Over the next few weeks, Rose often doubted her own sanity, painfully, and in depth. It didn't help that Andy kept cutting her off whenever she turned the subject toward the supernatural during their phone conversations. He knew their mom had gone to see Hank one last time before she died; that she had died there was plausible, given her weak condition. And Hank's home care worker, Steph, had confirmed how ill he had been lately—he was prone to aneurisms, had been on beta-blockers and other assorted medication for years. It was therefore not out of the realm of possibility, given the strong emotions Blythe's visit had stirred, that he'd also died of natural causes the exact same night.

To the pathologist and the coroner and everyone else, it was a coincidence, albeit an unusual one. But Rose knew differently. Her mom had officially died about two hours before Hank and, yet, she and her mom had taken that walk after she'd seen Hank die. It made no sense unless the explanation was supernatural. Mom couldn't have been walking with her and, yet…she had been. For hours. Telling her everything she knew. If that wasn't proof of life after death then what about Bellamy? He'd vanished before her eyes and had never reappeared after. No trace of him anywhere. It was like he'd never existed. Even now, weeks later.

Andy maintained he didn't know what had happened to Bellamy and didn't want to know. Whatever mom had hired him for, it was over with now. At least he no longer believed Bellamy's motives had been unsavory; Blythe had set him straight on that score. But he flat-out refused to buy into Rose's Ouija talk. People die. People lie. Show me some solid proof or else it's all just wishful thinking. Honestly, I didn't think you were like that, Rosie. I thought you knew better than that.

And she had once, before Bellamy. But the more she pitted the facts of those three days against the so-called wishful thinking, the more she realized that it was impossible to prove any of it, at least anything supernatural. All she had was her own experience, and that told her everything her mom had said on that inexplicable midnight walk was true. It buoyed her with hope, knowing that somewhere, Bellamy and her mom were waiting for her, maybe watching on, maybe even reaching out to help her every now and then. But with hope came sadness. A deep, broad ocean of sadness on which hope could only stay afloat for so long before reality drowned it again. The reality that said here, now, and for the rest of her life she was going to be without the only two people she couldn't stand to be without.