We both laughed. “We’ll leave the past intact, but we’ll ensure you’re not bothered going forward.”
I nodded in gratitude. “Will I still have to be the Gatekeeper until the next one comes along?”
“No. You and Dashiell will live your lives as normal humans. There will be no interference from anyone upstairs or down. Your future is in your hands completely. You’re no longer the Gatekeeper and he’s no longer the Key.”
Jo gathered their knitting bag and stared into my eyes. “I’m sorry Dash was in such a nasty accident. He fell through the floor of the funeral home while getting your important papers from the safe in your office. He hit the tile floor in the mortuary. All your friends will be there to support him in his recovery. You’ll no longer have spirits knocking on your door.”
Jo stood and smiled as they touched my arm. “I’ll check in on your family on occasion. Call me Aunt Jo. And no worries about the future Gatekeeper. That job has already been reassigned.” They leaned forward and kissed my cheek before leaving the cafeteria.
I was filled with an enormous amount of gratitude, and as I looked around, relief consumed me when the spirits that had been mulling around when we arrived had now vanished before my eyes.
It was the dawn of a new beginning for our family.
Chapter Seventeen
Dash
“Three more, Dash. You can do it.” Little did Kenny, the physical therapist, know, but I was ready to rip his fucking head off. I’d already been at it for an hour, and lifting kettle bells—even light ones—was painful as fuck.
When I remembered why I was undergoing physical therapy, I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and gave him three more reps on my right side before switching to the left and repeating the torture.
Falling through the floor of Dearly & Son and landing on the tile-covered concrete in the mortuary served me right for not listening to the fire marshal that the building was unstable. I wastrying to retrieve our important papers from the safe in Keir’s office, but the natural gas fire that began in the mortuary and exploded through the stove upstairs had done a lot of damage. It was truly unsafe.
“There’s Papa, baby girl.” Keir pushed the stroller into the large therapy room, a smile instantly blooming on my face. I’d been out of the hospital for a month, and our little angel was turning six weeks old the next day. Things were currently in flux in the Dearly family, but we were going to see a house when I finished my session. I was bouncing-off-the-ceiling excited.
“There are my two favorite people in the world,” I said as I took the towel from around my neck and dried the sweat rolling down my face.
They’d shaved the back of my head to perform surgery on my neck, and when I’d seen it, I’d demanded Keir shave the rest of it. It was starting to grow back, but not fast enough for me.
I’d wrecked three vertebrae in my neck because of the fall—C2, C3, and C4. There had been surgery to repair the damage, and I now had a small titanium rod to stabilize my neck and hold up my big head.
I was told it was a miracle my spinal cord hadn’t snapped. My doctor had been optimistic that I would have minimal nerve damage. Sometimes, my hands and fingers were numb, but the swelling was still going down from the surgery, and once the nerves, muscles, and tissue returned to normal, they all believed I’d be as good as new.
My husband stopped next to the mat where I’d been doing my therapy, a beaming smile on his face. “Good morning, Kenny. How’s Grumpy Gus doing? Was he a pain in the a-s-s?” Kenny laughed, the dumb fucker.
Keir refused to curse in front of Grace, which made me laugh. She cried, pooped, ate, and occasionally, she made sweet littlesounds that lit up my heart. Her picking up any bad words from either of us was a long way away.
Not being able to hold that little angel in my arms was currently my biggest hurdle, which pushed me to work harder to regain strength in my arms and shoulders. I could sit in a chair and hold her for short amounts of time before the tingling and fatigue in my muscles forced me to ask Keir to take her. I wanted that shit behind me as quickly as possible.
“He’s committed, which is half the battle, Keir. How’s that little beauty doing today?” She was a beauty, all right. She looked exactly like Keir with his dark hair and porcelain skin. No DNA tests were necessary to determine her biological father, not that we wanted any.
I reached into the stroller and let her latch onto my index finger. “What did Dr. Phillips say?”
Keir had taken Grace to the pediatrician’s office in the same medical complex for a check-up. She had a little rash in the bend of her left arm, so we wanted to get it looked at to be sure it wasn’t serious.
I pushed back the hood of the stroller to see our beautiful daughter flinging her arms and kicking her feet. “Hello, Gracie Jo! How are you, sweetheart?” I brushed my other finger over her soft cheek. She was the light of our lives and the best medicine for my recovery.
I’d fallen through the floor of Dearly & Son the day before Christmas Eve, thirteen days after Gracie had been born. Thankfully, Keir had been waiting for me in the SUV with our daughter, so when I hadn’t returned in a hurry, Keir called Scotty Locke, who worked for him at the funeral home.
Scotty came over and found me in the mortuary. Keir later told me that Scotty was able to immobilize my head with some bubble wrap from the recycling bin in the bay and bring me outof the building. He alerted Keir to call the ambulance that took me to the emergency room.
It was my own stupid fault for going against the fire department’s determination that the building wasn’t safe, but we needed those documents to start the adoption process for me to adopt Grace Josephine, who was named after Keir’s Aunt Jo.
Scotty was a great guy, and we’d become close friends over the time Keir and I had been falling in love. Sadly, Scotty’s partner, Jay, had taken a job on the East Coast, so they would be moving sometime in the new year, and we wouldn’t get to see them as often. I’d forever owe him my gratitude for getting me out of that building before the whole second floor caved in. At least I’d gotten everything out of the safe before I went down.
I’d noticed some memory issues since my fall, experiencing blank spots in my life that dated back to the first head injury I’d had in Italy a few years ago. The latest crack to the noggin was my second Grade-3 concussion, and the doctors didn’t seem surprised that I had memory issues. They’d told me to remain positive and more of the blank spots would be filled over time, but frankly, I wasn’t dwelling on the things I couldn’t remember. I was only looking forward to a bright future and all the new memories we’d make in the Dearly family.
“Doctor says it’s nothing to worry about. Maybe we have the thermostat a little too warm, but I have a prescription for a topical to put on her twice a day until it goes away.”
