Tricks & Treats: A Romance Anthology (7 page)

He admires her honesty and her gumption. Her selflessness. Bartering for more time is not uncommon, but most either beg in despair or get angry and demand they be given a chance to tie up loose ends. Samantha has more poise. She's accepted the inevitable, but her last prayer is a hopeful one. To avert a tragedy. Her daughter's happiness is all that matters to her now. That will help define her place in the great beyond, he supposes.

“Can you tell whether Tom's made it through the storm?” she asks. “Do you have that power?”

Bellamy shakes his head with regret.

“But you're Death. You're the Reaper,” she adds. “If you don't know if he's dead, then he must still be alive!”

“That isn't the way it works, I'm afraid.”

“Oh.” Her head bows in disappointment, but only for a moment. It soon pops up again with renewed vigour. “But it's possible for us to find out, isn't it? If you can stop time like that...” she points to the clock, “you must have another trick or two up your sleeve. The man whose form you've borrowed—Glenn McArdle—was my dad's best friend. He crewed on those big icebreakers up north, with the search and rescue. Dangerous work. He'd tell us about the impossible scrapes people got themselves into around all that pack ice, and the close shaves he had. But he always made it back home. He outlived Dad by twenty-sum-odd years, and Dad worked in a sawmill—the most dangerous thing he ever did on water was catch his reflection, he once said.” She smiles at the memory. It makes him like her even more.

“I think that's why you've appeared as Glenn,” she says.

“Why do you say that?”

“You said you didn't choose him, but someone did. It has to be for a reason. Glenn was a survivor. He never did die at sea, though by rights he should have, many times over. It can't be a coincidence, can it?”

Bellamy wants to console her with that idea. She has come to it herself. It would be a perfect segue into her crossing over to the great beyond, with that hope of a happy ending for Renee and Tom at its fullest. But she's right. Something about this rendezvous is...different. Uncertain. That touch of destiny he sensed the moment he arrived, was it just Samantha? Or does it have something to do with him, too?

The most dangerous thing he ever did on water was catch his reflection.

A man in peril at sea. A young woman waiting anxiously for news of him. The end.

The echoes are uncanny. They reverberate through the throbbing halls of soundless centuries. It's his unfinished story as much as it is Samantha's or Renee's or Tom's. He never makes it back to port, he never found out what happened to the girl he left behind. The girl he sees whenever he pictures Renee.

The love of his life. Lost forever.

And here he is, denying Samantha this chance to know how this story ends. He's appeared in the form of a survivor, a saver of souls, when in fact he's the bringer of death. It's either a cruel, cosmic joke or he's seeing with new eyes.

“It can't be a coincidence, can it?” she repeats.

“I don't know,” he replies.

“Who would know?”

He says nothing. This is uncharted ground. He knows he shouldn't interfere in earthly affairs any more than is absolutely necessary to fulfil his assignments. But things are no longer clear. The right thing to do here may not be what he's supposed to do.

There's definitely a touch of destiny about this rendezvous. But whose? His? Hers? He decides to stay with it. If only to see how the story ends.

“You ask good questions,” he tells her. “And I think we should find out the answers together.”

She tilts her head to one side. “You're letting me stay a while?”

“Until Renee receives the news.”

“I-I don't know what to say. Thank you, Bellamy! Thank you so much. You don't know what it means...for me to know.”

“It's unfinished business. Denying you that knowledge doesn't feel right.”

Another tilt of her head, this time more pensive. “The way you said that, it sounds like you're bending the rules. Is that normal?”

“No.”

“Care to bend them further? Like all the way?” She gives a playful wink.

Bellamy twitches a smile. “Listen, Renee might not get the news she wants. I don't know how it ends. Maybe you'd be better off not knowing, Samantha.”

“Nope. Either way, it's something I need to know. It's important to me.”

“Then come with me,” he replies, taking her by the hand as she slides out of bed in her nightgown. “We have a date with destiny.”

***

The after-storm light is gloomy at best, cold yellow mixed in with the gray, almost like a bruise. It's late afternoon on a snow-covered grassy area somewhere high up, overlooking an old quarry. The treeline stands a little over a football field's length behind the young woman with auburn hair, who sits on a blanket not far from the edge of the cliff, hugging her knees. There's a cellphone on the blanket beside her. The wind has dried the tracks of her tears on her cheeks, but the mascara smudges betray them.

“When is this?” asks Samantha, striding over the grass toward her daughter, away from Bellamy. But her footsteps do not crunch on the snow or even disturb it. The wind does not blow her nightgown. Her voice does not reach the world she drifts through.

“Hours have passed,” he replies. “This must be when she receives the news.”

Samantha crouches beside her, her expression heavy with maternal worry. “If she's come up here on her own, that means I must have died already and she's had to deal with that.” She turns toward Bellamy. “That's unbelievably cruel, at a time like this.”

Before he can answer, Renee's cell rings. She snatches it up and leaps onto her knees. “Christy! Is it him? Is he one of the survivors?” After a long pause while she listens, Renee begins to sniffle. “I guess. There's always a chance. But you've not heard anything about another rescue? Nothing since the mayday from Tom's pilot?” She shakes her head slowly as she listens, fighting back the urge to sob. Samantha reaches out to touch her, to console her, but can't. An imperceptible distance separates them; it might as well be a galaxy. They belong to different worlds now. And Samantha can only watch and listen.

“This isn't right,” she insists to Bellamy. “This isn't the way it happens.”

“What makes you so sure? If I didn't know, how could you?”

“Because I've never felt anything so strongly before. So certain. He survives the storm, and they are reunited.”

A part of him wants to believe her, but hunches and feelings and intuition are no match for the cold grip of reality. This is Renee receiving the news. If Tom has been lost at sea, no further news will be likely. A bitter farewell to her earthly life, then, but at least Samantha has her closure. She desperately wanted to know and now she does.

Fate can indeed be cruel. But she has the great beyond to look forward to. Who knows what happier twists of fate she, Renee, and Tom will encounter there?

“Samantha, it's time.”

“No, there's more. It isn't finished yet.”

“I'm sorry it happened this way, but there's nothing anyone can do to alter fate.”

“You're wrong. You don't have all the answers. I'm telling you there's more.”

“I believe you,” he says. “That's why we must go. You'll find all the answers you seek where I'm going to take you.”

But it's Renee who gets to her feet first, having dialled another number. Her voice keeps breaking as she speaks: “Hey, Freddy. It's Renee. Sorry I had to leave a message like this, but I figured you'd want to know sooner rather than later. Mom passed this morning, late this morning. She went peacefully. The last time I spoke to her, she mentioned how much she enjoyed us all getting together for Patsy's graduation bash. So I think she'd like for you guys to do something similar, you know, after the funeral. Just an idea. This has been the worst day of my life. You'll forgive me if I don't go into the details. And now I've gone and lost Tom as well. They say there's still hope, but you know what? I'm all out. I'm done. The two most important people in my life...on the same...day...”

There she breaks down in tears, ends the message and flings the cellphone toward the cliff edge. It doesn't reach the drop, so she walks after it, slowly, purposefully, with a poise that makes Bellamy wish he hadn't brought Samantha here at all. The way her daughter strides on past the cellphone, toward the edge of the cliff, is not the walk of a survivor.

“Renee! Stop! You can't! Oh God.” The old woman clasps her hands together and presses them hard to her lips in prayer. But her daughter does not stop. “Bellamy, you have to do something! My baby's going to die!”

Everything in his being wants to intervene. To stop this girl from jumping. “
You don't have all the answers. I'm telling you there's more,”
Samantha had said before. And she was right. But interfering in earthly affairs directly is not a part of his calling. Things happen the way they happen according to earthly laws and the free will of living souls. This is Renee's choice.

“God, I'll do anything if you'll spare my girl. Anything. I don't care what happens to me. Just...you can't let this happen. Not now. Not like this!” Samantha shuts her eyes tight and shakes her head.

“This isn't right,” she repeats her earlier words. “This isn't the way it happens.”

And it suddenly occurs to him, as Renee approaches the drop and her mother suddenly rushes after her like a guardian angel reaching with everything she has, he's improvised this whole rendezvous so far. Why not improvise one more time? He's done his duty all these years, abiding by rules that have never been explicitly stated. They'd only felt right, by the guiding light of instinct. But that guiding light has deserted him this time. That instinct has gone awry. So the question now is: what does he want to happen?

“Renee, you can't! You can't!” Samantha's cry echoes over the howling wind. Her daughter halts in mid-stride, two steps from the edge. She turns her head a fraction. “Renee, you can't! This is not your time. Listen, Renee. He's coming.”

“Mom?” The young woman spins around, scanning the snow and the treeline. When she doesn't see anyone, she shivers and hugs herself. Then she creeps back toward the blanket, looking this way and that, convinced she's just heard her mother's voice.

But how is that possible? Bellamy asks himself the same question. To the best of his knowledge, no one in his charge has ever directly communicated across the barrier between life and the in-between. He watches in awe as Samantha kneels with her daughter, lifts up a corner of the blanket and wraps it around the crying girl.

“Mom. I knew you wouldn't leave me.”

“And I never will.”

The blanket slips. Renee looks around again. Her mother isn't there. Instead, someone else is approaching through the trees. Footsteps crunch the snow. Birds fly out from bare branches. A lone figure appears. Tall. Lean. Wearing a Coast Guard jacket, jeans and a Klondike hat.

“Tom?” Renee gapes at him, covers her mouth. She starts to jog over the hard, frosty grass. Stumbles. Almost falls, then speeds up, throwing caution to the wind. “Tom!”

He waves first, sees her running. He's cold in his bones, exhausted, but he'd never not run to greet the love of his life when she's so happy to see him. He catches her, spins her round. They embrace like it's their last chance to show how much they mean it.

Samantha smiles a secret smile as she returns to Bellamy's side. He's lost for words. They both watch and listen as the reunion unfolds. A miraculous reunion that should not have happened but has. Somehow.

“Now do you believe me?” she nudges Bellamy.

“I'm not... How did you do that?”

She shrugs. “I'm sure I don't know. You're supposed to be guiding me, remember? I just got here.”

“But once a soul has crossed over to the in-between, it can't return. It can't reach back.”

She studies him from the corner of her eye. “But you can.”

“I can what?”

“You can cross over, back and forth, whenever you like.”

“That's my calling. It's what I do.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Then give yourself some credit. You just let me save my daughter's life.”

“I...?”

“And I'll never be able to repay you. Bellamy, she's alive now because you willed me the power to intervene. Don't you get it? You didn't want her to jump any more than I did. We acted as one. That's how I reached her.”

He's torn by yanks of forgotten emotion. Joy: the couple have their happy ending, and he's helped facilitate it. Fear: the couple have their happy ending, and in helping to facilitate it, he's interfered with primal forces, in ways that go against his calling. Will the powers-that-be look the other way, or will they make him answer for altering the young woman's fate? Hope: if something like this is possible, and he and Samantha haven't broken any cosmic laws, what else can he do with his power? Could he possibly interact with the living before they die, and not just watch and wait?

Love: seeing Renee and Tom reunited like this reminds him what he lost, what he was denied. The freckled girl with the frilly parasol, standing on the dock, waiting for a sailor who would never return to her. If only someone had intervened to save him that day in the midst of battle, things might have turned out differently. They might have lived a long, happy life together...