Days were easy, his only focus a job that demanded all his attention. But at night, when he lay within the quiet of his empty house, it was Sara's face that haunted him in the moments it took him to fall asleep, and who greeted him when he woke from a dreamless slumber. It was easier for John to focus on Sara than it had been to be so consumed by me. I tried to remind myself of this every time I started to get hurt that he no longer seemed to need me. It helped that he still thought of me from time to time. But whenever he did, he traded my face for Sara's, giving his attention to someone more attainable than a dead fiancee.

He had only called Sara a handful of times in the past three months. The first time, he hung up after her voice gave instructions on how to leave a message, before the beep obligated him to say something back. The second time, he tried to act casual, giving an unbelievable performance of someone who was just checking in to see what was new in her world. By the third phone call, he was aware that she was avoiding his calls, and he called her out on it in the phone message. But it was the fourth call he left that he regretted the most, one that he replayed over and over in his head and wished he could take back.

"Sara, it's John. You might not want to see me, but your girls might. After all, I was a part of their lives too. I was almost their uncle. So... s.h.i.t. Okay, this isn't going how I planned. Leave it to me to try and get you to call me back by reminding you that I was once going to be married to your sister. But I'm going crazy here. Look, will you just talk to me? d.a.m.n, I probably should just re-record this-" Beep.

The phone cut him off before he could do anything, holding his jumbled up message hostage in her voicemail box until she listened to him make an a.s.s of himself. He almost called back, but decided the damage was done. Calling her repeatedly wasn't going to make any of it look less crazy. So he left it as it was, and never called again.

But her non-communication was eating away at him. And on his next Sunday off from work, he knew he needed to see her in person and at least plead his case.

Most flower shops in town were closed on Sundays and Mondays. Knowing this in the beginning days of opening our shop, Sara and I had decided we would place the odds in our favor by keeping limited hours on Sunday mornings to fill the needs of those in a bind. At first, staying open for four hours on a Sunday morning didn't make much sense. We only saw one or two customers on the first dozen Sundays, making the expense of staying open cost more than closing one day a week and losing the small amount of business. But soon word got out that we were available on Sundays, and we began to see the church altar guild buying replacement lilies for the ones that had wilted too soon, funeral directors who needed a last-minute arrangement, and apologetic husbands who had strayed into the excitement of the city, afraid to go home empty-handed to their waiting wives. This was one of the reasons our shop didn't fold when many new businesses were affected by the economy. It seemed that even in the poorest of times, people still needed flowers to say what they couldn't with words.

With the limited time Sara would be at the shop, John knew he needed to move fast. His conscience told him just to let her go. Or perhaps it was my voice he heard somewhere within the thoughts that scrambled up his mind, pleading with him to forget her as I tried to protect him from breaking his heart any more than it already was. But he wouldn't listen. He knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he had seen her face to face, pled his case, convinced her that he was the answer to everything she needed and she was his answer as well.

He took a quick shower, pulling on the cleanest pair of jeans he could find in a pile of laundry that had been building up for weeks. He then grabbed a granola bar for breakfast and hopped into his truck, taking the drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to reach the small shop Sara and I had set up so many years before. As he drove, he went over what he was going to say to her. In truth, he didn't have a clue. All attempts to formulate a plan failed, fluttering away like the leaves on his windshield.

There were no customers when John walked in the door. Not even Sara was in sight, leaving John alone in a room of flowers. He paused in his mission and looked around. It occurred to him that this was where he had first laid eyes on me, when he had fallen in love with me but wouldn't know it for a few more months. The room seemed smaller than he remembered, encased by flowers on the walls and in buckets around the shop. The claustrophobia set in before he even knew what was. .h.i.tting him. I was everywhere he turned - my eyes, my smile, the mango smell in my hair.

"What am I doing?" John said out loud, his hands shaking. He couldn't breathe, the air swallowed by the fragrance of flowers, suffocating him with their sweet aroma.

"John?" Sara asked, emerging from the back room. "What are you doing here?" She saw how pale his face was, and changed from curiosity to concern. "Are you okay?"

"I need to get out of here," John said, rushing back through the doors he came in from. Sara grabbed a bottle of water from beside the register and followed him out.

"Here," she said, handing him the bottle. "Drink this." He took it with an embarra.s.sed smile, and drank half of it without pausing. Wiping his mouth, he sank to the ground, squeezing the area between his eyes in efforts to get his mind to shut up. "Feel better?" Sara asked him. He nodded, though his hands were still shaky.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come here," he said.

"Why are you here, John?" Sara asked. I could tell she already knew why, having listened to each of John's messages with a guilty heart, afraid to answer the phone or even call him back for fear of rocking the boat with Kevin. Things were good at home. She didn't want anything to interfere with that. Seeing John here, she knew it was because she had cut off all communication. She remembered how it had felt, months earlier, when she had been the one on the other line, searching for some kind of connection since her husband was unable to give it to her. But she found it easier to pretend innocence than to admit she knew what John was going through.

"You won't talk to me, won't even answer your phone. Look, I know what happened that night was sudden. But we were friends before that. And now you won't even give me that," John said.

"I can't, John."

"Why not? I mean, I know it's totally weird. It will be hard to explain to everyone around us. But... s.h.i.t. I'm not good at this anymore. I haven't dated since before your sister." Just mentioning me flooded his brain with my face once again, and he took a deep breath in and out. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with me, Rachel? Why am I having such a hard time even talking to you?" he asked.

"I'm not Rachel," Sara murmured.

"What do you mean?" John asked. "I know you're not Rachel. You're Sara."

"No, you called me Rachel."

"I did?" He racked his brain over the past few minutes, and realized it was a huge possibility that he had slipped up, using my name instead of hers. "Sara, I'm sorry. I know you're not Rachel. I think just being here is making me think of her more than ever."

"But don't you see? That's exactly why that night was a mistake. You don't love me, you love the idea of me the one that is mixed up with thoughts of my sister."

"That's not true," John protested. But just the mention of it made him question what was going on.

"What happened in there?" Sara asked. "I know that wasn't from me. What were you thinking of when you entered the store and suddenly needed to leave?"

"I was thinking of her," John admitted. He sighed, rubbing his temples at the realization he wasn't over me yet, that he had transferred all of his pain over losing me into obsessing over Sara. "This was where we first met. It was an accident, really. But it was one that was meant to happen." He relayed the story, telling her about how the forgetfulness of his friend brought him to this shop. "From the moment I saw her, she took my breath away. She didn't know it, of course. She was adorably fl.u.s.tered as she tried to help me with some last minute flower needs. But it gave me the in to be able to ask her out." He smiled at the memory, taking in the details of the dress I wore that day, the way my hair escaped from the loose bun I wore at the nape of my neck, the rich coffee of my eyes.

"You know, you were the first guy she really let get close to her, I mean, since Joey's dad took off. She had a hard time trusting anyone. But something about you let her believe that even she could fall in love. I never saw her as happy as she was when she was around you." Sara paused, her eyes twinkling at a memory only she and I shared. "If she were here, she'd kill me for telling you this. But she called me the day that she met you. She actually told me she had met the man she was going to marry."

"You're kidding."

"No!" Sara insisted. "I remember thinking that was so unlike her. The few dates she had gone on before she met you, she saw as dead-ends. Eventually she just gave up dating altogether, finding it easier to take care of Joey and focus on the shop than, in her words, 'deluding herself that any man could be anything more than disappointing.' So to hear her tell me that you were the one, after only having just met you... Let's just say I was both delighted by her hopefulness and fearful that she was about to get her heart totally ripped to shreds." She smiled at the memory of her sister in those early days of love. "I don't believe in soul mates, John. But when I was witness to the beginning of my sister's relationship with you, seeing how it grew so purely out of just a chance meeting, even I had to re-evaluate how I perceived the idea of love at first sight. You two were meant for each other, and you made her final years on earth the happiest she ever had."

"I guess everything happens for a reason," John mused. "If it hadn't been for a forgetful friend, I never would have met her." He paused at the thought, remembering how that meeting had led to a night of dancing at the wedding, the first of many consecutive days and nights we spent talking to each other, getting to know each other, and when we weren't together, thinking about each other. But his thoughts darkened at the loss that followed a life that had promised so much happiness. "Or maybe it was a mistake. If I hadn't been in here that day, I never would have known what it feels like to lose her."

"And you never would have known what it felt like to love her, either," Sara pointed out. The tears he had worked so hard to keep at bay broke free and ran down his cheeks in sheltered sobs. He tried not to let it all go, but when the first sob shuddered through him, the rest barreled down and bowled him over in unbridled sorrow.

I watched with compa.s.sion as everything he had kept so close to his chest was now pouring out of him. He held no power to stop it either. He was healing as he mourned, enveloping the whole section of the world where we were with the strength of his emotion. They couldn't feel it, of course, but I experienced every teardrop as a tiny ocean of hope, the breaking of his heart allowing the past to break free and make room for whatever the future held.

And I was suffocating him.

By indulging my selfish need to be close to him even as he grieved, I was making it impossible for him to let me go. I hadn't thought I would ever be able to walk away, that if I did it would mean I didn't love him enough. But I was beginning to believe I was ready to leave, that I could move on and leave behind all I loved in this world. John was taking the first real steps toward doing the same. I also saw, for the first time, that leaving him was an act of love in its own way.

"I'm sorry I came here," John whispered when the tears allowed words to form once more.

"I'm not," Sara said. "I think you needed this more than you know." He nodded in quiet agreement, raw from allowing himself permission to break. He turned to her with a sad smile.

"And you, are you going to be okay?" he asked her. "I mean, I know you've been the strong one here by being firm that this...thing...won't work. But raising the girls all by yourself and everything..." he trailed off. "Will you be okay?" She smiled at him, breaking into a grin of happiness she couldn't contain.

"Actually, Kevin has come back home. We're starting to put our marriage back together. And so far, it's working," she told him, her eyes filled with hope.

"Oh G.o.d," John stammered. "But we... Does he know about us?"

"Yes," Sara confirmed. John's eyes widened at the complications that presented, but Sara waved her hand as she finished the thought. "I mean, no. He knows that I had an indiscretion while we were apart, but not that it was you. We both made our fair share of mistakes during our time apart from each other, and all we can do is forgive them, understanding we didn't know what the future held."

"And are things better?" John asked her.

"They've never been so good," Sara breathed with relief.

In the past few months, she was introduced to a part of her husband she never knew. He was proactive in being a parent to the girls, which she a.s.sumed was a result of his months as a single father with no other parent to lean on. He helped out around the house, even surprising Sara that he knew how to cook a meal or two. And he was more attentive to Sara and her needs, reading her like a book and keeping himself open to communication. She was falling love with Kevin all over again.

"How about you?" she asked. "Are you going to be okay? Do I need to call someone, or anything?" He gave a light chuckle in response, staring at the street in quiet reflection. The city never slept, but it was beginning to rouse from its sedated state of morning peace the cars starting to pa.s.s by with more frequency, as was the increasing number of people pounding the pavement. Not one of them noticed Sara and John huddled off to the side.

Sometimes it is good to be invisible.

John took in the details of the green gra.s.s that poked through the cracks in the sidewalk, the black of the tar on the wooden light post in front of them, the contrast of the colors in a small square flyer boasting of the carnival that was coming in a couple months. And he breathed in the smell of San Francisco, a mixture of the foggy air with a slight hint of fish from their close proximity to the wharf. He turned to Sara and smiled.

"I'm going to be just fine," he said. And for the first time, he believed it.

Twenty-three.

I spent the last few moments of my time on earth memorizing everything and everyone I ever loved in life, taking a full six months of human time to say my goodbyes before I was gone forever. I danced on the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, running up the rusty orange rails toward the top of the towers and taking a long look at the expanse of the bay. I climbed into the trees on Telegraph Hill, letting the parrots that lived within the branches project their colorful thoughts back and forth from their head to mine and back again. I ran the bases at AT&T Park at the same time as Chewy Mendez, this year's favorite San Francis...o...b..seball player. I even pretended the crowd was cheering for me as we both rounded third base and slid into home. I visited old clients I adored, my son's former third grade teacher, and the young gal who made my latte every morning at the coffee shop. Even my mailman received a momentary sojourn, a brief glimpse into his house while he served dinner to his family, just because I could.

I asked Aunt Rose to accompany me on all of these visits, in part so that I had someone with me on this side of the world, but also to keep me from changing my mind. These were my goodbyes. I wanted to make sure that I was clear on my intent, that nothing in this world altered my resolve to find peace in closure and leave it all behind. But I also wanted to make sure that I had one last memory of every part of the world I cherished, something I could hold onto once I had crossed over from this world to the next.

If Aunt Rose disagreed with what I was doing, she never let on. Instead, she hid in the corners of every place I visited, and melted into the shadows of every person I bid farewell. She didn't speak to me, only offering comfort through her presence.

And I found the exercise cathartic. I started out easy, breezing through parts of my life that were once forgotten, coming to terms with loose ends and people who had slipped from my life. I checked in on old high school friends I had lost touch with, saw each of them in a different phase of life. Some had kids, some were divorced, and at least one of them made it big by becoming a rock star just as he swore he would in high school. I discovered my cat, who had escaped from our apartment a few months before my death, living in the apartment of Mrs. Rhodes down the hall. I laughed when he saw me, floating near him as a light in the air. And he knew it was me.

"d.a.m.n Mrs. Rhodes," I laughed, remembering how she had seemed so concerned when I came to her door with a photo of him, swearing she hadn't seen him but would keep her eye out for him. All that time, Pepper had been in her house. "Good for you, Pepper," I told him, glad that he was at least well-loved in his new home even if he had betrayed me in his abandonment.

I traveled to Sebastopol to visit Sam in his mother's town. I watched him as he moved with ease among his friends, an air of confidence unmistakable around him as he joked with those who looked up to him. He was different than I once knew him. We were so unfamiliar with each other in life, our defenses still strong as we became accustomed to living under the same roof. There was so much I didn't know about him in life that I now knew about him in death. My regret with Sam was that I never got to experience the other side of being his stepmom, moving beyond our initial awkwardness to a place where we showed how much we cared. I sent him a silent farewell from my world to his, taking comfort from knowing he really had cared.

I visited Joey's dad, Tony, exploring a part of my life I thought I'd never want to see again. My heart softened for him when I found him, living in a drug-induced stupor that seemed to be a permanent thing these days. He was the only one who lived in his home, the place trashed with beer cans and a sink full of dishes. The whole place smelled of old booze and cigarettes. He didn't have much, but what he did have was worn out and old. However, one thing shone out among the piles of dirt and junk, and that was a photo of all three of us on his shelf. Tony had his arm around me in the picture, holding me up as I held Joey in my arms. My face was unsure, a hint of hope flushed in my cheeks. It was when Joey was only a few weeks old, when Tony had reappeared for just a moment to check in and see how we were doing, and, in an out-of-character move, hand me a wad of cash to help out with some expenses. He'd only stuck around for a few days, more than I had expected of him even then. I had forgotten about the photo until now, which he had asked a random guy on the street to take as if we were tourists instead of a local broken-up family. The moment was captured forever, now sitting on his bookshelf that held no books, us as a family for the last time in our lives with a backdrop of pork buns in a store window in Chinatown.

And next to the photo was our obituary.

The visit to my parents' house in Sonoma was the one that worried me the most, and I begged Aunt Rose to stay close to ensure I wouldn't fold. She nodded, holding my hand in silent support as we manifested to the home where I had grown up.

My mother was in the garden when I arrived, her hands deep in the dirt as she took advantage of the late afternoon sun. She was planting bulbs, a pile of them near her as she took her time digging six inch holes and placing a bulb in each one, covering them over with dirt and patting it down so they could sleep through the winter. Nearby, a j.a.panese maple I'd never seen before shone in red and gold. She glanced over at it when the last bulb was planted, offering a silent prayer.

"I miss you, sweet Rachel."

It was all she said, but it spoke volumes. I understood that this was her way of keeping me close, that the tree was her offering to me and a beacon of hope for her. I had only visited her a handful of times in my death, but somehow she never looked as lovely or as young as she did in this moment. I memorized how the sun shone through her hair, casting a golden glow through the silver that now stood as the prominent hue. I traveled along her laugh lines, creases that made up an older version of my own face when I was human, and proof of a life filled with laughter. I captured the blue of her eyes, painting my dress the exact same shade so that I couldn't forget the warmth of indigo that had smiled upon me at every stage of my life. I watched her hands as she worked, noticing the signs of age both in weathered skin and in age spots that hid among patches of dirt. I held onto Aunt Rose as I watched my mother's hands, feeling cautious as I longed for the time when I was once cared for by those hands.

"It's okay to feel," Aunt Rose said, giving me permission in my goodbye to grieve. "I've got you." And I cried as the memories of a really wonderful childhood flashed in front of me like slides to a moving picture show, scenes of my life pa.s.sing me by. There was the time my father took Sara and me to the dump in his truck, all the windows rolled down and the radio turned up as we enjoyed being my father's honorary sons for the day. There were all the times my mom rolled up her sleeves to teach us the art of baking bread, or how to outline the pictures we were coloring before filling them in with a lighter shade. The hills behind our house became the road of connection with our father, the hikes he took us on as teenagers serving as magical bridges when we couldn't see eye to eye.

On this late afternoon, my father came out to join my mother, handing her a cup of ice water and inviting her to take a break. And the four of us stayed out there until the sun went down and cast a shadow over their bit of land in Sonoma. My father held my mom's hand, a gesture I had taken for granted in all my years of life. I never took the time to notice how in love they were, even after years of marriage. I may have never been able to experience that kind of love in a marriage to John, but I got to be a part of it through my parents two people who had served as an example of what a true partnership looked like.

The sky took on a purplish hue, the moon appearing over the ridge in magnified brilliance. It was why our hometown of Sonoma was referred to as the Valley of the Moon, the magical way the moon appeared larger than life when it first rose, before shrinking to a more demure orb. My parents stood up to go inside. But I stayed where I was, watching them walk away for the very last time. When they closed the door, Aunt Rose and I were already gone.

Sara's house was a tornado of happiness - a naked Lily running to avoid bath time with a fit of giggles while Kevin and Sara worked to corner her, and Megan, in hysterics, who was doing her best to help her fleeing sister. When Kevin was able to capture the wriggling four-year-old, she squealed and twisted in his arms, not ready for the game to be over. To her delight and her parents' dismay, it continued in a flurry of tidal waves and bubbles once she entered the bathtub. I left with this memory, the four of them as a family, only Sara and I aware that the number would grow by one more in nine months' time. But I was the only one who knew that this one would be a boy.

I saved John for last. I wanted his to be the last human face I saw before I took off. It was only fitting that he was at the carnival in Santa Cruz with Sam. It seemed like ages since Jane and I were here, not just the two and a half years that had pa.s.sed. I felt like I was a different person back then, amazed that the effects of time were still able to touch those of us in the afterlife.

Jane was there, and she ran to me, surrounded and followed by a storm of balloons.

"You're doing it, aren't you?" she accused me with a smile. "You're leaving all this behind for something better. Am I right?"

"How did you know?"

"Honey, it couldn't be clearer if you hired a plane to write it in the sky," she laughed. "Yee! I'm so excited for you!" she squealed.

"You could come with me, you know," I pointed out. She shrugged with a grin.

"Maybe one day. Hold me a seat when you get there. I'll join you when I'm ready. But for now, I think I'm okay being right here in my own little Heaven."

We sat together and people-watched. Or rather, Jane watched the random faces pa.s.sing us by while I kept my eyes locked on John. I didn't want to forget a thing. But there was something different about him, a lightness in his step and a permanent pull at the corner of his mouth. He and Sam looked more at ease than I'd ever seen them before, even in life. Sam held just a hint of being a boy, wisdom in his eyes from experience and growing up. And the two of them joked with each other, an easy camaraderie between them as they spent a silly evening at the carnival among the lights and balloons, men walking on stilts, and music enveloping the whole scene.

I saw her at the same time John did, a girl with strawberry blonde hair. She was sitting with friends several yards away from where he stood, and it was as if the crowd parted to create a path that led straight to her. She got up to leave with her friends, leaving her purse behind on the bench where she had been sitting.

"Hold on, I'll be right back," John said, rushing forward to grab the purse before someone else took off with it. "Miss!" he called out, and she turned. "You left this behind." Her eyes widened when she saw her bag in his hands. She thanked him, taking the purse from his hand and brushing her fingers against his in the motion.

It was as if time turned sideways and broke open, spilling all the contents of the future out in front of me. Time skipped, and she was there in front of him, kissing him while dressed in white as they stood in front of all their friends and family. Time jumped again and it was Sam's college graduation, the two of them cheering a few rows down from Wendy and her husband. Each jump brought them further along in life, the lines showing on their faces from years of laughter. I waited for the jealousy, the painful feelings that he had forgotten me in the eyes of another woman. But it never came. Instead I felt elation, the magnitude of happiness growing as they fell deeper in love. I experienced joy through their joy. I lived in the fast-forward of their lives until the final scene, John now an old man at the edge of her grave, smiling as he thanked her for a life well-lived. And then it all wound back up and we were at the carnival, music surrounding us as John handed her the purse.

"I'm John," he said. She smiled at him then, letting her fingers remain on his just a little too long before pulling away.

"My name's Hannah."

John wouldn't find out until after they were married that she worked for a month at a flower shop, filling in when the owner's sister died.

Twenty-four.

I was coming to the end of my time here on earth. It seemed like so long ago that I had entered this divide between Heaven and Earth, and it made me think back to that very first day when I had been knocked from my body and found myself lost and alone in a forest filled with both wonder and fright. And to think, I'd had no idea before it happened that I was taking my last breaths among the living.

When a moment is so tremendous it knocks the familiar part of the world off balance, you'd think there would be some sort of clue before it happened. Maybe just a hint, or even a premonition that would have allowed me to at least hold my breath until the moment had pa.s.sed and I could find my footing once again.

But life doesn't work that way.

Life is often unfair. Sometimes things have to hurt, sometimes they're even unbearable, and sometimes the pain is necessary.

I learned this lesson the hard way. But I learned much more than just that.

Bad things can happen to anyone. Or rather, things happened that I wouldn't have chosen for myself. When it came down to it, any notion that I'd had absolute control during the course of my life was but a comforting thought covering a cloud of absurdity. I was merely a miniscule blip on a very large course of time that had only just begun.

Sure, I'd been able to mold my path in the general direction of my choice. I took half-blind leaps of faith, and conjured up my very best intentions in a five-year plan in which I'd banked all my hopes and dreams. But as it was, even my most fervent efforts at success were thrown off-course by someone else who had the same freedom of choice that I did. Because of this, I was cast into the Bermuda Triangle of Life After Death, leaving me in uncharted seas where my only chance of survival was to tread water until I became familiar with my surroundings.

But perhaps that was supposed to be the plan all along.

I'd learned so much about myself since the day I had died, and I'd learned so much about life and love. Once I finally stopped fighting the current and trusted in the mercy of the waves, the tempests, and the creatures that lurked at my feet, the storm began to calm and revealed a really beautiful ocean. It was only when I abandoned control that I was able to discover pure freedom.

In my death, I discovered what it was like to truly live.

Twenty-five.

"I think I'm ready," I told Aunt Rose. She stepped forward to take my hand.