“Yes. But this one was different. I felt it was going to be different before I even met her, just like I can feel now that things can't go back to the way they were. I can't go back to that, to the way I was. Encountering Rose was no fluke. I can't explain why, but it all started with that rendezvous. Samantha Byers was her name. She was seventy-seven years old when I came to collect her. Even before I met her, I could tell there was a touch of destiny about the woman.

“She knew things, things I couldn't see.”

“Like what?” Blythe spoke aloud without realizing it. Her eagerness to finally know the truth about her dark chaperon had her perched on the edge of her favorite chair. “Sorry. Go on.”

“A premonition. Samantha could see ahead to a crucial moment in her daughter's life, hours into the future after Samantha's death. I didn't believe her at first because I couldn't see it, and if someone with my insight couldn't see ahead then how could she, a mere mortal? But she convinced me to let her linger a while after her death, to make sure her vision came to pass. It was important for her daughter's happiness. Then something happened that I've never experienced in all the time I've been doing this. To avert a disaster, Samantha reached out from the in-between, back into the world of the living, to warn her daughter away from danger. She spoke to her and touched her. I didn't know how at the time. She later suggested that I must have lent her that power momentarily, without realizing it. The scenario did have uncanny echoes of my own life at the time of my death. And I did want her daughter to survive, to have her happy ending. Either way, Samantha's prophecy came true against impossible odds. Yet it wouldn't have if she and I hadn't intervened to save her daughter's life at the last second.