This is a fictional short story written by me: The Angel Of The Woods Since my Dad had been very sick lately, we drove to my family home for the weekend to celebrate my 40th birthday. The family home was on 1600 acres in East Texas and that included the north shore of a huge lake in a dense woods. We arrived early Friday morning and spent the day visiting my parents and my brother’s family. My brother had built his house just up the drive about a quarter of a mile from the house where my parent‘s lived. After breakfast on Saturday morning my two daughters, Molly and Sarah wanted to walk down the drive to visit, Mia, my brother’s daughter. I told them okay since it was a short walk and I felt they would be safer in the country than they would be in the city where we lived. After they left I helped Mom with her baking and about noon my brother came in. I ask him where were Molly and Sarah and he answered he hadn’t seen them that day. In a panic we all began looking for the girls. I was so frightened since they were not used to being out in the country. We searched the open land and part of the woods for several hours. It was getting late in the evening and since a cool front had came through the wind was now blowing and the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees. I was driving on one of the dirt roads through the woods when I saw a woman standing in the road. I was so surprised because I recognized her from pictures I’d seen ever since I was a child. Her name was Lindy Bonner and she had died in 1938. I had heard the many stories, my entire life, about her roaming the woods looking for her little girl. But I had played in those woods as a child and had never seen her so I thought those were only stories that folks had made up. I was told that her little daughter had wondered away from their house one day and that after two days of searching through the woods the child’s body was found in the lake. Lindy died about a year later, folks said she grieved herself to death. Some of the stories had called her a ghost and some called her an angel. One city man said she had led him out when he had gotten lost in the woods. I stopped my van and got out. She told me that my children were okay and that they’re in the clearing called Smith’s Landing on the lake. I got out my bicycle since the only road to Smith’s Landing started on the other side of the lake and I’d have to go back to the highway to get there. I rode down the path until I could see the lake and then down the road toward Smith’s Landing. As I approached I saw Lindy and she was cradling Molly and Sarah in a giant set of beautiful angel wings. I called and the girls came running. I scooped them in my arms in an embrace. I then looked up to thank Lindy but she was no longer there. The girls told me that they had seen a baby deer at the edge of the woods. They then followed it into the woods where they got lost. They had walked and walked trying to find there way back to my parents house. The nice beautiful lady had came to them and said for them not to worry. She assured them I was coming and would soon be arriving. Since they were cold she had covered them with her wings to keep them warm. I will forever call Lindy an angel since she helped me find my children and comforted them until I could get there. I now believe those stories I’d heard all my life about her. I know the reason I hadn’t seen her before was because I hadn’t needed her help. The Bonner’s had owned the land on the south shore of the lake for generations, just as my family had the land on the north shore. When I talked to Jimmy Bonner at my birthday party on Sunday, I told him I’d seen his aunt Lindy. I told him I believed her to be a guardian angel for folks who needed help in those woods. Copyright @ M. Doris Fuller