Goddess in Love

Despite the high ceilings, white table cloths, and formally dressed waiters and waitresses, the golden light from the massive chandeliers at Candleford’s was warm and comforting.

John and Megan Harris sat at a window-side table in the restaurant, over the remains of two plates of Pasta Fazul, enhanced with shrimp and scallops, a Candleford’s specialty.

It had been a good evening, romantic even. They’d walked to the nearby restaurant from home – one more advantage of living in a small town, Megan thought, in the warm late Spring twilight.

She leaned against her husband and luxuriated in his big arm around her as they strolled. She let herself feel small and protected on one level, while laughing at herself gently for it on another.

They chatted about the weather and work. Megan gloried in feelings of normalcy.

He’d asked about her 'deputy duty.'

“Don’t worry,” she’d assured him. “Trish has the watch tonight.”

At the restaurant, over good food and wine, Memory Lane inevitably drew Megan and John down its rosy path.

There they laughed and sighed over the people and places they’d encountered together, the incidents, circumstances and stories of more than a decade of married life.

Megan wished the night could go on forever. Tender feelings suffused her for John, husband, lover, friend, whatever his faults, always there for her.

There he sat, big, bluff, handsome, a construction man, a builder, beaming at her, holding something out to her ...

“John, what’s this? I thought we agreed we wouldn’t ...”

“I know,” he said, proffering the little box wrapped with red paper and gold bow. “But things have been kind of rough lately. I wanted to give this to you as a kind of pledge. A promise that things will be better. That I’ll be better.”

“Aww, you didn’t have to do that, sweetheart,” Megan said as she took the box and peeled away bow and paper. She smiled broadly at him. “It’s awfully sweet though.”

She opened the box, and caught her breath at the slim, elegant gold ring, capped with a translucent red stone.

“It’s a ruby,” John said, grinning hugely. His grin faded, as in astonishment, he watched his wife’s face crumple into tears.

“Oh God,” she sobbed, looking down and holding her hand to her eyes to try to stem the unexpected flow. “I love you so much, John, and I’ve been so awful. No wonder you ... you ... went with ...”

She couldn’t finish.

John reached across the table to take Megan’s hand.

“Going out with her was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” John said. “I’ve never stopped thanking my lucky stars you came and got me that day.”

“Really?” Megan looked up sniffling. John handed her a napkin and she dabbed tears away and wiped her nose.

John nodded. “I love you, Megan, and that’s all there is to it.”

“John,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry for all those times when I was mean, when I took advantage of my ... my abilities. I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking. I love you more than anything in the world. I swear, I will never, ever use my powers on you like that again.”

“Really?” John said. “Not even for ...?”

“John Harris,” she half-laughed, half-sniffled, “you are incorrigible!”

“That’s me!” he said brightly. “And on that happy note, what do you say we head for home?”

The pair stood up and John placed some bills on the table.

Megan’s phone rang. She glanced at the display and answered.

“Hi Trish, how are you?” She listened. “Oh, we’re fine, never better. Wait’ll you see the ring John just gave me.”

She listened again. “Really? No, we’re absolutely fine here. How about you? Are you sure everything’s okay?”

John waited, trying to piece the conversation together from Megan’s side of it.

“You’re kidding!” Megan said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to John, “Trish just helped the police handle a hostage situation!” She listened again. “Says we’ll probably read all about it in the paper tomorrow.” She smiled at John. “Your girlfriend Anne Straits was there.”

He winced. She turned her attention back to the phone.

“Maybe it was what they call post-cognition,” she said. “You know, a premonition about the hostage situation, but delayed until after the event.

“I’ll be careful Trish. I’m supposed to be the worry-wart!” She listened. “Okay. Well, that’s sweet; I love you too!

“Okay, Trish, thanks for calling. Bye!”

Megan put the phone in her small black purse and turned to her husband.

“Trish handled a hostage situation!”

“So I heard,” John said, impressed. “She’s ok, I take it?”

“Oh yes. She called because she was worried about me.”

“You? Why? I thought nothing could hurt you.”

“That is the case,” Megan said. “But Trish said she was just now struck with a feeling that something really bad was getting ready to happen.”

“To you?”

“To us.”

John half-smiled. “If there’s some muggers waiting for us outside, you leave them to me.”

Megan leaned against him. “My big strong boy,” she said. “You really are my hero.”

“So what’s with the hostage situation? What’d she say?”

Megan told him what little she knew, as arm in arm, they left the restaurant. Outside, in the moonlit dark, Megan put her head back and breathed deeply. “Thank you so much for my beautiful ring, sweetheart,” Megan said as they strolled homeward.

“I’m glad you like it,” John replied, enjoying the feel of her moving hips in the soft gray fabric beneath his strong hand. “It looks good on your finger. Wasn’t sure I’d got the right size.”

“It fits perfectly,” Megan said. “John do you think it’s too late for me to get pregnant?”

“No,” John said, surprised at the sudden turn in conversation. “What made you start thinking about that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, taking his arm and snuggling closer to his side as they walked. “I’ve had the strangest dream lately about a little lost girl, a little blond girl, looking for her parents, and I thought maybe ...”

“Maybe what?”

“It sounds silly, but maybe I’m supposed to be her mother!”

“With all that’s happened to us – happened to you,” John said, “I’d hesitate to discount any signs from above.”

The couple had arrived home, and John fumbled for his keys.

“The strange thing,” Megan said, “is she’s Russian.”

“Who’s Russian?”

“The little girl. The little girl in my dream. Isn’t that weird?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Dreams are strange sometimes. What do you say we get undressed and see if we can’t make a little blond girl – or boy,” John said. “An American.”

She floated up and kissed him slowly and sweetly.

They headed for the bedroom, Megan walking on the carpet, floated nevertheless. In the big bed, Megan and John loved each other slowly and tenderly. Megan was invulnerable to all harm, but with her defenses entirely down, John went for the one sure sweet spot within her he’d always known. The knowledge didn’t fail him.

Afterward, she held him close but gently under the covers. John drifted pleasantly to sleep, to the sound of Megan’s contented sighs.

He didn’t hear, as Megan, nearly asleep herself, whispered his name.

“John,” she said faintly, and drowsily, “the little blond girl’s here.”