Blythe sat up, frantically scanning the room. Half of it was wreathed in shadow, the other half held loosely by fingers of cooling light. Outside, the sunset’s glare reflected off the windows of neighboring apartments, needling the corner of her eye as she focused on the darkness in front of her.

“Who said that? Who’s there?” She motioned toward the phone on her medication table, but a strong knowing feeling deep inside told her it would be dumb to dial for help.

“Don’t you know? Have you not been expecting me?”

Again, the pungent, perfumed scent of wet hay mixed with burning motor oil—so specific to that tragic day from her past it took her breath away. That smell and that memory linked inextricably by death.

“Where are you?”

“Here in your living room.”

“Why don’t you show yourself?”

There was no reply.

“You should know I don’t receive uninvited guests,” Blythe said. “Why don’t you come back another time, when I’m better prepared?”

“Let me guess. Fifteen years from now? You’ll send a postcard when you’re ready?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know where to mail it, but sure, that sounds like a plan.” She swallowed. Cracking wise with death in the room probably wasn’t the smartest route to long life, but it was either that or slip away quietly. Blythe had never gone quietly in her life; she had no intention of starting now.

“That accent, that diction; they don’t go together,” she pointed out. “Texas, but your delivery is stiff and proper. Who are you supposed to be?”

“I never choose the form I take.”

“Form?”

He didn’t respond. The silence thickened, seemed to charge the air in the room. Together with the pungent scent, it excited the memory of that fateful day at the fair: no longer just the tragic outcome, now she recalled the happiness before it, the love she’d felt, the natural high of just being with all the people she cared about most in this world, all on the same outing, on the same damp, sunny day. Yes, there was love in the room with her, not just death. The scent was a bittersweet one, she realized.

He stepped half out of the shadows, into the cool dusk light that didn’t seem to fade.

Blythe squinted to see his face, but her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. She put her glasses on. “You!”

But her reaction was knee-jerk, not backed by any sort of understanding. It was a familiar face she was seeing, but it took her several searching moments to place it, to give a name to the face and a memory to both.

“What are you doing here?”