Epilogue

I was dead, but I was still thinking. I hung suspended over my corpse for a moment, watching it gasp its last. No blood had spilled out of the bucket, but the pale, dead looking hands flopped off the rim into the corpses lap, spilling a few last drops on the newspaper. Nice and neat.

And then suddenly my incorporeal essence was yanked upward through the roof, as though it were on a string and somebody who was really, really pissed was yanking on it.

I flew up through the cloudy sky and then, before I could blink, there was an odd flipping sensation, like I was being turned inside out and upside down all at once, and I was standing before a clearly angry Tabbitha Langston.

"Robert Torrence!" she screamed. "Do you have any fucking idea how god damn pissed off I am at you right now?"

"Uh," I said intelligently. Seeing her had totally floored me. I didn't really expect there to be any kind of afterlife. I thought I would just go out like a light and never wake up again.

She hadn't changed a day since I last saw her, back before I got drafted into the army. She didn't have a harp or wings, she was just Tabby. I felt all the old love rise in my heart and I started to sob.

She threw herself at me, and at first I thought she was going to hit me, but she wrapped her arms around me and sobbed with me.

Then she did hit me.

"You asshole," she cried. "How could you do that? You threw your life away! Do you have any idea how angry I am at you?"

"Tabby," I croaked, "you were my life. You were the reason I did everything I did. Everything I did was with one goal in mind: so that we could settle down and raise a family. Nothing was more important to me than you, and it hasn't been that way since you rescued me from Frank Shepard on those school steps. When you died, most of me died with you. I just didn't see any point in living anymore. I was all alone in the world and I didn't want to go on."

"Bobby," she sighed softly. "I've watched you all these years, although out here it was really more like a couple of hours. Time is different here. I was there when you fainted at the airport and I was there when you went through all those dangerous missions in Viet Nam, trying to get yourself killed. You didn't find another girl, hell you didn't even try to. I wanted more than anything for you to be happy, but all these years you just dragged on.

"This afternoon when you cried on the guitar that was given to you with love from me, the guitar that you played for all those years while I cheered you on, it set up something miraculous. There was so much love in that guitar that your tears for me caused an echo effect."

"What do you mean?"

"She means that you may have another chance," said a voice from behind me.

I turned but there was nothing there. "Who said that?"

There was a chuckle from nowhere. "That doesn't matter, child. Your love for this woman and her love for you was so great that it transcends time and space. When her essence fled her body, she thought of nothing but you. And when yours fled, you thought of nothing but her. You shed tears of love into an instrument that carried much residual love. Love is one of the greatest forces in the universe, and events have conspired to allow you to rectify some of the wrongs that have occurred in your life. Choose wisely, Robert Torrence, because this may only happen once."

And then I was sucked away down into a spiraling vortex of energy. I had only time to say "I love you" to Tabby before I was gone.

I came to rest standing on the access driveway to the Langston farm. It was a soft spring night, the buds beginning to open up on the trees. Somehow I knew just what night it was too.

I hurried up the long driveway, just in time to hear Tabby say, "Down boy, you'll get your chance." And then I was certain. I was back on prom night, 1966.

I was then faced with a couple of choices. I could stick around here and try to save Tabby's parents. But, and it gave me a sinking feeling to realize it, tonight was probably their night to go. When you gotta go, you gotta go. I doubted I could change much. They would be dead sooner or later, with or without my intervention.

And then I got a shock. I knew that I had been here already. I caught sight of myself, reflected in one of the living room windows. I looked like that creepy old guy I had seen at the steakhouse. I had seen myself, all those years ago. And I had felt something, an eerie premonition of events to come, looking at that old haggard face.

My decision made, I had no time to loose. I had somewhere to be.

It appeared that I was semisolid. As long as you didn't look at me in direct light, I was normal. I was like a hologram, not like a stereotypical ghost. I could pass through walls if I wanted though.

Feeling a bit low, I went in through the bedroom wall and, while Barbara and David were in the shower getting ready for their own date, I borrowed fifty dollars from Mr. Langston's wallet. He wouldn't be needing it anymore, but I still felt like a scuzz for doing it.

It took me a bit of time to get the hang of grasping something, while not trying to slip through it, but I finally managed. I was no sooner back out through the bedroom wall when I heard giggling and smacking sounds coming from the bathroom. It appeared they were going to have a quickie before dinner.

Using a mechanism I didn't quite grasp, I floated across the river into Portland faster than seemed possible. Then I walked normally in through the steakhouse door.

I was seated and had a newspaper someone had abandoned here in front of my face when my younger self and Tabby arrived. I watched them out of the corner of my eye. Did my face really light up that much when I was in Tabby's presence? I was amazed how much hand touching we had done. It was so natural that I never had even noticed it.