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to reveal a tattoo. Mirabel. My mother’s name.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I came, but she never recognized me here. She didn’t love me here. We are the ones who love, and you are the ones who accept that love. She didn’t accept me. She didn’t even see me.”
    “And so you spent your whole life on this side, for nothing?”
    “I was able to watch you grow up. From a distance.”
    “I don’t even know his name.”
    “Michael.”
    “I think I want to go there.”
    “You can’t think. You have to know. And it can’t just be about sex. That was my mistake.”
    I blushed, thinking about all the ways Michael and I had done it.
    “Can I leave a note? For my mother?”
    “No, I’m sorry.”
    “She’ll miss me.”
    “I’ll watch out for her.”
    “I wish you could both come.”
    “I know.”
    “That other place. It’s where people go when they die, isn’t it? That’s what it is, right?”
    “I can’t tell you.”
    “Will he be there? Michael?”
    “He’ll be there. He’s waiting now.”
    The old man pulled a red daisy from nowhere, and I lifted it to my nose and inhaled the intoxicating scent. The ground fell away. The sky brightened. The blood in my veins began to sing. Panic fluttered. “I changed my mind.”
    “Too late,” he said, but his voice was faint. I felt myself swirling higher, and when I looked down, my body was lying in the road, and the old man was standing over me, holding my hand. Above me, the sky turned dark and the moon rose beyond the hill, blood red and full.
    I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital, and Michael was standing over me, smiling, holding my hand. “We thought we’d lost your for a while,” he said, love in his eyes.
    “I was just trying to decide.” My voice was thick and groggy.
    “Trying to decide what?” he asked.
    “If I was going to stay or go.”
    He frowned, as if trying to make sense of my words. “I think you’re a little out of it. You were inhaling that ether like it was a flower or something. That was quite a fall you took. The carnie said the ride was solid, but when that basket came unhooked and you tumbled to the ground—“ His voice caught.
    “How long have we been together?” I asked.
    “You don’t remember?”
    “Humor me.”
    “Eight years. Eight years this October.”
    “And your tattoo?”
    “This one?” he unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his shoulder. There was my name. “Got that right after we met.”
    “Have I ever worked at Winn-Dixie?”
    “They don’t even have Winn-Dixies around here.”
    I wanted to ask where here was, but I could see the worry in his eyes, and I thought I’d better wait. I began to think that maybe this was the real world, and that other place, the place of my mother and the Georgia sky and the fireflies and Winn-Dixie, had been some kind of limbo. But it had felt real. As real as this.
    On the shelf behind Michael was a blue vase of red daisies. Next to the daisies, a pink stuffed elephant. I heard the sound of small feet on a tile floor.
    “Mommy! Mommy!” Two blond-haired girls appeared in the doorway and ran for the bed.
    ***
    Other titles by Paisley Grey
    The Secret of Blackthorn Manor
    You Put a Spell on Me
    Magic Moon
    Mad Love
    Power of Three
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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Magic Moon
Paisley Grey
Author
    Paisley