"Is John your husband?" Frank asked.

"Almost-husband. We were to be married in just a few weeks when I died."

"Oh, that's unfortunate," he said. "So you didn't get that much time with him, did you?" I shook my head no, feeling even sorrier for myself in the moment. "But you do know he'll move on," Frank said with certainty. I nodded. I knew it to be true. I just didn't want it to be true.

We sat there without speaking for quite some time. The sun rose above the fog, burning it off until we could see the beautiful island lying below us, surrounded by the green and blue water that appeared still as gla.s.s from this high up. The air was now warm and clean, and more people came by car to see the view and take a few pictures. I could see Mona and Oscar beginning to make their descent back to the car they came from, a guide staying near them to ensure they didn't lose their footing. Frank got up, too, preparing to leave as well, since his reason for being here was about to be driven away. But he turned to me before disappearing.

"When you love someone, what you love most about them is how they make you feel," he told me. "You're not only in love with them, but you're in love with the person you are when you are around them. This is a one-sided existence we live in, where we don't receive the kind of love we used to get when we were in the world of the living. You would do best to adapt the way you love John to fit in with your afterlife, because you're confining yourself to a world of hurt and disappointment if you keep going on expecting him to give you what you need. He can't do it. But you can love him selflessly. If you can find happiness in his happiness, even if it's from someone else's love, you'll find peace with him moving on. After all, a selfless love only wants the best for the object of adoration. And in our state, the best just isn't us." With these words, he gave me a solemn bow in a ceremonial gesture, and I nodded my head from my seated position. He took my hand in his and kissed it, his kind and smiling eyes the last thing I saw of him before he disappeared altogether.

I knew he was right. If I loved John like I thought I did, I needed to start thinking about his happiness and leave my own happiness to the side. Well, no, that's not what Frank was saying. I needed to find my happiness in John's happiness, receiving love and joy back with each blessing that came John's way. If this joy happened to come from Sara, so be it. I needed to let go of the childish jealousy I felt towards her, letting go of the past because that's all it was the past.

I didn't realize I was crying until the tears from my cheeks dropped down and splattered on my bare knee below the hem of my dress. My heart was breaking all over again, but this time it was cleansing. I let go and immersed myself in my sorrow, grieving for the romance John and I shared. I knew the next step was to let it go and make room for a different kind of love. Such a human emotion, this crying is, I thought to myself, even as the tears and sobs continued at a steady pace. I wondered why, when we had to give up all other attributes of human life, we were allowed to keep our emotions and even stronger emotions than we had in life. It seemed both a blessing and a curse, allowing human life to be held onto by a thread while keeping the fullness of it just out of arm's reach. I wanted the freedom to feel nothing for my human life. But in a contradicting desire, I wanted to seize life so it would stop slipping from my grasp.

The sun rose and set, at times in a rapid spiral of motion as an immeasurable length of time pa.s.sed me by. I wasn't sure how long I'd been there when the tears ceased their steady stream down my cheeks. But when the last tear dropped, I felt a sense of relief as I realized I was ready to begin a new chapter.

I took a deep breath, blew it out, and stood up and brushed the snow off my dress, taking one last look out at the ocean that surrounded the big island of Hawaii and my perch atop Mauna Kea. The fog had just begun to form at the base of the mountain, and I watched as it grew, gathering strength in its manifestation. Soon, the whole expanse in front of me was covered in the white blanket of clouds.

"What would happen if I walked out upon the fog, Daddy?" I had asked my father that day driving above the covered valley.

"You'd pa.s.s right through and fall to the ground," my father had told me, stripping away all the magic my five year old self still held when it came to science and life.

The fog touched the edge of Mauna Kea, inviting me to test my father's theory and prove him wrong. I placed a cautious step forward onto the filmy cloud, touching the solidity within the mist that existed only for me. I moved forward so that both my feet were firm on the fog. A gap in the cloudy substance showed I was standing thousands of feet above the shadowed island below, with nothing to break my fall should I plummet from my s.p.a.ce in the sky. I found pleasure in this dangerous thought, smiling in the freedom that existed in this one simple realization. And then I ran across the fog at full speed, skipping over the covering of the earth until I reached the end and jumped off into the ocean below.

Eighteen.

John came home after a grueling day of work in the summer heat. He kicked off his shoes at the door to keep from tracking dirt any farther than the entry way of the apartment, shedding clothes piece by piece as he walked up the stairs to his room. At the top of the stairs, he tried to ignore the view of Sam's room from the corner of his eye, though it was getting harder and harder to do in the emptiness of the house. His son's room was added to his list of ghosts that haunted him, sitting as it did beside the ghosts that lay within the door of Joey's room.

It had been just over a year and a half since my death, and a year since Sam had moved out. At times, John felt like time was pa.s.sing at a rapid pace. Other times it stood too still. He was glad he would soon be free from the clutches of the apartment, fleeing the memories and starting fresh when he moved to the finished house in San Anselmo. The whole apartment was packed up, save for the few belongings he still needed in his day-to-day life as well as the contents behind the door of Joey's room.

This forbidden area of the apartment had become something like a shrine since my departure, unseen by human eyes since Sam had moved out. While John refused to view the contents of the room, Sam had often gone in there when he lived in the room next door, rifling through Joey's video games and belongings in secret, just in case there was anything of interest to him.

I also visited the room. Often I would find a hollow sense of solace among the clothes on the floor, the unmade bed, Joey's things strewn below boxes of my things. His smell still existed in the walls and the bedding, and I would sit for hours, days, weeks, just pretending I still held a connection with my son. I had given up on finding him in this divide, knowing that when it was time, if it would ever be time, he would find me instead.

As John showered, his mind drifted to Joey's room. He knew he needed to do something with the room, but wasn't sure if he could bring himself to open the door and face all the things he'd packed in there to keep my memory at bay. While it hadn't worked I haunted him even when I stopped trying to do so he found comfort in knowing the solid proof of my existence was hidden behind a closed door.

But he couldn't move from the house until he had packed up everything. And that included Joey's room. He needed to decide what to give up forever, and if anything within that room would make it to the new house. He knew this was a task he couldn't do on his own.

John finished his shower and dried off with hurried movements. I knew who he was going to call before he even picked his cell phone up off his bed.

"Can you come over? I need your help with her things," he said without even saying h.e.l.lo.

"Of course," Sara replied.

He'd only seen Sara a handful of times since he came home from the hospital eight months earlier. She had helped him to settle in to the apartment, but he made it clear that he was okay to take care of himself. Sam had stayed with him for a while back then to help monitor him until he could get back on his feet. And because of Sam's involvement, his ex-wife, Wendy, had lost the iciness she'd developed in the beginning stages of their divorce, and made herself available to him should he need any help.

Still, Sara called every now and then just to check in on him. He had let her calls go straight to voicemail each time. Then he listened to them as soon as his phone signaled a message, hearing my voice within hers as she let him know she was thinking of him and hoped everything was going okay.

The intent wasn't lost on Sara, either. She knew he was avoiding her. She tried to respect the distance he was keeping, but she couldn't help but feel disappointed in the wall between them. Kevin had since moved out, and she was forced to be away from her girls every weekend as a result of the custody arrangement. She tried to immerse herself in work to keep from going crazy in the empty house on the days they were gone. But the evenings felt unbearable as she ran out of things to pick up, dirty dishes to clean, unmade beds to make, and a bathtub void of bubbles and giggling girls.

It was on those nights she called John, even just to hear his voice in his message on the phone, giving her a sense that she wasn't alone.

The doorbell rang thirty minutes later, and John let Sara in. He gave her a quick hug, turning his face far away from hers in their embrace.

"Thank you for coming over," he said.

"Anytime!" she exclaimed. Both of them moved around each other with caution, acting as if this were more of a first date instead of a friend helping a friend. "So what's going on?" she asked.

"Well, you know how I'm moving?" he asked, and she nodded "You want me to lift heavy furniture, don't you?" she joked. "I knew these muscles would curse me one day." He chuckled with her, grateful for the break in the tension.

"Not exactly. But I do need you to move some things with me, specifically Rachel and Joey's things," he said in an apologetic tone. Sara smiled in rea.s.surance and nodded. He led her up to Joey's room and took a deep breath at the closed door. With great force, he turned the k.n.o.b and pushed the door open, the boxes behind it shifting so that a few things fell over in the process. "Oops," he said, wincing.

Sara moved past him and looked around. Step by step she maneuvered through the crowded room, taking in every single thing that had ever been mine. John, on the other hand, kept a safe distance on the outside of the door.

"Wow," she said after she drank it all in. "This is everything, isn't it?" John nodded, running his hands through his hair in embarra.s.sment. "Have you even been in here since Rachel died?" she asked.

"Just to put stuff in here as I found it. Other than that, no. I couldn't bring myself to give anything of hers away. But I couldn't look at it anymore, either," he admitted.

Sara moved a few of my belongings around in a box, seeing glimpses of me in things she recognized, running her curious hands over the things she didn't, and feeling overwhelmed by the task as a whole. She was beginning to regret even answering her phone when John called. But she could also tell that if the physical task of this job seemed daunting to her, the mental portion of it might be impossible for John.

"Did you want to do this together? Do you think you can handle deciding what goes and what stays?" she asked him. He nodded, though the look in his eyes lacked conviction.

"I, uh... I was thinking we should just get rid of it all. I can't keep any of it. It's too painful. But I figured that if there was anything in here that you wanted... You know, since they were your family and all."

Sara started to protest at this, sure that there was something in here that he wanted to hold on to. But when she looked at John's face she could tell he'd been haunted enough. Keeping anything around would only serve as an anchor for that ghost that wouldn't allow him to move on.

It would keep me from allowing him to move on.

I watched as they rifled through my belongings. At first they moved in silence, going from one box to the next as they divided things to give away and things that Sara would take home. Sara made faster work of the task than John, many of the possessions I'd once owned holding no meaning for her as she held them for the first time. Others brought back a flash from a past event, and she'd stop to remember what we had been doing, how I had smiled that day, the sound of my laugh. Many of those things found their way into her pile.

John was cautious in the task, afraid to touch anything should it tear at him with another memory. But as he watched Sara move through the boxes, he realized he needed to pick up the pace. He tried to ward off the thoughts that came with each piece, knowing that I had touched each one of these things he now held in his hand. He stopped looking at my things, seeing through them as he grabbed and dropped items into a box close to him. Sara retrieved a few of the items, explaining to John the memories they brought back to her. And John was happy for the distraction from his own thoughts of me. But as his memories became less painful in the act of going through my things, he began to understand the therapy in this simple process. Soon he was allowing visions of me to come at him unharnessed, laughing as he held the sweater I had ripped when we thought sliding down the banister might be a good idea, and shedding a tear over the blanket I wrapped myself up in every night on the couch. He tucked the blanket away in his own "keep" pile, one that held only a few items.

"I think Sam might want all of Joey's games and gaming equipment," John said. "And I suppose if there's anything else in here that a teenage boy might want, we should save it for him." Sara nodded, pulling out another box and placing a few of Joey's things inside.

"What about the dress?" Sara asked. It still hung from the frame of the closet, the ivory material glowing in bright contrast against the darkness of the room. Sara got up from the boxes that surrounded her, running her hand over the fabric. She paused at the part that was cut away, glancing over at John to give him a curious look. She looked away when she saw the pained look on his face. "I suppose we can decide later..." she mumbled, but John shook his head with determination.

"No, it all needs to be done now. I can't let this go any longer," he insisted.

"Did you want to keep the dress," Sara asked. "You don't need to keep it out, but maybe store it until you are able to part with it?" She had already figured out that the missing square was his doing.

"I can't keep it," John winced. "Do you want it? Can you take it?" Sara didn't want it either. She had no idea where she might put it, or what she could do with it. Her natural impulse was to donate it. Even with the missing material, someone would be able to use it as a discounted gown for their own wedding should they be lucky enough to find it in a thrift store. But she could tell that even the suggestion of giving it to someone who didn't know Rachel would tear John apart. So she just nodded, bringing the dress down from where it hung and laying it with care over the top of one of her boxes.

Hours later they were done. It was almost midnight when John glanced at his watch, and he sucked in a quick breath.

"s.h.i.t, Sara. I'm sorry. It's really late. Are the girls with a sitter right now?"

"No, they're with Kevin tonight. And it's okay. I think we both needed this for closure. But I guess I should get going." She didn't want to go, dreading the emptiness of the dark house across town. So when John offered to make up the couch for her, she didn't argue.

"I can let you use one of my t-shirts," he suggested. "Or... I guess Rachel's stuff would probably be better." She nodded. There had been a few items of mine that she'd tucked into her box, including a couple of her own clothes that had somehow made their way into my closet. She pulled one of my night shirts out of a box.

"This should be fine," she told him. He gave her an extra toothbrush and then made her bed up while she got dressed in the bathroom.

"Goodnight," he said to her when she emerged, giving her a hug. He caught a whiff of my smell mingling in with her perfume, a new aroma that both caught him off guard, intriguing him.

"Goodnight," she murmured. She looked up at him with curiosity when he paused without letting her go. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. It had been so long since anyone had looked at her that way, she missed the part where he saw me, and she only saw the part where he found her desirable. Without thinking, she closed her eyes and leaned in, feeling the way his hands gripped her shoulder and moved to comb through her hair before lining her cheek with his finger and tracing the outline of her lips.

John knew he was making a mistake. He knew it was Sara in front of him, trembling in a shirt I used to wear often. But he looked past her blonde hair and saw me in the similarities of her features. He hadn't been this close to a woman since the last time we'd been interrupted during our love making, a moment that felt centuries old. And beyond wishing I were the one in front of him, he felt the natural pull of needing to be near the softness of a woman. When he looked at Sara, he knew it was her. But the familiarity she presented in her appearance and fragrance overwhelmed him into losing the ability to think. He leaned forward and caught her waiting lips with his own, crushing against them in a dance of tongues and pa.s.sion.

I crouched in the corner, frozen by the scene unfolding in front of me. I was afraid to stay, but more afraid to leave. I could feel everything the way it felt to be touched after countless nights alone, the elation of being in each other's arms, the confusion that went alongside it, and the sadness that each of them stuffed down as they pretended in the moment that this was something it wasn't. I wanted to tear myself away. My biggest fear was unfolding in front of me in a way I knew would haunt me for eternity. But something new was emerging from this nightmare. I found peace in their relief and growing pa.s.sion, feeling more human than ever as their emotions transferred over to me. The irony didn't escape me. All this time I had affected John through my presence. Now he was affecting me.

They made their way to the couch, their mouths and hands never leaving each other. John knew he couldn't bring her up to the bedroom, feeling it would be like stepping on holy ground. But the made-up couch served as a middle ground for the crime he was about to commit. Her hands tore at his shirt, and he slipped it over his head. She ran her hands across his chest, pulling her fingers through the hair that covered it and tugging to send a shivering shock through his body. John unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his pants, then pulled Sara's shirt over the top of her head. She stood naked in front of him, her pale skin trembling in the shadows of the room. John pulled back the covers and she laid down within them, drawing her breath in as his skin made contact with hers within the warmth of the blankets.

Sara's hands traveled the whole of John's body, running them along the pulsing muscles of his back down to the curve of his hip as he hovered over her, afraid to let his whole weight press against her. Sensing this, she pulled him closer, feeling the release of tension as his body crushed down on hers. She could feel his heart pounding against her own, beating faster as she sent a flurry of kisses across his cheek, his neck, his chest. Unable to get close enough, she arched into him as his hands smoothed over her body, exploring every inch of her skin.

He couldn't find the raised scar that blemished my back. It was what kept him grounded, knowing that, enveloped by my scent, it was nonetheless Sara he lay against in the darkness of the room, and not me. When he found himself immersed in thoughts of me, he searched for the scar again on Sara's back, both relieved and disappointed when he couldn't find it. But Sara felt good to him, the softness of her body differing from the tightness my muscles had possessed in the weeks before my wedding, a result of a quick series of workouts rather than a lifetime of exercise. Sara's body, while slender, remained soft from afternoons chasing children rather than working out at the gym. It matched the downy texture of her skin, and John ran his hands over every inch of it, pausing when his fingers found the hardness of her nipples. She gasped at his touch, arching her back even more in the process. Leaning down, John took her nipple in his mouth, pressing it between his lips before letting his tongue flick against it. Sara could feel the sensation at the tip of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s washing over the top of her head and radiating throughout her body until she was burning with desire. She grasped at him, pleading to come closer with every kiss she peppered across his skin, unable to find her release until he entered her in an explosion of pa.s.sion. The room was ablaze as they made love to each other, searching for comfort in a world that had swallowed them whole. John buried his face into her hair, breathing in as their bodies moved together in one fluid motion.

"You smell like her," he whispered, his movements slowing as he voiced his thought. She tightened her hold on him.

"Please, just go with it," she said. She didn't elaborate, afraid that too many words would take away from the moment. She knew he missed me, even as his body molded against hers. He needed this to be able to move past me, but also to feel close to me. She needed this for a different reason - just to feel wanted once again. She couldn't bear the thought of being rejected, and in her mind she begged him to forget me for just a moment and continue making love to her or to remember me in secret as he found comfort in her body.

John lost himself in the scent of her hair, grasping her skin so tight it reddened in patches that would bruise later. The room evaporated around them as they became one breath together. And in a final moment, they burst into flames within a frenzy of ecstasy, mounting to a final explosion that both gave them life and left them breathless.

No words were spoken as the pa.s.sion subsided. John stroked Sara's hair against her back as she lay against him. Sara ran her fingers against the damp hair on his chest as her eyelids grew heavy. I remained a connecting thought between the two of them, feeling the different edges of guilt as they drifted off to sleep. But more than that, they both found comfort in being able to help each other in a pain that no one else could ever understand.

Nineteen.

John had left sometime during the night to go to his own room. Sara had felt him get up, leaving behind not only more room for her to sleep but also a cool void, and she burrowed under the blankets to get away from it before falling back asleep. But in the early hours of the morning, she found herself awake in a house that wasn't her own, questioning the wisdom of their actions the night before. It was more than the fact that I existed in the very fiber of this house, even after John had gone to great lengths to keep me boxed up behind closed doors. It was more than the fact that she had just gone past an invisible boundary with the man her sister was supposed to have married. It was more than the fact that John was the first man she had been intimate with since her husband moved out. Of every fear that tumbled through her mind, the biggest worry she held was the realization that once the sun crested over the San Francisco hills they would be faced with the morning after and it would likely end with a speech that sounded like "It's not you, it's me."

"I just can't do this anymore," Kevin had told her in the privacy of their bedroom after the girls had gone to bed. "We're just going through the motions, and it's killing me." It had been coming for a while, and on this night these words were spoken after a long and drawn out argument about Kevin's hours at the office and the distance he kept even when he was in the house. But still, when Kevin spoke the words out loud, it drove salt into the already gaping wounds of Sara's heart.

"You can't just give up, Kevin. This is a marriage, and you're not even trying," Sara shot at him, her words solid stone even if her insides were tumbling pebbles.

"This is no marriage, Sara. I feel like an outsider with you and the girls. Ever since you became a mother, you have shifted toward that role one-hundred percent, and there's nothing left for me."

"That's not fair!" Sara shouted through a whisper, afraid that her anger would wake the girls across the hall. "Because you're gone so much, being their parent has been totally left up to me. I spend most of my time here taking care of them, even with the flower shop! Even though that shop is taking up so much more of my time now that Rachel is dead and I'm left with a whole business to flounder in on my own! You don't do anything except go to work, come home, then plop your a.s.s on the couch and expect a hot meal to be placed in front of you. You haven't looked at me the way you used to in months, maybe years. f.u.c.k, I can probably even count on one hand how many times we've had s.e.x in that amount of time. There's nothing left for you? What the f.u.c.k are you giving me?"

"I have nothing to give you, Sara! That's the point!" Kevin yelled. Sara raised her hand in fury, looking toward the girls' room through the closed door.

"Shhh!" Her whisper was icy. "We don't need to wake them up."

"I have nothing for you, Sara," he hissed.

"Then why are you pinning all this on me?" she asked him, her eyes flashing. He hung his head at the question, the silence hanging between them like fragile icicles ready to drop. She waited for his answer, the fury inside of her ready to pounce at any word he spoke.

"I don't know," he said in a soft voice. "I guess I thought things would be different, or that things would go back to the way they used to when the girls grew a little more."

"But things are always going to be different than they were then," Sara said. "We were young and selfish back then. We had nothing to focus on but ourselves and each other. Things changed forever when we chose to have kids. Now the focus is on Lily and Megan. That's never going to change."

"I know, Sara," he sighed.

"So what is it? You don't want to be a dad anymore?" she demanded. "It's kind of late for that, isn't it? Leaving me isn't going to take that away."

"No, that's not it," he shot back. "Of course I want to be a dad. But I can't stay in a marriage where I feel like I'm just the paycheck, coming home to your little family of three while I am merely the outsider."

"What are you talking about?" Sara demanded. "Those girls adore you! They wait for you to come home every single day and pounce on you once you walk in that door! When you come home, they don't even see me anymore. It's all about Daddy."

"I don't love you anymore!" Kevin blurted out. Sara gasped, the words slicing right through her. They both stared at each other, neither one able to believe the words had been spoken. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. The regret was evident in Kevin's eyes, but it was too late. "I'm sorry, Sara. I didn't mean that. I-," but she waved him off with a flip of her hand as the tears broke over the barrier of her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.

"Don't. Don't even try to take it away. You said it. You finally said what I knew was true." She sank down on the bed, fighting with all her strength to keep from breaking down in front of him. "Is it someone else?" she asked him. "Is that why you've been spending more and more time at work?" He shook his head.

"No. There's no one else."

To Sara, that was almost worse. He wasn't leaving because his heart was being pulled in two directions. He was leaving because he couldn't stand to be with her anymore.

"I suppose we could try counseling," he offered as a weak gesture. She shook her head.

"I think it's too late for that," she told him. "I think you should just go."

"I'll go in the morning," he said. "I want to say goodbye to the girls."

"And say what?" Sara demanded. "That you're giving up on this family? That you don't love their mother anymore? No, you need to leave now, tonight. I can't have you in this house for another moment." She got on the floor and dug a bag out from under the bed, flinging it on the bed in front of him.

"And what are you going to tell them?" he asked her.

"I'll think of something. After all, I'm the one who is solely devoted to the kids, so much that my own husband doesn't want me."

"Sara, wait. This isn't fair. You can't make me leave without any kind of defense at all. They're my kids too. Please don't make them hate me," he pleaded. She looked at the ground, then up toward the ceiling to keep from losing her emotions.

"I'm not going to make them hate you," she said after some hesitation. And she made an inward promise to try her best to make this as fair for Lily and Megan as she could. "I'll tell them something, that Mommy and Daddy need some time apart, like a vacation or something," she said in a quiet voice. He nodded.

"And what if this isn't a vacation, Sara? What if this is the end?" He opened his drawer with reluctance, pulling out socks and shirts and placing them in the bag on the bed. Sara digested the reality in the words, reading the final answer that lay in the concealing folds of the question.

"One thing at a time," she told him.

True to her word, Sara had let the girls know that she and Daddy were taking a vacation from each other. She answered their frightened questions as best as she could, trying to keep the answers lighthearted and full of hope, unable and unwilling to hint that the end was inevitable. She promised they both loved them very much, and that the girls could see their Daddy anytime they wanted.