"I grew up learning to pay attention to the signs. Having a sixth sense makes you a mighty powerful listener."

"Guess I buried plenty when I buried Meggie, because I stopped listening as well."

"We'll work on resurrecting your sixth sense the way we resurrected the big guy."

"He's always ready for a resurrection. My sixth sense, not so much."

Disappointment and frustration filled Destiny. But she figured there was more than one way to awaken Morgan's gifts.

Chapter Forty.

"I'M hungry," Morgan said, recognizing the imminent arrival of dawn outside the window.

Destiny turned on her side, snuggled her bottom against his boner, closed her eyes, and sighed in contentment. "It's the middle of the night."

"It's still dark, but it's nearly dawn." He jumped from the bed and put on some sweats. "Wear warm clothes and meet me at the top of the lighthouse tower in fifteen minutes for a sunrise picnic. I'll teach you how to ring the fog bell."

Destiny moaned in frustration and tried to keep warm without him.

"Tower picnic," he coaxed, pulling her blanket slowly away from her and toward the foot of the bed.

She grabbed it to stop its defection, but she shivered anyway.

"Sex in the tower at sunrise. An experience to-" Tell their kids about? Was he nuts?

"To what?" she grumbled, as she got up. "And it better be good."

"An experience to make us come every time we remember it."

"I'm holding you to that."

"Now who's the grumblestiltskin?"

"Breakfast better be ready when I get there."

Morgan saluted and left.

AT the top of the tower, Destiny stole his breath when she arrived wearing makeup and a pair of purple sweats with a matching hair band, her blonde hair curling around it. What a stunner.

"I love it up here," she said, walking the birdcage around the Fresnel lens along the lantern room gallery, then going out onto the main gallery, the boxy deck surrounding the square tower, then a smaller gallery lower down that connected them to the fire escape.

Afterward, she came back inside, shivering. "What's for breakfast?"

"Champagne and birthday cake."

"Now that's something to wake up for."

"And sex, isn't?" he asked, making a bed for them on the main gallery around the caged lens, with enough blankets to throw over their shoulders while they watched the sunrise.

"Breakfast first, sex after," she said. "I worked up an appetite last night."

An unannounced and silent visitor startled them. A white owl landed on the gallery railing and stared right at them.

"Hello, Owl," Destiny said. "This is Morgan. Morgan, Owl."

"Kismet, you scare me sometimes."

"If an owl sits nearby, face your fears, for a great mystery is about to unfold. Grandmother Owl is the totem of psychics, a link between the seen and unseen. She encourages us to make peace with our pasts. She must understand your need, Morgan, or she wouldn't be here. Owls are night eagles, and since the owl is my totem, that makes us both eagles, Boy Scout."

"She could be here for you, Kismet."

"I embraced Owl a long time ago. She's here for you, believe me."

"I'm making peace with Meggie's presence."

"How about your parents?"

"I'm making peace with their presence, too."

"And how about your psychic ability?"

"It would be easier to make peace with that if I hadn't blown it first time out of the gate."

"You were twelve years old. You couldn't have saved Meggie's life, but you can still clear her memory. You can't let anyone continue to believe that your sister was crazy. You have the power to correct that misconception."

Morgan understood, and he was as appalled that he did as by what Destiny proposed. "You want me to tell my parents that Meggie was sane."

Destiny nodded. "As sane as you and me."

"They would debate that."

"Doesn't matter. We have to vindicate her, because she can't speak for herself."

The owl stayed, refused a bite of birthday cake, and watched the glorious sunrise with them. With Destiny, Morgan huddled in the blankets against the bite of the ocean breeze at dawn and began to make peace with his past.

A few hours later, he called his mother from town to tell her that they were coming.

Destiny had obviously decided not to dress to please his mother but to please herself. She wore her favorite cowboy boots and hat, a butterscotch leather straight skirt, a yellow Western-stitched shirt, buttons open to the clasps on her yellow bra.

Morgan looked her up and down. "Thank you for not wearing your Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy shirt, or the one that says Orgasm Donor."

"They're only words," she said, buttoning one more button on her yellow shirt, bless her.

As she got in the car on the dock, Morgan checked the backseat. "I can't believe we brought the cat and dog."

"Don't look now," Destiny said, "but they're not all we brought."

"Meggie? Are you kidding me?"

"No, and Buffy, too. Stop at the Immortal Classic. I need to pick up some picture frames. We have tons. Then we have to stop at a drugstore to make prints of these pictures of you and Meggie as kids that I found in the captain's chest."

Morgan did a double take. "I'm afraid to ask why."

"So you get to keep the originals? Speaking of asking, I'd like your permission to replace the priest pictures on your parents' wall with framed copies of you and Meggie."

"You're gonna piss off my mother."

"Either that, or she's gonna kill me."

"No, I won't let that happen. Changing those pictures needs to be done, and we're going to do it together."

"My hero." Their hands met and held. "You've just taken a big step in facing your past," Destiny added, which made him feel like he could do anything, even tell his mother the truth about his beautiful sister.

At the house, he didn't knock; he opened the door like he'd once done naturally and let Destiny and their pets precede him into this house where he grew up and learned to shut up. But no more.

Samantha the schnoodle jumped on his father's lap. His dad laughed and ate up the attention.

Caramello hissed at his mother, jumped on her coffee table, and a milk glass bowl went flying, though Morgan was sure that Caramello hadn't gone close enough to have knocked it over.

His mother screamed so loud, Caramello peed on her pineapple doily.

Meggie, the instigator, had surely come in with them. Morgan tried not to crack a smile as he went for a trash can, paper towels, and spray cleaner. This house needed some Meggie action, though Caramello's accident had been an unfortunate side effect.

"Mrs. Jarvis," Destiny said, on her knees picking up glass when he returned. "Go to my shop tomorrow-you know where it is-and Reggie will give you an identical replacement. I'll have it put aside for you on our way home."

Together, he and Destiny cleaned the mess while everyone sat in silence, Caramello on his mother's lap, despite her obvious dislike.

Dumb cat, unless she planned to pee again.

His mother wanted a fight. She looked hard. Purposefully older, a sympathy cane in her hand, granny shoes on her feet, hair pulled back so tight, her face was all severe angles.

She'd given him life. He'd been taught to appreciate that, but thinking about it, he couldn't imagine her taking joy in anything, ever. They heard a sudden racket upstairs. It reminded him of Meggie's tantrum in the lighthouse kitchen, minus the plates. Morgan ran, Destiny behind him, as they followed the sound to Meggie's room. Barren. Stark. Empty. White walls. Not a stick of furniture. Empty closets. "What the hell did you do?" Morgan snapped at his parents. "Erase Meggie from your lives?" No wonder his sister was upset.

Every door-closet, bathroom, hall-and every drawer and window opened and shut, slammed and crashed. Window glass broke.

His father shouted with alarm.

His mother screamed. "What's happening?"

"Maybe Meggie's haunting you. Maybe she's pissed off that you stripped her out of your lives. My room's the same as it was when I grew up. Why isn't hers? I'm ashamed of you both."

The tantrum stopped, another shock, and Morgan felt something lean against him, like maybe Meggie, grateful that he'd spoken up for her.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and stood straighter.

He loved her, and it was time somebody stood up for her. "Mom, Dad, I'd like to speak with you downstairs."

Chapter Forty-one.

MORGAN waited until his parents were sitting. "Destiny," he said, "Give me a minute to do the first part myself, then you can help me."

She nodded and sat in a rocker, protecting the box of framed pictures in her lap.

He went to the stair wall and took down every picture where he was wearing his cassock or vestments or any form of priestly garb.

His mother shrieked once, as he began, and his father shushed her successfully. Very reassuring.

"I presume you came here for a reason," his mother said when he finished.

"I have a whole list," Morgan said, bringing Destiny up with him. "No, we," he said, keeping an arm around her. Because if he let his mother stare her down like that, Destiny would grow icicles.

His mother stood to face them head-on, firming her spine.

"Sit down, Olive," his father said.

"Gordon!"

"No. You had your turn at calling the shots, and now it's mine. Sit."

His mother sat.

"Son, Miss Cartwright, feel free to sit or stand. Whatever makes you comfortable." His father settled into his favorite chair, and Samantha and Caramello joined him. "We're listening."

"Give us a minute first to replace the pictures on the wall," he said.

Destiny opened the box, and they hung the ones she'd picked, great pictures of him and Meggie together as children.

His father got up, came closer, and gazed at each one, clearing his throat more than once. His mother remained ramrod straight on the sofa.

Morgan started a fire in the fireplace and threw in the pictures of him as a priest.

His mother rose, but he stood in her path while the fire behind him did its job. "You're harboring false memories," he told her. "The place should be full of Meggie and me together. That was real. That's the past to remember."

The fall board on the piano went up with a crash, revealing the keys, which started moving slowly, and individually, in a one-fingered version of "Chopsticks," the only thing Meggie had ever learned to play. His parents paled, but Morgan felt as if he could do anything with Meggie and Destiny beside him.

"Mother, Dad, I'm angry," he said. "I have been for a long time. Years. Nearly my entire life. I'm mad that you erased Meggie from our lives after she died, except for the pictures I stole from the trash along with Samantha, her doll, all of which I still have, though you now have copies of the pictures. You can thank Destiny for that, though she asked my permission, and I gave it wholeheartedly. I've been angry for years that you wouldn't let me talk about Meggie after she passed, and I hate that you sent her away to die."