Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,20
in her kind eyes, “you needed to bury him . . .”
Diana felt her insides wrench. “. . . and I couldn’t. I can’t . . .” She tried and failed to hold back a sob.
“It’s hard. I know, it doesn’t seem fair,” Dr. Lightfoot said. She touched the back of Diana’s hand.
“Maybe he survived,” Diana said. “Because I still feel him. It feels just like he’s still here.”
“Diana,” Dr. Lightfoot said, “accepting death and letting go is the first step. Until you do that, you won’t be able to move on.”
Following Dr. Lightfoot’s good advice, over the months that followed Diana had tried to move on physically, even though the emotional journey would turn out to take much longer. She got rid of Daniel’s clothing and gave away his books. She moved out of the farmhouse and back into the house where she’d grown up. Still, her heart refused to accept that Daniel was gone. Every time she touched Daniel’s walking stick, it seemed to bring him back to her.
“That stick does not smell,” Ashley had said. “And it’s not even pine.”
“It’s not a literal smell,” Diana had tried to explain. To say it was Daniel’s essence sounded crazy. “It’s more of a feeling. It’s Daniel.”
“It’s you,” Ashley had said. “And maybe his ghost in your own head. Your phantom limb.”
That spring, around the time when Ashley had correctly predicted that the snow bells would be blooming in Diana’s backyard, hikers near the spot where Daniel disappeared found remains, picked over by scavengers, and an orange ski jacket. Jake traveled to Switzerland to bring Daniel back, but all he’d returned with were his ashes in a brass urn. When Diana had held it in her hands, she felt absolutely nothing.
“See?” Ashley had said. “He’s really and truly gone.”
It was at that point that she’d surrendered.
In Switzerland, Jake had obtained documents that enabled Daniel to be declared legally dead. He’d convinced Diana to invest the life insurance settlement—all of the one million dollars—in the business that they’d been planning to start when they returned from Switzerland. She knew that helping her was Jake’s way of dealing with the guilt he felt about Daniel—after all, Jake had been the one anchoring the rope.
The ding on her computer brought Diana back to the present. A chat window had opened.
GROB: U there?
This time, the interruption was welcome. A moment later he added:
GROB: I want to show you something. Meet me? 1329, 4655.
She stared at the coordinates, as if between the numbers or within the pattern she’d glean meaning. Was it safe? She’d learned the hard way about transporting to untested coordinates. Parts of OtherWorld were infested with willfully antisocial players who got pleasure from annoying everyone else. She’d once arrived at what she thought was a business meeting with a new client and found herself trapped in a combat sim. A cylindrical cage had dropped over her avatar. An avatar troll had appeared, knocked the cage over, and started rolling it down a hill and into a lake with Nadia trapped inside.
Diana had known it wasn’t real, just “cartoon characters,” as Ashley put it, but she’d been thoroughly freaked. Her heart had flipped into high gear and she couldn’t catch her breath as Nadia’s health meter plummeted and her body grew increasingly transparent.
It was an experience Diana had no desire to repeat, even though after “death” Nadia had simply transported home, where her “life” resumed as if it had never been terminated.
GROB: Come on. I won’t bite.
She could hear Ashley’s words: Sweetie, don’t you think it’s time you let someone in? Diana copied the new coordinates into OtherWorld’s atlas. No, the area was not damage enabled. No complaints had been logged. She clicked and brought up a map showing the area surrounding those coordinates. A single yellow dot indicated that an avatar was already there. Just one. GROB was waiting for her.
Diana slipped on her headphones and transported Nadia. A bell sounded, and sand-colored dunes materialized around her. She touched an arrow key and Nadia started to walk up the gentle slope toward the other avatar, her legs sinking knee-deep into virtual sand with each step.
GROB was facing away from her. He wore a light gray cowboy hat, jeans, and black high-tops with white soles. His dark wavy hair came down to his shoulders. As she came up behind him, she could see the view he was taking in. Waves breaking and water extending to the horizon.