MONDAY MORNING is my first appointment with the personal injury lawyer and on the way there, I stop in to have a chat with Sam. I’m walking from my car to his grave when I see there is a huge hole in the ground. I break into a run.

Sure enough, right in front of his headstone is a hole about three feet long by two feet deep. I drop to my knees and look down but thankfully, I can’t see his casket—just dirt and a candy wrapper that blew in. I reach in to retrieve the garbage and I think to myself that if I were in a horror movie, a hand would reach up right about now and pull me in. But instead of being terrified, it occurs to me that, given the opportunity, I’d go anywhere to be with Sam again. I let out a sigh of relief, finally feeling how I figure a normal widow ought to.

I lift my head to look at his shiny black headstone—but it’s a beautiful woman in capri pants and a white shirt kneeling at her husband’s grave I see. As difficult as it was to hear at the time, maybe Ed had been right when he said that Sam lives on in me.

“Do I sue or not?” I ask Sam’s photo, recently set into the stone.

I’d given in to his parents’ repeated request for a photo—but I chose which one.

“I’m not even sure I have a legal case yet,” I continue. “But if I do, is there any point in me spending all that time and energy in the courts?”

A bird chirps.

“Besides, what am I really after here? Money? Trying to force a corporation to take responsibility? Creating awareness about the issue?”

Silence.

“What exactly is the issue?”

I hear an aircraft, possibly a helicopter, in the distance.

I answer my own question. “Because of an unsafe workplace, you never made it home.”

It is a helicopter.

“But is suing the company going to change that fact?”

It flies overhead.

“No,” I say to Sam’s grave. “Not unless the money is directed to dealing with workplace safety.”

On my way out of the cemetery, I stop in at the office and tell the staff about the hole. They assure me it’s likely just the ground shifting as the result of an air pocket. They’ll fill it in as soon as possible.

“WE’VE DONE a preliminary review of Sam’s case,” the personal injury lawyer tells me half an hour later, “and to be honest, the circumstances are quite unusual.”

“That seems to be the general consensus,” I say.

“And I don’t have a clear-cut answer for you at this point.”

I lean forward. “As in?”

“As in whether or not to advise you to proceed with litigation against the company where Sam fell. And because it was a Workers’ Compensation Board claim, you might not even be entitled to pursue legal action anyway.”

“Oh?”

“I’m looking into that right now. However, what is clear is that according to Alberta legislation, a safety railing should have been in place. But I’m concerned this could be a long drawn out process and frankly, the evidence thus far doesn’t suggest this is necessarily the wisest road to take. I think you need to ask yourself what it is you hope to gain from pursuing legal action.”

“Awareness,” I reply. “Sam’s fund is going to produce a public service announcement about workplace safety, so any money I receive from litigation will go toward this.”

“Then there’s the possibility of approaching the company outside the legal system and explaining what the memorial fund is planning to do.”

“And?”

“And hopefully, they’ll do the right thing.”

I lean back in my chair. “Well, whatever we do, it’s pretty safe to say that Sam would…” I stop speaking and my hand flies up to my mouth.

“What?”

“I was just going to say that Sam would roll over in his grave if I spent the next five years of my life dealing with this in the courts—but that’s an odd choice of words considering I just came from Sam’s grave and there was a big hole in the ground!”

The lawyer’s face goes rather pale.

I give him the wave. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it was the ground shifting. It’s just the timing that’s weird. But this kind of thing happens quite a bit.”

BACK HOME, there are two messages on my machine. The first is from Jodie; she’ll be joining me in New York. I immediately go online and purchase outrageously expensive tickets for us to see La Boheme at the Met.

Then I deal with the second message. It’s from the police association lawyer and he does not sound pleased.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he snarls when I muster up the courage to call him back.

“About?”

“Those letters you sent about the remarriage clause! Adri, you wrote the chief of police and the president of the police union.”

“Yeah…so?”

“So? So, in the middle of contract negotiations, you communicated about a major flaw in the contract with the top dog in management and the head of the union. They are on opposite sides of the fence.”

“But they needed to hear my perspective,” I say rather quietly.

“That’s my job.”

“Sorry.”

He sighs. “Well, I guess you didn’t know any better.”

“What happens now?”

“Your guess,” he says, “is as good as mine.”

Oops.

BY EARLY September, the long days on the computer are taking their toll on my body. My wrists and forearms ache from tendonitis so I book a massage. The masseuse, not one I’ve met before, asks me to remove my necklace and upon seeing the wolf pendant given me by the girl on the plane, asks if that’s my power animal.

“My what?”

“Your power animal. It’s a native belief that each person has an animal to which they turn for strength and guidance. Sometimes it also symbolizes the type of person you are.”

I shake my head. “Actually, the wolf symbolizes the spirit of my husband. He passed away a year ago.”

“Were you soul mates?”

“Yes.”

“Then you probably have more wolf-like attributes than you realize.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I think the animal that best symbolizes me, at least at this point, is the butterfly.”

“That tends to represent transformation and change.”

I smile. “That’s me all right…I just hope I’m through the damn caterpillar stage—eating everything in sight.”

She laughs.

“Or maybe I’m more like a dragonfly,” I muse. “They’re bigger, tougher and louder, plus they’re always trying to mate.”

“I’m shooting a documentary about that right now.”

I lift my head to get a better look at this person. “You’re a filmmaker?”

“Yup. I’m just on call here to help finance my films.”

I lie flat again. “And you’re making a documentary about mating?”

“Pretty much…it’s called The End of Evolution, which is where the human race is headed if we don’t start changing the way we think and live.”

WHEN I get home, there’s another message from the police association lawyer.

“It’s gone,” he says when I call him back.

“Pardon me?” is my response.

“The remarriage clause has been removed from the contract. I won’t pretend to guess what happened—but clearly, your letter had an impact.”

Smiling, I hang up the phone. “Well, whaddya think of them apples?” I ask my little wooden gazelle all the way from Portugal, now sporting a tiny pink jelabah.

TONIGHT I dream that I’m in my basement office writing when I hear someone come in the back door. Expecting Sam, I race upstairs to say hi, but it is Tom standing in my kitchen. I’m the same age I am now but he’s about thirty years older, has white hair and is very thin. We hug tightly and are about to kiss but I quickly pull away. “No!” I say. “We can’t do this yet.”

In real life, Tom and I meet later in the day for ice cream and I tell him my dream.

“You do realize I am in love with my girlfriend?” is his response.

I dip my spoon into the sundae we’re sharing. “I thought you guys weren’t gonna make it?”

“We’re still trying.”

I eat a spoonful of ice cream. “Did I ever tell you that both your and Sam’s regimental numbers add up to eleven?”

“No.”

“They do. I had an actuarial friend calculate the odds of that happening.”

“And?”

“It’s less than .01 percent.”

Tom folds his arms across his chest. “And what do you make of that?”

“I think eleven is the number of my soul mate.”

He sighs and sticks his feet into the aisle, crossing one leg over the other.

I glance down. “Are those traffic boots?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you wearing them?”

“Because I’m back in the traffic unit. I got transferred last week.”

“Oh.” I scrape out the walnuts and chocolate sauce.

“You need to move on, Adri.”

I shrug. “I’m taking a dance class.”

His face brightens. “That’s a start. What kind?”

“Hip hop. I start tomorrow.”

“And the book?”

“It’s in rough shape,” I say. “Maybe I’m not cracked up to be a novelist.”

Tom frowns. “How so?”

“What if I just needed to write this book to make sense of Sam’s death—and my life without him in it?”

“But he’s still in it! You have a stronger relationship with your dead spouse than most people do with a living one.”

“True,” I say. “So maybe I just needed to write this book to help me grieve but that doesn’t mean I have to publish it.”

“But if writing it helped you, then reading it will help others.”

I shake my head. “Not the way it reads now.”

Tom folds his arms across his chest. “What would Sam say if he knew you were thinking of not publishing this book?”

“He’d throttle me,” I say, reaching for my purse. “Oh, and by the way, I finally saw Gladiator.”

“And?”

I look Tom in the eye. “And I know perfectly well I can’t be with Sam.”

“But you still want to be,” he says softly. “And that makes all the difference.”

Sigh.