But not tonight.

Sherry’s roommate, Marisa, had come home at eight and heard an earful about Sherry’s review before the board. After storming out of the hospital, Sherry had roamed the park, trying to make sense of this last wrench thrown into her cogs. She’d nearly called her adopted grandmother, Helen, but then she discarded the idea. There was no living soul wiser than Helen, but Sherry wasn’t sure she was ready for a dose of wisdom.

All in all, the day had been a disaster, but then so were most of her days.

Marisa had gone to bed at ten and Sherry had curled up with a novel just after that. But that was where the familiar ended and things started going topsy-turvy.

The room lay quiet below her. That was the first topsy-turvy thing. Not that it lay quiet, but that it lay below her.

The second topsy-turvy thing was the figure sprawled on the armchair, with arms and legs flopping over the sides like some couch potato who’d passed out after one too many beers. But the figure was no couch potato. It was her. She was sleeping on the armchair, her chest rising and falling in long draws, her mind lost to the world. A blue blanket lay across her waist. She didn’t remember anything about getting herself a blue blanket.

The third topsy-turvy thing was the clock. Because it read eleven o’clock and that figure there on the couch—Sherry—was indeed asleep. At eleven o’clock. Which was impossible.

Then another tidbit struck Sherry: She was floating above it all, like a drifting angel looking down on herself, like a bird soaring overhead. Like a dove.

Like eight years ago in the box!

A warm glow surged through her belly at the thought. If she really was sleeping and not dead from a heart attack, then this episode must be a vivid dream of some kind. Most definitely not a nightmare, which was another topsy-turvy thing, because she didn’t know how to dream without having a nightmare.

And yet here she was, floating like a dove over her slumbering body at eleven o’clock in the evening!

Topsy-turvy.

Then suddenly she wasn’t floating like a dove over her slumbering body. She was soaring through a bright blue sky high above an endless forest like a bat out of hell. No, like an angel from heaven. Most definitely an angel.

Wind streamed past her eyes. She heard nothing, not her own breathing, not the wind. Then she was above a jungle paradise. Flocks of parrots flapped silently, several hundred meters below.

Parrots. Jungle. And then Sherry knew that she was in Venezuela again, flying over the tropical rain forest. Her heart rose to her throat and she dipped closer to the trees. Memories flashed through her mind. Images of jogging through this forest, of swimming in the rivers and running hand in hand with Shannon over the plantation. A warm contentment rushed through her veins and she smiled.

Below her, the jungle yielded to fields and she pulled up, startled. It was the plantation! She recognized the rows of coffee plants as if they were still there, a week before harvest, beaded red under the sun. To her right the old mansion rose white from the fields; as she swooped to the left, she could see the mission station resting in the afternoon sun, undisturbed. Neither clearing showed any signs of life.