“I just can’t help but think of you and Hank,” she replied. “He's your biggest regret, isn't he—that you missed all that time with him when you should have been together.”

Blythe didn't respond right away. By the time she did, with a nod, Rose was completely and ridiculously lost. The walls had disappeared and they seemed to be climbing a dirt track up a ridgeline. She hoped her cell phone's battery had enough power to get them back.

“About Hank—did you know he was going to die tonight?” Rose asked her mom. “Did Bellamy tell you?”

“He didn't tell me. But I knew. Not right away, but I should have figured it out when Bellamy first appeared as Hank's son, Thomas. That day Thomas died in the fire, it's the epicenter of all this. It was the turning point in all our lives. I had my first heart attack, almost died. Hank lost his eyesight trying to save his boy. And that day was the only time you'd have seen Thomas, who looked exactly like the man you've fallen in love with. Bellamy appearing as Thomas Bonden was the key to the big riddle. He was a boy I hardly knew; but he meant the world to Hank. The more I considered the importance of that, the more I came to realize, Bellamy was summoned here to take Hank.”

“Not you? I thought you said he appeared to you three nights ago?”

“He did. But I think it all happened for a reason. I think everything does. His seeing your picture, wanting to meet you, giving me more time so that he could get close to you; then his willingness to defy fate itself in order to find a way to stay with you. I think that was all planned for him, to give him what he desperately wants.”

“And what's that?”

“A second chance at life. He's fulfilled his cosmic duty and now they want to give him this chance to be happy again.”

“How do you know all this, Mom?”

Blythe placed a reassuring hand on her daughter's shoulder, then glanced up to the gibbous moon as it breached the gray swathe of cloud. “Did I mention he volunteered?”

“No,” answered Rose. “But I figured he must have, the way he gave his life for his captain like that. It's in his nature, I guess. To help those in trouble.”

“He referred to it as his calling.”

“Uh-huh. But he couldn’t have been the first to get that calling, right? He died at the end of the eighteenth century; there must have been others like him throughout history up until that time, right?”

Blythe grinned. “That's my girl.”

“Other volunteers before him,” Rose went on. “Which means he had to have replaced someone. He got the calling because someone else—his predecessor—quit. Or got fired.”

“I somehow doubt pink slips are involved.”