4

Nothing else in the world made Jake more uncomfortable than hospitals. The smells, everything from the cafeteria food to the floor cleaner, nauseated him. And he didn’t think of himself as a germaphobe, but in a hospital, sometimes it felt like things were crawling off the walls and right onto him. Every place there was a foam disinfectant dispenser, Jake used it.

But this particular visit was growing increasingly uncomfortable for other reasons that had nothing to do with the hospital. First, he was ushered to the hospital with Hope’s family and closest friend. He was definitely the odd man out. He hadn’t explained he knew her from school. He hadn’t explained anything. Her friend, Becca, had insisted he come, and then stay, calling him a hero for finding Hope. On and on.

Jake didn’t do anything extraordinary. He was just in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately for Hope, it seemed she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As they stood in the hallway now, just outside Hope’s room in the ICU, Becca explained everything in a very hushed tone, patting her pregnant belly to underline certain important facts.

Hope was dumped at the altar.

She had plans to leave Poughkeepsie.

She never saw this coming.

None of them did.

But even weirder than Becca’s trust in him, was Hope’s mother. Jake had met her a couple of times, when she came in to order the flowers. She never seemed particularly odd, though Mindy had mentioned she was a bit . . . off. Perhaps she was outdated but that was all he noticed. Now, though, she was wailing. And not in a crying or grieving sense, although she was obviously sad. But it was more in uncontrollable bursts of . . . prayer? He wasn’t even sure. But he heard God mentioned a few times. Jesus twice. She wasn’t swearing. Just . . . praying.

Becca was able to handle her, but Jake was afraid to say or do anything. Mostly he just wanted to sink into the wall and keep an eye on Hope.

She’d been unconscious since he’d found her. They’d taken her immediately to get a CT scan. Now the doctor and two nurses were in the room examining her. Jake watched CiCi while listening to Becca talk about how sad she was for Hope. Jake understood that sadness. If he’d only been there a few minutes earlier, maybe he could’ve stopped the attack.

Just outside the ICU, through the small windows in the automatic doors, two cops waited to see if she would wake up. They wanted to try to get a description of whoever did this to her. Jake had already told them everything he knew, which was nothing.

“JESUS!” CiCi belted. Jake jumped toward Becca.

Becca patted his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

He doubted that.

The sliding glass door that led to her room opened and the doctor emerged, his expression not betraying a hint of what he was about to say. He held a chart in his hand, scribbled something down, and handed it off to the nurse before approaching CiCi.

“Doctor, please tell me she is going to be all right. Please. She’s my only child!” CiCi clung to the doctor’s arm. He didn’t look like he was used to being touched. Becca gathered her into her arms.

“The wound is deep. She’s definitely going to need stitches and we’re going to need to take care of that immediately,” the doctor said. “The CT scan shows swelling on the brain. She is in a coma.”

“What?” CiCi looked like she was about to collapse. “A coma?”

“There is no way of telling how long she’ll be in the coma.” The doctor shifted his weight from one leg to another and then took a step back. “Or if she will come out of it.”

CiCi began to cry. She turned and clung to both Jake and Becca, taking an arm from each of them. Her fingers dug into the flesh of his bicep.

The doctor’s attention focused on Jake, since CiCi had turned away from him. “Traumatic brain injuries are tricky, and they don’t follow a pattern or formula. We’ll keep an eye on her vitals.” His expression dropping into solemn stillness. “And hope for the best.”

He left and they all turned toward Hope’s room, staring at her. She looked like she was asleep. She had no ventilator in. A few IVs dangled from her arm. Otherwise, she looked like she was napping on a rainy day. Jake wondered if he should stay or go, but CiCi turned right to him, her eyes locked into him like a deadbolt. “Are you coming?” She nodded toward the room.

“I, um, wasn’t sure if I should stay or—”

“Honey, we need all the prayers we can get in there.” She reached for his hand, which he’d stuffed in his pocket. “We’re goin’ in like a college marching band and we’re going to blow our faith horns like it’s bedlam!” She stepped toward him. “You do pray, don’t you?”

“Sure. Of course.” Not really. His prayer life wasn’t all it used to be. Luckily, it didn’t sound like he was going to be the one leading the pack of three. He glanced at Becca who seemed all at once sad and startled.

CiCi turned and actually marched right in. All she was missing was a baton. She pumped her hand into the air.

“I’m just warning you,” Becca said out of the side of her mouth, “that it could get interesting. Don’t get me wrong. That woman loves Hope with all her heart. But she’s got her own way of doing things, and—”

Becca’s words were cut short by a loud wailing that sounded like a shofar he’d once heard in church.

“Enough said,” Becca said with a tense smile. “Let’s go.”

Jake took a moment to catch his breath before stepping into the room, but was then nearly knocked to the ground by a nurse going in at the same time. She elbowed her way into the room, gasping and looking around.

“It’s okay,” Jake said. “Everything’s okay. It’s just her mother. She’s very . . . upset.”

“Lord! Heal her! Heal her, Lord Almighty! Bring her back, Lord! Bring her back!”

The nurse froze, listening for a moment. Then she nodded and turned toward Jake. “Gotcha,” she said with a warm smile.

When Jake saw her face, she was way older than he expected, with sagging skin and wiry gray hair that looked as if it hadn’t been tamed a day in its life, though it seemed she probably gave it a good try every morning. She wore no makeup except a thin line of red lipstick that was barely inside its border. She touched his arm, a kind touch, like a grandmother about to dispense advice you might carry with you for the rest of your life. “Just remember, there is evidence that coma patients can hear what’s going on around them.”

“Bring her back,” CiCi wailed, “from the clutches of death!”

The nurse gave him a knowing look and then left.

Jake needed to stay. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but maybe it was to insert a little bit of reality into the situation.

The reality was—and he knew this firsthand—God was sometimes in the habit of not answering prayers.

Greetings from My Life

I stand at the curb of my house, fishing for cash to pay the cab driver whose cab made an inexplicable beeping noise the entire trip. Despite that annoyance, I’d handed him one of the cards I’d made while in Idaho, and to my everlasting delight, he is laughing. And not just a chuckle. I’m talking a full-fledged belly laugh. He’s actually leaning over, slapping his knee.

I start to hand him the cash, but he waves me on, pointing to the card, indicating that’s all the payment he needs. I grin. Yeah, I feel like it’s worth a good $3.95, but a whole fare’s worth from the airport?

I shrug. Well, so be it.

The cab pulls away and I stand there in my yard, my duffel bag around my shoulder and a ten-pound sack of Idaho potatoes by my side.

The high I just got off the greeting card pat-on-the-back drains right out of me. In its place comes sadness. I really, really, really thought I was off to New York City. I really, really, really thought I’d found a man who wouldn’t leave.

Now I’m back in Poughkeepsie, and I’m back at this little old house, that leans a little to the left and whose shutters are nailed in such a way that they appear to be a good half foot off from one another. The electric garage door hasn’t worked since 1992. The grass is full of weeds and the mailbox is about to fall off the siding by the front door.

I long to see my mom. I guess everyone needs their mothers when they’re in a crisis, and I’m no different, even if my mom is. I guess I’ve learned to live with her quirks. I don’t cringe anymore, because no good comes from it. There was a point, around the age of sixteen, that I thought a person could actually drop dead from cringing too often.

I am kind of looking forward to a big hug from her, and Lord knows I could use a prayer or two, which I’m certain she’ll offer up straight out of the gate.

The front door is unlocked, and I walk on in. The smell hits me first. Nothing’s changed. The house is dark. Mom only turns on one light at a time, depending on which room she’s in. She likes the drapes pulled too, yet somehow, from somewhere, light always seems to seep in.

I pass the dining table and do a double take. Cards. Lots of them. At least fifty. They make cards saying “I’m sorry your daughter got dumped at the altar”? Wow. That doesn’t seem like a lucrative market.

Or maybe they’re for me. But still . . . ? I make a note to read them later. I wonder out loud about taking my new card ideas to whoever might be selling “dumped at the altar” cards. Then I notice a box. And another box. And a third, set against the far wall. All labeled “Hope’s Stuff.” I’m about to go examine this when I hear movement down the hall.

My mother emerges through the darkness. I can tell it’s her because her hair is backlit by the nightlight I insisted she install in the hallway. She flips on the living room lights.

And screams.

And not one of my mom’s normal screams either. That wouldn’t even make me blink. But this is like a blood-curdling scream, and for a moment I think we’re about to both be murdered by someone I can’t see. She is actually turning pale. I wait for the arms to shoot in the air and her to shout something about the devil, but nothing. She just keeps screaming.

So, instinctively, I scream too. We’re both screaming. She seems to know why. I don’t have a clue. We sound like squealing tires. Then she stops, so I do as well.

“What are you screaming about?” I am breathing so hard my bangs lift and fall from my forehead every second or so.

My mother rushes over to me, grabs my head, shakes it like she’s listening for change in a piggy bank. “You! You, you, you, you!”

“Me, me. Me what?”

“You’re here.”

“I live here.” I eye the boxes in the corner. “But you’ve got to give me credit. I did a heck of a job trying to move out. Almost got there, too.” I smile, hoping to break the awkwardness, though the awkwardness doesn’t seem to be coming from the fact that I got dumped at the altar.

“But you’re dead. Dead people don’t live.”

“Funny. Yes, it felt like death. Heartbreak often does.”

“But I had your funeral.”

This is the moment when I realize that she may not be speaking metaphorically. Especially when she falls straight back and faints.

“Oh, wow . . .” I hurry to the kitchen and get a washcloth and then drag her to the couch and heave her up onto it. I drape the washcloth across her forehead and watch her breathe. “Come on, wake up. Wake up. I’m not dead.” I prod her a little.

And that’s when I see a super skinny dude walking toward me, rolling an IV stand alongside himself, looking like a cautionary tale for some sort of vice that will eventually kill you.

I might not be dead. But maybe I’m going crazy.

The dude is so skinny his britches are hanging halfway down his backside, but not in a fashion-senseless sort of way. He’s got a belt and everything but they’re just too big for his small, skeletal frame.

The IV stand rattles loudly as he slips toward us. He weighs so little I can’t even hear his footsteps.

“Oh, man . . . she okay?”

“Who are you?” I stand up straight, bow my chest, but truthfully, I could totally kill this guy with my left pinky. If I blew hard, he’d fall down.

“I’m renting a room.” He pitches a (by all standards, rather fat) thumb over his shoulder, toward the hallway. “The old lady’s daughter just died.”

I swing my arm wide toward my mom, who is peacefully sleeping away. “She is not old. Yes, she is current-decade challenged, but she’s not old.”

“She’s like a Ford Pinto in a dress. Who are you?”

“I’m the Pinto’s daughter.” I sit on the edge of the couch next to Mom. Nobody calls my mom a Pinto. I stroke her hand. She is so Pinto-ish though. But in a good way. You know when you drive down the street and see a Pinto carrying large pieces of plywood in the back and you realize your coupe could never do that? That’s my mom.

He huffs. “Well, welcome back from the grave. Does this mean I have to give up your twin bed? I already paid the rent for this month.”

Mom’s eyes fly open. She taps my face lightly on the cheek. “You are here! Is it you?” Her taps suddenly turn into repetitive slapping.

Skinny just stands there and watches like he is still waiting for an answer about his rent.

I feel like crying. “What is going on?”

Skinny gestures toward a stack of newspapers on the coffee table. “It is all over the news.”

“What is?”

Skinny picks up a paper and reads. “Witnesses say the car plunged into the Hudson River. While authorities haven’t been able to find the body, the driver is presumed dead.” He looks at me. “They should’ve said ‘allegedly presumed dead.’” He turns the newspaper around. It’s front page. There are pictures! There’s one of me, my face as big as a playing card. “Gettin’ dead got you famous, girl.”

I grab the newspaper and read the caption: “Hope Landon of Poughkeepsie, Daughter of CiCi Landon, 31, Never Married.”

My eyes quickly scan the article, which is two columns in length. Is that what happened to my car? Someone stole it? Admittedly, everything was fuzzy up to the potato farm.

I read quickly, eyeing all the quotes:

“I’m not surprised she did it. She had a panic attack at my cake shop.”

They’re quoting someone I don’t even know! My eyes dart from sentence to sentence.

“Today, on her wedding day, she was left at the altar by musician Sam Vanderbilt. Our department is handling this as a suicide,” said the Poughkeepsie Police Department’s captain, Jerry Wilburn.

I turn to mom. “Tell me this is a joke! A nightmare! That I’m going to wake up!”

“Look,” Skinny says, “do you think I like this IV stuck in my arm? Dripping incessantly? Do you hear that drip? Over and over. Drip. Drip. Drip. We all got our things, lady.”

“Do you mind?” I say to him. “You can go now.”

He turns and heads to my room, grumbling all the way about rent and Pintos.

Mom tries to sit up. “You should have been there for your funeral. We had azaleas, lilies, and a whole tree built out of greeting cards. Just for you.”

“Mom, how could you think I killed myself?”

“Well, what do you expect me to think when you drive my car off a bridge?”

“I didn’t.”

“Did you swim out the window? Sometimes it gets stuck.”

“I didn’t crash the car. It was stolen . . .” I remember now, the girl in the purple jacket, racing by me . . . did she drive the car off the bridge?

Mom slaps my arm so hard it feels like a needle prick. “I’m your mother. You let me think you were dead. Where’ve you been?”

I slump and sigh all at once. “Idaho.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Clearly you don’t have the humiliation gene, Mom. I didn’t call anyone.”

“I shouldn’t have applied for your death certificate, huh?”

“I’m gone one month. One. And you rent out my room, have my funeral, and apply for my death certificate?”

“Upon grief I became extremely productive.”

“Mom.” I gaze at the boxes lining the walls. “Dad’s been gone for two decades and you still keep a closet of his stuff.”

Suddenly mom grabs my hands, forcing them together. I don’t have to ask. I know what is coming next. “Good Lord, you said I could have the desires of my heart . . . be still, oh my heart, it worked on Hope. Now, how ’bout bringing me her daddy? And a new hubby for Hope to share those gifts with?”

My head snaps up. “What gifts?”

Mom leaps off the couch and opens the coat closet. Gifts are shoved in there so tightly it looks like a wall of wrapping paper.

“Mom! Why didn’t you send the gifts home with the guests?”

She shrugs mildly. “Souvenirs? Speaking of . . . look what I kept!” She holds up the bride and groom that were supposed to be on top of the cake.

I put my head in my hands. This is too much for me to take. I’m overwhelmed with the idea that I was dead and everybody thought I was dead. Not just dead. Suicide dead. That’s a step below just plain old death.

Mom is beside me now, with her lanky arm wrapped around my shoulder. “There’s always a bright side, my dear. Always a bright side. The best part about Sam leaving you is that I get to keep you here with me.”

My heart sinks so low I think it hits my bladder.

“I bet,” she says with an excitable ring to her voice, “you can get your old job back!”

* * * *

The doors swoosh open at the nursing home. I didn’t notice the smell much when I worked here, but now it’s making me nauseated. I hold my breath as I hurry to Mrs. Barrow’s office, which is down the hall from the cafeteria. I have to gasp for air about the time I pass the cafeteria, and I’m overwhelmed by a whole new set of smells—egg substitute mixed with the burnt smell of a coffee urn sizzling on a hot burner somewhere unnoticed.

I hurry as fast as I can and round the corner, bursting into Mrs. Barrow’s office the way nobody who is thought to be dead should ever burst into a former boss’s office. Luckily, I called earlier to let her know I was alive and wanted to see her.

Still, her mouth has dropped and her eyes are wide as full moons. I guess it’s kind of hitting me at this moment how dead people really thought I was. As I cautiously sit in the chair in front of her desk, she rises with the same slowness. Now she’s towering over me, not saying a word, just searching me up and down like I might vanish before her eyes.

“Hope . . .” It’s all she says.

I sit up straight and pretend this isn’t at all awkward. I put on my best “I’m-here-for-an-interview” smile so we can get on with business. I think about cracking some sort of “back from the dead” joke but Mrs. Barrow doesn’t seem like she’d be able to take it at the moment.

As slowly as she rose, she sits back down, both hands flat on her desk as if she might bolt at any second. Why isn’t my “all-is-normal” smile working?

“So,” I say, “as I said on the phone, I was hoping we could talk about me getting my job back.”

Mrs. Barrow relaxes a bit, tugging at a blouse that is gaping in all the wrong places. She’s got my folder out on the desk, looking it over for who knows what. I wonder if it has “dead” stamped across it anywhere.

“Hope . . .” She shakes her head ever so slightly. It’s not so much a shake as a wobble, like her head isn’t sitting quite right on her neck and it’s causing an imbalance. “You quit . . .” She presses her lips together like she might break into a low hum of some sort. “You told us you were moving . . . and then you died. You quit and died. You see my predicament?”

I nod, but Mrs. Barrow doesn’t seem to see mine. I’ve been dumped at the altar and declared dead by suicide. As predicaments go, I feel mine trumps hers. But you can’t say that at a job re-interview.

“Mrs. Barrow, I’ve worked here seven years. My grandmother is here.” I clasp my hands together, hoping to either appear angelic or desperate.

She drums her fingers against the folder, pinky to thumb, over and over. “Well, you have been a model employee. The way you keep up with the laundry . . .”

“I fervently oppose laundry pileups.”

“And the bed pans . . .”

“Nobody is more enthusiastic about bed pans than I am.”

Finally she sighs and closes my folder. My eye twitches a little as I watch her do it. The book has been closed on me once. It’s like she’s putting the lid on my coffin.

“I can check with H.R. about letting your replacement go.” Mrs. Barrow smiles. She’s got the kind of smile that makes everything else on her face temporarily obsolete. Those big teeth gleam and twinkle. Her lips are spread wide and tight. And even as I return the smile, a sudden wave of doubt slips over me like a silky nightgown. I don’t think the smile makes it all the way to my lips. I only know this because Mrs. Barrow is now looking at me with the kind of expression that denotes alarm.

“You know what?”

She obviously doesn’t. Her eyebrows are raised halfway up her forehead like she can’t possibly anticipate what’s going to happen next.

“Maybe I . . .” My heart is beating silly in my sternum. My palms are moist and spongy, like a higher-end cake mix. The air conditioning blows uncomfortably at my ankles. “Maybe I don’t want to be known as the Best Bed Panner for the rest of my life.”

“But you are. You really are. I should’ve gotten you a plaque.”

“Thank you, but I’m realizing even as I sit here—”

Mrs. Barrow is starting to look desperate. “No, really. I can check for you. Who else will rewrite the ladies’ greeting cards for them? Who else will make them smile?”

I stand suddenly. Now I tower over her. “I’m an artist. A writer!” It’s all way too dramatic for a twelve-by-twelve office in a nursing home, but I’m having a moment. I’m having one of those life-changing revelations that you hope happens on top of a mountain or near a monument. She has a small plastic flag on her desk, held up by Snoopy while he stands on his doghouse. So I look at that. “This, here, it’s not what I planned to do.”

Mrs. Barrow’s expression morphs back into that same expression she wore when I bolted into her office just a few minutes before. I stretch a charming smile across my face. “Why let a little thing like my pulse get between you and the new girl?”

* * * *

I kneel by my grandmother’s wheelchair and hold her hand.

“. . . and obviously I realize it’s very confusing, me having left, then died, then come back, and now I’m leaving again. People in their right minds are having trouble tracking with this. But the point is that I think I’ve found my way. For the first time in my life, Grandma, I think I’ve found my way.”

“Okay.”

“Yes. Yes! Okay indeed.” I place the Columbine on her lap. “So, good-bye, Grandma.”

“Okay.”

I leave her room, trek down the same hallway I’ve trekked a hundred thousand times, and round the corner into the common room. Usually at this time, the residents are entranced by their soap opera, but there is an odd sight. They’re all reading newspapers. Some of them can’t even see.

I spot Gertie by her shoes, Reebok’s under swollen ankles. “Gertie?”

She lowers her newspaper and smiles at me. The other residents lower theirs too. Everyone is staring at me.

“Oh honey!”

I embrace her. “Hi, Gertie.”

“I was so glad to have read in the paper that you’re not dead.”

“No, I’m not de— . . . hold on. Paper? What do you mean, in the paper?”

Gertie hands me the newspaper, folded crisply and neatly the way I remember my dad reading it. I turn it over to see what she, and apparently everyone, is so enamored with.

There are the obituaries. And where normally there would be a large ad for funeral services or legal services or carpet cleaning, there I am, four inches tall, with a headline over my forehead: “Alive and Available!”

I gasp for the obvious reason—my mother has taken out an ad for me on the obituary page, where, of course, every hot-blooded male goes on the hunt for potential mates. But beyond that madness, she has managed to choose the quirkiest picture ever taken of me, one of those pictures where you’re managing to have a bad hair day and a momentary lapse in judgment on clothing choice and facial expression. It’s a complete train wreck. For no reason that is discernible, my arm is raised, and a shadow is cast right into my pit, looking like I’ve decided to go all Euro on my hygiene options.

I gasp again. One more and I’ll be officially hyperventilating.

“It’s official. I’m going to kill her.” I glance at all the residents. They look as if no one really knows who her is. “My mother,” I say flatly. “For putting this in the paper.”

“Oh . . .” they all say in unison, nodding.

“Now, now,” Gertie says. “Your momma means well.”

“This is a nightmare . . .”

“You know what? After you get rid of them bad boys, that’s when the good one sneaks right on up.”

“The only people looking at obits for dates are gold diggers, Gertie.”

“One day, mark my words, you’ll be so thankful you’re in all this pain. When the right boy answers this ad.”

* * * *

Maybe it’s just me, but have you ever had a moment where you’re so mad that you’re engulfed by it? Like all facets of your mind are in gear, working out the angst, solving the problem of how to change your current circumstance? Some call it “seeing red,” but I just call it blind-by-rage.

That’s why I didn’t see the van as I pulled into the driveway of my home. At that moment, I was rehearsing the speech I was going to slay my mother with.

It wasn’t until I heard “Hope!” that I realized anyone was even there.

I look up to find a reporter stalking across the lawn of my home, a microphone extended out in front of her, a cameraman trailing behind, and a long cord snaking behind him. My eyes dart to the van. It’s a news crew. The woman is wearing fuchsia head to toe—the kind that really only works if you’re trying to overexaggerate your presence. Her hair is tied into the kind of bun that makes her look like she’s in the middle of getting a face-lift.

“Ms. Landon,” she says as she sidles up to me.

I slowly close the car door because the car is dinging a reminder I’ve left the keys in the ignition.

“How does it feel to be alive?”

“Great. Thank you for asking.” I flash a smile because all the awkward photos of me are streaming through my mind and I’m hoping, if I’m lucky, this one gorgeous grin will make up for all the ones that have let me and every other single woman down.

I try to step to the side. She steps in front of me. I try the other side. She’s right there, her heel planted so firmly that I think it might have actually sunk into the concrete of the driveway. All the while, she’s smiling at me and angling herself to still look good on camera.

“We want to do a news series on you. You give hope to our audience.”

I just stand there blinking. Me? Giving hope? What is she talking about? Hasn’t she seen all that has happened? I can’t give hope. I’m the polar opposite of hope. I’m Oedipus. I haven’t killed my father and accidentally married my mother, but you’ve seen my life. You have to agree that all-in-all this is more Greek tragedy than inspiration. My mother alone is cause enough for despair.

The reporter is still going. Her eyes are all “aura and light,” as if somehow her dream is coming true right before our eyes. “To come back from being left at the altar, back from a suicide attempt! Now you’re ready to risk, to find love again.”

“I’m . . . no, I’m not. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I was dead. I am still feeling quite dead, to tell you the truth. Not totally dead. Just alive enough to wish I might’ve really been dead. It’s complicated.”

“Let us follow your story with our cameras until you find true love! You’d be inspiring many women out there who feel hopeless.”

I’m slumping just like an eighth grade girl who is all at once dealing with acne and social dilemmas. Doesn’t she see me for what I am? I’m no hero. I’m certainly no reality star. I’m trying to keep my mother from taking more ads out in the obituaries, for my death and for my life. This is not the picture of stardom or hope. This is the picture of complete dysfunction on nearly every level imaginable.

I look at the reporter. She is still smiling as if I’m missing the most exciting opportunity of my life. “What’s your name?”

“Danielle Warren.”

“Danielle, let me give you some advice. I’m assuming by the way you’re looking at me that I’m offering you some hope in life, that you’re single and you’re looking for that one story that makes you believe true love can happen.”

Danielle glances back at her cameraman, then back at me. She slowly nods. “I got dumped too.”

Oh goody. We’re all in the same club and they need a pack leader.

“So you can understand where I’m coming from when I say that this is not really my dream—to be dumped, presumed dead, only to rise again and find out that my life is way worse than I thought. You see what I’m saying? This is not the kind of story that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks star in.”

Danielle lowers the microphone, nods her head slowly.

I’m about to thank her for her time, hug her because, after all, she was dumped too, and bid her farewell when all of the sudden I hear a noise that causes me to freeze—it’s the kind of noise you can’t at first identify. But it becomes louder and the only thing that’s moving in my entire body is a sudden flush of adrenaline, the kind that makes it possible to lift a car to save a life if need be.

What is that noise?

It almost sounds like a herd of elephants. Or geese. It’s the weirdest sound. I look quickly at Danielle. She doesn’t look alarmed. She looks . . . guilty.

I turn around, just in time to see it—the source of the noise: a dozen men are piling out of the news van, each and every one of them sweaty like they’d been stuffed inside a duffel bag for a while. They’re gathering on the front lawn of my home, adjusting their shirts, feathering their hair, checking their armpits.

Now, I am just like any other American woman. I see a hot guy and even if I truly believe he’s toxic and would eventually be the death of me, I strike a pose. I smile, maybe run my fingers through my hair. It’s just instinct. Primitive, really, if you don’t include the hair spray and the lip gloss.

So you’ll understand what I mean when I say I don’t strike a pose. I don’t smile. At all. I’m just staring, that kind of awkward stare that you never want to be caught giving.

I count them one by one. Eleven. How did they all fit into that news truck?

I scan the crowd as they smile and wave. Four look like they should be at ComicCon. Three just got off the farm, literally. Two are wearing reds that don’t match. And the other two don’t look right. That’s all I can say.

Danielle puts the microphone back in my face, her eyes wide with anticipation. “Every one of these men called today to answer your ad!” She makes a sweeping gesture, as if I’m royalty, these are all princes and I get to choose with which one I will live in eternal bliss.

A croaking noise comes up my throat. It shocks me because I can’t remember another time I’ve actually croaked, besides when I supposedly died. And I’m no psychologist, but if I’m sticking with the fairy-tale analogy, I’m pretty sure somewhere in this scene there are toads. And I’m no amphibian, so . . .

The croaking sound erupts again from my throat. Danielle’s face grows concerned. The cameraman tilts his head away from the viewfinder, takes a step back, as if preparing for me to yack. At this point, I can make no promises.

Now you’re probably thinking that I’m going to say something clever. Or give the ComicCon guys a shot, because you and I both know that Nerd is super-hot right now. But I can’t tell you the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. That kind of ignorance can get you murdered at ComicCon.

It takes me a whole second to decide, but I realize I need to beat the next croak, because all I can see are five-second sound bites of me on the news, four seconds of which are me croaking like a frog.

So I bolt. Straight for the front door. I actually jump over the iron railing around the porch. I don’t remember even opening the door. I am just suddenly inside, my back against the door, my pulse a thick, ticking thud against my neck.

“Mommy?”

* * * *

It took me eighteen days to decide, but I did it. I stare at the duffel bag and rolling suitcase that are open on the couch. Both look like wide, gaping mouths that are ready to devour the hope and the future that God says I have. That’s stenciled on my wall. Some of the letters have worn off through the years so now it reads: I now the p ans I have for yo , pla s for a hope and a futu .

I don’t know what my futu holds, to tell you the truth, but anything has to be better than this. I realize that people have different thresholds for their low point. Anyone who has ever dealt with an alcoholic knows that just because you think they’ve hit bottom doesn’t mean they have. But generally speaking, I’m pretty sure being dumped at the altar and then falsely declared dead by suicide is a low enough point to consider a new life plan.

My friend, Becca, disagrees. She’s standing next to me, looking into the same gaping suitcase holes that I am, but with a completely different perspective. Her hands are on her hips, which is the first indication she believes she’s right. The second is that her belly is swollen with new life growing inside, which changes the chemistry in women’s brains to believe they have insight into all life, in any form, in any predicament, regardless of their own life experience. It doesn’t say that in What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but I’m certain a lot of men can confirm my suspicions.

“You’re sure you’re not just running away?”

I’ve assured her for seven days, ever since I told her my plan to go to New York City. But that hasn’t taken. So I try a different approach. “I live in a small town that most of the country can’t pronounce. Humiliation rests behind every corner. Why would I need to run away?”

She starts to answer but I interrupt her. “Example, and I’m just pulling this out of the pile of four dozen examples. But I was at the grocery store a few days ago. I have about six items in my basket. I get to the cash register to pay and the cashier says to me, ‘It’s paid for.’ I ask her what she means. Apparently the lady in front of me handed the cashier a hundred dollars, asked her to pay for my groceries, and then wanted to give me the change.”

Becca can’t even sell it as it comes out of her mouth. “It was a nice gesture.”

“It’s pity, Becca. I don’t want to be pitied. I don’t want any of this. I want out.” I gesture toward the small round table I’d eaten most of the meals at in my life. On top of it I’ve constructed a house of cards. A house of all the cards that have been sent since my death and all the new ones sent since my resurrection. There are of course no cards made for people rising from the dead, so people are sending awkward ones, like the one today meant for someone getting a promotion. Congratulations! We know this is well deserved! “Look at this house I built.”

“Nice.” She doesn’t smile.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. Building a three-foot house of cards out of cards.”

“I should get you a Popsicle. That’s what you need. Just one of those blue Popsicles that makes you feel so good.”

“You think a blue Popsicle is going to solve my problem?”

Becca sighed. “It’s just that my grandmother said something to me once. She said if you are not happy, geography isn’t going to change a thing.”

“That of course insinuates that I am the problem. Save that psychobabble advice for the ladies at the nursing home—you know, the ones who have no control over their geography. They can’t even choose whether they want to go to bingo or not. They just get wheeled in there, like it or not. I have the freedom to go and do and you’re saying I shouldn’t?”

Becca softens a little. Her hands leave her hips. Even that big, sassy ball sticking out of her tummy appears to deflate a bit. “It’s just . . . by yourself? New York City by yourself?” She chews a nail that hasn’t grown past the nail bed. “We’re just small-town girls, Hope. I mean, what do we know of the big city? When you were going with Sam, that was different. He was with you. He’d lived there once. But how are you going to survive in a city like that? By yourself?”

“First, you’ve hit your quota for saying ‘by yourself’ to me. No more. Obviously, yes, I’m by myself. That was evident the day my wedding fell apart. So there’s no reason to reiterate it. Second, why should I stop chasing my dream because Sam isn’t coming with me?” I pull one of the cards off the house of cards. I flip it over and point to the New York City address and the “Heaven Sent” logo on the back.

Becca arches a brow. “You’ve already been to heaven. And back. And I’m not entirely sure about this, but if I’m guessing, heaven isn’t in New York City.”

“Becca, my entire life I’ve been too afraid to leave Poughkeepsie. To chase my dream of making cards professionally. These”—I point to the one in my hand—“well, yeah, they’re kind of sappy. But they got published. And they’re very popular. We received dozens of them when I came back from the dead. And I look at these, Becca, and I know . . . I can do better than this. I’m good at greeting cards.” I say this with a grand gesture. I bump the table. The entire house of cards falls down—revealing my mother, who was apparently standing there listening the whole time.

It’s such a shocking exposure she actually covers her privates even though she’s fully dressed. But indeed, she has been exposed.

“You can’t leave! Your life is here!”

“Mother, what life?” I take a breath, realizing I’m going to have to defend this decision once again. That’s why I need to get out of here, so I don’t have to explain anything to anybody anymore. “Taken inventory lately? I even lost custody of my twin bed.”

“I’m working on getting that back.” Now my mom has her hands on her hips. “No one’s going to publish your cards.”

“Now that’s just mean.”

She nods heartily in agreement, her eyes watering. “I know it was. I’m just desperate.”

I look down at the card in my hand. It’s so sappy, like it came straight out of a tree. Sticky with the residue of a useless kind of hope, the kind one sits around and waits for instead of going out and getting. All these words, they’re meaningless. Prayers that sound good on a page, rhyme well, tickle the ear, but have no use otherwise. Well, I refuse to write sap. Refuse it.

“Dad always loved my cards.” Sure, they were all the ones I created when I was kid, but even then I had a certain edge, a certain way with words. I didn’t care about butterflies and rainbows, I can tell you that. I once wrote an entire poem to give to the old lady that sacked our groceries, wishing her a windfall of money so she could sit and her ankles wouldn’t swell. Just sayin’, that’s how I saw the world. It’s how I still see the world. But now, I have an even newer perspective—one that most women don’t have, but should.

I cover my face with my hand as my mom’s hands shoot into the air. I always know it’s coming yet each time it always feels misplaced—which obviously it is, but there’s a pattern you’d think I would’ve settled into by now.

“Lord! Tell her if she stays she’ll find love here!”

To my surprise, my hands shoot toward the ceiling. Becca stumbles backward. Even my mom looks caught off-guard. Her mouth is open, mid-prayer, but nothing is coming out.

I look up at the ceiling. Notice some cobwebs and a moldy patch from where the roof leaked in ’88. I don’t see the Almighty, but that doesn’t stop me from shouting at him: “Tell her that love and all the pain that comes with it—I don’t need it! None of it!”

My mom catches her second wind. Now she’s back in gear. “You know love, Lord! It sneaks up on ya! Tell her it’s sneaky!”

“Tell her that it’s my time! It’s my chance to be heard! Which has never been a part of my—”

“But you gotta be in that right place to be snuck up on, Lord! Like Poughkeepsie!”

I drop my hands. Becca gives me a wistful, sympathetic look. “Mom, I believe you just proved my point. I’m trying to state that I’m never heard and then you interrupt—”

“I hear the Empire State Building is a perfect place to find love.” It’s Becca this time who keeps my declaration from fully escaping, but at least she’s now seen my perspective.

I turn to my mom. I take her hands. Tears, fat and bulbous, are welled in her eyes. I know this is so hard for her to understand. All she’s ever known is me, Poughkeepsie, and our little way of life. “Mom, this is my chance to say something. To give something to people in pain. To help them laugh at pain.”

She is so lost. “Oh, honey. Pain’s not funny.”

I realize it right then. No matter what, she will never understand I have a gift. She will never see what it does to my soul to see someone laugh at something I wrote. It’s my balm, but it’s not hers.

“Maybe it’s not,” I say to her as gently as I can. “But can you support me? Just this one time?”

My mom slides her hands to either side of my face, right at the cheeks. I don’t know if she’s going to slap me, squeeze me, or pop me. “At least I can take comfort.”

I try to smile, but her hands are in the way.

“When this fails, you’ll be back. I’ll save the couch bed for you!”