A story born from lake summers, dark woods, and the quiet power of believing in what we cannot always see.
Some stories begin long before they are written. Adeline grew from the wonder I carried with me as a child: lazy summer days at the cabin on the lake, woods waiting to be explored, night skies alive with mystery, and the feeling that nature held secrets just beyond what we could see. This story is dedicated to my mother, Jackie, for those years of summer days at the lake and for the memories that helped shape the world of Adeline. I am also deeply grateful to my husband, Patrick, my life partner of more than fifty years, for believing in me and encouraging me to follow my dreams. And to my mother and father, thank you for giving me a childhood filled with opportunities to immerse myself in the glories of Mother Nature. It is a firefly in my soul that will never grow dim.
I hope you enjoy meeting Adeline.
— Mary Ann Hayes
I’m going to tell you this story, and believe you me, it’s true.
Now, you may feel your eyebrows rising before I’m through, and you may even be thinking that I must be crazy. That’s all right. I suppose when a woman gets to be eighty-seven years old, people start thinking most anything unusual she says is proof that her mind is going.
But I know what happened to me.
And I know I never should have gone out there in the first place. I know that now, and everyone has certainly taken their turn reminding me of it. But being eighty-seven does not mean I have to quit living, and I am sick and tired of everyone expecting me to.
Besides, if I had not gone out there, I might never have understood something that had been with me since I was a little girl.
You see, I had been fighting a battle nearly my whole life.
When my sister and I were little, we shared a bedroom. I never could understand how she slept through the terrible battle that went on there at night, time and time again. I always knew when it was coming. I could feel it before I ever saw anything, and sometimes I was so afraid that I would lie awake, scared to let myself fall asleep.
There was a demon in our room.
It stayed beneath the built-in desk in the corner, slick and black, with red glowing eyes that watched me through the dark. I would hide under the covers as long as I could stand it, praying it would not get too close.
But I was not alone.
My angel always came.
I think she was a girl, though I cannot say for certain. I mostly remember her wings. They were wide and strong, and she would spread them out between me and that awful thing beneath the desk. I could still see the demon through the fine filter of her feathers, but it could not get to me as long as she was there.
Most nights, my angel won easily enough.
But sometimes that demon was sneaky. Sometimes it would fool her just long enough to come closer, and when that happened, I would fly out from under my covers and jump behind the easy chair in the corner. I would crouch down low and peek around the side, just enough to see that my angel was still protecting me.
She could cover me better behind that chair, you know. There was less of me to protect there than there was stretched out in a whole bed.
I tried to tell my sister about it once. She said it was a stupid nightmare and that I should not think about it anymore. But I knew better. I had scared the willies out of her, and she simply did not want to hear any more about demons in our bedroom.
So I kept it to myself.
I lost a lot of sleep during those years, waiting for the battle to begin and praying my angel would win one more time so I could go on living. Then, sometime as I grew older, the battles stopped. I cannot tell you exactly when. One day I simply realized that I had not seen that demon in a very long time.
I figured it had finally given up on me.
My angel was a diligent sort, after all.
So imagine my surprise when that old battle came back after all those years.
There I was, out on the mountain and in the woods, lost and cold enough to freeze to death, when the demon found me again. Doesn’t it just figure that old Satan would send something after you when you are already as low as a person can get? When you are frightened and exhausted and wondering whether even your angel could find you way out there in the wilderness?
But she did find me.
Only this time, she did not stand in front of me.
She stood behind me.
At first, I did not understand. I wondered why she was not spreading those wings between me and the demon the way she always had when I was a child. Then I knew.
She was not leaving me unprotected.
She was telling me it was my turn.
I was not a little girl hiding behind an easy chair anymore. I was an old woman, that was true enough, but I was still here. I had lived a whole lifetime. I had loved people and raised children and buried sorrows and found joy again. I had more strength in me than I had ever given myself credit for.
My angel knew it, even if I did not.
So that night, in the dead dark cold of the woods, I stood in the light of my angel and faced the demon that had frightened me nearly all my life.
And this time, I was the one who won.
But I suppose I am getting ahead of myself, Beanie Girl.
Before I can tell you what happened out there on the mountain, I should tell you how I came to be walking across that bridge in the first place.
Adeline continues next week with Chapter One.
Captivating!