AFTER THE chaplain leaves, I retreat to the serenity of our blue bedroom. Downstairs, the phone and doorbell continue to ring so I close the door, open the window and lie on our bed. Sasha curls up beside me. The late September sun streams through the blinds, casting horizontal beams of light across the duvet cover. I think about the chaplain’s words. Maybe I should grab onto the Hope-with-a-capital-h life preserver because believing I’m going to see Sam again in heaven makes me feel a hell of a lot better than the reality that his body now has no heart in it.

There’s a knock at my door. “Goo, can I come in?”

“Yeah.”

Harry comes in and hands me a white envelope. “An officer just dropped this off for you.”

I open it up. Sam’s cross and St. Jude medal are sticky-taped to a piece of paper with my name written on it; dried blood is still stuck to his pendants. I breathe in sharply. 

“I guess these are mine now,” I say, gently peeling off the pendants and placing them on the chain around my neck. 

“Oh Googie…”

I bring the cross and medal to my lips and kiss them.

Harry tilts his head to one side, watching me. “Maybe the big fella kept them for as long as he needed them?”

“Maybe.”

Then I turn the medal over and read the inscription on the back. “Pray for us.”

“What?”

“That’s the wording on the St. Jude medal,” I say. “Jude is the patron saint of police officers and lost causes.”

“Oh.”

“Where the hell were they yesterday?” I ask. “On a goddamn coffee break?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jesus and Jude! Great protection they turned out to be—useless fucks.”

Harry’s mouth drops open. I lie back and pull a pillow over my head. 

“Umm…Adri?”

“What?”

“I hate to bother you, but I think we better get you over to Sam’s parents’ place.”

I pull the pillow off my head. “Why?”

His eyes widen. “Because his mom and dad really need to see you.”

MY DAD drives my mom, Anthony and me the twenty minutes to the house where Sam grew up. Not five minutes into the drive, I hear my mother ask Anthony how military school is going.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I snap from the back seat.

She turns around. “I’m sorry, Adri. I was just trying…”

“Not now, Mother. That’s completely inappropriate.”

In the rear-view mirror, I catch my dad’s tiny smile. Nobody says a word for the rest of the drive. When my father pulls up in front of Sam’s parents’ place, both sides of the street are lined with vehicles. “Oh, for God’s sakes,” I say, “look at all the cars.”

Still no one says a word.

“Surely they can’t all be visitors.” I try again.

“Er…they’re probably Sam’s relatives,” my dad says. 

“Well, I’m not going in there and talking to everyone!”

Thankfully, Nick and Angela immediately come out to the car. I tell them I’m not talking to a bunch of people right now.

Nick nods. “We’ll meet in the backyard.”

It seems to me that Sam’s brother and sister are handling this pretty well. When I walk in the back gate, I see why. Sam’s parents, dressed completely in black, are sitting on white lawn chairs in the middle of the yard. With her arms folded tightly across her chest, his mom rocks back and forth, sobbing loudly, as her husband holds her. Nick and Angela have to place their own sorrow aside to care for their parents.

What is one to say to a grieving mother? Wait, I know! I walk straight over to Sam’s mom, hug her and announce: “Don’t worry. Sam is in heaven and one day we’ll all be together again.”

This goes over like a lead balloon.  

“I know that!” she screams. “But he’s my son and I want him here.”

My first thought? If I can find some solace in Christianity after a single conversation, why isn’t a strong believer like Sam’s mom able to do so?   

I shut my mouth and hold her as she sobs. Then I look up and see a squirrel scurrying along the top of the fence with what appears to be a peanut in its mouth. I catch myself smiling because Sam loved nuts, but they’d upset his stomach. Now that he’s free from the confines of his body, he can eat as many as he wants…

Speaking of nuts, you better get a grip on yourself; Adri: it’s a squirrel.

The gate opens and the two police chaplains and Tom, now sporting a bandage above his right eye, walk in the backyard. I ask Tom how he’s doing.

“I am so sorry, Adri…I don’t know what happened at your place.”

You were removed from the scene, so the chaplain could tell me about Hope. 

“I’m just glad you’re OK,” is what I say.

We all sit in a circle of lawn chairs beneath the apple trees—a garden party of grief. After a prayer by the Hope Chaplain (a nicer undercover name than the Shorter Chaplain), Sam’s family is told about the police component of the funeral. But I don’t think his parents catch much because Sam’s mom rocks and sobs throughout the meeting and his dad’s attention is on her.

Afterward, Nick and Angela pull me aside. “We saw something strange this morning,” says Nick. 

“What?”

He tells me how they saw the first letter of their brother’s name in a cloud.

“Huh?”

“I mean, it was the same shape,” Nick says sheepishly. “Except that the letter was backward.”

I don’t feel so silly about my squirrel thoughts, but cloud-shapes are not my concern at the moment. I nod toward their mom. “Is she going to be OK?”

“She’s definitely better with you here, Adri,” says Angela.

“That’s better?”

Nick nods. “And thank God her best friend came up right away.”

“From San Diego?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Sam and I just saw her last week—she showed us her prayer room.”

“Oh, we’ve heard all about your visit,” says Angela.

Two minutes later, the Greek lady from San Diego is in the backyard, hugging me. “I just don’t understand how this could happen,” she says. 

For privacy, the two of us go to the side of the house and sit by the yellow daisies. I ask her if she believes Sam is in heaven.

“Absolutely. But I don’t understand why God would have taken him.” 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I say.

“Perhaps we’re not meant to know God’s plan, Adri.”

“If indeed there is one.”

She places her hand on my arm. “There is.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because there has to be.”

I raise an eyebrow. Then she asks me if I’ve heard about the Greek Orthodox forty-day ceremony.

“No.”

“Well, we believe that starting on the ninth day after a person passes away, Michael the Archangel takes the soul on a journey and shows him all the good and bad deeds he’s done throughout his lifetime. It’s a time of learning and then, on the fortieth day, God tells him what his work in heaven will be.”

“Are you saying that Sam’s soul leaves after forty days?”

“No, no!” She shakes her head. “Sam’s soul will always be with you. Just because he’s working in heaven doesn’t mean he can’t also be watching over all of us.”

“What’s your take on the Second Coming?”

She looks as surprised at my question as I am hearing myself ask it. “On Judgement Day,” she replies, “Jesus will be coming back as our Saviour.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“Judge the living and the dead.” 

I frown. “The dead? How’s that gonna work?”

“Well, the deceased souls are in a sort of temporary heaven right now, waiting for Jesus to come back to earth. Then, after the Second Coming, God will decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell for all eternity.”

I picture billions of souls, flipping through magazines in heaven’s waiting room. “That’s getting kinda complicated,” I say. Never mind ridiculous.

“Look,” she says, “what I’ve told you are my Orthodox beliefs. You need to follow your own heart on this. You and Sam were very much in love…”

“Are.”

“Are. And that’s what really matters.”

Except that my heart is currently shattered into thousands of pieces, so which one do I pick up first? 

“…you could do that too, if you like.”

I look to the Greek lady. “Sorry?”

“I was just saying that Sam’s parents have put a glass of water out for Sam’s soul to drink so you could do that, as well.”

“Why water?”

“I don’t know. But it’s connected to the soul somehow.”