“Get out of my house. Molly, Charles, Seth.Now.”
A chill plummeted down Kari’s spine at the small pistol Caleb had pulled from his coat to level directly at Seth’s heart.
Everyone else in the room, hushed, staring, suddenly burst into panic and jumped up from the table to rush from the room until once more, it was silent.
Deadly silent.
Caleb extended his arm as if preparing to shoot. “I said for you to get out—”
“Caleb, this is madness!” Seth’s mother broke in, but Charles rushed forward to take her by the arm.
“Molly, let’s go. Seth, please…”
To Kari’s mounting horror, Seth didn’t move an inch as if daring Caleb to shoot. His fingers only tightened around hers.
“Uncle Caleb, you’d be a fool to pull that trigger.”
“And you’ll be dead if you don’t leave now.Get out!”
Her heart breaking, Kari eased her hand from Seth’s grip as she looked up at him. “Seth, please listen to him. If anything were to happen to you…oh, God,for me, please go!”
It seemed no one breathed, no one moved for the longest moment…and then Seth turned from her and walked stiffly from the room, his parents with their arms around each other right behind him.
Leaving Kari to face Caleb alone, tears stinging her eyes as she slowly shook her head.
“You can’t be the man my mother loved, you can’t be. You would do this to me? Force me to marry someone I don’t love? It’s just like what happened to her and look what it’s done to you! You’re not my father, you’re a monster!”
As if her words had struck him, he flinched, his face suddenly grown ashen as he lifted the gun and pressed the muzzle to his temple.
“You’re right, Kari…look what it’s done to me—”
“Papa, no, please!” She lunged for him at the same moment the strangest light seemed to fill the room, a shimmering form appearing next to Caleb that seemed to knock the gun away from him.
Yet in the next instant, Kari stared down at the pistol clutched in her hand while Caleb crumpled to his knees, weeping.
“Forgive me, Kari. Forgive me!”
She dropped the gun and threw her arms around his quaking shoulders even as Seth burst into the room followed by his parents, their faces stricken.
“Kari, we were outside and heard a shot! Are you all right?”
Stunned, she looked up at them and then back to her father. “There was no shot. Somehow I grabbed the pistol, I don’t know how…”
Seth came around the table, gesturing to the broken glass on the carpeted floor where a bullet had shattered the window.
Only a few feet from where Kari knelt beside Caleb, cradling him in her arms.
* * *
“I still don’t know how I grabbed the gun in time,” Kari murmured in disbelief, her cheek pressed against Seth’s coat as he held her tightly. “I heard nothing, no shot, just a whooshing in my ears and then I saw the most brilliant light—”
“It’s the storm coming, see?”
Kari glanced behind her from where they stood together on the front porch, jagged lightning streaking the dark sky as thunder rumbled to the west. Yet she shook her head, trying to explain something that to her, seemed all the more inexplicable the more she tried.
“No, it was something else…and then I saw my mother’s face, Seth!”
“You were in shock, everything happening so fast. It’s all right, Kari. It’s all right.”
