Nine Minutes in Heaven

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The day of my death had started out as normal, in so much as I could call my existence that since I’d acquired the ability to speak with ghosts and seemingly travel to other realms. By the time those twenty-four hours reached their end, however, despite searching my racing thoughts for any other possible explanation, I couldn’t help but wonder if my offbeat life had reached its end as well, an end or a new beginning, perhaps.

“What…what happened?”

I opened my eyes. Though the visual was hazy, I immediately heard a cardinal—twelve tweets, twelve notes. More than a bit disoriented, I wasn’t sure where I was, but I just had a feeling.

“Jefferson?”

“Yes.”

An angel made sense, with the light so golden around and behind me. I had to stop thinking of Jefferson and Calvin as ghosts, now that I knew they had both crossed over.

“Hello, my Jefferson.”

Yes. An angel made sense.

“Hello, Goose.”

Not nearly as blinded as I had been just before I’d stepped through from the other side, I still had to shield my eyes to see his face. Jefferson was just as small and boyish looking as I recalled, with that puppy soft beard of his I wanted to stroke and eyes as green as the grass beneath my feet.

“You’re still dressed like a motorcycle cowboy.”

His dark hair was slicked back, like James Dean, and the leather jacket he wore made noise when he moved. “That is how you’ll see me,” he said, tugging at the cuffs.

I gasped, a habitual thing I would likely always struggle to curtail. “You’re here as I dressed you, because you’re visiting me this time.” That made sense, too. Maybe it did. “You’re visiting me, here in my world, and I can see you, and hear you, and…and touch you? Can I touch you?”

“Of course.”

I didn’t though. I just stood there, somewhat afraid to close the gap between us, a space of several feet. “The first time you visited me, I couldn’t see you at all, remember, Jefferson?”

“I do.”

“But I heard you and sensed you there. In January, when I hit my head and visited you, I call that a vision. Patrick didn’t remember any of that. He was there. I thought he was, but I had to describe it all to him. I wish he was here, now. If this was a vision, like that, I would have brought him, I think. Yes.” It took only a moment to decide. “I know I would have, if I could. That was real, though, in its own way, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“Good.” I tried to take in my surroundings, blue sky, sunlight, nature, to make sense of them, and to quiet the chaos in my brain. “This feels different from all that.”

“Yes,” Jefferson said.

“How did I get here?”

“What do you remember?”

I remembered a black night, without a single star twinkling above me as I lay in distress. There was dirt and gravel and weeds deadened by weeks of winter before and a spring that was taking its time. It was definitely warmer, now, warmer than the early April night I’d come from, but also in some sort of ethereal way, like a hug bringing comfort after a bad dream or a loss. Before the bright light, total darkness had surrounded me. Now, it was daytime, and the grass where we stood edged a field of wildflowers proclaiming summer, the smell of exhaust and gas fumes replaced by the pleasant aroma of them. None of that came out in words, though, because my next thought was of my sister.

“Can you guys meet Shelby, now, you and Calvin? Where is Calvin?”

“He’ll be here shortly.”

“Good. Jefferson and Calvin, Goose and Patrick, they should always be together.” The smile I offered was returned, even though mine had already faded, as I wondered why neither couple was. “I assume you could have met Shelby anytime. Rip, too. They can meet you, now. Shelby will be blown away, if you can actually talk to her. All of them know so much about you,” I babbled a bit, relishing the chaos in my head for once. Settling on one thought, the obvious one, the obvious explanation for where I was and why, seemed almost frightening. “Shell and Rip, my bro-ham in law, I’m not sure they believe my stories about you, not a hundred percent. Rip was at the reenactment when I first found your diary. Carrie believes them. Carrie is the girl Patrick and I found sleeping in her car during the blizzard after I got back from the last time I hung out with you and Calvin. Do you know her story? How her parents don’t accept her as a daughter, because she was born as their son, even if she never felt that way?”

“A light flashed in the parking lot allowing you to see her car,” Jefferson reminded me.

“Right. Yes. You did that for us. Thank you. Carrie lives with Rip and Shelby, now. They make wonderful surrogate parents. Carrie’s in a play. If you stick around long enough, you can come see it. I’ll spring for your tickets—unless you decide to come but not in the flesh. Then we won’t need seats.”

The worry I felt concerning Patrick’s absence was starting to needle me, but I blathered on, trying to squelch it. I yammered and fidgeted, with my sweatshirt sleeve, my hair, never quite neat, and even my eyes, rubbing them to see if the sights before me would change to something more familiar and logical. Just because an angel made sense didn’t mean I understood why and how he was here, or why, how, and where I was.

“I can’t wait to do twenty-first century things together. It’ll be hard to top Halloween with your entire family, back in the 1800s, but I’m sure we can find something fun. I’ll introduce you to QVC, and CNN, and the NFL on ESPN. We’ll eat M&Ms, look at IG, and shop for BVDs or 2Xist online. That way, if you’re not too busy to stick around seven to ten business days, I can introduce you to my UPS man. His boyfriend’s an angel, too. That’s kind of a joke. Noah’s boyfriend’s name is Angel. He’s not an actual angel, like you and Calvin. I think he’s a lawyer.”

Though I realized Jefferson was likely aware of everything I was telling him and describing, I was a bit nervous about what he might say if I stopped talking, so I didn’t.

“Maybe all six of us can just hang out some night and watch RuPaul’s Drag Race or Grey’s Anatomy, maybe fire up some Super Mario Brothers or Netflix. The twenty-first century has so many things to marvel at, not the least of which might be our indoor plumbing and toilet paper, if you have need for such a thing.”

Jefferson had been in my time before, in ghostly form, to take it all in. Now, he was like a real living person, as alive as I was, it seemed.

Something made me shiver.

“I’m sure all that would sound boring to a lot of people, especially people who’ve been to Heaven. This century is about a lot more than TV and TP. We’re not in the midst of a civil war, at least, not like the last time you were all the way on Earth.”

I had to rethink that, the statement and our location.

“Well, sadly, in some ways, we are…two sides against one another with little compromise, racial lines, hate crimes…” I decided to ignore the other thing a while longer. “There are good things, too, though. Cost-Mart stopped selling guns. Good for them. I should take you there. Everything you could ever imagine under one roof. Except guns, now. I even found love there, but we don’t sell it, or anything.”

“Ah.”

“It’d be fun to see you at the store.”

I kept turning in a circle, looking behind me and in both directions side to side, hoping to see Patrick, maybe, or just to recognize a landmark or even a particular tree out of the dozens behind us.

“We should do something more adventurous, I suppose. I’d offer to take you to Hawaii or France, but that’s a little out of my price range and comfort zone. Sorry about that.”

I couldn’t stop rambling, there beside the meadow with chirping birds, dancing flowers, and butterflies. I spotted two yellow ones flitting from beebalm to lupines. That quieted me, but only for a moment.

“We’ll definitely take another road trip, Jefferson. For real, this time. I don’t mean to suggest our trip to Massachusetts and Tennessee last fall wasn’t real, but now…” I gasped again, then touched my chest. Something else was off. “Maybe I can teach you how to drive a twenty-first century car. They don’t fly or anything, like on The Jetsons, but you don’t need to crank them, and you don’t need a horse. We can take turns driving, and when it’s my turn, you can hold Wilbur on your lap. Little French bulldogs love to be held. He’ll love you even more, now that you have a lap.”

I had to stop again, this time to catch my breath.

“Oh.”

The pain I’d been expecting with a deep inhale never came. That’s what it was.

“Hmm.”

I shook it off and chattered on.

“You can’t drive and hold Wilbur at the same time. There are rules of the road. Seatbelts are a must—and no texting and driving. I can show you how to text!” I’d been cautious with my breaths for a while, because of how much everything hurt. Now, “Look at that. In and out, in and out. No problem.”

“Not here,” Jefferson said.

“Here?” I went to touch a white daisy that shouldn’t have been flowering for at least two more months, June, not April. I jerked back, though, just short of its petals. “Where are we?”

It wasn’t my sister’s backyard. That was the last place I recalled being, at first. Going a little deeper into the recesses of my mind, I remembered I’d been at the high school with Carrie. Did North East High have an acre of wildflowers there? It was possible, but I doubted the football field doubled as a meadow during the off season. “Dang it. Is this a vision after all, like the night I bumped my head at the store? That’s a bummer. A bummer means something is bad,” I explained. “A disappointment.”

“Ah. Well, this isn’t a vision,” Jefferson said. “This is real.”

“Real.” I repeated the word, with the hope that doing so might help me believe it.

“Real, dear Goose. And whether or not it’s a bummer, that’s up to you, as is whether or not you stay.”

“Oh.”

“I believe, however, we are overdue for a hug.”

“Yes.” I took a step, but then stopped short, worrying about the crisp, white cleanliness of the T-shirt under Jefferson’s leather jacket. “My hands are kind of messy.”

“Look again.”

They were clean.

“How?” I wondered. “There was so much blood.”

“Not here, Goose.”

“Not here?”

“Hug me.”

A part of me still feared the worst. A beautiful dream, that was one of several alternative scenarios to the one I still tried not to land on too long. Though I feared one wrong move might force me awake at the best part, I decided to risk it.

“It’s wonderful to be with you again,” Jefferson said against my ear.

Now close enough to do so, I touched his face, his beard, his chest, wondering if I could feel a heartbeat. I thought I did. “I guess you get the wings and the robes later on.”

He smiled and touched me back, my cheek, and my hair, to move it from my eyes. “Maybe.”

“Will you fly eventually, from one place to another, or just think of a location and automatically get there? I’m thinking of McDonald’s. I better stop, though, just in case, because I’m happy right where I am.”

“You think too much.”

Jefferson still had a way of putting me in check and making me smile while doing it. “For sure. It’s hard to stop, especially in this moment.” I wanted to. The feeling was mostly good, but the thoughts, thoughts that brought more thoughts, were rather unsettling. “Maybe they’ll fix that by the time they fit me for my halo.” That thought came out loud. “I’ll try.”

I kissed the top of Jefferson’s head, where his halo should have been. Because we were both short, I could.

“Tell me, have you and Calvin married?”

“We were waiting for spring,” Jefferson said.

“Would it be thinking too much to ask if Heaven has seasons?” I looked at the sky.

“I love the four seasons. I can’t imagine enjoying my afterlife half as much without them.”

I sang a few bars of “Walk Like a Man.”

“What song is that?”

“One by a group called the Four Seasons, from the sixties and seventies. We can listen to them.” I reached into my pocket. My phone was actually there. “Now, I know we’re in my world, unless Heaven allows iPhones.” I pulled up the song I’d mentioned.

“May I?”

“Sure.”

Jefferson took the phone from me. “Remind me. This is a…”

“An iPhone.”

“Ah, yes. The letter I, not the kind through which we see.”

“Exactly.” I gasped again. So much for my New Year’s resolution to cut back to two a day. “Did you come here so you can exchange vows at your tree all big and grown up? Patrick and I would love to be there. I can get ordained online in, like, five minutes, if you want me to officiate. I bet that’s it. It’s warmer in Tennessee than here, in New York. Though it’s warmer than it has been there…here…in New York, just so you know. Do trees in Tennessee get their leaves by the first week in April? If not, maybe you can make the leaves come in some sort of heavenly, ghostly way, like when you did what you did at Cone Heads in the rain last October, right? Wait.” I inhaled deeply, now that I could. “Are we in Tennessee?” Smelling my surroundings did absolutely nothing to help me identify them. “Did you ‘beam me up, Jefferson’ to Tennessee?”

He jumped ever so slightly, when “Walk Like a Man” switched to “Waterfalls.”

“There you go! TLC on iTunes.”

I never did get an answer, not right away, as Jefferson stared at the phone, entranced by the music and the movement on the screen as he stroked it with one finger.

“Maybe you two and Patrick and I can get married together. He asked me. He thought I was asking him. You probably know that though, right? Since you were there and all. I wish Patrick was here.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Patrick!” I was afraid to turn around, the dream thing again, but when I did, he was real, approaching via a path through the grass. The big, tall beefy body, the beautiful eyes, the bifocals, the bushy orange beard, all of him, he was there.

“I’m here, too.”

“Calvin! I’m glad. In your presidential suit and tie.” I hugged them, Patrick, then Calvin, then Patrick again. “All four of us together. I still don’t know where we are, but this is certainly a heavenly moment.”

“My idea of Heaven would surely include you,” Patrick said, calling back to our declaration of love while snowed in three months earlier at Cost-Mart during my overnight shift.

“And you would be a part of mine,” I said.

Seeing his smile when we separated was almost as wonderful as the hug. Just almost, so, I copped another one of those.

“I’m so happy to see you both.”

“I’m happy to see you as well, Goose,” Calvin said.

“You’re meeting Patrick!” The loudness of my voice matched the excitement it brought me. “Patrick, you’re meeting Jefferson and Calvin for real this time. I won’t have to tell you about it later, because Jefferson told me this isn’t a vision. You’ll remember. It’s real.”

Patrick bowed to Calvin. “It is with great pleasure I make your acquaintance in the flesh once more, my guardian angel.” He bowed to Jefferson. “And you, my guardian angel’s beloved, who’s guardian angel to mine.”

“I like that,” I said. “Is it accurate? Can it be? Are you really now our guardian angels?”

Calvin smiled. “Our hands did go up the moment the call went out. If we can tear Jefferson away from whatever it is that has him so enthralled…”

“It’s a letter I phone.” Jefferson turned it toward us just a second.

“It’s distracting you.” Calvin folded his arms across his chest.

They were so cute, bickering over phone usage, just like ordinary people.

“Sorry.” Jefferson put it at his side. “Would you like to see more of what’s around you?”

“With you two as our guides?” I asked.

Calvin took my hand in one of his, and one of Patrick’s in the other. “Absolutely.”

Two more steps had us in the middle of the field, in amongst the colorful carpet of flowers, some tall enough to tickle my knees where my jeans were torn, leaving a gaping hole there. Green stems with purple blooms, red ones, yellow ones, orange, yellow, and blue waved and shimmied, as if they were happy to see me, too.

“A rainbow!” Every color from the ground was represented in the arch of stripes all aglow when I peered ahead toward the horizon. We ran in that direction, like little boys playing on a summer day, and then I fell, as Calvin let go of me. Once on the ground, I giggled, like that little boy, still, as a several dozen big and little paws climbed and fumbled over me. “My babies!”

Seven cats and two dogs wagged, wiggled, and kneaded.

“How? How are we here?” I wanted to know, but it was hard to concentrate on anything other than whiskers, bright eyes, toe beans, and soft fur right then. “Why don’t I have cats now?” I asked. “Wilbur would love cats, I bet!” There was that. Wilbur was never far from the forefront of my mind.

The kitty cats purred, Funny Face, Sandy, Smokey, Molly, Black Cat, Kitty, and Boy Cat. Shelby and I had never been great at coming up with names for cats. Max, a huge black lab mix with the same name as my given one, had some believing I didn’t do any better as an adult. He and TJ, a soft mop of a sheepdog, nuzzled into my cheeks, getting me all wet with their noses and tongues. “I love you, Maxter. You, too Teej. I wuv all of you!” Every one of them, canine or feline, was spry and healthy, happy and agile.

“That looks like fun.” Patrick joined me down in the splendor of the meadow’s tall, green spikes and fanciful petals. I kissed him. I tried to, but the dogs wanted in on it and one of the cats, Funny Face, the calico, was already kneading on his broad chest. “Hello, precious little one,” Patrick said to her. “Hello, precious big one.” He managed to get his lips to mine. “Not so big, actually.”

“A short joke, here?” I asked, feeling a smile that would show I wasn’t the least bit angry.

“If I haven’t mentioned this before…” Somehow not disturbing the cat, Patrick shifted closer, so all of him touched me somewhere. “Like Baby Bear’s everything, my Love Camel is just right in every way.”

I was about to explain the term Love Camel to Jefferson and Calvin, but then assumed they knew. I assumed angels were all-knowing, omniscient, at least when it came to those to whom they were attached on Earth. “It’s The Rainbow Bridge,” I said upon the realization. “It has to be. I guess we’re visiting you, after all, Jefferson.”

“Uh-huh.” His response as brief and vague as most of the others he’d offered, this time, I blamed Apple.

“I guess it pays to be personally connected to residents of Heaven.” My eyes locked on Patrick. “Though I hope they don’t get in trouble for bringing us here.”

“I think it’s okay,” he said.

“Yeah. Like a gym membership. Maybe we’re here on a visitor’s pass.”

“A visitor’s pass to heaven…” Patrick drew an imaginary heart on my forehead. “I like the way you think.” Then, he traced the letter P inside it. “Never forget me.”

“Forget you? How could I?” I turned Kitty’s butt away from my face. “There are none here for you?”

“I was allergic to the furry ones, remember?”

I stroked Patrick’s beard and peered into his eyes through glass. I was glad he still wore glasses, even in Heaven. I liked Patrick’s glasses. “Right. And scared of cats.” Then, I felt his heartbeat against my palm.

“I no longer remember why,” he said, allowing me to feel his words with my fingertips now on his lips. “You never had an antelope as a pet, I trust?”

“Nope. Gramma wouldn’t allow them in the house.”

“Phew.” He turned onto his back again but was not about to let go of my hand. I was fine with that. “Goldfish, turtles, and lizards await me, perhaps.”

“And bees?”

“And bees,” Patrick said, snuggling up to the black tom named Boy Cat, as Funny Face finally put her head down for a nap. “Look.” He inhaled deeply at each of their necks. “Not even a sniffle.”

I leaned over and did the same, my face in Patrick’s beard. “None for me, either.”

“Good thing. My existence would suck if you suddenly became allergic to me. Though if it was only the beard, I’d shave it right off, like the rest of my hair.”

I had to check that out, the hair—or lack thereof—on Patrick’s chest, so I slipped two fingers between the second and third buttons of his dress shirt, the color of orange sherbet. “Nice.”

“For me, too.”

“How come you guys aren’t down here with us?” I asked Calvin, looking up at him.

“Jefferson is busy.”

He was once again enamored with the phone.

“I could leave it here, if it wouldn’t annoy you or get him in trouble. That way, he could phone home, like E.T. My home, so we could talk every single day.”

“I don’t know what E.T. is,” Calvin said.

“Show them.” Patrick tried to roll onto his side, but the two dogs and Funny face wanted him right where he was, so he obliged.

“Jefferson?” I held out my hand.

“Yes?”

“Can I borrow the phone a sec?”

“Sure.” Reluctantly, I thought, he passed it to me, once he was down on the ground with the rest of us.

I stopped the music to Google E.T. “Heaven has Google,” I said to Patrick.

“Good to know.”

“And the Wi-Fi is excellent.”

“One would hope.”

“Though I assume we’re technically still on the outskirts, right?”

“Technically,” Calvin said with a smile as bright as the warm sun above that got me to wondering if we could get way up there via the rainbow.

“Here he is. E.T. stands for extraterrestrial,” I explained to our angels. “E.T. Get it?” I held the screen up to give them a better view. “We can watch the whole movie. Would you like that?”

“That would depend on its duration,” Jefferson said.

“Ah. Well, here.” I handed the phone back over. “Watch anything you’d like.”

“Back to the puppy dogs!” Patrick went a few more rounds with the animals, but then lost his playmates and lap buddy, when Funny Face decided hopping grasshoppers could no longer be ignored. Half the cats joined in the fun, while the other half watched, the dogs, too. Patrick wasn’t idle for long. Still exuberant and playful, he rolled right at me, bringing me into his orbit, like a snowball down a mountain. Switching direction, we captured Calvin in our movement, and then went back the other way for Jefferson, four grown men tumbling and spinning, like we were back in our younger days on the playground.

“Watch the letter I phone,” Jefferson scolded.

“Jefferson doesn’t want to play,” Patrick said.

“I never knew him to be a party pooper.” I stuck my lip out in a pout, unsure he even noticed. “Maybe phones shouldn’t be allowed in Heaven.”

“Maybe nothing but an mp3.” Patrick nodded. He liked his idea. “Heaven needs music, or I could just sing.”

I kissed him before he could start, a kiss that was cut short by the sound of three men’s heavy breathing, s*x sounds surprisingly loud from such a small phone speaker. “s**t. I mean…shoot.”

Patrick tried to hide a snicker.

“Am I in trouble for real?” I snatched the phone from Jefferson.

“What was that?” Calvin asked.

“Three men engaged in s****l intercourse,” Jefferson told him.

“Am I going to get the boot?” I was certain I would. “For bringing porn into Heaven?”

“You’re fine,” Jefferson promised.

“Good.”

“Why would watching two, three, or four men expressing their love for one another with pleasure be bad?” he asked. “We enjoyed having you watch us in the woods when you came back to our time in autumn, and would quite enjoy watching you, also, here, there, or anywhere.”

“It was good for me, too,” I said. “And, well, maybe, we can get into some of that during this visit, if it’s not against the rules. I haven’t needed to watch guys on my phone as much, lately, not since Patrick and I have gotten closer.”

Patrick smiled at me.

“And when it comes to those particular three men you had on, I’m not so sure about the love part.”

“I’m sure about ours,” Patrick said.

I kissed him once more. “Me, too. And yours, Jefferson and Calvin. I really thought you guys would be married, you know, since you’ve been here so long.”

“Maybe I haven’t been here as long as you think.” Jefferson brushed my beard, like I had his. Calvin picked up the phone, once I’d set it down.

“Over a hundred years,” I said.

“Or not.” Patrick put two fingers to the fluff at his chin. “Not if Jefferson just crossed over last October, when we helped him.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Sort of.”

Calvin chucked the phone, as if it was possessed, when it suddenly asked, “How can I help you, Goose?”

“It’s supposed to do that,” I told him. “That was Siri.”

“Is she your mother?”

I laughed, despite my circumstances in that department. “No.”

“She’s his friend.” Jefferson remembered me calling Siri that from when he’d come home with me after the reenactment. Maybe he’d called her that, and I just hadn’t corrected him.

“It’s all rather strange.” Done with the phone, Calvin gathered a colorful bouquet to present to the man he loved. “Though not quite a tree, still as lovely as thee.”

“Aww.” They tickled my heart and always would.

My two layers on top suddenly too much for the weather, I pulled them up, baring my torso. With Patrick’s hand on my gut and mine on his chest, inside his dress shirt again, we breathed in synch. Then, the questions came.

“When I had my vision, that night at Cost-Mart in the snow, I remember how glad you were to see Jefferson again, Calvin. He hadn’t crossed over when he’d first passed away, right? You hadn’t, right, Jefferson?”

Jefferson shook his head side to side. “Right.”

“What’s happening now isn’t like my vision, though?” I asked again. “Jefferson told me that,” I said to Patrick.

“Right.” Calvin answered this time. He held Jefferson’s hand, and I took Patrick’s.

“What happened in that vision was real, either way. Wasn’t it?”

“I told you that, too,” Jefferson said.

“This is also real…but different.”

He confirmed that again as well.

“I just wanted to make sure. Who died first?” I only considered the question after I’d asked it. “Forgive me if that’s indelicate. I never got the whole story. If you had died together, would Jefferson still have had trouble crossing over?”

“I passed first,” Calvin said.

“So, Jefferson wasn’t in Heaven when you got there.”

“No.”

“Would he have been, if he hadn’t been trapped on this side?”

“I would not have been there,” Jefferson said. “For the fact I was still alive.”

I remembered everything, then. The dark night came rushing back, where I’d come from and what had happened there, to me and to Patrick. “But Patrick is here?”

Part of me wished he wasn’t, because it was all my fault.

“Yes,” Jefferson said.

“I am.” Patrick offered proof in the form of a kiss.

“We’re not here for a special visit, are we?” I scrambled to my feet and stepped from the flowers back onto the grass. “The Rainbow Bridge comes first, because that’s a nice distraction to make it easier to process what’s happening, huh?”

Calvin stood as well. “Perhaps.”

“I still have images of back there, though. I think I’m…” I looked to Jefferson, now up with us. “And Patrick is…” I looked to Calvin. “We’re both dead, aren’t we?”

“You have crossed over,” Calvin said.

“Whoa.” I crouched to hug my dogs. TJ and Max had come to lie down at my feet. Patrick, maybe because it was the first time he was able, was still sitting in the middle of the flowery field petting cats, one and then another, as no less than five of them rubbed all against him again. Even now, the cat that followed me wasn’t cooperative enough to cuddle, except on her terms. Cats made their own rules, I learned when I tried to pick up Kitty. They behaved as cats, on Earth and, apparently, in Heaven. “What about Wilbur, Shell, Rip, and Carrie?”

Jefferson shook his head. “They won’t be here.”

“Oh.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “Can I go back and forth?”

“Not in the way you would want to, not as your human self, with all that entails, not once you’re here for good.”

“And…how will I feel about that? How will they?”

Jefferson’s smile dimmed. “Missing a loved one is always difficult for someone left behind.”

Calvin kissed his cheek.

“The choice to stay or go back is yours right now, Goose.”

“There’s a limited time to decide, however.” Calvin offered his hand. “The tick of a clock is different here, but back where you came from, recovery is not assured after a finite number of minutes,” he warned.

“I see. How far into that countdown are we?” I asked.

“Farther than you would want,” Jefferson said.

“And when that time is up, I’ll be dead-dead forever?”

“We’re at that crossroad.” Jefferson took my other hand. “Do we stay here, or do we go back where Shelby, Rip, Carrie, and Wilbur are?”

“What about Patrick?”

He seemed so settled, there on the ground amongst the beauty of nature and the love of furry creatures.

“We need an answer, Goose,” Jefferson said. “We need it now. Do you want to stay in Heaven, or do you want to go back?”