Meant to Be (The Saving Angels 1)

Mark reached out to take the picture. Curiously, I looked over his shoulder to see what would make him treat it like it was some kind of crown jewel. I gasped when I saw the picture.

It appeared to have been taken exactly where we were standing, with the same Boardwalk in the background. There were four couples standing side by side. They all looked relatively happy and the women were obviously very pregnant, judging by the size of their bellies. At their feet were four little boys that appeared to be about one year old. They looked so care-free, digging in the sand with brightly colored shovels.

“Why are you showing us this now when…?” Mark said in a voice laced with anger.

I could relate to his feelings. We had spent the entire week trying to find something that linked us together and Shawn had this picture the entire time.

“Look, don’t be mad,” Shawn said, interrupting Mark’s tirade before he could build steam. “I wanted to make sure you guys felt the same pull to this place as Sam and I. Sam wanted me to show you earlier this week, but I had to be sure that we were all really connected.”

“Shawn thinks they might be our parents,” Sam said in a quiet voice.

I swallowed an unexpected lump in my throat as I grabbed the picture from Mark’s hand and critically studied it. Could Sam be right? Were these our parents? They don’t look like the type of parents that would abandon their children, I thought to myself. As a matter fact, the way they rested their hands on their bellies conveyed a feeling of love for the unborn babies they carried.

“Well your right about that,” Mark said with certainty. “That’s my dad, and I recognize the picture of my mom from a picture I saw a few years back in my dad’s desk drawer. I was going to ask him for the picture, but never worked up the nerve because I know he doesn’t like to talk about her.”

I started to feel a wave of unease approach, but I quickly stifled it the best I could before it became an issue.

After a few minutes of silence, I finally asked the obvious question that they were all struggling with. “Why are we all drawn here?” I asked, spreading out my arms.

“I don’t know, but I want to know what the connection is with this place. What happened here to make all of us feel the need to be here?” Mark answered.

“Your forgetting something else that is important?” Sam said.

“What’s that?”

“Look at the couples, there’s four of them with four little boys and four babies on the way.”

Understanding dawned on me. Sam raised a valid point. Only four of us were standing here now. Which meant, somewhere out there were four more people that could be just like us. Maybe the others in the picture were normal, but it seemed highly unlikely. Some force connected all of us, and it had started here.

“I think we need to do some research and find out if anything happened on this beach eighteen or so years ago,” Shawn said.

“Like what? A UFO sighting? That’s crazy,” I said.

“All of this is crazy, but if not UFO’s, then maybe something else paranormal. Or if not any of those things, then maybe something more scientific, maybe they did nuclear testing here or something like that. I’ve read in books just how detrimental radiation poisoning can be.”

“You’re right, we need to find out everything we can about this beach, and the Boardwalk,” Mark said.

Sam and I exchanged a look. This was insane.

The guys were talking like we were involved in some kind of crazy movie.

Mark and Shawn continued to hash out ideas as we all sat on the beach; they soon became engrossed in their conversation, throwing out one crazy harebrained idea after another.

While the guys hashed out ideas that could have been an episode of X-Files, Sam and I drifted away a little, so we could share some girl talk more openly.

“This is hard to believe,” I said, still trying to wrap my brain around the ideas Shawn had thrown out. I sifted sand through my hand and watched as it cascaded through my fingers.

“I don’t know. I’m kind of relieved that we’re starting to figure things out. I would rather it be something crazy, than never knowing what happened. I hate not knowing where we’re from or where our parents are,” Sam said.

I felt a small wave of guilt for forgetting that Sam had always been by herself. Of course she would want answers. She had not been as lucky as me. I was loved and raised by two caring people.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Even if it’s crazy, we still need to find out the truth.”

I decided to change the subject. “So, what does Shawn think about this whole situation?” I asked.

“Well, like all of us, he wants to get to the bottom of all this, but I think he feels similar to me and just wants to find out what happened to his real parents. He had it pretty tough growing up too, but puts on an ‘I don’t care’ attitude, so no one can see just how much it influenced him. His foster dad died five years ago, and Shawn hit the road. He said his foster dad was mean as a snake, and he wasn’t taking the chance of being placed in another abusive foster home.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the guys.