It surprised her that anyone knew where she went. But then, perhaps everyone did, but respected her enough not to disturb her. She watched as he drew nearer, his gentle glow visible in the daylight because the floor was so vast it was mostly in shadows, even with windows on all sides. He was clearly not comfortable with the space. “Why would you come here? It’s so … empty.”

“You see emptiness,” she said. “I see possibility.”

“Do you think you’ll ever need all these floors?”

“There are more Afterlights out there, and more crossing everyday,” she told him. “It may take a thousand years until we need the space, but it’s nice to know I have it.”

Mary looked out at the faded world of the living, hoping Nick would go away, hoping he would stay, and cursing herself for not being able to keep her distance.

“Is something wrong?”

Mary considered how she’d answer, then decided that she wouldn’t. “Allie’s leaving, isn’t she?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m leaving.”

“She’s a danger to herself,” Mary said. “Which means she’s also a danger to you.”

Nick wasn’t concerned. “She just wants to go home and see if her father survived the accident. Why is that so bad?”

“I know something about going home,” Mary told him, and she found that just saying it brought the memory closer, along with all the pain it held.

Nick must have read her emotions, because he said, “If you don’t want to talk about it you don’t have to.” And because he was kind enough not to ask, Mary found herself telling him everything, with the honesty she would have had before a priest. It was a memory Mary had tried desperately to forget, but like the chocolate stains on Nick’s face, the harder she tried to forget, the more indelible the memory became.

“I died on a Wednesday, but I didn’t die alone,” Mary told him. “Like you, I had a companion.”

“We weren’t exactly companions,” Nick told her. “Allie and I were total strangers—until the car accident.”

“I had an accident, too, but my companion wasn’t a stranger. He was my brother. The accident was entirely our fault. Mikey and I were walking home from school. It was a cool spring day, but sunny. The hills were already turning green. I can still remember the smell of the wildflowers that filled the fields—it’s one of the only smells I can still remember from the living world. Isn’t that odd?”

“So it happened in a field?” Nick asked.

“No. There were two train tracks side by side that crossed the dirt path that led home. Those tracks were mostly for freight trains. Every once in a while, for no good reason, a freight train would stop on the tracks and sit there for hours on end. It was a terrible nuisance—going around the train sometimes meant a half-mile walk in either direction.”

“Oh no,” said Nick. “You went under the train?”

“No, we weren’t stupid enough to do that, but quite often there was an empty boxcar open on both sides, so we could climb through the train. There was one on that day. Mikey and I had been fighting, I don’t remember what about, but it must have seemed important at the time because I was just furious and was chasing him. He was laughing and running ahead of me, and there was that boxcar, right in the middle of the dirt path, the doors on both sides pulled open, like a doorway to the other side. Mikey climbed up and into the boxcar. I climbed up right behind him, reaching for the back of his shirt as he ran across. I just missed him. He was still laughing and it just made me even more angry. He leaped out of the boxcar on the opposite side, and turned back to me.”