Getting a Life, Even If You're Dead by Beth Watson

Author:Beth Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elizabeth Watson
Published: 2013-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Amber

Could Claire feel our presence? She kept looking over her shoulder while we followed her around Paris. Either she was paranoid or intuitive enough to feel our presence without us materializing. She slipped inside another store and stood by the window, nervously scanning the sidewalk for stalkers.

Loic grabbed a pink, floppy hat with flowers and a pair of white sunglasses off a display. He put them on. “She’ll never see me in this disguise.”

I giggled. “Pink’s your color.” I twisted my hair up and put on a wide-brimmed, black-and-white hat and big, black sunglasses.

Loic stood staring at me, smiling.

“What?”

“You look really...good. Like Audrey Hepburn. She’s my mom’s favorite actress.” He kept staring at me.

I smiled, unable to recall if a guy had ever told me I looked good. “Ah, thanks.” I noticed a woman staring in our direction, looking freaked out. I snagged the hats from our heads, along with the sunglasses, and put them back on the display. It took a few minutes for an item to dematerialize once we put it on or held it. Usually I was so careful. “We don’t want to scare Claire.”

Loic shrugged. “Maybe she’d be scared enough to go to the police for protection.”

Claire left, and we followed. She popped into a cyber café and checked her Facebook page. When there were no messages from Pierrot about her letter, or whoever she was expecting a message from, she pounded a fist on the table and bolted out of the café.

“You follow her,” I told Loic. “She still has ten minutes left on this computer. I’m going to check quickly to see if I’ve gotten any Facebook friends. I’ll catch up with you.”

Loic took off after Claire.

I was seated at a corner table, so nobody noticed the computer logging itself onto my Facebook page. Forty-three people had responded to my friend requests. I anxiously scanned my friends.

Antonio in Spain had become an ER doctor. A prime example of the trickle-down effect of my job. By saving Antonio, I’d saved hundreds more. Lindsey in New York was married with two little dark-haired girls. She had a photo of them dancing in The Nutcracker ballet. Too precious.

I envisioned myself as the proud mother kneeling between the two girls, giving them a loving squeeze. If I had a heart, it would seriously be breaking. I could never be part of a loving, functional family with a daughter I could treat like a princess and a husband who loved me and lived for family vacations to Disney World. The type of man I imagined my dad would have been.

Besides sticking around in Limboland for my job, there was the whole dad thing. I’d convinced myself he’d died rather than abandoned me at birth as my mom had claimed. What if I crossed over and he wasn’t there? Ruining my idealized vision of the man he was, the father he could have been, given the chance. It’d be as if a part of me died all over again.

I

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