***Major Hankie Alert***

The next two days passed in a blur for Tyrone. It felt as though he were on autopilot as he did what he could to care for his children, make arrangements for his Lenora’s funeral, and to just get through each day. When alone, Tyrone sat on the sofa, unable to concentrate on much of anything, and staring off into space. Tears came often, and there were many times when his grief crushed him so enormously that there was no choice but to give in. Nights were the worst because he was plagued by horrible nightmares while he tried to sleep. In some of the dreams, his Lenora was trapped behind a wall of flames, which he couldn’t break through to save her. The more he tried, the higher the flames got while Lenora’s cries of fear and pain grew more desperate. He awoke screaming as Lenora uttered a tortured shriek as the flames consumed her. Other dreams consisted of his Lenora being pulled down by an undertow in the ocean. She called his name, begging him to save her while her hands waved frantically. The harder Tyrone swam to get to her, the choppier the ocean became. Large waves pushed him back. Lenora’s figure grew smaller, her voice more frightened but weaker and more distant. He sat bolt upright as the current dragged her down and she didn’t resurface. Sweat rolled down his back, and Tyrone discovered his pillow was wet from mingled tears and sweat.

Tyrone ran his hands through his hair in an agitated gesture and groaned. The aftershocks of the nightmares stuck to him like white on flour. His entire body was shaking with fatigue and grief. As he slowly rose to his feet, he felt his knees shaking and threatening to give way. He hadn’t eaten much of anything since his Lenora went away, and it was catching up to him. “I am an old man before my time,” he said, stretching and flinching as his back popped. “Great Drogo, give me strength to go on. Give me the courage to do as my Lenora asked and carry on.”

Tyrone swiped the backs of his hands over his wet cheeks and heaved a tremulous sigh. He made himself drag one foot in front of the other so he could check on his kids. He found Jonas and Chris in bed asleep. Kissing their foreheads, he arranged the covers more snugly around them. Andrea was sprawled on her back, asleep, but with tears drying on her little cheeks. Tyrone’s heart broke all over again as realization that his daughter had cried herself to sleep crashed over him. “Not feeling much like a steamroller now, are you, sweetheart?” he whispered while tenderly wiping away her tears with his fingers.

All his kids had their own code names that always made him and Lenora smile. They’d just seemed to materialize out of thin air and stuck. Andrea, because of her athletic ability and strong personality, was dubbed Steamroller. Jonas, who was always smiling with laughter coming easily, was called Smiler. Chris, because of his cooking talents as well as his ability to put away food like nobody else, was named Jaws. Aurora was their Princess because she loved long dresses, always wanted to look pretty, and was such a kind and gentle soul.

“None of you are feeling it, not that I blame you a bit,” Tyrone said, stroking a hand over Andrea’s hair. “Jonas hasn’t smiled once, Chris hasn’t felt much like eating, and Aurora looks like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her back. I wish I knew how to make it better, darling.” Tyrone kissed Andrea’s still moist cheek and tucked the covers around her. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you too, Da,” Andrea murmured sleepily as one eye cracked open.

“I didn’t mean to wake you, sweetheart. I just wanted to tuck you back into bed. Go back to sleep,” Tyrone whispered.

“Stay with me till I do? Please, Da.”

Without hesitation, Tyrone slid onto the bed beside his daughter and snaked an arm around her. “I’m here, my darling Andrea. Close your eyes.” Tyrone rubbed Andrea’s back in slow, methodical movements. It was the way she loved it when she was littler when her parents would put her to bed. As Andrea began to relax under his touch, Tyrone sang softly.

“Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you’ve been asking me
I think you know what I’ve been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away…”

Andrea loved this song and always wanted her mother or father, depending on who tucked her in, to sing it to her. Singing it to her this time made Tyrone’s heart tremble. It was such a beautiful song with a deep meaning about both life and death. It was so fitting for what they all were going through, especially with lots of questions having arisen about Lenora’s funeral and where she was now. Tyrone’s cheeks were wet by the time he finished. Thankfully, Andrea was asleep, which spared her from seeing him cry.

Carefully easing himself off the bed, Tyrone ran the backs of his hands over his cheeks. Drogo, he cried more in these last two days than he ever had before in his life! Taking a ragged breath and steeling himself, he went to Aurora’s room to check on her. Aurora, however, wasn’t in her bed. He frowned and reached out for his daughter with his wolfish senses. His knees nearly came unhinged as he felt the tentacles of her sorrow entwining with his.

Tyrone padded in the direction of where he felt his daughter. “Aurora? Princess?” he called softly. His frown deepened when he heard no answer.

As he neared the little studio he and Lenora had set up for Aurora, he heard soft, sad singing.

“Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in Heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in Heaven…”

Tyrone’s heart seized as he heard his once cheerful daughter singing such a woeful song. Nobody that young should have to resort to singing Tears in Heaven. He bit his lip to stifle a sob. Taking a deep breath, he slowly opened the door and poked his head in.

To help herself cope, Aurora lost herself in her painting and music. With the loss of her mother came a change of mood to her work. Aurora no longer hummed merrily as she dabbed color over the canvas. Instead, she sang songs of darkness and loss.

“Would you know my name
If I saw you in Heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in Heaven…”

Aurora sang in a soft, mournful voice as she shaped storm clouds above a drenched cemetery scene. In the shadows, gathered around a tombstone were crying people with blurred features. A lonely woman clad in a black dress and long black veil stood off in the distance, her head bowed, and the black veil shielding her face. The ticking of her mother’s grandfather clock in the living room added to the mood of desolation as Aurora shaped the minute details of the lone woman’s black veil. When the painting was done, she left it on the easel to dry, then curled up in the chair and surrendered to the hot tears that always accompanied her now. Dark despair overcame her as she rocked herself back and forth and sobbed in repeated broken tones, “Oh, Ma! Ma…oh, Ma!”

“Hey, come here, princess,” Tyrone said, coming fully into the room and holding his arms out to her. She didn’t come of her own volition but didn’t resist when Tyrone pulled her into his embrace. Even in his grief and unbearable pain with so little to give, he couldn’t ever turn away from his daughter, especially when she so desperately needed him.

“I miss her, Da. I miss her so much. It’s not fair! I want her back. She should be here…with us!” Aurora sobbed as she buried her face against Tyrone’s sweater.

“Oh, baby, I know…I know,” Tyrone croaked as tears ran down his own cheeks. “Your mother was the most beautiful person I have ever known. She gave all of us so much love and took great care of us. There will never be anyone like her.” He cradled Aurora’s head against his chest and sighed as he looked off into the distance. “I’d give anything to bring your mother back to us.”

“What are we going to do without her, Da?” Aurora sobbed.

Tyrone stroked Aurora’s hair and placed a gentle kiss atop her head. “I don’t know, sweetheart. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Your mother would want it that way.”

Aurora cried for a long, long time while Tyrone held her close and tried to soothe her with gentle words and loving fatherly touches. When the torrent of weeping subsided into tiny hiccups and mournful little sighs, she remained cradled against Tyrone’s chest, her energy spent. Finally, she whispered in a congested, weak voice. “Da, I need to tell you something, but…but I’m afraid to.”

“You can tell me anything, Princess.. You know that.”

“I don’t want to make you cry again,” Aurora replied.

Tyrone sighed, hugged her tighter, and brushed his lips over her temple. “I’ll try not to, I promise.”

“Well…” she began uncertainly.

“What? You can tell me,” Tyrone urged gently.

She hesitated another moment before speaking. “Just before the earthquake, I had a vision. I-I can see and feel things like Ma could.”

Tyrone nodded encouragingly. “I know.”

“you do?”

“I’ve suspected for quite a long time, and your Ma told me about that talk you had with her the night before she went to the hospital.”

“So then, you know about the music thing, too,” Aurora replied.

“Yeah,” Tyrone confirmed.

“Anyway, just before the earthquake, this vision came. I saw you and Ma in the hospital. You were holding her, and she knew she was going to d-die. Sh-she said goodbye and then just went to sleep. Da, I…I felt her go.” Aurora’s little arms tightened around her father. “There’s more. I felt you lose it…afterward, I mean. Then, the earthquakes came and we thought you might die, too.”

The urge to throw his head back and howl for all eternity came on so strong, he thought he might go mad. Tyrone took in a very slow, grounding breath, bit his lower lip, and held Aurora against him as hard as he dared without hurting her. “Aurora! Oh, Aurora, my love! You shouldn’t have had to experience that.” His voice was raspy and clogged with the tears he was finally able to tamp down. “I wish I could have kept you from having to go through that. Great Drogo, you’re so young…too young to have seen and felt that.”

“I don’t think psychic powers or this empathic stuff is age sensitive,” Aurora said, lifting her head to look into her father’s ravaged face. With the tenderest of touches, she wiped away a lone tear glistening on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Da. I didn’t mean to make you cry again.”

“It’s all right, princess. It’s all right.” Tyrone pulled her close for another hug. “We’re all going to be crying a lot for a while.” Studying his little daughter’s face, he saw how truly haunted she looked. It seemed her gifts were already so powerful. He hated that she’d experienced such a heartbreaking vision along with the empathic messages. He wished she’d been a bit older before her gifts grew so powerful. He hated the haunted, woeful look in her eyes, which made her appear far older beyond her years.

“Maybe when it gets really bad, and maybe if we hold each other tight enough, it wont hurt so bad,” Aurora whispered.

“Maybe so,” Tyrone replied.

Aurora squeezed him as hard as she could. “I love you, Da.”

“I love you so very much, Aurora,” Tyrone whispered, pressing her to his heart. “So much like your Ma.”

“That’s a good thing,” Aurora said, one corner of her mouth raising in a slight smile.

“It’s the best thing. Now then, it’s late and you should have been in bed a long time ago.”

“I know, but I couldn’t sleep. I was having bad dreams, so I got up to paint,” Aurora said sadly.

Tyrone’s eyes flicked over to the drying canvas. “That’s a sad scene you painted and an even sadder song you were singing.”

“I know. It just fit my mood.” Aurora shrugged and looked at her picture. “I was trying to paint that scene from the book Ma wrote about the woman who convinced Death to give back her lover. You know the one. The woman didn’t admit she loved the guy until it was too late. She made a deal with the wise witch who summoned Death. The woman had to go through all kinds of stuff before Death released him to her forever. I was painting the cemetery scene where they had his funeral. I wanted it to look like how Ma described it.”

Tyrone sighed and tucked a lock of hair behind Aurora’a ear. “Your Ma was always so happy when you captured one of her scenes on canvas. She’d be a little worried about you painting such a sad scene though.”

Aurora shrugged again. “I suppose I did it to help prepare myself for what…what we have to do tomorrow. You know, when we have to…to put her in the…the g-ground.” Her voice broke on the last two words, and she clung to her father desperately.

Tyrone swallowed hard, attempting to steady himself. “I don’t think there is anything we can do to fully prepare ourselves for that. Sweetheart, it’s going to be a very, very hard day.”

“I know, Da. I know.” Aurora squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t like to think of Ma being in the ground. She wouldn’t like that. She’d want to be where all the pretty flowers are.”

“Oh, Princess, she won’t feel it. What goes in the ground is just a shell of what your mother was. She’s already gone from this world. The body she left behind won’t feel anything.” What he didn’t tell his little daughter was that he, too, didn’t want to think of his Lenora lying underground. Tyrone gave her a final squeeze and kissed her cheek. “Let’s get you tucked into bed now.”

The day of Lenora’s funeral was cold and dreary. Rain pelted the car as Amadeus drove the family to the chapel. Tyrone and Landon wanted to arrive early before anyone else so they could say their final goodbyes to Lenora alone.

Tears ran, unchecked, down Tyrone’s cheeks as he looked at his “wife.” “You look so beautiful, Lenora. You look as if you’ll just sit right up and tell me this was all a bad dream.” He touched her hand and curled his fingers around hers, unable to hold back a gasp at how cold she felt. “My Lenora! How I wish…”

However, he didn’t finish his sentence. Something didn’t feel right. His sixth sense buzzed unrelentingly, but he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. Tyrone ran a hand over her arm and then caressed her cheek. She would have felt like Lenora if she wasn’t so cold, but something was very, very wrong here.

Tyrone bent closer to “Lenora,” brought a handful of her beautiful hair to his nose, and sniffed. “Something is missing. You don’t smell like my Lenora.” He could smell death on her this time; there was no question about that. Beneath the smell of the chemicals used to prepare her body, there was no underlying smell of who he knew as Lenora, his beloved mate. It was as if everything that made her Lenora had been drained away.

It didn’t add up to Tyrone. He’d seen death before, smelled death several times, in fact. Even in death, there always remained the smell that was unique to that person. In “Lenora’s” case, there was nothing except for the smell of death and chemicals. The words that came to Tyrone’s mind as he smelled “Lenora’s” hair again were “clean slate.”

Tyrone stood back to take everything in from a wide angled view. “I am going crazy. I want her back so badly that I’m trying to convince myself that she’s not really here, that this isn’t my Lenora lying here. She looks like Lenora…feels like her except for the coldness, which I know is her body at room temperature. Even her hair…” He stepped forward to caress the golden tresses. “It feels exactly like my Lenora’s hair…and yet…I can’t shake this feeling.” Tyrone didn’t realize he’d been speaking aloud, albeit softly.

“Son, are you okay?” Deus stepped up beside Tyrone and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I…something is wrong here,” Tyrone said, momentarily tearing his eyes away from his “Lenora” to lock onto his sire’s. “Take a good look at her. I mean, really look at her and tell me what you think.”

Without hesitation, Deus stepped up to the casket and laid his hand over “Lenora’s.” As expected, she was cold to the touch. “She looks very peaceful,” he whispered.

“Yeah…but she’s not…right,” Tyrone protested.

Deus leaned over to look more closely. He immediately detected the odor of death and embalming chemicals. Deus sniffed “Lenora’s” hair and frowned. “She’s cold this time, and the sense of death is easily detectable. But, she smells…”

“New,” Tyrone filled in where his father trailed off. “It’s like her body was stopped only moments after it began to live. It’s like a…a clean slate. What the hell is going on here?”

Author’s Notes: As it turns out, I’m going to have to break up the “In Memorium” part into two separate chapters because of the length. I know I’ve dropped a cliffhanger on you, so I’m (mostly) sorry about that. I’ll get the second part up as soon as I can, and then we’ll move onward and see what actually happened to the real Lenora.

The songs mentioned here are (Lullabye) Goodnight, My Angel by Billy Joel and Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. Obviously, I do not own the copyrights to these songs. Here are some links to these beautiful songs for your listening pleasure.

(Lullabye) Goodnight, My Angel by Billy Joel

Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton

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