There were papers to sign, acknowledgments and releases.

Calista had brought nothing with her. There were no personal effects to gather.

Although David had been in the hospital less than half an hour, when he stepped outside, he was surprised to find himself in warm morning light, for he had expected a bleak darkness to match his mood.

| 55 |

In the parking lot that served the cemetery and mortuary, shaded by the spreading boughs of an old water gum tree, David sat behind the wheel of his SUV, the windows open to receive the breath of the morning.

The tree was the one under which the beige van had been parked in the security video, the shade the same in which the late Patrick Corley had stood waiting, inexplicably solid for a ghost, while Maddison Sutton had delivered the calla lilies to a grave that was not her own.

The flowers had been for Emily, the girl next door, but maybe they had also been for Calista as well. Maddison had known Calista would die soon. That conclusion was inescapable.

Yesterday, according to Calista, Maddison had visited her, had spent an hour in her company. In parting, she kissed Calista’s hand three times and said, I . . . love . . . you.

Maddison’s words, as recalled by Calista, echoed now in David’s memory: I’ve come back just for this one visit, so you will know that I’m happy and beyond all pain, and to tell you . . . be not afraid of whatever comes next, because I’ll be with you always.

Whatever comes next. Twenty-four hours later came a cerebral aneurysm. A severe headache, stiff neck, confusion, inevitably fear.

. . . be not afraid of whatever comes next . . .

And according to Dr. Goshen, Calista had not appeared to be afraid, only lightly confused.

. . . because I’ll be with you always.

Because of that encounter and the encouragement Calista had taken from it, her bleeding brain evidently conjured a vision of Maddison—Emily—at her side as she’d been taken for a CT scan in the final minutes of her life.

Yesterday, David had been shocked and mystified that Maddison had visited Calista, that she had pretended to be Emily. When he’d come home, where Maddison was busy whipping up dinner, he had been reluctant to ask what motivated her to do such a thing, because he worried that their conversation would lead to the revelation that he’d been investigating her, that she would then withdraw from him.

He had assumed that her motivation had been ill-conceived if not even somehow suggestive of ill intent.

However, it now seemed that Maddison had visited Calista on a mission of mercy, to lift her heart and prepare her to endure the impending crisis of the aneurysm without fear.

Which meant Maddison had known Calista would soon die. Of an undetected, unsuspected, entirely natural arterial weakness.

How could she know? She couldn’t.