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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: Terry's wife Claire may have died three years ago, but some things are stronger than death. Trapped between life and death, Claire refuses to let go until she can find a way to bear their child ... no matter what the price.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Realms of Fantasy, 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2005

6 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [30 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [43 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [20 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [257 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [21 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [75 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [92 KB] , hiebook (KML) [114 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [59 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [17 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [22 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [57 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [32 KB]
Words: 6403
Reading time: 18-25 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"The author asks hard questions and pulls no punches in this realistic, literate, and socially relevant short story. The characters are solid, and the dialogue is excellent."--Michael Gabriel Bailey, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

July

Claire waited until the 4th of July to tell me.

We were sitting on our balcony, watching the fireworks over Lake Michigan. Every year, folks take the boats out a few hundred yards from shore and shoot fireworks from the decks. The radio stations try to synchronize the music with the explosions, but they never get it quite right.

Our apartment was too far inland to see the lake itself. I had been lucky to find anything at all in West Bay for seven hundred a month, especially on such short notice.

Sitting there with my dead wife, I drummed my fingers to the R&B tune playing in the apartment next door. The smell of burgers and kielbasa rose up from the apartment beneath us.

"I'll be right back," Claire signed. She wasn't a ghost, at least not like ghosts I had watched on TV growing up. I could feel her lips as she kissed my cheek, like a feather brushing my skin.

To me, she smelled of smoke, but her sister Jennifer said it was all in my mind.

Claire returned with a stethoscope in her hands, the one she had used in her nursing classes. Her name was stamped onto a metal tag on the left earpiece.

I took it before the weight tore through the delicate membrane of her skin. Looping it around my neck to free my hands, I signed, "What's this for?"

She lifted the earpieces to my head and slipped them into place. With a wink, she pantomimed breathing on the end to warm the chestpiece, just like a doctor. Of course, she had no breath, and I heard nothing at all.

Her eyes danced as she signed the words, "Is this thing on?"