The Fine Line Book One Between Worlds Series (14 page)

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Although work continued on little things in
the house, all in all, everything else was done. Robin put a
Christmas tree in the family room and in the parlor. She decorated
the house perfectly with bright Christmas lights and fresh pine on
the mantles. Stockings hung from the family room fire place.

Robin eagerly awaited Olivia’s arrival. She
sat in the study checking email when she heard the kitchen door
slam. Fear gripped her, but then she heard the sweet sound of
Olivia’s voice.

“
Robin!” she shouted.
“Robin!”

Enthusiastically, Robin pushed away from the
desk and rushed down to the kitchen. Olivia, still bundled in her
pink parka and knit hat, glowed with excitement.

Embracing Olivia, Robin sighed, so happy to
see the little girl.

“
Oh, you look so good I
think I’ll eat you up! Let me take your coat and hat.”

“
This place is so big!”
Olivia exclaimed as she started unzipping her coat.

“
Yes. It’s
large.”

“
Hey, who lives next door?
They have a Santa on their lawn.”

“
That’s Mr. and Mrs.
O’Bryan’s place,” Matt answered. “They have grandkids I know you’ll
want to play with.”

“
They have lived there for
a really long time,” Robin added.

She took the coat and hat as Olivia stepped
out of her snow boots.

“
Where’s my room?” Olivia
asked curiously.

“
Come on, we’ll show you,”
Matt answered.

They made their way up the stairs. Timidly,
Olivia opened the door and then gazed inside, her mouth gapping
open. “Super Girl!” she shouted as she jumped up and down clapping
her hands together. “I love it!” She ran to Matt and leapt into his
arms.

“
Don’t thank me munchkin.
Thank Robin. She’s the one who picked out everything,” Matt
said.

Olivia hopped down and walked to Robin.
Looking up into her face earnestly, she smiled.

“
Thank you so much. I just
can’t believe you did all of this for me.”

Robin knelt down and smiled.

“
Of course I did it.
That’s what you told me you wanted.”

“
But I didn’t think you
would. Mommy told me that you would never do it because it was too
hard.”

“
Nothing is too hard when
it comes to you, little one,” she replied. “You want to go see the
basement? There’s stuff down there for you, too,” Robin
asked.

“
Yeah!” Olivia shouted as
Robin rose and held out her hand.

The basement added to Olivia’s thrill. An
area of the room painted pink with stenciled purple butterflies
featured a large wooden doll house and other toys.

After a bath and a few hours of play, Olivia
needed to go to bed. Robin kept working in the kitchen as Matt went
upstairs to put Olivia to bed. She heard his feet on the
floorboards in the hallway and turned to look at him. Smiling
widely, he walked to her.

“
She wants you to tuck her
in,” he said.

“
Really?”

“
That’s what she
said.”

It was the first time she had asked for
Robin at bedtime.

Gladly, she walked up the stairs and into
Olivia’s room. Sitting in her bed, Olivia flipped the pages of a
book.

“
What are you reading?”
Robin asked.

“
Oh, daddy just read me
Green Eggs and Ham.
It’s my favorite book.”

“
I liked that book,
too.”

She took the book from Olivia and put it on
the night stand. Olivia snuggled under the covers and Robin pulled
the red down comforter up over her.

“
Love you dear-heart,”
Robin said as she leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“
Love you, too. I just
wanted you to tuck me in.”

“
Well, I’m glad you
did.”

“
Good night,” she
concluded.

Robin smiled. “Night sweetie,” she said as
she pulled the door shut.

Fatigue overcame Robin and she longed for a
warm bath. So, she walked to the master bedroom, gathered her
cotton pajamas, and walked to the bathroom.

The sound of the water hitting the porcelain
soothed her soul. It would be the first time she would actually be
taking a bath in the claw-foot antique bathtub. Matt installed a
shower mechanism so she had been taking showers instead.

Around the tub hung a white linen shower
curtain from a round rod secured to the ceiling. A simple pedestal
sink stood across from the toilet. A large fluffy yellow bath rug
protected the new tile floor.

Robin lit some candles and left the door
cracked just enough to see out. She sank into the hot water as the
bubbles wrapped around her body. Soaking in the calming scent of
the lavender candles, she closed her eyes and rested her head on
the rolled up towel. The sound of Christmas music echoed through
the house.

Suddenly, she heard giggling. Her eyes
opened and she struggled to look out the bathroom door into the
dark hallway.

“
Olly?” she asked
quietly.

No one answered. She put her head back on
the towel and closed her eyes again, but she heard the giggling
once again. She kept her eyes closed sure Olivia was being
mischievous.

“
Olly, you need to go to
bed.”

Robin didn’t want Olivia to get in trouble
for being out of bed, so she stood up as the water ran down her
body. She carefully stepped out onto the rug and grabbed the
terrycloth robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. She
wrapped it around herself and walked down the hallway. Quietly, she
opened the door and peaked into Olivia’s room. To her surprise,
Olivia’s body was still as she lay sleeping.

Slightly unnerved, she headed back to her
bath but was interrupted by the giggling again. Now fear rushed
over her. She returned to Olivia’s room, but the child still didn’t
move.

Without hesitation, she walked downstairs.
Matt sat at the dining room table with wrapping paper strung all
around. Ribbons hung off the table as he struggled to wrap
gifts.

Robin stood in the doorway feeling
terrified. Their eyes met. Immediately, he stood and walked to her.
She felt his gentle touch on her arms and her eyes moved but her
body stayed numb.

“
Robin, what’s wrong? You
look like you just saw a ghost,” he began.

Blankly, she looked at him.

“
I was taking a bath and I
heard giggling, so I thought it was Olly and I went to check on her
and she was still in bed asleep. I stood outside her door and
started back to get in the tub…I heard it again. It scared me,
Matt. I don’t want to go back up there by myself.”

“
Sweetheart, it’s probably
just Olly playing games. You know how she can be.”

“
Matthew, it wasn’t her.”

She trembled visibly.

“
I’ll go up with you. You
can finish your bath while I turn the bed down and put some laundry
away,” he said in a consoling voice.

She nodded.

They made their way up the stairs to the
bathroom. The water was still warm, so Robin hung her robe up as
Matt sat on the closed toilet lid.

She knew he would try to calm her. She could
almost see the wheels turning in his head trying to come up with
logical reasons for what Robin told him. He didn’t disappoint
her.

“
You’ve been under a lot
of stress with the move and the promotion and everything, you
know?” he began.

“
You think it’s my
imagination?”

“
It’s possible,” he
continued. “The one thing I am sure of is this: if you can’t touch
it, it doesn’t exist. So whatever it was that you thought you heard
has to have a logical, realistic explanation to it.”

“
You don’t believe in a
higher power?” she asked curiously.

“
I believe that what
happens in this life is all we have.”

“
So you don’t believe in a
creator?” she questioned insistently.

“
I’m not an atheist or
anything, but honestly who is God? I’ve never seen him.”

“
I’m not talking about
God. I’m talking about a creator; an all powerful being who created
each and every soul.”

“
No, Robin, I don’t
believe that there is an all-powerful anything. I believe there’s
life. I believe we are a bag of chemicals. We live. We die. I
believe we experience happiness, sadness, loss, triumph. But
honestly, I don’t believe there’s much more than that.”

Disturbed by his smugness and his
interpretation, she couldn’t believe what she heard.

“
So you don’t believe in
an afterlife or miracles or things like that? Divine intervention?
Nothing?”

“
Robin, I’ve seen too many
people suffer for no good reason. Where is God when that happens?
Where was he when you were being held hostage?”

She was ashamed for him. “I wasn’t alone,”
she whispered.

He didn’t hear her and kept talking.

“
Don’t you think that it’s
all just bullshit?”

“
No. I don’t. You know my
stepdad is a retired Pentecostal preacher. My entire life I was
taken to church. My brother, my sister, and me were in agony while
we were there most of the time, but we saw things and felt things
that none of us could explain. When I was held hostage by Brett and
I thought my life was going to end, I experienced something. It was
completely different than the beliefs I had been raised with. Even
in the midst of all of that chaos with Brett, I felt peace. You
can’t buy that Matthew. Yes, I was scared, but once I gave into the
spiritual energy that surrounded me, the fear was gone. I felt
reassurance that no matter what happened, I’d be okay. It was then
that I realized that there was more to what I had been told growing
up. I began researching spiritualism and shied away from the
fundamentalist teachings of my childhood. I discovered more than I
could have ever imagined.”

“
So you don’t believe in
God?”

“
I believe there is a
higher power. I used to think God was a mean old man sitting on a
throne ready to strike me down when I made mistakes. You see,
fundamentalists control through fear. Spirituality embraces love
and peace.”

“
What about Jesus?” Matt
asked intriguingly.

“
I believe that Jesus was
the Creator in human form,” she answered.

“
And the
Bible?”

“
The Bible is what it is.
It is a collection of man-made written accounts of the Christian
belief system. It was written hundreds and hundreds of years after
Jesus died and I believe there are bits of truth in the Bible to
help each of us find our way successfully to the Creator. But, I
believe that each religion has that quality. Each set of teachings
allows us to commune with the Creator. But, really, I think it’s up
to each of us to distinguish what is fact in those teachings and
what is fiction.”

“
Angels?” Matt continued
to ask curiously.

“
Spirit guides are what
I’ve come to understand them as. They are supreme, angelic beings
assigned to a person for safety, guidance, help during death, and
enlightenment surrounding personal abilities.”

“
How come we never talked
about this before?” he asked.

“
I guess it just never
came up. Never seemed to be the right time, I suppose,” she
answered as she shrugged.

Sadness covered her heart as she thought of
how skeptical Matt seemed to be. How lost she would feel without
the comfort of her Creator. She couldn’t image how Matt functioned
on a daily basis without some kind of faith.

Terrifying

After the intense conversation, things went
on as normal. There was no more discussion about the giggling and
Robin’s intense belief system. In fact, Matt avoided any further
talk about spirituality.

Because of the investment with the house,
money was tight. Therefore, Christmas gifts weren’t something Robin
and Matt would be participating in. They bought things for Olly, of
course, and other members of the family, but, they agreed that the
house was gift enough for both of them.

Snuggled together on the couch with the fire
blazing, they talked over the events of Christmas day. The crackle
of the wood could be heard over the chatter.

Matt smirked sneakily. Robin knew him too
well; she knew he bought something for her in spite of their
deal.