Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  I waited as they wiped their eyes and regained control of themselves.

  “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Rin said, flashing a set of perfect teeth from the other side of Charlotte, who smiled shyly at the table.

  “They heard all about your recent adventure with Ethan and thought it was a good idea,” Creesie explained, pressing her soft waves back into place. “Time passes so swiftly here that we often forget about simple human pleasures. Even I decided to try it.”

  Only now did it register that Creesie looked different, too. She’d slipped into a pink floral halter dress, straight out of the fifties—her era of choice—and the bright color made her dark skin glisten more than usual.

  “Maybe you’ll start a trend at the Station,” Charlotte beamed. “Long after you’ve gone, we’ll still be up to our ears in fashion.”

  Rin stopped sipping her Coke, the straw still at her lips. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in ages. I’ll start spreading the word.” She closed her eyes. That’s when it dawned on me that she had already begun. Telepathy certainly had its advantages.

  A slow song ended on the jukebox and a bluesy one followed it. I tapped my foot beneath the table, bobbing my head a little as well. Without my asking, Charlotte said, “If you want to hear something, all you have to do is think it.”

  “Of course,” Rin broke in. “You’ll have to wait your turn. Who knows how many thousands are in front of your request?”

  “Still, it doesn’t hurt to try,” Charlotte encouraged. “We’ll think it with you . . . a song from the forties, right? I’ve heard the tune, but I don’t remember the—”

  “Charlotte—!” I exclaimed in shock.

  “We weren’t listening. I promise.” She pointed a telltale finger at Creesie.

  “I might have mentioned a few things . . . nothing special, no real details,” Creesie fudged, gazing at me with her owl-like eyes. “We were waiting for you to fill us in.”

  Creesie scooted over, making way for the golden-haired boy to sit beside her. Cat appeared at the table then. Five plates of pecan pie with big dollops of whipped cream on top balanced easily on her arms. With my mouth watering, I dove in for an oversized bite before Creesie introduced her guest.

  “Where are my manners?” she suddenly announced, as though she had forgotten the boy was there. “Hope, this is my dear old friend, Gustav Vallerius.”

  I grinned politely at him, my mouth still full.

  In a German accent, he joked, “Old? Look who’s talking.” To me, he said, “You, young lady, should call me Gus. All my friends do.” His eyes were a clear pale blue. The color reminded me of the sky overlooking Heaven’s Peak. And, of course, that made me think of Ethan. “Are you enjoying your stay?” Gustav asked earnestly.

  I swallowed before speaking. It was beyond delicious.

  “What’s not to love?” I finally said, my thoughts returning to Ethan.

  As I dug in for another bite, Creesie told Gus, “Hope’s just returned from another visit, a delightful little shortcut.” Her eyes lit up unexpectedly. “Something you also have a little experience with, I’m guessing . . .”

  Gus chuckled freely. It was a delightful, intoxicating sound.

  Looking back at me, he said, “I don’t hear enough great stories these days. Would you like to tell us about your visit?”

  I groaned internally. Was it possible to keep some thoughts to myself? Even for a little while? With so many eager faces awaiting a response, I couldn’t just announce what was troubling me. There seemed only one logical explanation for it. One unthinkable one. Ethan didn’t feel the same way about me that I did for him.

  Creesie either noticed my hesitation, or she was listening. I wasn’t sure which.

  “He does have a beautiful soul,” she prompted. “That doesn’t happen every day.”

  And just like that, as if someone had taken a giant eraser and erased it all from my mind, I could only think of how lucky I was to have ever met Ethan. That chocolate-cake-for-the-soul thing was having its usual uplifting effect.

  The words spilled out before I could stop them. I rambled on in a breathless rush, “You should see him! He—he glows!” I pictured him then, his broad shoulders, effortless smile. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s . . . he’s . . .” I broke off. The only word that came to mind was not one I was about to say out loud. Especially here.

  “Angelic?” Charlotte finished for me as Creesie snickered at her pie.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” I muttered under my breath. “I wish you could have seen the way he looked at me. As if I were the only person in the world that mattered . . .”

  Stepping out of my reverie, I noticed their mutually inclined heads.

  “I’m sure,” I mumbled, red-faced, realizing what they were doing, and attempting to stem the flow of thoughts, “I’m sure that happens to everyone on visits.”

  I heard four distinctly separate voices mumbling disagreements in my head.

  “Did you say he was glowing?” The words bubbled right out of Charlotte. Gazing at me dreamily, she asked, “Can you show us?”

  The pale violet shade was burning in my mind.

  “That’s gorgeous,” Rin breathed. “I can see it.”

  “It’s his aura,” Creesie said, continuing her trend for her nonexistent explanations.

  “His aura?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

  “The color of one’s soul,” Creesie replied. “Strong emotions tend to make it more visible. The greater the intensity, the easier it is to see.”

  “Does the color have meaning?” I wondered aloud.

  “Oh, heavens yes! That’s very telling. If you think about what colors are generally associated with—yellow is a happy color, red is angry, blue is peaceful—it will give you a general idea. Those are very basic, of course. But it does give clues as to the type of life a person has lived. The clearer the color, the freer the soul . . . Muddier shades indicate a problem of some sort—a troubled soul, if you will.”

  “And violet?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “What about violet?”

  “Throughout history, purple has often been associated with royalty. In our world, it usually indicates an advanced being. At the very least, a pure soul.”

  Pure, I could see that in Ethan. “What do you mean by ‘advanced?’” I asked.

  “Gifted. Talented. But not in human ways, in our ways.” Creesie lifted a forkful of pecan pie to her mouth.

  “Gifted?” I prompted as she chewed thoughtfully, hoping she didn’t take the rest of the day to answer. She rested her fork on her plate, reached for her coffee cup, and as she leaned back against the booth, I urged her on with my eyes.

  “Oh, the living don’t always view them as such . . . gifts, I mean.” Creesie looked deeply into her cup as if it contained the answers to life. “But that should never diminish wonderful they are. More times than not, they show up in ways that most folks think of as odd. Or even, frightening.”

  She gave me a long, probing look, causing me to think of several strange incidents of my own, premonitions, mostly—when I had scared the stuffing out of Claire. Grandpa Valenti’s death, Gigi’s husband, for one. I had known before anyone else had.

  “Exactly,” Creesie said, hearing my thoughts. “A person might sense something is going to happen before it actually does . . . or, in rarer cases, they’re aware that there’s a lot more going on in the world than what they can see with their eyes—”

  “Ooh!” Charlotte cut in. “What about Ethan? Does he sense you near him, Hope? Did he know you were with him in his room?”

  A chill ran through me as I recalled our last visit—me crouched in the corner and Ethan inches away. I—feel—you. And then the worst—I’d felt nothing in return. I tried desperately not to think about it. And, of course, that definitely made me think about it.

  “That’s not all bad,” Rin mused wickedly. “Spying could be tons of fun.” I could almost see her
tucking that idea away to be used at a later date.

  I purposely kept my face blank, questioning whether I could lie to them.

  “Has something happened, Hope?” Too late. The way Creesie asked it, I knew she had already heard it.

  I sighed in frustration. It was such a losing battle. Who didn’t know that when you told yourself not to think about something, you automatically did? Of course, that became even more impossible when everyone around you could peer into your thoughts.

  “I’m sure you already know the answer to that,” I snipped, feeling as exposed as I had back in Ethan’s room a short while ago.

  “I might have listened in . . . a little,” Creesie admitted reluctantly, though I didn’t believe her about the little part. I would have bet she knew every last detail, even those I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself. “Believe me, it’s nothing to worry about. Just because you can’t feel Ethan’s love for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. At certain moments, I can feel it. It’s quite intoxicating.”

  I choked on my soda. It spluttered into the air, dribbled down my sweater.

  Charlotte’s eyes glistened as she whispered, “Sometimes we can feel it, too.”

  My eyes flew open so wide that I half-expected them to fall out of my head.

  “Don’t worry, Hope,” Charlotte consoled, hearing my fears. “It’s only because of our connection with you that we’re able to feel it so deeply.”

  I was suddenly, ridiculously envious of Creesie, Charlotte, and Rin. They could feel how Ethan felt about me—but I could not? If I could have seen myself through their eyes, I was sure my aura was glowing pond-scum green.

  “The connection begins from the moment we speak,” Rin tried to explain, though I wasn’t really listening. “And from that very first instant, nothing on earth can break that bond. It’s an incredible way to find someone, virtually anywhere you can imagine.”

  “And, as you already know,” Charlotte chimed in, “we’re also tied to each other’s feelings and thoughts. Isn’t that wonderful? There are no secrets here. It’s like we’re one big, happy family!”

  I looked anxiously at Creesie, dreading the question I was about to ask. If they all knew how Ethan felt about me, then it reasoned that they also knew how I felt about him. My nightmares of showing up at school naked didn’t begin to compare to this.

  “Does everyone know?” My voice was shrill. Even at a rough count, there had to be six hundred visitors milling about. “Please tell me that I’m not in all of these people’s thoughts!” Creesie almost chuckled. My exasperated glare stopped her cold.

  “I said they could read your mind if they tried. It does require quite a bit of effort and a lot of concentration, though. The connection is what makes it easier—not easy.”

  “Then why can’t I feel Ethan’s emotions?” I fretted aloud, not understanding what they were telling me. “Does that mean we aren’t . . . we aren’t connected enough?”

  The three of them exchanged silent words. Though I couldn’t hear their thoughts, I could see it in their eyes, and there was something they didn’t want to say.

  Then Charlotte sighed. “Sometimes people put up walls around their heart, Hope. You’ve heard of that, right?” I nodded, wondering where she was going with this. It was, after all, just an expression. “Here, they’re more real than you can possibly imagine.”

  “Old sayings,” Creesie reminded me, “take on new meaning here.”

  “But why would he—” I began.

  “A tragic event usually precedes it,” Charlotte said. “Like with my mother.”

  I couldn’t imagine it. A tragic event in Ethan’s life? It seemed—or rather, he seemed—too perfect.

  “Love is a funny thing.” Creesie scooped up her last bite of pie. “The bigger it is, the more it can get in the way. Ethan probably isn’t even aware of what he’s doing.”

  “But if he doesn’t know he’s doing it”—I swallowed a lump in my throat—“how will we ever get past it?”

  “The same way anyone does. You’ll just have to love him with all your heart, and then love him a little bit more.” Creesie’s returning smile was almost motherly.

  I shook my head, trying not to smile back. “Well, I guess somebody’s gotta do it.”

  I had just lifted my fork when Cat arrived to check on us. She vanished again after refilling our drinks. As I chewed, I mulled over the latest information spinning around in my mind. Something about Ethan and tragedy and walls around his heart. And Charlotte had mentioned her mother. Was it because someone he loved had died? Maybe Poppy? Or, could it be from our lifetime before? A time that neither of us could recall in much detail. Was it actually me? Or rather, the previous incarnation of me, causing his pain?

  Of nearly equal concern was this business of connections. It was both comforting and appalling to realize that the more people I got to know here, the more, in turn, they would know about me and everyone around me.

  Did I want to connect with everyone I met?

  Definitely not.

  But aside from returning to my body—an unpleasant task which I planned to put off as long as humanly possible—there was little that I could do about it.

  When only crumbs remained on our plates, and all of us had sugar-high glazes in our eyes, Gus cleared his throat as if he were about to make a grand announcement.

  “Speaking of shortcuts, would you care to hear a favorite of mine?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I glanced once at the faceless clock. “I think I’ve got a little time.”

  “It was with my wife, Ellen.” Creesie gave his arm a gentle squeeze, and he patted it where it rested. They seemed to be the best of friends, their exchange reminding me of something Brody and I might have done—except ours would have been more of a punch than a pat.

  “So it was wonderful?” It was a relief to let Gus take the spotlight and get all of those prying eyes (or whatevers) out of my thoughts.

  “Not exactly.” Gus’s eyes disappeared in an ear-to-ear grin. I liked his touch of a German accent and the way he talked with his whole body. In some weird way, he made me think of Brody. Gus oozed genuine happiness. Maybe that was it.

  In one invisibly swift movement, Cat returned to our table. She stacked the plates and refilled our sodas with a pitcher she pulled out of nowhere. I distinctly heard a voice say the word “blueberry” in my head. Cat popped a pink bubble, gave a curt nod. It was an easy guess that Creesie’s sudden craving had something to do with me.

  “Anything special I can get for you, sweetie?” Cat was talking to me. Shaking my head, I glanced down at the checkered cloth to avoid her intense gaze, and when I looked up again, Cat was smiling blissfully at me. To my astonishment, I began to see pictures in my mind . . . cloudy images of two old people. The woman had brown eyes like hers and, at her side, there was a shorter, pudgy man with a shock of thick, white hair.

  Then Gus spoke, diverting my attention. “As far as visits go, it wasn’t memorable because it was pleasant. It was memorable because of its significance. . .” When I looked back to where she’d stood, Cat was gone, and so were the images. But for some reason, I thought I’d seen those faces somewhere before. “Though we were married for over fifty years, my bride refused to believe it was really me.” He scratched his head as if this were still a mystery to him. “She shouted and screamed at me as though she’d taken leave of all her senses!”

  “She freaked out on you?” Either I was paying very close attention, or I was reading Gus’s mind, because I thought I could see Ellen in my head. She was sitting in a recliner, holding knitting needles, a silver-haired woman with a sweet face.

  “Is that what the kids call it these days?” Gus repeated the expression, his German accent causing us to giggle. “Freak out? I’m going to remember that.”

  We leaned away from the table as Cat returned. Efficiently, she laid out five slices of blueberry pie, asked if we needed anything else, then exited in a blur. But this time she didn’t give me
any lingering looks or leave any images in my mind. Her actions were puzzling, though not nearly as much as my ever-growling stomach. How could I still be hungry after all that I’d eaten? At least I didn’t have to worry about cavities, or calories, for that matter.

  “Mmm. Smells like you, Hope.” Charlotte took a huge bite that included a chunk of the now melting vanilla ice cream on top. I laughed, scooping up an equally large bite.

  “For our first encounter, I didn’t arrive mid-dream,” Gus continued, forcing me to focus. Just as Creesie had predicted, my thoughts were becoming as scattered as stars that littered the night sky. “I wanted more of a surprise for my love, you see, so I showed up in the middle of the day!”

  I suspected that a dead person showing up at any time was a fairly shocking event. But during the day? It made me wonder about Ethan. Surely, my visit was less terrifying for him. I may have been in a different form, yes. But I was still very much alive.

  “She looked at me like she’d seen a ghost!” Gus was choking on laughter. I was thinking that Ellen was dead right, but I refrained from saying it aloud.

  “And she could see you?” I marveled. “How did you pull that off?”

  Gus shrugged. “Ellen always saw others around her when we were married.”

  “Others? You mean others like . . . ?”

  “My Ellen is a lot like your Ethan,” he replied. His smile was effervescent, but I grinned back at the casual way he’d said, Your Ethan.

  “I thought a daylight visit would make it seem like more of an occasion. So, as my lovely bride lounged in her favorite chair, the unmistakable sound of her knitting needles clicking and clacking, her thoughts wholly absorbed in her task, I ever so quietly walked up behind her.” Gus gave a low chuckle. “In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea. In a soft whisper, I said to her, ‘Guten tag, darling. What are you knitting today?’”

  “Let me go out on a limb here. That’s when she freaked out.”

  “I’ve never seen her jump so fast,” he said, laughing. “She was out of that chair in a flash, jabbing her knitting needles in the air as if she were trying to stab me, shrieking and screaming, ‘Why are you here? Are you haunting me?’”