“If you’re talking about the white-cloud, sit-around-playing-harps kind of heaven, then no,” she said. “But I believe our energy doesn’t just disappear the moment we die. I believe there is a place for them. Why?”
“And soul mates. Do you believe Jin and you were meant to be together? Fated. Destiny…whatever?” I asked.
Stacy’s sharp gaze met mine. “I see where this is going.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised, because I’d spent half the night trying to figure it out myself—my reluctance at dating someone else.
“If you loved Darren, if he was your soul mate, then you must be destined to spend eternity in the afterlife together as well, right? So how could you possibly consider the idea of loving someone else?” she said gently.
“It’s stupid,” I said, frustrated with myself.
“It’s not stupid, Tris,” she tried to reassure me.
“I mean… Who knows if there is even something out there? Maybe this is all we have. Maybe this is heaven, hell, and reality. But I can’t keep from thinking of him…of what will happen when I die and he’s suddenly there with me, but right next to him is some other person I chose to love as well… How could I choose?”
Just the thought of not choosing Darren made my entire insides splinter apart even as brown eyes and pink lips that tasted like sweet holidays also filled my vision.
“Who says you’d have to choose?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t that be unfair? Wouldn’t they want to know who I loved more?”
“You can love people differently without it being more or less. What you had with Darren you’ll never ever feel again. But that doesn’t mean what you feel for someone else won’t be equally as strong,” she told me.
I wasn’t convinced, and as much as I loved my friend, she hadn’t had Jin die on her. She hadn’t had to choose between staying faithful and moving on.
“Look. Like you said, we have no idea what’s waiting for us after these bodies die. For all we know, it’s a huge mix of electrical waves where there is no defined unit. No me. No you. Maybe we’re all one entity. Maybe we come right back to earth and live again. Maybe there’s nothing. But you’re thirty-four years old. You’ll likely have another sixty years on this planet if Elana is any judge of the life expectancy of the women in your family. You shouldn’t have to give up human touch…intimacy…affection…love for all those years.”
“Grams did,” I said.
It was true. Grams had lived a solitary life after she’d lost my grandfather. She’d lost him when I was younger than Hannah. I barely recalled anything of him that wasn’t a picture or a story.
“But she was, like, what, sixty at the time? That’s really different, Tris. I mean, I still think she should have gotten her rocks off with old Alejandro Romero. I think he loved her more than he loved his apple trees.”
I giggled at the thought of Grams with the seventy-five-year-old grandfather of three. He’dspent a lot of time with Grams, routinely bringing her flowers from the farm he managed with his children.
“Who knows,” I said with a smile. “Maybe she wasn’t always alone. Maybe she did have fun with him, and that’s why he brought her all those bouquets.”
I waggled my eyebrows up and down.
Stacy’s laughter joined my own. “I wouldn’t put it past your grandmother to be a hot cougar like that.”
Hannah came running toward me, one hand holding her top hat, the other holding onto her purple-and-pink shawl. “Mommy!”
“Yes,Chiquita?”
“I forgot. I have to get to the store.”
I smiled. “What did we forget there?”
“Brady!”
Stacy choked and then started laughing while I gave her a dirty look.
“He said he’d teach me a new song,” Hannah continued over the top of Stacy’s chuckle. “Grams always taught me new songs on Fridays.”
She was right. The schedule I’d given Brady had included time with Hannah on Fridays. My days were completely askew right now—too many things I was trying to keep afloat. I looked at my phone to check the time. We had an hour at least.
“We’re not late, but why don’t we go downtown, and you can tell Helen what flavor you want your cake to be before going to the store.”
