They would all eventually appear over the years, sometimes singularly or in greater
numbers under worse circumstances, and most were likely met by either Tracy or Lila upon their arrival in town. They encountered
adversaries and friends, former lovers, and ex-husbands. Tracy didn’t see the challenge coming, but took her cues from
her mother and kept an eye out. There was a blow to the chest right around the corner. She was forewarned and still naively
unaware.
Against her will, Tracy began to cry when she met Georgie Jones-Quartermaine far
too soon. BJ was at her side and they took turns soothing the still young woman. It was Tracy’s duty to tell her that
it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d taken the Volvo instead of the Bentley to pick up her son; she would’ve
died one way or another. It was her time.
She felt Dillon’s anguish at the heart-level and whispered platitudes that
would never reach his guarded ears. Nothing counted then but his grief.
Noah Drake landed on someone else’s bed, but they heard of his arrival and
how he’d swept his wife into his arms before anything. Mother and daughter had shared a solemn, if regretful smile at
the love only one of them had equaled during life.
Lila saw Alan flicker into existence once but she gently begged him to go back,
as though it were in her power to turn him away. He vanished before Tracy saw him. He’d nearly died protecting a patient
from a knife-wielding a madman.
On a wintry day, Edward Quartermaine himself made an appearance and stared at
Lila with such disbelief that he might’ve died again were he not already deceased. She smiled and led him through the
same process she’d taken Tracy through. It was magical because she loved him and hell because that love conflicted with
the promise she had made to her daughter. She sent him to explore without a word and stood, somehow, by her oath.
Not a tragic two days later in living time, Laura Spencer rose from the pillows
and felt for the first time in more than a dozen years. She reached out and touched Tracy’s face, then her own. After
a shaky start, the two of them walked the length of Port Charles until their knees buckled and spoke only of Luke. They came
away with the sense that they had each loved him and that the brutal conclusions of that love ached more than any wrong he
had done to them.
Morgan Corinthos woke up crying and holding his head after an unfortunate accident
with his brother and his father’s gun. Adella came slowly and Tracy was forced to hold him as he sobbed. He was asleep
in her arms before his grandmother arrived.
Stone Cates sat opposite Lila as Robin Scorpio opened her eyes for the first--well,
second first--time. BJ and Georgie looked on from the foot of the bed. He stroked her hair and told her she wasn’t sick
anymore. She laughed until the tears began to fall. All the health in this world couldn’t make up for what was lost.
Not even what was found.
Sitting on the park bench between her grandmother and her aunt, Brook Lynn Ashton
wished for another chance to go to prom, but for the night to end differently. Randall Brant had never intended to do right
by her, and now it hardly made a difference.
The ground shook with Lois’s cries and Tracy commiserated. She stroked Brook’s
hair as she couldn’t pretend this was a better place to be.
Eventually, a day Tracy had dreaded finally arrived. She ascended the curved staircase,
flanked by Laura and her mother. The weather was picturesque. She and Laura's moods were not.
They entered the master bedroom and took their places on the edge of the bed,
which sat empty before them. Some souls needed room. Slowly, slowly, slowly, Luke Spencer rolled into a blur of color. It
was hard to distinguish him for a while, but then, he suddenly came into sharp focus. It felt like an eternity, but was only,
in actuality, a few lingering moments. Only the time it took to say goodbye.
He rubbed his face, feeling instantly the difference in how he was and how he
had been. He dropped his hand and looked at the women gathered for him. His mouth fell open.
“Close your mouth, Luke, you’ll catch flies.” Tracy smirked,
the affection abundant in her shimmering eyes. It wasn’t that she was sad, but that she mourned the life he was no longer
living. Soul corralling took its toll after a while. It seemed all she ever thought about anymore was what had been left undone
by each spirit to pass through her door.
“Spanky,” he grinned. He couldn’t express how much he’d
missed her. Words didn’t exist-- emotions didn’t exist to say it. He kept quiet because it hadn’t become
real to him yet. She was still a much sought after delusion that had evaded him in his final days.
He turned his head and he stopped even the habitual pretense of breath. He saw
Laura. The Laura who had suddenly departed his life after a decade’s long absence was here. She smiled and touched his
chest. It was a simple touch, a comfort he appreciated.
“Angel.” He struggled to say more, but she silenced him with the shake
of her head.
Lila’s unyielding support moved him--he double-took when he recognized the
gaze if not the face it peered out from. She told him to rest and left him to his women. His heart was up to him, the most
reckless of possessors.
Tracy wasn’t in a mind for decisions, especially for one she didn’t
feel was in her favor. She loved him. It wasn’t a secret anymore and was no longer a burden to be carried on her shoulders.
She left the mansion with Melanie in tow. They decided on shopping, then, ice cream -- oh, and more shopping.
They returned that night with a metric ton of purchases to find Laura long gone
and the house settled to sleep. Even Mel was dead on her feet--no pun intended--and Tracy lifted the lightweight girl up the
stairs because her legs refused the job. After tucking her in, Tracy thought she was the only one awake.
She jumped when the door to her bedroom closed behind her. She spun around and
saw Luke standing there. Handsome and young though he was, she missed that spiky gray hair quite a bit. Guilty pleasures died
hard. He stuck his hands in his pockets and puttered about her door.
“You want something, Luke?”
He massaged the back of his neck.
“Yeah, I do.”
She perched on her bed and sat back expectantly. No more words passed from his
mouth.
“What then?”
He shrugged.
“I want you, spanky buns.”
She didn’t believe it.
“I don’t have your 15 million, Luke. When they say you can’t
take it with you they mean it.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money. It isn’t about the money
for me anymore. I love you, Tracy. And, I have it on good authority that you love me back.”
She stared at him somewhat malevolently.
“Whose?”
He smirked superiorly.
“I’m not at liberty to say, pumpkin.”
She narrowed her eyes in the distance and slammed her fists into the mattress.
“Mother!”
“Whoa there, mama,” he attempted to calm her with irritating placating
hand gestures. “I did not say it was your mother that told me. It could’ve been someone else. In fact,
it was someone else.”
Hardly trusting his word, she ran through her short list of who would know and
the culprit was fairly obvious. She groaned and flopped backwards on the duvet covers.
He ambled over and plopped down beside his late wife--he wasn’t sure if
she was still the “late” wife if he was “late” too. Speaking of which, just what were they late for?
Tracy slung her arm over her eyes in misery, wondering how it was possible to
be a fool in two lifetimes. She was silent for some time and Luke began to think she’d fallen to sleep. He prodded her
side a little; she squeaked and jerked away. Definitely conscious and lucid.
“Was Laura wrong?”
Tracy curled away from the interrogation. She didn’t want to think about
it right now. It was easy to openly love him in absence, but now that they were in the same space again…she was at a
loss.
“Tracy. I think I deserve an answer.”
She blinked against her four hundred thread count sheets and rolled over, looking
up at his wondrous face.
“I agree.”
She stood up and disappeared into her walk-in closet, pulling off her clothes.
He watched after her, mystified.
“Am I gonna get one?”
She stuck her head out of the doorway.
“Give it a second.” She was gathering her courage and rummaging around
for the sexiest article of silk drama she owned. She found it and slipped into it discreetly.
She heard him moving about, maybe giving her privacy, perhaps snooping. She wasn’t
concerned; her secrets were void at this point. She’d taken them to the grave and doing anything further with them smacked
of unfairness. She tried to do right now, even by her enemies.
She stepped out of her mini-mall and saw her husband looking at himself critically
in her vanity mirror.
“You look fine, Luke.”
He turned fast at her voice and nearly tripped himself in place upon seeing her.
If his jaw wasn’t on the ground, then the ground had surely risen to meet it.
She had never been more thankful for her long legs than she was now. His eyes
inspected them on a long journey from the tips of her toes, and it was even longer before they touched the hem of her negligee.
“Answer enough for you?”
He stammered unlike his usual cool self. Tracy Quartermaine willingly seducing
him. No ulterior motive. His head was on the verge of exploding and it had little to do with his brain function.
“I want to say yes, but I’d like to hear it in your words.”
They’d come too far to turn around now.
“I love you, too, Luke Spencer. And I’ve missed you.” It was
her admission. And it was in his hands.
He crossed the distance between them in five seconds and engaged her mouth in
a greater display of bravado than she’d ever felt. Score ten for him.
Not that he was scoring tonight. When they stumbled to the bed, his newly admitted
soul mate could do little more than nod off. The day -- as they never seemed to end here-- had been arduous.
He swept the hair from her eyes, grumbling about her being all fox and no follow-through.
Not half as asleep as he’d previously thought, she whacked him in the chest and stole the covers.
He groaned and rolled his eyes. One thing could be said for death. It hadn’t
change Tracy’s personality a bit. He wrapped himself around her for warmth.
During the night, she let the covers fall to the floor. The least of her concerns
was pneumonia.
~~~
Sitting down alone to a late breakfast the next morning, Tracy had a great deal
of time to reflect on things. She looked back on her father, with whom she was still marginally estranged; her husbands, a
number of whom were here now; and her family, those that continued living and carried the sorrow of their heavy losses with
them. She’d frequently looked in and anguished over the complications of their daily lives as they did, wishing she
was there. Having Luke near again made her realize why she couldn’t do that anymore.
Her time on Earth had ended and her role had been filled, for better or worse,
by Monica, but things had changed. No internal troublemaker remained for the family to unite against. There was also no patriarch
there to impose his ways. There was no Georgie to support her aspiring young filmmaker. No Luke to rail after. No Brooklyn
to play innocent and hopeful. By and large, the Quartermaines were mere fossils of the respectable clan they once were; their
fragile bonds tattered to the thinnest of gossamer threads and continuously breaking.
There was no sense in mourning bones, Tracy found, no matter how tempting it might
be. The essence of the living thing was gone.
So, she hesitantly but resolutely wished her loved ones, and even those she despised,
an amazing life and shut that door. For now, at least. If they needed her, she existed already in every moment they’d
shared, the bad ones not withstanding. And she’d exist, to them, again when they arrived on this side of Port Charles
Harbor.
Tracy hid her smug smile as Luke dragged himself in from sleep and slumped into
the chair beside her, reaching with a moody scowl for the coffee and pilfering a bagel from her plate. She pretended not to
notice and turned the page of her Wall Street Journal. She listened to him practically inhale it and rolled her eyes,
because he was just a little bit obnoxious--and she loved him for it.
She folded her paper and marveled once more at her surroundings. It was identical
to the original, but lacking in the most basic necessity, the voices. Stretched out before her, the table was clear except
for the two place settings in use by her and Luke. There was a centerpiece and an endless expanse of linen tablecloth, gone
mostly untouched for years. It needed people. It was empty and sparse without the eccentric gathering of souls that could
only be her family.
She knew that in time, every Quartermaine would be drawn here, in search of the
place and the people that made them whole. She also knew that she’d undoubtedly be there waiting, at the foot of the
bed to welcome them, in whatever order they should come. That on the evening of that certain date, this room would be full
with their voices; bickering, muttering, and beneath it all, loving each other as only they could.
She exhaled, all distress and tension gone. This was the honest to God last chance,
this second life. For once, Tracy had landed right where she wanted to be: at the side of the man she deeply loved and who
dared love her in return; with her mother, who had loved her most, unconditionally; and in this house where her daughter lived
and her boys would someday, in an incomprehensible future, set foot and live again.
Until then…
Tracy snagged the second bagel Luke had stolen from his grasp and dropped it back
on her suspiciously empty plate.
“I was eating tha--”
She quieted his protesting mouth with her own. She pulled back, a wicked smirk
adorning her dark-tinted lips.
“I always follow-through.” As he reached for her, she slipped out
of his reach and ran for the staircase. He was hot on her trail, the sumptuous blueberry bagel forgotten. They passed the
master bedroom for Tracy’s and the door swung shut after their entrance. Even closed, it wasn’t sound-proof.
Their exuberant laughter bounced between the manor’s old walls and shivered
above the master bed. A life force quivered into being and settled at the peaceful sounds. Her blond hair fanned out across
the pillows and it blew with her sigh.
The cancer had returned to do its office, but Monica Quartermaine wasn’t
ready to wake up yet.
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