Wake Unto Me Read Online Free Page A

relationships so fragile at their core?
    Her relationship with her family seemed to be. As she’d predicted, as soon as her father had understood that the Fortune School tuition would be free, he’d seen no reason not to let her go.
    Joy had wept and asked why Caitlyn hated her home so much, but eventually had admitted that the educational opportunity was too good to pass up. “I just want you to be happy,” she’d said, reproachfully, with the air of a martyr.
    Caitlyn’s half brothers cared only that there would now be one more bedroom available in the house, and began fighting over who would get it.
    It hurt a little to see everyone’s lives closing over the small hole that would be created when she left. They’d already started to move on.
    But so had she, she realized. Part of her had already boarded the plane, flown over the pole, and landed in Europe. Spring Creek was no longer home.
    But France was not yet home, either. She was in limbo, and it was eerily uncomfortable and disquieting. She was floating, untethered, between two lives. Caitlyn propped the tarot cart at the base of her bedside lamp and curled up on top of her bedcovers, trying not to think or feel. It was easier that way. Her eyelids gradually grew heavy, and between one moment and the next they drifted shut.
    The jumbled images of half sleep crowded her mind, and then they, too, gave way, and she slipped gratefully into the dark vastness of sleep. Somewhere in that darkness a dream began to form: a light shone faintly in the distance, and she floated toward it.
    It grew larger as she approached, and then resolved itself into a familiar lamp beside an unfamiliar couch. Beyond the furniture there was only a blurry beige blankness hinting at the walls of a living room, but without depth or detail.
    I know that lamp , Caitlyn thought, staring at it, puzzled. She’d seen it before … but where?
    Your baby pictures , her unconscious answered. She had a photo of herself as a baby, being held by her mother, with this lamp in the background. It had been in the house where she spent the first four years of her life, just a few blocks from where she lived now.
    Behind her, she heard the shuffling of cards and then the soft snick, snick, snick of cards being laid upon a table.
    The hairs rose on the back of Caitlyn’s neck, and she slowly turned.
    Sitting in an easy chair, a TV tray in front of her, a young woman with hair as long, black, and straight as Caitlyn’s own was laying out tarot cards.
    “M-m-mom?” Caitlyn whispered hoarsely, afraid to believe what she was seeing.
    The woman looked up, her pale gray eyes gazing straight at Caitlyn. Her face was preternaturally still, no emotion showing. She looked like a wax figure.
    “Mom? It’s me. Caitlyn.” She took a cautious step forward, waiting for her mother’s recognition, but afraid of that eerie stillness in her face. A small part of Caitlyn whispered in warning, You’re dreaming, she’s dead, this isn’t real … But the voice faded under the power of the dream, and Caitlyn no longer questioned why she was standing in the middle of an out-of-focus living room, talking to her dead mother.
    Her mother blinked, a hint of life coming to her features. “I know who you are,” she said, her voice quiet, but with an underlying tension. Then her mouth crooked in a hint of a smile, and with a slightly shaking hand she shoved a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “I can certainly recognize my own daughter. You’ve grown into an attractive young woman.”
    “I look like you,” Caitlyn said in mild wonder. She’d known from photos that there were differences in their faces and eye coloring, but in person, the set of her mother’s shoulders and the way she held her head were echoes of Caitlyn’s own posture, reinforcing their resemblance. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, watching another version of yourself moving and talking.
    Her mother nodded. “You’re your mother’s