"Indeed, Sam. But without her, you would not be that which you call a vampire."
"She helped create me-"
"That is all, Sam. She helped create you. Nothing more, nothing else."
"But I feel less. The sunlight. Food. My reflection. These gross nails..."
"Spillover, yes. But nothing more. You are a powerful spirit, Sam Moon. A powerful creator. And someday soon, perhaps you will recognize that."
I sat quietly and looked at the words that had spilled down my page, written in a tight, neat script that I didn't recognize as my own. I had gone through five pages already. I placed the tip of the pen at the beginning of the next blank line.
I said, "So if I am hearing you correctly, I have been ejected from heaven."
"You are living your heaven now, Sam."
I looked around at the mostly empty street, the two bums, the crow on the branch nearby. The sparkling facades of far too many high-rise apartments.
"It doesn't look like heaven."
"There is a kind of heaven in all things, if you choose to see it."
I sensed the wisdom of the words, but I wasn't ready to hear it. Not yet.
"You never answered my question," I said. "What happens when I die? Me. Samantha Radiance Moon." I rarely let slip my full name, as it is quite a mouthful... and begs too many questions. Yes, my parents were hippies. Growing up, my full name had been Samantha Radiance Sundance. You can imagine my parents' delight when they learned I would be marrying a Moon. Giddy would have been putting it mildly. Yes, Samantha Sundance had married Danny Moon. Our wedding invites had promoted the celestial theme. As had the entire wedding. It was a match made in the heavens. I had thought so, too. Little did I know then that there would be no heaven for me. I said now, "And what happens when this physical body of mine should die? This vessel that contains all of my soul?"
"You will return to me, child, where you will re-emerge into all that is and all that will forever be. Where you will be loved forever more, unlike any other."
Tears flowed as I considered the words. Truthfully, I didn't know what to make of them, but knew exactly what to make of them, too, and I felt love for me unlike anything I had ever felt in a long time, and the entity within me shrank and cowered in the darkest recesses of my mind.
Minutes later, when I had cried myself out, something was tugging at my mind-no, my heart-something persistent and childlike and innocent, something that grew brighter even when I shined a light on it. I almost didn't ask. I almost didn't want to know. But I did want to know, too. Very much so.
"What is heaven like?" I asked. "Can you tell me what I will be missing?"
"Do you really want to know?"
Through my window, I noticed one of the homeless men had awakened and was watching me. He looked familiar. Very, very familiar. I said aloud, "I think so, yes."
There was a pause. My hand twitched, then stopped. Twitched again, then lay unmoving, like something forgotten and broken. Finally, like a spider rising from the dead, it rose up and pulsed to life, and spelled out the words:
"Perhaps it is better if I show you."
My eyes widened at that, and I stared at the words spelled out before me for a heartbeat or two. Then I nodded, and said, "Yes, I'd like that. I'd like that very much. But how..."
And just like that, I was no longer in my minivan.
I was somewhere else, somewhere beautiful, somewhere majestic and free and untethered and light. It was somewhere not here, but it also didn't feel much different either. I saw people and buildings and activity and excitement and love. Mostly I saw love. And by my side was a little man I remembered, a little man I had met years ago at a Denny's, a little man who held my hand and pointed and spoke softly and laughed often and gripped my hand with more love than I had ever felt.
It could have been hours or days later when I found myself seated once again in the minivan, my face in my hands and tears streaming through my fingers.
On the notepad before me were the words: "You are loved more than you know, Samantha Moon. Yes, you are loved very much indeed."
The homeless man was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Tammy didn't like her dad very much.
Now, as she lay in her bedroom, with her mom in the next door office and her brother in his bedroom down the hall, she decided right then and there that she didn't like her dad at all. Nope, not one bit.
Tammy knew he had cheated on her mother. She had relived every lurid detail in her mother's memory. Tammy liked the word lurid. It made her feel grown-up to use it. She very much wanted to be a grown-up. Yes, she had recently turned sixteen, but she had lived far more than her sixteen years, she was certain. Even if the lives she lived were through other people's memories.