“Falling. I remember falling.”

I looked over at the woman I was talking to. She lay huddled in her bed, a Bugs Bunny comforter pulled up until only defiant strands of chestnut hair were visible. And she was still half asleep if her lack of response to my predicament was any indication.

“Mmm-hmm. Keep going,” she said, her voice groggy and muffled under the bedspread.

“But that’s it. I don’t remember anything else.” When she didn’t reply, I glanced down at the nightgown I was wearing and tried to piece my memories together. What happened. How I got here. Where here was.

I turned and looked out the woman’s apartment window into the cool city night. I could make out streetlights and the dark shapes of buildings looming near, but everything was different now.

Concrete objects seemed distant, uncertain. The light emanating from lampposts seemed more a suggestion than an actuality. All light did except for hers, the woman’s, I realized, looking back at her.

She shimmered like liquid gold, sparkling and brilliant even through the comforter. And she was the only thing I could focus on, could really see.

Lithe fingers curled over the top of the blanket and a dark head appeared, eyes still closed, face glistening and incandescent. Her eyebrows slid together in groggy annoyance and she tossed an arm over them as though to block out the world. Soon her breathing evened out again, and I figured she’d fallen back asleep until she spoke.

“So that’s all you remember? Falling?”

Surprised, I straightened my shoulders. I was sitting on her dresser, as the only chair in the room sat buried under a pile of clothes. “Yes.”

“Considering the fact that you’re here,” she said, scrubbing her forehead with the back of her hand, “I’d say your stop was fairly sudden.”

I swallowed and licked my lips, but they had no taste, no texture, like I’d just been to the dentist.

With head bowed, I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Am I dead?”

“As a doornail in August. What time is it?”

Stifling a hiccup of sadness, I looked at the clock on her nightstand, but the numbers, as familiar as they were, no longer made sense. It didn’t matter. She’d propped herself on an elbow and was peering at the clock from behind a mop of unruly hair. Then she looked back at me, and my breath caught. Her eyes were beautiful, deep set and bright gold. Looking at them through the long strands of her dark hair was like looking at a panther’s eyes through the heavy, sharp leaves of a jungle. The image was ethereal.

“Couldn’t you have died later?” she asked, her voice thick with fatigue. “Like around, say, nine-

twelve?”

I started to answer but realized she didn’t expect me to. She’d pushed off the bedspread to reveal a Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt and unfolded herself into a lengthy stretch accompanied by the loudest yawn I’d ever heard. But even that couldn’t break her spell completely, and I wondered what she was. Maybe she was an angel, I thought as she crawled out of bed and headed for the door.

Maybe she was stuck on earth, sent here to help those who had passed. What a noble creature.

“Wedgie alert,” she said before adjusting her boxer-like underwear.

I blinked and tried to turn away, but it happened so fast, I didn’t have time. Which was awkward for me, but she didn’t seem to mind it a bit.

“If we’re going to figure this out,” she said, holding up an index finger, “we need coffee and lots of it.”

I followed her into a tiny kitchen that made mine look like Carnegie Hall.

Wait, mine. My kitchen. I turned to her with a huge smile. “I have a kitchen. I remember it.”

“Wonderful,” she said, scooping coffee into a filter. “Unfortunately, so do about five billion other people. But it’s a start.”

“Yes,” I said, rounding her snack bar to have a look around. “But mine is much, much bigger, with terra cotta tile and granite countertops.”

She paused and leveled a hard gaze on me. “Are you dissing my kitchen?”

“No!” I said. I’d offended her. “Not at all. I was just trying to—”

“Just kidding.” She chuckled to herself. “I thought about expanding once, but my attention span isn’t long enough to see it through. Plus, I’m renting. You were saying?”

“Right.” I eyed her with the uncertainty of someone who’d bet on a horse only to find out it was missing a leg. “Who are you again?”

After setting the coffee pot to brew, she turned and offered me her full attention. “I have to warn you, it’s going to sound bad.”

Make that a three-legged, partially blind horse. “Okay.”

“My name is Charlotte Davidson, but call me Charley, and I’m the grim reaper.”

The breath in my lungs fled as I stood there, looking her up and down, trying to wrap my head around what she’d said.

She smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry. You don’t actually need to breathe. Do you like hazelnut?”

After a long moment, I asked, “What?”

“In your coffee?”

I blinked and glanced back at the pot. “I can drink coffee?”

“Oh, no. Sorry. I was just wondering if you liked hazelnut in it. You know, when you used to drink it.”

Swimming in a sea of confusion, I asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Not a darned thing, sadly. Hazelnut rocks.” She reached into a cabinet for a cup. “But it might jog your memory. Do you like chocolate? Jelly beans? Crystal meth?”

I gasped and looked around for a mirror. “Oh, my god, do I look like a meth head?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Absolutely not.” After casting a furtive glance over her shoulder, she added, “Or, well, not much.”

Looking down at my arms, I realized they were a bit skinny. And my coloring was bad, but couldn’t that be chalked up to the whole death thing? If only I could remember who I was, how I died. I just remembered falling. That was it. And reaching out for something as I fell, but what?

“Is it normal for people to forget who they are after they, you know, pass?”

She shrugged while stirring her coffee. “Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Especially if the death was particularly traumatic.”

“Maybe I was murdered.” I tried so hard to remember, to push past the fog in my head. “Wait. I can’t drink coffee. I couldn’t even when I was alive.”

“Why not?”

“I think it nauseates me.”

She grabbed the cup and walked into her tiny living room. That was when I noticed a small, painfully thin man in her corner, his back to us, his bare toes hovering several inches off the ground.

“Told you it would jog something. Coffee is multifunctional that way. Maybe you were sick.

Were you in the hospital?”

I pointed. “There’s a guy—”

“Oh, that’s Mr. Wong.” She sat at her computer and nudged the mouse to bring things out of hibernation. “Hey, Mr. Wong,” she said, offering a wave. “How’s it hanging?”

“He’s just—”

“Hovering. Yeah, you’ll get used to it. So, any idea what your name is yet?”

I refocused on her but kept tabs on Mr. Wong from the corner of my eye. “Not really. Is he dead?”

“Sure is. And he doesn’t talk much, either. Have a seat.” She gestured to the chair beside her desk, so I sat down while she logged onto a database. “I’m going to check out recent deaths, starting with the Albuquerque News Journal, see if anything local rings a bell.” As she waited for the server, she folded her legs in the chair and propped her chin on a knee, careful not to spill the coffee she held in both hands, and I realized she was wearing thick knitted socks. Her hair, which hung just past her shoulders, was still in utter disarray. She looked like a kid on Saturday morning, waiting for the cartoons to start.

“You don’t really look like the grim reaper.”

“I get that a lot,” she said, then leveled a pointed stare on me, “Mary Jane Holbrook.”

“Who?” I asked.

She looked back at the screen. “Oh, crap, never mind. She was like eighty-four when she died.”

I looked at the screen as well, but the colors pixelated and made me dizzy.

“Damn, she looked good for her age.”

“Why can’t I see right?”

“You’re on a different plane,” she said, studying the screen. “Things don’t always translate well.

How about Jennifer Sandoval?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar,” I said, shaking my head. “Do I look like her?”

“No idea. I’m on the police blotter, now. No pics.”

Another memory surfaced, one so unbelievable, so horrid I bit my lip to keep from gasping. I had to be remembering it wrong. That couldn’t have happened.

“I got nothing,” she said, refocusing on me from behind her cup. She took a long draw, eyeing me from head to toe. “Not to mention the fact that you could have died anywhere in the world and, quite honestly, anytime. I’m not really getting a read off your gown or hairstyle other than you probably died sometime within the last twenty years.”

“Twenty years?” I asked, appalled. “You mean, I could have been walking around for decades?”

She nodded. “But time doesn’t really work the same on your plane. It’s not as linear. But things are starting to come to you, right? Did you remember something else?”

It must have shown on my face, the horror of realization, the crackle of dread that rushed down my spine. “Yes, but it can’t be right. I just... It can’t be right.”

She cast a sympathetic gaze from under her lashes. “You can tell me anything. I have a very stringent confidentiality rule. Well, that and nobody would believe me anyway.”

I glanced down at my hands, or more importantly, my wrists, but they were unmarred. But I remembered falling. Maybe I’d jumped off a building or a bridge. “I think I committed suicide,”

I said, shame burning my face.

“Oh. I’m so sorry, hon.” She put a hand over one of mine, and though I couldn’t seem to feel anything physically, I could feel warmth radiating off her, pure and inviting. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to cry. How could I do such a thing? I loved life. I remembered. I wanted nothing more than to live, to be healthy and normal.

“Wait,” I said, glancing back at her, “if I’d committed suicide, wouldn’t I have gone to Hell?”

She squeezed my hand. “It doesn’t work that way, though many religions would have you believe it does. Sometimes our physical bodies send us to a place we just can’t seem to crawl out of. It’s not our fault.”

I felt a wetness slide down my face, surprised that I could still cry.

“Can you tell me what you remember?”

I wiped the back of my hand across my cheek and took a deep breath. “I just remember deciding to die. It was a conscious decision.” I pressed my mouth together to keep from bursting into tears. How could I have done that? What kind of person did that make me? I took the sacred life that was given to me and threw it away. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

“Sweetheart, there are a hundred reasons why you could have made that decision.” She gestured toward my nightgown. “Again, you could have been sick. Sometimes...sometimes cancer patients will take their own lives, often for very unselfish reasons.”

I scrunched my brows together in thought. Cancer didn’t sound right, but I got the distinct feeling she wasn’t far off the mark. When she cast a quick glance toward my abdomen and turned away just as quickly, I looked down and noticed the soft fullness that rounded my gown.

A gasp escaped before I could stop it.

“I was pregnant?” I almost screamed the question in disbelief. Both hands flew over my mouth as I looked at her. “Please tell me I wasn’t pregnant when I committed suicide,” I pleaded from behind them.

She put her coffee cup down and took both my hands into hers, and only then did I realize she could feel me. I was solid to her and yet I could pass through walls. I’d done so while trying to get to her, to her light.

“We don’t know that,” she said, her voice strong and reassuring. “I’ll find out what happened to you. I promise.”

The sincerity in the golden depths of her eyes reassured me.

“But right now I need a shower.”

After another quick squeeze of my hands, Charley left to get dressed. As she did so, I studied her apartment in lieu of trying to remember anything more. I no longer wanted to know who I was.

What I was. I ran my hands over my belly as I perused her book collection, a gesture that seemed as natural as breathing, as though I’d been doing it a long time. I didn’t look very far along, but certainly far enough to be showing. Perhaps six months? Maybe a little more?

My heart contracted, and I forced myself to stop thinking about it, to pay attention to what I was looking at. Charley had books by Jane Austen, JR Ward, and everyone in between. I’d never read Sweet, Savage Love, but it must have been really good. She had three copies. After that, I careened past Mr. Wong’s corner and toured the rest of the tiny box-like dwelling in about thirty seconds flat. I thought about trying to strike up a conversation with Mr. Wong, but he seemed to be meditating, so I sank into Charley’s overstuffed sofa and let my mind wander.

It paused at a place of longing, at a need so desperate, so overpowering I was willing to give my life for it. Like a teenager who knew she would just die if Daddy didn’t buy her a new car. Were my desires so superficial? I couldn’t help but wonder, because I had no idea what it was I longed for. Had I committed suicide because I wanted something and couldn’t have it? Could I be that childish? That callous? Especially with a baby on the way?

“Ready?” Charley asked.

I opened my eyes to darkness and had to concentrate to gain my bearings. But I seemed to be slipping, falling into oblivion. Then I saw her light in the distance and traveled toward it until I was in her living room again.

“You okay?” she asked.

She’d showered and changed into jeans and a white hoodie. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and I saw her face fully for the first time. What a beauty she was. I wondered if she knew.

When she started another pot of coffee, I furrowed my brows in question.

“This is for my friend Cookie. She lives across the hall,” she said as she scribbled a quick note.

“She’ll be over for coffee soon, but we have an errand to run.”

“We do?” I asked. Maybe she’d figured something out.

“We do. I think your gown is new.” She gestured toward it with a nod. “I remembered seeing it at Target when I was in the shower.”

I looked toward her bathroom. “You must have a really big shower.”

“You’re funny. I saw it recently, which means you died recently. Probably very.”

“Really?” I looked down at my gown. It did look new.

She slapped the sticky note onto the coffee pot. “Give her my message, lover,” she said, winking at the pot before grabbing her bag and heading for the door.

I studied the pot a long moment, long enough to realize she was kidding, a little relieved when it didn’t answer her. But all of this was new to me. Who was to say what was alive and what wasn’t in this world? On this plane?

“Wait ’til you meet Misery,” she said over her shoulder, then stopped short when she opened the door and a tall man stood blocking her path. Or at least I thought it was a man. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over a wide chest, a breathtaking grin tilting one corner of his mouth.

But he was different. Dark. Fierce. The air around him seemed to stir as though he were turbulence itself. And he seemed to be made only partially of flesh and blood. The rest of him was smoke and shadows, and the mere sight of him, the magnificence of him, weakened my knees.

Charley put one hand on a hip. “Where have you been?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

“Miss me?”

“Not even,” she said, adding a snort to emphasize her apparent distaste. She didn’t fool either of us.

“You’re such a bad liar.” His grin widened to reveal a set of white teeth, and I doubted I could’ve torn my gaze away if someone had paid me. Simply put, he was stunning. Thick black hair. Full mouth. Piercingly dark eyes with long, inky lashes. And quite possibly the most devilish grin I’d ever seen.

“I’ve told you before, I’m a wonderful liar. You’re just really astute. And I have a case, if you don’t mind.” She tried to sidestep him, but he braced an arm on the other side of the doorjamb and tilted his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“What?” she asked, her voice thin and airy. He was getting to her. “Nothing. I have a case.”

He pressed his lips together and studied her a long moment. When she gestured for him to move, he looked over her head and asked, “Who’s the dead chick?”

“Reyes...” She looked at me apologetically then turned back to him. “That is horridly rude.”

“Um, son of Satan?” he said, apparently referring to himself. “Don’t you want to know what I’m doing here?”

“No.”

Wait, did he say son of Satan?

“I have every intention of kneeing you in the groin if you don’t move,” Charley said, squaring her shoulders.

Reyes leaned in until his mouth was at her ear. “I’m incorporeal at the moment, Dutch.”

She kneed anyway, and at once he was gone. Vanished into thin air. Dark smoke lingered, along with a deep chuckle that faded into silence almost instantly. Charley turned back to me. “Sorry about that. We have a few things to work out. Respect for my clients, for one thing.” She said the last through gritted teeth before heading out the door.

I followed. “Did he say ‘son of Satan’?”

“Yeah. It’s an evil incarnate thing. And, trust me, he wears it well.”

I couldn’t imagine him wearing anything badly.

We stepped into the night air, thick with a syrupy darkness, and yet it didn’t hinder my eyesight at all, besides perhaps muting the colors. But again, the streetlamps darkened the area directly below them. The effect was surreal.

“This,” Charley said, gesturing toward a red Jeep Wrangler, “is Misery. I’m in love with her, but don’t tell my sister. She’s a psychiatrist and would psychoanalyze the crap out of that.”

We climbed in and Charley brought the Jeep to life, turning on the heater with a shiver. That’s when I realized I wasn’t cold. Or hot. Or anything. Temperature, like taste and texture, was apparently lost on me. As we drove down a street I didn’t recognize, I clasped my hands in my lap and asked her reluctantly, “Was he there for me?”

She raised her brows in question.

“The son of Satan. Was he there to take me to Hell?”

After turning into a convenience store, Charley pulled to a stop and shut off the Jeep to give me her full attention. “Listen to me. I promise you, if you were scheduled for the southbound flight, you would already be there and we would not be having this conversation.”

“But, I’ve so obviously sinned.”

“No kidding?” she asked, a teasing smile lighting her face. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve sinned a few times myself. And according to some religions, I’m about to sin again.”

I blinked and looked around, trying to figure out what she was talking about.

“I’m going to march in there and make myself a mocha latte with whipped cream. Caffeine.

Calories.” She leaned in and whispered, “Unabashed pleasure.”

I couldn’t help but smile back. “Didn’t you just drink a cup of coffee?”

“Well, yeah, coffee. This is a latte. A mocha latte. With whipped cream. So not the same thing.”

She winked then jumped out of the Jeep.

I decided to go in as well.

“And besides, I finished that coffee off”—she looked at her watch—“minutes ago.”

“You make me laugh.”

“And you’re in a convenience store at five in the morning in a nightgown and bunny slippers,”

she said, keeping her voice low.

She was right. I should have had the decency to feel self-conscious. “So, what’s the story with you and that guy?”

“Reyes?” she asked, taking out her cell phone as the machine filled her cup. She opened it and actually pretended to talk into it, I guess in case anyone was watching. “Well, besides being the hottest thing this side of Mercury—I mean, he was forged in the fires of Hell,” she said with a waggle of her brows as she filled a second cup, “he’s something of a pain in the ass.”

“But you like him.”

She put a lid on both cups, stuffed one in the crook of her arm so she could still hold the phone, then headed for the cashier. “If you’re talking about the fact that he makes my innards mushy and my knees weak, then, yeah, I like him.” She pulled the phone to her chest to indicate a break in her conversation and said to the clerk, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

He smiled shyly as he handed over her change. “See you tomorrow night?”

“If you’re lucky,” she said with a flirty wink. She could give lessons.

“You come here a lot?” I asked.

With a shrug, she climbed back into her Jeep. I crawled through the door into the passenger’s seat. “Only every night or so. They have really good lattes. But again, he’s a pain in the ass.”

“The store clerk?”

“Reyes.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t help but wonder what Charley’s life was like. I mean, what kind of being glows in the dark and hangs out with the son of Satan? “So, do you have super powers?”

Turning onto Central Avenue, she offered me a questioning gaze. “You mean, like, can I fly?”

I laughed. “No. Wait,” I said, rethinking. “Can you?”

She laughed that time. “Not unless I’m on some very powerful painkillers.”

“Then, besides being very shimmery, what does a grim reaper do?”

“You know, everyone says I’m really bright. I don’t see it.” She studied a hand, turning it over and over. “Neither do the living, thankfully. But I pretty much just hang out and help the departed with their unfinished business, for lack of a better phrase, those who didn’t cross initially and are wandering the Earth. And when they’re ready, they can cross through me.”

“Through you?” I asked, a little stunned. “Literally?”

“Yeah. Didn’t I mention that?” When I shook my head, she said, “I hope that doesn’t scare you.

You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She burst out laughing, and I was slowly drifting back to my three-legged horse paradigm. After a moment, she sobered and said, “Okay, too soon. Newbies don’t have the best sense of humor.”

“Sorry. I’m a little dead right now.”

She smiled and nodded. “That’s good. You’re catching on.”

I smiled, too, but I turned away so she wouldn’t see. I didn’t want to get too comfortable here, in this place of void, of loneliness.

We pulled into the parking lot of a Presbyterian hospital and made our way up to the maternity ward. That was when I realized what she was doing, checking to see if anyone died in labor or something like that. Shame consumed me. I’d made the decision to die. I felt it. I would never have made it to the delivery ward.

“Are you really going to drink both of those?” I asked her.

“Oh, no. This stuff is currency ’round these parts.”

As we got closer to the ward, she turned to me, unwrapped an index finger from one of the cups and placed it over her mouth, shushing me.

“Why do I have to be quiet? I thought no one could hear.”

“Because you’ll ruin the mood.”

I frowned as she flew to a sidewall and flattened herself against it. After checking up and down the hall, she eased to her right, closing the distance from us to the maternity ward. She almost slipped—on nothing, absolutely nothing—caught herself with a soft gasp then plastered herself to the wall again, a long sigh of relief escaping her.

Oh yeah. She was nuts.

A female voice echoed against the walls, originating from a speaker by the locked entry door.

“Davidson, what are you doing?”

Charley gave up the pretense and pushed the button. “Nothing. Over.”

“This isn’t a walkie-talkie, Charley.”

“Got it. Over.”

After a soft chuckle, the voice asked, “Would you like to come in?”

“Would you like a mocha latte?”

No other words were spoken. The doors opened. Charley offered me a satisfied grin and raised the cup. “Told you. Better than gold.”

We ended up at a nurse’s station where two nurses sat filling out charts.

“Not that I’ve actually tried gold,” Charley added, whispering over her shoulder.

One of the nurses looked up, a gorgeous Hispanic woman with a short bob and almond shaped eyes. The hunger on her face said it all. She grabbed the coffee and took a hesitant sip, blowing into the opening on the lid first.

“It’s been ages. To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, a dreamy countenance coming over her after she swallowed. Then she chuckled, stepped around the desk and gave Charley a bear-like hug.

“Well—”

“Your hair is wet,” she said, interrupting. “Charley, I swear. It’s, like, seven degrees out.”

“No way. It’s nine at the lowest.”

I looked around as Charley and her friend caught up on the everyday goings on of life. The rooms around us were dark, but of course I could see tiny beds and massive machines and I realized we were on the preemie ward. Just being there seemed to reawaken something within me. A longing. A desire. A blinding need to create and protect, so powerful that it almost hurt. I clawed past it, pushed it back down and steeled myself against its talons.

“So you’ll call around?” Charley asked as I turned to head back. I stopped short a moment, stunned once again by her beckoning light, the glittering aura that encompassed her.

“Absolutely. I know several nurses at each hospital. I’ll find out.”

“What is she looking for?” I asked Charley, retracing my steps.

“Oh, excuse me one minute,” she said to her friend and opened her phone again. Apparently her friend didn’t know about me. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Um, okay, what is she loo—”

“Right, Nancy’s looking now. Keep your panties on, Uncle Bob. We’ll figure this out.”

I thought she might actually have a call this time, then she looked directly at me and winked.

“Uh-huh, she’s looking for anything like that. A pregnant woman in her late twenties who might have died recently. She’s checking all the hospitals in the city.”

I glanced at the floor. “But if I took my own life—”

“We don’t know that.” She touched my hand to bring me back. “We don’t know what happened.”

Just then, her brows bunched together and she looked past me, her expression suddenly annoyed.

Turning, I saw it too. Him. Reyes. In all his glory. He stood down the hall from the nurse’s station, gazing through a glass panel into one of the rooms with all the big machines and tiny beds. I got a better look this time at his corded arms, thick chest, shadowed jaw that outlined his mouth to perfection.

After a quick glance at her friend, Charley strolled closer to him, keeping the phone at her ear.

Her friend offered her a quick glance, but she clearly could no more see Reyes than she could see me.

“You’re not still mad about that putting-a-knife-to-your-throat thing, are you?” he asked without taking his eyes off the glass. “That was days ago, and not entirely my fault.”

“What part of I have a case are you not understanding?” Charley said into the phone.

He didn’t answer. With a smile that would charm the fur off a fox, he said, “Babies are cool.”

Charley smiled too and looked into the room. “They don’t even look real,” she agreed, squinting inside, her face full of admiration. “They look like dolls. Well, dolls with lots of wires and breathing apparatuses. Poor little things.”

He touched the glass with an index finger, pointing. “That one’s going to be professional football player.”

At first Charley laughed, but when he didn’t join in, she aimed a wary expression at him. “Do you really know that?”

Again, without taking his eyes off the infant, he said, “I really know that.”

“Oh, my gosh.” She looked at the baby with a new purpose. “But he’s so small.”

Reyes shrugged. “He gets over it.”

Charley gave a soft chuckle. “I hope so.”

I couldn’t look. I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge what I’d done, the life I’d destroyed. The life I had to have destroyed.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” Reyes asked after a moment. He’d crossed his arms over his chest and focused his sultry gaze on Charley.

“Nope.”

Taking a miniscule step toward her, he said, “Would you put that ridiculous phone down?”

“Nope again.” As she studied the tiny being behind the glass, Reyes lifted a hand and ran a finger over her jaw and down her neck, leaving trail of dark smoke to caress her skin. Charley took a deep breath, inhaling his essence, before shaking her head and stepping away. “Stop.”

He eased closer. “Stop me.”

She put a hand on his chest and he covered it with one of his own, a beseeching look in his eye, as though begging her. But she pushed him away and he vanished once again with a devilish grin, leaving a shadowy fog in his wake.

“What are you doing?” Charley’s friend asked. She was walking down the hallway toward us, a piece of paper in her hand.

“Oh,” Charley said, recovering, “I was... There was a bug.”

The nurse looked around. “And you were nudging it away?” When Charley just shrugged and closed her phone, her friend handed her the paper. “A woman died last night at St. Joseph’s hospital. She was pregnant.”

My heartbeat skyrocketed as Charley studied the paper. Or I think it did. Did I have a heartbeat?

“Do you have a time of death?” Charley asked.

“Nothing exact. Sometime early this morning.”

“Got it.” After scanning the paper again, Charley said, “Well, I guess I’m off to St. Joseph’s.

Thanks for the help.”

“Thanks for the mocha latte,” the nurse replied, pulling Charley into a hug. “And someday you are going to tell me what all this was about.”

“Someday,” she agreed, grinning at me over the woman’s shoulder.

We made our way across town to St. Joseph’s, neither of us saying much. The parking lot was deserted as light was just now cresting the horizon. But it was a light I could see, colorful and magnificent. Natural. We went inside and found the nurse’s contact, an RN named Jillian Lightfoot. Charley introduced herself and asked about me, claiming she’d been a friend of mine and had been worried sick.

“I’m not sure if it’s the same woman. What’s your friend’s name?”

Crap. I hadn’t thought of that. I looked over at Charley as she clenched the paper in her hand and cast a furtive glance my way before saying, “Jo. Jo Montgomery.”

That was my name! I recognized it instantly. I touched my chest, my face in remembrance. I was Jo Anne Montgomery.

Charley looked over at me and smiled sadly.

“That’s her,” the nurse said. “I’m so sorry for you loss. The family is here as well.”

“Can I see them?” Charley asked.

“Well,” she hedged, not sure what to do. “It’s still early. I don’t think anyone will mind that you’re not related, but I’ll have to ask them first. They’re with the baby.”

I stilled as everything came crashing back like a title wave of emotion.

Charley seemed to sense my distress. “I would appreciate that,” she said to the nurse, then laced a hand into mine and coaxed me into a nearby bathroom. “I’ll be right out,” she called before closing the door. Then she turned to me as I sank to the floor, knelt beside me as I could no longer hold my own weight, sparse as it was.

“Are you okay, hon?” she asked, her voice soft and soothing.

“I was falling,” I said, piecing together the last minutes of my life. “I knew something was wrong and I reached out for my phone, but I fell, blacked out. I don’t remember anything else.”

“Someone must have found you,” she said. “Were you at home?”

“Yes. Wait, no. I’d moved in with my parents. My mother!” I shouted, worry flooding every ghostly molecule of my being. “She’ll be so upset.”

I started crying, sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Good thing I didn’t need to. Charley wrapped her arms around me, and I felt her light seep into me, warming me and healing me like a salve of illumination. I lost track of time as my mind revisited the last few months of my life, the pregnancy, the hope, the decision I’d made, knowing I might not survive.

When I next looked up, Charley had led me somewhere else. We were in a hospital room with my mother cooing to a tiny bundle in her arms.

“What’s her name?” Charley asked.

My mother—my beautiful, strong mother who had worried so hard for so long—handed her a baby girl. “Her name is Melody Jo Anne,” she said, her red-rimmed eyes sparkling with pride.

“Wait,” I said to Charley, “we’d decided on Melody Ruth, after her.”

Charley tore her gaze away from Melody and asked my mother, “I thought Jo decided on Melody Ruth.”

My mother laughed, tears sparkling in her eyes. “We did, but I thought it much more fitting that this child be named after the woman who gave up her life to give her one.”

“May I ask what happened?” Charley said.

With heartbroken eyes, my mother explained. “I’m not sure how well you knew Jo, but she had type one diabetes.”

“I didn’t know that,” Charley replied, offering my mother a sympathetic gaze while swaying with the baby.

“We figured it out when she was seven. It almost killed her, and the damage it did to her kidneys was irreparable. We’d struggled her whole life just to keep her alive. So many hospitals. So many close calls.” She touched a tiny hand that had escaped the tight folds of the blanket. My baby’s hand. It was terrifying.

“Just like her mother,” a male voice said.

Surprised, I glanced up as my father walked in carrying two cups of coffee.

“Always escaping,” he added, gesturing toward the hand of the infant, “always defiant.”

“To the end,” my mother said, choking on a sob.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Montgomery, Mr. Montgomery,” Charley said.

“She just came home pregnant one day,” Mom said. Dad handed her a coffee and squeezed her shoulder for support. “The doctor told her if she went through with it she would be risking her life, but it was all she’d ever wanted. The one thing that would kill her.”

My mother melted into a sea of sobs as my father held her tight. I remembered everything now.

The one night my boyfriend and I weren’t careful. That same boyfriend then opted out of Melody’s life. Quitting my job and moving back home with my parents when I’d fallen too ill to care for myself. Everything I’d done was just to keep Melody alive.

I finally worked up the courage to move closer to Charley, to get a look at this being that had taken up residence inside me for so long. Charley instantly angled the baby so I could see her face, and both my hands flew up to cover my mouth. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Absolutely perfect.

“Look at her eyes,” I said.

Charley nodded. “And her long fingers.”

“Babies are cool.”

Startled, we both looked up at Reyes. He’d materialized from a sea of black smoke. It drifted off him like fog off dry ice. I thought Charley would be upset, but she didn’t seem to mind his presence. She refocused on Melody, her only concern my baby.

“May I?” Reyes asked, questioning me with upraised brows. It was the first time he’d spoken to me directly.

“Absolutely,” I said after a moment of recovery. I eased aside to let him have a look.

He stepped closer and smiled down at Melody. “Happy birthday, beautiful.”

Charley’s grin widened and she whispered, “Isn’t she?”

“She is, but I was talking to you.”

Charley gasped and leveled a curious stare on him. “Oh, my gosh, it is my birthday. How did you know?”

He shook his head. “I was there, remember?”

“Right,” she whispered. Then she stared at him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now I’ll leave you alone.” Tipping an invisible hat at me, he said,

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

Just before vanishing, he added, “Oh, in case you’re wondering, she’s going to be a very successful artist.”

A hand covered my mouth again. I could just see it: my beautiful Melody, paint brushes in hand, a spot of cerulean on her cheek, a smudge of violet over her brow. She was perfect, and her art would be perfect, too.

I watched the smoke of his exit dissipate then turned to Charley. “He was there when you were born?”

“Yep. Long story.”

I chuckled. “The life you must have had. And you share Melody’s birthday.”

“I do, don’t I?”

“Is she talking to you?” my father asked Charley, clearly having heard her whispers. He looked amused.

Charley laughed. “Yes, she is. Just bursting with things to say.” She glanced up at him and smiled. He smiled back, moving closer to stare down at my child.

“Can you tell them something for me?” I asked.

Charley nodded and waited for me to speak.

“Can you tell them thank you for everything? Just...” I couldn’t seem to say anything else. My throat closed when I thought about all the things they’d done for me, all the sacrifices they’d made. I hadn’t actually committed suicide. Not really. I’d sacrificed myself for another. Relief flooded through me with that knowledge. And my parents had forgiven me, indulged me this one great desire I’d had in life and my need to fulfill it. Now they would be raising my child, showering her with just as much love as they had me. I couldn’t have asked for more.

But, how could I possibly put all of my gratitude in words? Did words as strong as the feelings swirling inside me even exist?

“Yes, thank you, ” I said. I’d made the right choice, and nothing else mattered. “Just thank you.”

“Jo asked me to give you a message should it come to this,” Charley said, her voice a little choked.

My mother gasped and stood beside my father, her eyes searching, craving for any word from me.

“She said, ‘Thank you.’”

Oh, I’d forgotten something. I leaned in and whispered.

Charley laughed. “Oh. And she wanted to make sure you enroll Melody in the finest art schools in the country.”

The smile that commandeered my mother’s face was brilliant. “That’s Jo,” she said, her eyes shimmering with unspent tears. “Always demanding the very best.”

Easing Melody out of Charley’s arms, she hugged Charley and my father at the same time. It made me realize something. “I think I’m ready now,” I said.

Charley turned. Leveling those gold eyes on me, she nodded and waited.

My parents were busy with Melody. It was time. But, I stepped forward and hugged Charley first.

She hugged me back, and it felt liked being wrapped in sunshine. Then, without another thought, I crossed.

The journey was fast. I saw memories and thoughts that were not my own. It took me a moment to realize they were Charley’s, and they were too vast for me to completely comprehend, but I managed to absorb a few. The memory of her mother’s death. What it was like for her in high school, a grim reaper among humans. How she secretly loved children but was convinced she’d never have any. The small and cunningly placed defense mechanisms she incorporated to keep those around her at arm’s length, all because she simply knew too much about betrayal and loss and death.

Also, I saw how she hoped with all her heart that Reyes loved her. Just a little. Just enough to keep her going day in and day out.

Suddenly I was in a place I’d never imagined existed, seeing colors we don’t have on Earth, so vivid they’re blinding. I was feeling warmth that had nothing to do with the weather, a warmth so fine and pure it saturated every molecule of my being. And there, in a place outside of time, I watched my sinfully powerful desire grow up. I watched Melody Jo Anne Montgomery grow up, all the while waiting for the day I’d get to meet her.

What a marvelous day that will be.

Copyright 2011 Darynda Jones

Table of Contents

Start