Post by StoryGirl83 on Jan 17, 2009 0:04:08 GMT -5
Epilogue - Afterlife
Most of the time the dead do not know what is going on with the living, but on that particular day Patty watched as her youngest daughter put away the two items she had hidden away for her. A smile settled on Patty’s lips and she went over to where her mother and oldest daughter were talking. “Prue?”
Prue looked over surprised. In death she had gotten a chance to better know her mom, one that in life she hadn't had much chance due to Patty’s early death, although she had gotten to know her a lot more than her younger sisters had. She wanted to be with her sisters so much and at times, almost wished that they could be up here with her so they could get to know their mom. It was, perhaps, one of the only things about death that she liked, that and now being married to Andy. “Yes, Mom?”
“Do you remember the letters I put in that little red box?”
“The ones Phoebe found?” Patty nodded. “What about them?”
“Did you know I wrote four?”
Prue looked up in surprise. Then, a smile curled on her lips. “You wrote one for Paige.” It had taken a while, but she had gotten used to the idea of another sister, especially because it had helped save the Power of Three--and her sisters. “She found it?”
Patty nodded. “I cast a spell on the box so that only Paige could find it. It also told her how to find a picture of the three of us.”
Prue quirked an eyebrow. “The three of us?”
Patty nodded. “Yes, a picture of me with you and Paige. You were so young, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Prue closed her eyes and thought. She tried to recall back to when she was very little. A vague memory came to mind of seeing Sam before that time at the lake. He had a camera in hand and in her mom’s arms was a baby. She couldn’t say for sure which baby, but maybe it was Paige. “I think maybe I do.”
Patty walked over to Prue and gave her a hug. “My precious daughter.”
Prue smiled. “Thanks, Mom.”
Patty pulled away and looked at Prue surprised. “For what?”
“For your letters. You don’t know how much they meant to us, to Phoebe, to Piper, to me. They were a gift when we really needed them. Thank you for those letters.”
Patty smiled. Her mind drifted back to when she wrote those first letters with Phoebe actively kicking for most of the process.
Then, her mind drifted to a few months later when she was writing the letter to Phoebe. The children had been rowdy, but something had made her think of the time when her full-grown daughters from the future had told her that she was pregnant and then getting to meet that baby full grown.
Finally, there was the hardest letter to write. The one to Paige, to the daughter she would never know. Giving Paige up had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. Both she and her mother had been afraid the Elders would rain retribution on her daughters by stripping their powers, but it was the fear of them taking her baby and of them raising her that scared her the most. They had good intentions, but love was not part of their vocabulary. At least Paige had gotten that.
The letters had been her chance to say good-bye, for as it had turned out she had been dead by the time her daughters had read the letters. For all of her daughters they had been a gift. For her two older ones, they were a reminder of their mother's love, but for the two younger ones, it was something neither had received before, a gift of their mother’s love.