“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
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
