Dear friends -- this came to me this morning and I had to write it. But it's a tough story, and it left me crying in any number of places. Take the caution seriously. I deal with the closet, and love, regret and suicide. If you aren't ready, or in the mood, don't.

The Mulligan

The pain had been excruciating – a tsunami of agony. But it had just . . . stopped. Gone. The noise, too . . . And it had been night. A dark and stormy night, appropriately. My eyes were still screwed shut, but I could tell it was light out.

Tentatively, fearfully, I opened one eye, just a peep. Definitely light out, though the light felt strange.

Somewhere behind me, I heard a sound that seemed natural, harmless . . . tantalizingly familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. A swooooosh followed by a sharp crack. Slowly, I opened my eye more, then the other one. I blinked several times.

What am I doing in a . . . pasture?

I heard the sound again and looked around. A guy was teeing up golf balls. Looked to be in his fifties. Dude could spend a profitable hour at the barber shop – his hair and beard were a bit wild. But he looked like he was in pretty good shape for a guy my own age.

Swoosh . . . crack!

“Shit!” He shook his head.

“Might want to work on your grip,” I offered. Then stopped. I mean, first, why am I talking to this guy? Why am I even here? And . . . what’s wrong with my voice? It seemed thin, reedy. Insubstantial.

I looked down and noticed that my body, too, was wrong. I had always longed to be a woman, but I wasn't that. My body was thin, seemingly as insubstantial as my voice. Sexless, to all appearances, though I was wearing something that reminded me of one of those robes I wore, decades ago, when I was an altar server.

“Ah! You're with us.” He looked my way briefly, to confirm my “with-ness.”

I guess I passed.

He bent down and placed another ball. “Your old man says the same thing. About my grip.”

Huh? Pops had been dead now for . . . oh, wait a minute!

Swoosh . . . crack! He grunted, noncommittal. He gave me another look, this one kind of sour. “That’s why I owed him a mulligan.”

I was sitting, and didn’t think getting up was a good idea. “Pops is long gone. So I’m either dreaming, or . . . .”

He placed another ball and resumed his stance. “'Or.' Yeah, pretty much.”

Swoosh . . . crack!

“Pig farts!” He shook his head with disgust and turned to face me, resting the club against his left shoulder. “Well that was quite the clusterfuck you just managed, wasn’t it?”

“I . . . uh . . . what?” My brain seemed to be having some trouble tracking. “What do you mean? Where am I?”

“Look, I owe Karl a mulligan, not a morning of babysitting. You aren’t. That’s the point. Your little physics experiment with the bridge abutment at ninety miles an hour saw to that.”

I felt my face flush. The memory came back, hard. “Yeah . . . I . . . yeah. So . . . Not heaven?”

“This?” He sounded derisive. “Get real. Look, like I said, I owe your dad one. Go talk to him, and see me when you’re done.”

“Wait . . . Pops is here?”

“Thataways.” He waved his hand behind me. “Down by the crick. Probably trying to catch something.” He shook his head. “Stubborn bastard.”

“Holy shit!” I jumped up.

“Not really,” he said. “Leastwise, not here. Anyhow, take as long as you want . . . time don’t matter here. But stay inside the fence.”

I ran.

My legs ate up distance, but somehow I had no sense of exertion. No increase in my heart rate, no change in my breathing. No burn in my muscles – but also, no dopamine rush. I willed movement, and I moved. It was strangely bloodless.

I found him by the muddy banks of a sluggish creek, and sure enough, he had some sort of jury-rigged fishing pole and line. At the sight of his shapeless hat and his compact form in all of its dad-bod glory, I slowed, then stopped. I wanted to see him, so bad, but . . . . Can I face him? After . . . .

A beloved, but long-gone head rose from the grass, and a voice I still heard in my dreams said, “Wooof!”

“Trent?” My voice broke as the hound rose, stretched, and made a ponderous charge in my direction. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I don’t care what that old fart said!” I knelt, taking his sloppy kisses and wrapping my arms around his powerful body. “Fuckin’ A, this is heaven.” I was bawling, lost in the wonder of seeing my dog again, feeling him wriggle, smelling his houndy smell.

“I thought it might go easier, if I brought him.”

Through the blur of my tears, I could see my father’s form above me. “Oh, Pops!” My tears flowed even harder, and my throat was so tight I could barely speak. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry! I made such a mess of everything!”

He squatted down by me. “It’s okay, Jilly. Let’s talk. Maybe I can help.”

The improbability that there was any hope for fixing what golf man back there had called my clusterfuck went on the back burner. “Jilly?”

“Well, you call yourself Jill, in your head anyways. I figure a dad should have a nickname for his daughter. How’d I do?”

“You know?” It came out as an appalled whisper. “I was always so careful . . . there’s no way!”

Trent’s hammer head came up to butt my chest, reminding me that whatever I was doing with my gums, my hands could be put to use giving belly scritches.

With a sob, I burrowed my face into his bull-like neck and complied.

His tail went into overdrive, and he “wooorf’ed” happily into my ear.

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You see? Ol’ Trent knows better’n we do. Always did. Love and affection – that’s what counts.”

My tears just wouldn’t stop.

The hand on my shoulder gave a squeeze. “We didn’t see it, Jilly. Leastwise, I didn’t, and I’m sure Maura would’ve told me, if she had. But . . . I see things now I didn’t, then.”

I was quiet, drawing strength from the happy beast in my arms. Strength enough to ask the question that burned inside. “Do you hate me?” I couldn’t look up.

He sat and put an arm around me. “Oh, Jilly . . . it kills me, that you have to ask. I mean, I’m dead already. But . . . you know.”

His dad humor caused a spasm – some mix of a gasp, a snort . . . and a sob – to escape my lips.

“Wooorf,” Trent replied.

“Things look different, from before,” Pops said gently. “Eternity does that to you. You see what’s important, like that fool hound there. . . . And what’s not. If you’d told me, back when you were little, that you were a girl? I wouldn’t have been there for you. I know it. You knew it. Why you had to hide, I guess . . . .”

He sat silently for a minute, collecting his thoughts. Rubbing my back with a slow, circular motion. “I’m sorry, kid. My head was full of nonsense. Everything I’d been taught, everything I thought I knew. Don’t think I’m making excuses; it’s on me. . . . But I love you, Jill. Always have, always will.”

I shook my head, managing to sit up again, while still giving Trent the attention he deserved. “I didn’t know what I was, Pops. Other than different . . . some kind of wrong.” I stared at the trees by the creek, dark against an oddly pale gray sky. Stared away, so I didn’t have to see his face. “I’d sneak into Meaghan’s room and wear her clothes, and imagine . . . But I was so ashamed. So afraid. And I knew . . . I knew I looked ridiculous. That I wasn’t . . . that I couldn’t be . . . .”

He kissed the top of my head as I wept. “I know, honey. I know.”

“You do?" Something deep and dark welled up inside. "Do you know why . . . Why I wasn’t . . . born the way I should have been? Why I was such a Goddamned freak!” I shocked myself with the savagery of the question, as it tore through me. I pulled back, appalled at myself. “I’m . . . I’m sorry! I didn’t mean . . . .”

He shushed me and held me close. “Yes, you did, and it’s okay. But . . . remember how I used to tell you that the mysteries of the universe . . . “

“. . . are above your paygrade?” I finished for him. “Yeah. You mentioned it, once or twice.”

“They still are, kid. I’m just your father, all’s said. Probably a better version of him – maybe even the best version – but it’s still just me.”

I didn’t know how I still had tears left. “I’ve missed you so much!”

“I know. But, Jilly . . . I was always there.”

“Were you? Then you know . . . . You know I messed up. And how bad.”

“Sure. But I’d like to hear you tell me. Besides . . . Sometimes it helps to talk it out.

Where to even begin? I’d messed up so many times . . . so many ways.

I loved my sister’s room . . . Everything was so tidy . . . so soft. I padded across the thick carpet, making no sound. Drawn to her chest of drawers, off-white with an antique glaze . . . . her panties were always neatly rolled up in the top left drawer . . . . on the right, her bras and a couple of camisoles . . . . I reached out, trembling . . . .

* * * *
Meaghan had her own apartment, and I was alone. Her old room – her beautiful room, that I had loved so much – was Pop’s study, now. Filled with books and papers and smelling all wrong. But I was standing in the middle of it anyway . . . At least the carpet felt the same against my stocking feet, my purloined dress reaching my knees . . . I felt a familiar stab of terror, as I heard the garage door open . . . .

* * * *
My college dorm . . . I was a junior, and I had my own room, finally . . . . I was ready for bed, but I stood in front of the full-length mirror that was the closet door. The silky nightgown felt wonderful. But . . . I looked absurd. Ridiculous. I screamed in silence – always in silence – What are you doing?

* * * *
“Hey, Caroline – you up for a coffee?” I was standing nonchalantly – I hoped it was nonchalantly, anyway – in the door to her office. We’d worked together for a while, but we weren’t on the same team . . . .

She looked up, sun catching her flowing, golden hair, the sparkle of her eyes. “Sure, Jack! Just give me half a minute!”

* * * *
Classic Americana . . . a porch . . . a pool of light around an incandescent bulb . . . . “I had a great time, tonight, Jack.” Her voice was soft. Shy, almost. “Thank you.” She looked up at me, so close.

I took the half step, folded her into my arms, and kissed her. Softly, gently . . . like she might vanish, disappear like a soap bubble.

* * * *

The bag was almost full, I grabbed the last item, and stuffed it in – a crisp, white full slip. I checked my drawers. My closet. I had it all. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I’d done a purge.

But it would be the last! The last. No more! There will be no more ‘Jill!’ Enough!

* * * *

She was so beautiful, sitting there in the moonlight. She made me want to be the best, the boldest, the wisest and smartest man the world has ever known. I wanted to be everything she could ever want, and more besides. I would never be worthy of her. But I would try!

“Caroline Jones, will you marry me?”

* * * *
Light pooled in rich colors on the polished stone floor, filtered through acres of stained glass. The church was full – family, friends, all there for us. All happy for us. I looked into those amazing eyes . . . the eyes that always took my breath. Almost, they took my nerve as well.

But I took a deep, steadying breath. It helped. “I, John, take you, Caroline, to my lawful wife, to have and to hold from this day forward . . . .”

* * * *
“Oh my God, Caroline – he’s beautiful! So beautiful!”

“Isn’t he, though?” She looked down at his sleeping face, framed by wispy tendrils of spun-gold silk, every plane, every curve, every line of her body a symphony of infinite tenderness. “Karl.”

“You sure?”

She looked at me and smiled. “Of course I’m sure. I’d go with John, but you won’t let me.”

I looked at my tiny son. Rested a finger against his impossibly smooth cheek. “You’d better like golf, boyo.”

* * * *
“He did it! He did it!”

Caroline dropped down to her haunches and spread her arms. “You did?”

Karl ran to her, his ruddy face one enormous smile. “Mummy!! I made it halfway down the block. No training wheels or ANYTHING!”

She crushed him in a hug, looking up at me, her eyes brilliant.

* * * *
My finger traced the satiny smoothness of the nightgown that hung, tantalizingly, from the hook behind the door. I ached, as I always ached.

“Dammit, Jill. No!!!”

* * * *
“Do you think it’s ADD? ADHD?”

“I’m not a doctor, Caroline. How should I know? Let’s get him tested.

“I don’t want him all doped up!”

“I’m not wild about it, either. But that’s a later decision point.” I looked into her worried eyes. “If there’s an issue, we should find out about it.”

“There’s an issue,” she said, with a certainty I shared. “I’m not sure putting a label on it’s going to help, but . . . . okay. Let’s look into it.”

* * * *
“You’ll make a golfer, yet, boyo!”

Karl the younger looked at Pops and laughed. “Says the guy I beat last weekend!”

Pops waved away the comment like the irrelevancy it was. “You win one game, and suddenly you’re Tiger Woods?”

“You gotta admit, that was a hell of a shot, Pops,” I said. He was already as good as me.

Pops grinned. “I do! I did! Now, do it again. A hundred times!”

* * * *
My image in the mirror looked no better than it ever had. The light, flowing dress felt wonderful, but my waist now bulged a bit where it should have tucked, my hips were still skinny, and the slight flab at my pecs was in no way sufficient to fill the bra I was wearing.

“I don’t care,” I said, my jaw clenched. I brought the tube of lipstick to my lips, and applied it defiantly.

* * * *
“I’m worried about him, Jack.”

“I know, Sweetie,” I sighed. “But he’s never been . . . .”

“Smart?” Her voice was sharp with challenge.

“No, he’s plenty smart. Just not . . . book smart. Academically inclined.”

“The way he’s going, no college will take him!” She was worried. Afraid.

“Maybe . . . maybe it’s not for him?”

“Jack!! He’ll never get ahead if he doesn’t go to college!”

Same argument . . . the stage differed, but the issue didn’t. “I understand. Maybe he just needs more time to mature.”

“At his age, I was getting good grades AND working twenty hours a week!”

“I know, Sweetie.”

“You know. Fine. But what are we going to DO about it?”

* * * *
I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and slid my hand under the pile of jeans that were, just at the moment, a bit too tight. Time to get serious about the elliptical that was collecting dust in the basement.

My hand encountered the chemise and I pulled it out. I ran my hand over the fabric, feeling the sense of longing that was always there, just below the surface. I had a couple hours, and nothing to do but bills. Why not be comfortable?

I started to get undressed.

* * * *
“Can you believe it? Twenty-five years?”

“Every time I look into those perfect eyes of yours . . . It seems like yesterday.”

“I love you, Jack,” she said softly. “As much as that first kiss. More.”

She was still beautiful. She’d cut her hair to something sensible and she’d started coloring it. There were worry lines around her eyes and mouth. Some had Karl’s fingerprints on them; others, I knew, had mine. But she was still pretty trim, and her face lit with inner light when she laughed. Her laugh was always magic, even if it was rarer, now.

“I love you, Caroline. All the way to the moon and back.”

* * * *
“It’s an Associate’s degree, for God’s sake! Why do they even HAVE a graduation ceremony?”

“It’s important to him, Sweetie.”

She sighed. “I know. And I know how hard it was for him, too. I’ll be there, and I’ll be proud as a momma grizzly. But . . . ah, Jack, it just kills me!” Her perfect eyes were red with tears.

“I know, love. But what else can we do?”

* * * *
“Jack . . . ?”

“What is it?” I was in the study, doing the bills.

I heard her steps coming from the bedroom. “I was cleaning old stuff out of your drawers and found this.”

I turned, knowing what I would see in her hands as she walked across the hall. Readying the lie I had worried I might need, some day. But I looked in her eyes, and the lie wouldn’t come. After a lifetime, I was done hiding it.

“It’s mine, Caroline. I like to wear it, sometimes.”

She stopped dead, the blood draining from her face. That beautiful face. “What?” Her voice was quiet. Laced with disbelief, touches of fear, and spreading frost around the edges.

“I like to wear it sometimes,” I repeated, as evenly as I could. “There’s a part of me that’s always felt a bit . . . feminine, I guess. So, occasionally . . . .”

“What are you saying? That you’re some kind of transvestite?” The fear was stronger, the ice harder, the disbelief giving way to anger.

“I’m not sure about the label, honestly. But I’m still me. Does it really matter?”

She leaned against the door, her face a hard mask. “Does it MATTER? We’ve been married for twenty-seven YEARS, Jack! And, oh, by the way, you're some kind of girl inside, and you like to wear women’s clothes, and that wasn’t worth MENTIONING to me?”

“I’m sorry, Sweetie . . . .”

“Don’t CALL me that!”

* * * *
The living room looked clean. Almost antiseptic. Stepping back into it, I felt like I was in a stranger’s house. I suppose I was. It felt as foreign as the hotel room where I’d spent the last three weeks. The worst three weeks of my life.

“Sit down, Jack.” She was dressed in slacks and a nice top, and she sounded calm. But her posture, when she sat in the chair across from me, was formal.

Judgment day.

“I want a divorce,” she said. Still calm.

“Sw . . . Caroline. Please. I’m sorry I hurt you, and it won’t happen again!”

She shook her head. “Jack, don’t. You hid part of who you are from me. It’s not going to be any better if you try to bury it again.”

“It’s not that important to me . . . .”

“Bullshit!” she said, cutting me off with an impatient gesture. “Just bullshit! No more lies, Jack! I went around the house; I think I’ve found all your little stashes. It IS important to you! It’s who you ARE.”

“But it’s not ALL of who I am,” I pleaded, “And you’re MORE important!”

She looked at me sadly, the anger suddenly gone. “Thank you for that, Jack. It means something. I don’t know what, yet. But something.”

Her anger had been easier to take than her grief. I made a motion, involuntary, but she stopped me.

“It doesn’t change anything. You are who you are. And, Jack . . . I’m sorry. Really I am. But that’s just not what I signed up for. I . . . I just can’t.”

I struggled to control my own tears. I’d done enough harm, without that. Pulling myself together, I said, “Of course, Caroline. I’ll do whatever you want. It’s . . .”

I looked around, wordlessly. The house. The books. The photos. The stupid, but important stuff . . . the accounts, the 401ks, the insurance policies that covered every possible disaster. Except, of course, this one.

“It’s all yours. I won’t fight you.”

“Dammit, Jack, I don’t want your money!” She was angry. Affronted.

“Well. Whatever, then.” I stood, suddenly unable to take any more. “Just have your guy draw up the papers. However you want. I’ll sign.”

She rose and followed me to the door, her face hard once again. “Just once in your life, would you FIGHT?”

I turned to her, studying her precious face a final time. Every line. “Would it change anything? Really?”

“You might go out like . . . .” She stopped herself, but it was too late.

“Like a man? But that’s just the problem, isn’t it?”

Her faced eased, and the sadness returned, a katana through the center of my soul. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess so.”

At the door, she handed me a bag that she’d put, appropriately enough, in the closet. “Please take these with you.”

“Of course.” There was no need to look at what was in the bag. “Goodbye, Caroline.”

Her eyes – her perfect eyes – were filled with tears she refused to shed. “Goodbye, Jack.”

As the door closed behind me, the sky opened up and rain drenched me in an instant. I whispered into the storm, “Goodbye, my sweet love!”

* * * *
The parking lot was deserted, the lights pale and dim. I drove to the place where a metal bin was located, a place for the well-to-do to donate clothing. I’d heard they were scams.

I didn’t care.

The rain pelted me as I opened the bin and dropped the bag; it didn’t sound like it fell far. Probably be picked up, soon. Definitely the last purge.

Good bye, Jill.

I drove around. Past the house where I had grown up . . . . I didn’t know the family that was living there now. Past the office where I’d met Caroline. The restaurant where I’d proposed was long gone; there was a Walgreens there now. Past the church . . . Karl’s grade school . . . . the park where we’d take him to the playscape . . . the golf course where Pops had taught me how to play. And, later, Karl.

I didn’t want to think about Karl. But he’d still have Caroline. A Mom who was really a Mom.

It was 2:00 a.m. before I got on the highway. Not a car to be seen. In a flash of lightning, I saw the overpass, a mile in the distance, and began to accelerate. Sporty, my little Nissan wasn’t.

Goodbye, Jack.

* * * *

I don’t know how long I sat there, in that place between places, Pop’s arm around me, Trent’s head now on my lap. Trying to sort it all out, explain how I’d gone wrong. But I finally recovered enough to say, “I thought it was just, I don’t know. A fetish, maybe. Something that would fade, if I was strong enough. If . . . If I loved Caroline enough.”

He hugged me, wordless. Letting me talk it out.

“But it never did,” I said, staring at trees that never felt the touch of a breeze. “It was always there. That awareness that I was wrong . . . . That the face I showed the world – even to Caroline and Karl – was a lie. I kept wanting to be Jill. The person I thought I was, inside. It never got easier.”

I sniffed, but forced myself to finish. “There were so many times I gathered up my things and tossed them, promising myself that Jill was done. But they were just clothes, and sooner or later, I’d get more. Because Jill was always there.”

I shrugged, remembering. “Other times, I almost told Caroline everything. But . . . I didn’t . . . I couldn’t do it. I knew that the truth would hurt her so much.”

I finally looked at him, but I still saw only love and understanding. I went on. “Then she found a chemise, and I suddenly couldn’t keep it in any more. I told her . . . and it was every bit as bad as I’d thought it would be. Worse. She wanted a divorce. Naturally. But that wasn’t the worst. It was just seeing how deep she was wounded . . . . I couldn’t cope, any more. You know the rest.”

“You don’t think you’d hurt her worse, driving into that bridge abutment?” His question contained no undertones of disapproval.

I shrugged again. “Pops, I don’t know. I hope not. Maybe she’d feel liberated . . . .”

He looked skeptical. “You really think so?”

I looked back at the motionless trees and sighed. “Probably not. But she’s done with me, anyway. She’d move on.”

“And Karl?”

I looked down at the hound, now drooling contentedly as he slept. Hopefully the robe doesn't need to be dry cleaned. “Karl’s grown up now. Has a job, roommates. I think, even, a girlfriend, though he’s being cagey about that. This day would come, sooner or later.”

I looked back at him. “I lost you when I was forty-two. Wasn’t any easier then, you know.”

“If you knew you were wrong – wrong about how this would affect them – would it change your thinking?”

I sat up abruptly, earning disgruntled “rooof!” from Trent. “What do you mean?”

Compassion filled his eyes, and he spoke as gently as I’d ever heard him. “I’m sorry, Jilly. There’s no way to sugar-coat this. Caroline was livid at you, as you’d expect. But she was even angrier at herself. She felt she’d failed you, when you’d needed her love the most. She convinced herself it was all her fault.”

“No!!! It wasn’t!” I was trembling. Pops was suddenly the ghost of Christmas yet to come, and I knew it would only get worse.

“She tried to dull the pain, the usual ways. Alcohol. Drugs. She died about two years after you did. Overdose.”

“Nooooooooo!” My scream split the heavens. How could the pain be this great? Damn it, I’d died to stop the pain!

“It didn’t work out so well for Karl, either, Jill.”

“Stop! Stop! I don’t . . . I can’t . . . “ I bolted up, causing the hound to yelp, and ran.

His voice followed me, effortlessly. Like it was in my ear. “Jill, honey. You’ve got to stop running sometime.”

I stopped, defeated. The old man with the bad swing had been right. What a complete clusterfuck I’d made of everything. Oh, my sweet love!!!

Turning back was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Pops was still where I'd left him, calming Trent down from the indignity of my abrupt departure. I walked back to them, slowly, bent down and rubbed Trent’s always itchy snout. “Sorry, boy.”

“Wooof!”

I looked at Pops. “Your friend . . . said something about owing you a mulligan?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Pete was desperate to win a round, so I gave him one when his first shot off the 13th hole ended up in the sandpit.”

“Pete? Like, Saint Peter? And you’re beating him at golf?”

“He may be a saint, Jill, but that don’t make him Arnold Palmer. Besides, like I always told you, ability . . .”

“. . . is no substitute for practice. I remember.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I might have said that more times than I shoulda. But Pete’s a busy guy, he doesn’t get much practice, and no one can teach him a proper grip, ’cuz, he’s, like, 'Saint Peter' an’ everything. So, yeah. He owes me one.”

I looked at him intently. “Tell me what it means.”

“You get to go back . . . you pick the spot. And start again, going from where you were then.”

“If I go back to when I was first dating Caroline and tell her then . . . will she still accept me?”

He stood back up, looking down at me as I loved my dog. “I don’t know. I only know the results of the future you created, just now.”

I could only look up at him, trying to weigh his words. “It could turn out worse! I mean, if she said ‘no,’ Karl would never even be born!”

He said, patiently, “It could. I’ve known mulligans that went wilder than the original shot.”

I snorted. “You’ve hit mulligans that were wilder than your original shot.”

“Nice of you to remember!” Then he looked serious and crouched back down beside me. “I don’t know what’ll happen, Jill . . . but you’d be hard pressed to end up worse than you did. It was bad. For you, for Caroline, for my grandson, even for the EMT who had to pry you out of that car. The only one who wasn’t affected was your Mom, and that’s just ’cuz she can’t even remember her own name, now.”

I thought about it carefully. “Almost any spot I pick, I should do better . . . especially knowing what I know now.”

He shook his head. “You won’t, though. Sorry. You’ll only remember your life – the parts that happened after the spot you pick – for a couple of minutes after you get back. Beyond that . . . it’s a new timeline. You won’t remember a thing – it won’t even trouble your dreams.”

I gave a rueful smile. “No buying into Google at the IPO, huh?”

“Shoulda listened to me, kiddo.”

“I know.” I rose. “Okay . . . . I’m . . . I’ll go back. I’ve got to make this right. For Caroline and Karl. Even for the EMT. I’ve got to.”

He got to his feet and said, “C’mon, then.” The three of us walked back the way we came. Trent, as usual, ranged this way and that, checking for smells. I wondered if there was anything worth smelling here.

“Jill . . . You want to do right by Caroline and Karl, and you’re right to put them first. I’d do the same. But . . . spare a thought for yourself, too, would you?”

“Me?” I snorted. “Why?”

He stopped me, grabbing both shoulders, his face suddenly contorted with pain. “Oh, girl! How ’bout just ’cuz I love you to pieces, you are the whole world to me, and I never even saw you properly! Maybe if I had, none of this would of happened. I am so sorry!” He pulled me into a bear hug and cried so hard I thought he’d burst.

And I cried too, right there with him. “Pops . . . Pops! It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll fix it, Daddy! I promise, I’ll fix it!”

That just made him cry harder.

“You were the best father ever,” I said, fiercely. “Don’t you dare think otherwise!”

He broke our embrace and looked away, taking a moment to wipe his eyes. “Well . . . don’t you worry about me, Jilly. I’ll be fine. Me’n Pete and the dog ‘n all. Just . . . take care of yourself, will you? Spare a little love for the person you are?”

“Okay, Daddy. I will.”

“That’s my girl. C’mon now, let’s stop that idiot before his muscle memory locks on his current excuse for a golf swing.”

We started walking again.

“Daddy . . . is this your place, now? Did you get to heaven?”

He chuckled. “Story for another day, Jilly. You’ll find out when you get back.”

We heard him before we saw him.

Swoosh . . . crack!

“Oh, God damn it!”

“Pete!!! Pete!!! Not like that! How many times do I have to show you?” Pops was never rational about golf.

“Don’t start on me, Karl!” he warned. He looked at me. “You ready? He explained it all to you?”

Deep breath. “Yes, sir. What do I need to do?”

“Just focus on a moment. Your choice. Visualize it. Where you were. Who was with you. The sounds. The smells. . . . then, all you have to do is step forward, into the moment. Carpe Diem and all that.”

I nodded, the motion shaky. I looked around, bent and clapped my hands, and Trent came lumbering over.

“Wooof!”

My hands caressed his head, his silky, floppy, perfect long ears. “I love you, boy! Miss you every day!” Then I stood. “Pops . . . Daddy. I’ll do better. And I’ll be back!”

“I know, honey. Go on now!” His eyes were misty.

I turned back to the Saint and closed my own eyes, following his instructions. The moment rose around me, everything as clear and sharp as the instant it had happened. “Ready.”

“Just step forward, and the moment’s yours.”

So I did.

– The end.

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