Friends in High Places Read online

  FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

  BY

  TONI DEMAIO

  AHEART PRINTS PRESS RELEASE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

  BY

  TONI DEMAIO

  This story contains the truths revealed to me by my late daughter, Samantha Hodge concerning what it’s like to cross over to the other side and to work from Heaven as a spirit guide assigned to souls on earth. This is a fictionalized account of what I’ve learned about life after death. Although the characterization of Angel is based on Samantha, the story line is a work of fiction containing many of the truths of her life and experiences she had during her last life on earth. Many of the characters in this story are fictitious creations.

  Mountainhome is an actual town in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and was my home for some years. Gram and Uncle John are family members who have also passed over and their characterizations are accurate.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the written permission of the author, with the sole exception being short excerpts used in advertising, marketing, or in reviews.

  Text Copyright© 2016 Toni DeMaio

  All rights reserved.

  WithHEART PRINTS PRESS: A portion of all royalties will be donated to the charity of the author’s choice. The donations from each sale of this eBook will be made to The Brooke Healey Foundation, P.O. Box 981, New Providence, N.J., 07974, working to find a cure for D.I.P.G., a rare form of pediatric brain cancer. www.brookehealey.com

  Cover design and cover photo by Toni DeMaio

  The cover photo was taken on the highest mountaintop in The Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania where a portion of Samantha’s ashes were scattered. I returned there to this site four years following her death to share the breathtaking view with my new husband, Joe. It rained hard that day as we drove up the mountain road, making it seem like the wrong day to go there. But we drove on anyway, because I felt Samantha was with us, encouraging us to get to the top. It felt like a miracle when we got there and the rain suddenly stopped. Then the clouds parted, and we were caught in a spotlight of Heavenly light; a beautiful hello from my personal Angel

  STORY PREVIEW

  FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

  At barely nineteen, Angelica Donovan became one of the more successful winners of the T.V. show Our Next Super Model. The world assumed she was destined for a happy, fairy tale life as ‘Angel,’ the beautiful girl who was living the dream; sadly, that wasn’t to be the case. As the years passed, she flashed her million dollar smile to all her fans and fought to stay on top in a profession where you never knew who it was safe to trust while the fashion industry took big bites out of her heart and soul. And trust was a constant challenge for Angel due to the painful childhood secret she guarded as carefully as she did her heart. As a result, she never did find her true love on earth.

  When she wakes up ‘dead’ from a heart condition a month before her thirty-fifth birthday, Angel is at first relieved to find there is no death, just a change of state, like ice to water, and then she’s scared because her biggest and most important adventure is about to begin.

  Angelica is chosen to be an angel in training as a spirit guide for three souls on earth! Her assignment is to help two women to gain the courage and confidence to find, recognize and embrace the love that had eluded Angel in life. But her biggest challenge will be to save a very special little girl from the same evil experience that had poisoned Angel’s own earthly happiness and altered the course of her life.

  Will Angel be able to heal her own shattered soul in the process? And will the three souls she is guiding be able to recognize her, not as a ghostly threat, but as one of those ‘friends in high places’ we all have; the kind who often end up earning their wings.

  SAMANTHA JEANNE HODGE - DEDICATION

  In March of 2011, my oldest daughter, Samantha Jeanne Hodge left us in her sleep due to a heart attack. She was one month away from her fortieth birthday. Samantha had worked as a model and then as a chef. She loved animals, and was an advocate for adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. She was vibrant and funny and she had more friends than I can count.

  Being a psychic medium has proven to be a blessing for me as I’ve been privileged to be able to maintain contact with her. She has both materialized in my living room to wish me a Merry Christmas and also visited me as a twinkling light that teased my cat, Dolce, before casting a lovely rose colored light on her picture so I would be sure to know it was her.

  Then in 2014, three years after her death, on our honeymoon cruise, she sent me a FB request, and I instantly knew she was telling me my cat, Crow, who was nineteen, had passed over as I’d suspected he might, and was now safe with her. That night, in the ship’s cabin, Crow’s spirit jumped on the bed and snuggled against my back, just like he always did in life.

  And most wonderful of all, she has met with me in spirit on the other side and let me see the work she is doing now. She has also shared with me her experience as a spirit guide in training. While based on the truth and an accurate characterization of Samantha, Friends In High Places is the fictionalized account of what she told me it’s like to cross over to the other side to discover there truly is no death and how her greatest adventure began.

  So, Samantha, my amazing child, this book is dedicated to you with Love and gratitude for the time we had and still have together. XXOO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Toni DeMaio, spiritual psychic, author, and Reiki Master lives in Katy, Texas, near her family, with her husband, Joe Reynolds, an educator.

  Her earliest career was in professional theater and musical theater across the east coast, as well as in Jazz/Cabaret, singing at various venues in the New York Metropolitan area. She spent years in advertising and also studied with the well-known spiritual medium, Marianne Michaels, in order to be able to understand and control her psychic abilities as well as her visits from departed spirits.

  She is a spiritual psychic appearing on Psychic Tapestry Presents The Love Show, on BlogTalkRadio, every Friday. The show is heard around the world and concentrates on connecting live callers to the messages their guides and Angels want most for them to hear. She has been authenticated by The Edgar Cayce Center, Houston, Tx., where she has appeared numerous times, giving psychic readings to the public. She is also the facilitator for the Unity Houston Reiki Circle.

  Friends In High Places is her fourth book. It is based on her late daughter, Samantha’s adventures on the other side as a spirit guide. Her three previously published novels are now being repackaged and offered through Heart Prints Press, where a portion of each book sale is donated to the charity of the author’s choice.

  To connect with Toni and find out about upcoming book releases go to her Facebook pages; Toni DeMaio Reynolds, Toni DeMaio Psychic Author, and I’ll Know You By Your Heart. She offers private psychic phone readings on her website which also covers information about her books and her Reiki practice. Website: ToniDeMaio.com Twitter connection: @DeMaioToni Instagram: tonijdemaio

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  STORY PREVIEW

  SAMANTHA JEANNE HODGE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  MY HEART WILL FIND YOU

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANGEL

  I’ve discovered one of the fascinating things about dying is that in that instant when you transition, when all the things that never really mattered fall away, you’re faced with the basic truth of your life. Did you love enough when you had the chance? Did you treat others as you wished to be treated? And did you honor the gift of your life?

  I was facing my thirty-fifth birthday when the end came and my heart stopped in my sleep. You might wonder why I died at such a young age and the truth is for many years I hadn’t had a strong commitment to life. I let it slip away.

  When I was a little girl something terrible happened to me. It was evil and confusing and I was never able to fully get over it. This would surprise a lot of people because to the outside world I was living the American Dream. And I always made sure I flashed a dazzling smile to the world…and I mean the whole world. Everyone knew the name, Angelica Donovan.

  As one of the more successful former winners of that T.V. show, Our Next Super Model, that smile had won me an extravagant lifestyle. At only nineteen, I dropped out of college and the fashion world ate me up, taking big bites out of my heart and soul. I became used to being perceived as a human clothes hanger, a commodity

  I grew numb and hard inside and because of the terrible thing that had happened to me I was afraid to return love or to trust that it could be mine. I was considered one of the most beautiful women in New York yet I never married nor had a child…by my own choice.

  We never really know what to expect at the moment of our death but when it was my turn to go, I expected I’d see St. Peter, some pearly gates, and at the very least a trio of angels singing. Instead, on the morning I woke up ‘dead,’ I simply popped outside of my body exactly as if I’d been yanked up in the air and dumped on the floor.

  One moment I’d been asleep in my penthouse apartment, and then bam! I was out of my body and more awake and aware than ever before. But the room was strangely bright and when I looked up at where the ceiling used to be it was completely open and radiating a beautiful, shimmering light.

  I wouldn’t have known what was happening to me if my favorite uncle hadn’t been there to explain it. He’d passed away without warning a few years back from an undiagnosed liver disease and I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to him, so seeing him first thing was really cool! Not that anything could have made this one of my better days, being ‘dead’ and all.

  I actually heard Uncle John before I saw him. I spun toward the sound of two dramatic guitar chords and there he was looking healthy and strong and younger than he had the last time I’d seen him. Of course he would bring his guitar; music had been his life and Uncle John, a local legend, had had his own Blues/Rock band forever.

  I ran into his arms and we hugged and I cried for a few amazing minutes. “You’re alive, Uncle John!” I shrieked, “This has to be a dream!”

  He stepped back and brushed my hair out of my eyes. “Angel,” he said, “This isn’t a dream. I’m really here and I’ve come to take you home.”

  “But…I am home,” I said.

  He smiled. “I mean home home…Honey, this lifetime is over and it’s time to go.”

  “I don’t understand, Uncle John, you can’t mean I’m dead? How can either one of us be dead when we’re so…alive?”

  Then he laughed and hugged me again which only proved to me how ‘real’ we were. “We’re alive, Sweetie, you’re right about that. We just don’t have physical bodies anymore. The body can’t last forever, no matter how well you take care of it, but the soul lives on forever.”

  “So Oprah was right! We are not our bodies and it doesn’t matter if we never get back down to high school weight! But does that mean you and I are ghosts?” It was beginning to feel more and more like some wacky dream.

  Uncle John was laughing so hard, he had to sit down on my rocking chair, the one covered with all my laundry, including my Victoria’s Secret underwear; one of my favorite job perks.

  “But I’m only thirty-four! How can my body be dead? I mean, I wasn’t thrilled about turning thirty-five next month, but I didn’t want to be dead…instead.” Panicked, I glanced back toward the bed and was shocked to see my body there, still youngish and shapely, and tangled in the satin sheets; my long, highlighted hair hiding my face.

  Then my eye was drawn to the nightstand: two empty bottles of beer sat there next to my prescription container of pain pills. I’d needed them too often lately for my back. A few years ago I’d been injured in a car wreck on location in St. Thomas for a swimsuit lay-out and I’d been too busy with my career since then to consider the surgery my doctors had recommended I have to replace my growing dependency on the pills.

  “Did I O.D.?” I asked. “I can’t end up a cliché. I only took two pills and had two beers before I went to sleep.”

  Uncle John bent over and picked up a third empty bottle that had fallen to the floor, “Or maybe three. And when was the last time you ate anything substantial?”

  “It was…probably sometime back in junior high.”

  “That’s exactly my point.”

  “So I died of an accidental overdose?”

  He shook his head. “The medical examiner will conclude that you had a heart attack and died in your sleep. Your toxicology levels won’t measure high enough to have killed you, Angel. But we both know you haven’t been very enthusiastic about being alive for a long time. And we both know why.”

  I shook my head, stunned at this news. “A heart attack…I haven’t had any trouble with my heart.” My mind raced to find an answer as to how this could have happened.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “Remember how mom freaked out when I was about five or six because the doctor told her I had a heart murmur. But I thought I out-grew it. We all thought that.”

  He put his arm around me and grinned, “It hardly matters now.”

  He had a good point.

  “Meow!” The gravely cat-cry was right behind me and it was very familiar!

  And there sat my favorite cat, Rocky, who had passed the year before. “Thank you, Uncle John!” I cried, dropping to my knees and snatching him up, surprised by the warmth and weight of his body. “Have you been keeping him for me? This is amazing, but I’m surprised I can feel him… and you. I figured we’d be like smoke now.”

  “We can feel each other because all three of us are in our spirit bodies. Don’t try to figure it all out this second, Angel. It’s going to take some getting used to, but I’ll be helping you learn and accept all of it when we get back home.” He pointed up toward the glowing light where the ceiling of my bedroom used to be.

  I followed his finger with my eyes and stared up into the inviting pastel warmth. “So are we supposed to just fly up to Heaven? I assume that up is a good thing…and that’s where we’re going?”

  “That’s right. Think of it like your favorite fairy tale; we’ll fly like Wendy and the boys did with Peter Pan, only we’re going somewhere even better than Neverland.”

  I felt anxious and a little queasy at the idea. “I can fly now?”

  I was never that crazy about flying in a jumbo jet, so free-flying in my nightgown didn’t sound like much of an improvement.”

  He nodded. “All you have to do is believe you can fly and sure enough… you can fly. You can also pop into different places at will, but we’ll work on that skill-set later. First thing first and flying is at
the top of the list for day one.”

  “Well, I guess here goes,” I said, and shuddered; then squeezed his hand, and closed my eyes tightly. Rocky climbed up and draped his soft body around my shoulders, just like he used to love to do when we sat on the sofa watching Lifetime movies. He licked my ear, purring softly. Within a few more seconds all three of us were lifting slowly into the air.

  “Uncle John,” I whispered, “Are we expected up there right away?”

  “Why?”

  “I was just thinking it would be nice to see Maui first, being the airfare is free.”

  He grinned. “That can be arranged.”

  ***

  It was breathtaking. Our ascent into Maui was beyond my dreams. “It’s crazy, Uncle John,” I said, breathless and drunk on the exquisite vistas all around us; the perfection of this place exceeding all expectations, “I never would have believed I’d have to die to learn to live”

  He kissed my hand. “I remember thinking the exact same thing. Being purely in the moment is a precious and priceless gift too many of us ignore while on earth.”

  “When I think of all the life I wasted being worried about stuff that just didn’t matter. None of it mattered, really.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Honey. You had some tough breaks early on in life. You did the best you could but I guarantee next time you’ll do even better.”

  “Next time; you mean we get more than one chance down here?”

  “Uh-huh…Most of us are old souls and we’ve had more lifetimes than you can imagine. But you’re getting ahead of yourself, Kid. Let’s take a swim and then see where else we might like to go.”