Chapter one

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON. 1993

Tess Gregory paced nervously from one end of her small office to the other, her hands twined in a cold, bloodless ball. The silence that she'd long ago learned to accept seemed suddenly oppressive, suffocating. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she glanced down at the Mickey Mouse watch on her wrist.

Twelve o'clock. She let out her breath in an anxious sigh. The results should have been back by now. Certainly if her latest experiment had been successful?

No. She refused to think negatively even for a moment.

She knew better than most the value of positive thinking. Wearing a rut in the utilitarian gray carpet and worrying herself sick wouldn't do a bit of good. The lab would get back to her in their own sweet time, and until then, she simply had to relax. To believe.

Tess squeezed her eyes shut. It was an old childhood trick to calm her ragged nerves, one she'd often used as the doctors poked and prodded and asked questions she could no longer hear. She blacked out the physical world and focused on the one special noise that was captured forever in her memory: laughter. As always, it came to her quickly, lifting her spirits and easing the gnawing anxiety from her stomach.

She pried her fingers apart and shoved her hands into her lab coat's deep pockets. Taking a deep breath to calm her racing nerves, she tilted her chin and sailed past the cushioned beige walls of her cubicle.

In the employee dining room, lunch hour was in full swing. Dozens of white-coated people were clustered around the long, rectangular table. Heaps of Styrofoam food and drink containers littered the wood-grain veneer tabletop. The mingled aromas of microwaved leftovers, old coffee, and hospital disinfectants hung heavily in the air.

They were all talking animatedly to one another, mouths and hands moving at the speed of light. It was like an old Charlie Chaplin movie: the only thing missing from the vibrant scene was sound.

Tess moved restlessly past the bank of vending machines and went to the room's only window. Hugging herself against the slight chill that seeped through the thin glass, she stared outside.

It was an ordinary spring day: wet and gray. The kind of day that encouraged Seattleites to seek travel packages on Maui. Ash-hued, moisture-thick clouds hung above the city, obscuring the rooftops and casting the streets in shadow. Rain pattered cement sidewalks and plunked in overfull, leaf-clogged gutters. Puddles shone on the pavement like haphazardly thrown silver coins.

A good day for miracles.

The thought came before she could control it. She knew she shouldn't even think it?thinking was the first step to hoping, and hoping was the first step to disappointment. But no matter how often or how loudly she told herself not to hope, she'd never been able to follow her own advice.

Maybe today was her mantra, her lifeline. It was the

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same hope she had every morning as she stood at the corner of Third and Virginia, waiting for the bus that would whisk her here, to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The hope never died, even after countless failures. In fact, with each defeat, it grew stronger.

She rested her forehead against the pane, suppressing a quick shudder as the icy window chilled her skin. The answer was right under her nose; she could feel it. All she had to do was find the right key. If these tests didn't give her the answers she needed, she'd try again. And again and again and again.

That's what Tess loved about life and science?anything and everything was possible if a person truly believed.

And Tess had always believed.

The yellow light on the wall above her head blipped on and off. It was the beeper system the hospital had devised to reach Tess and other hearing-impaired employees anywhere in the building.

Excitement brought her head up. Her heartbeat accelerated. Unable to keep a grin off her face, she hurried back to her office.

Dr. Weinstein was already there, holding a manila folder of test results.

She skidded to a halt. Her heart and hopes and prayers were in her eyes as she looked up at him. Her breath caught as she waited for the results.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

Her knees went weak with disappointment. She sank unsteadily into the tufted vinyl chair behind her desk.

Dr. Weinstein squeezed her shoulder and tossed the file on the desk. She cast him a weary sideways glance and forced a smile. "Maybe next time," she said quietly, thankful for once that she couldn't hear her own voice. She was sick and tired of saying the same thing. Over and over and over.

Tess shoved the papers in her briefcase and followed Dr. Weinstein out of her office. She needed to walk, be alone for a while. Regroup.

Shrugging into her Eddie Bauer raincoat, she hurried down the stairs and went outside. The cold dampness of a late Seattle afternoon hit her full in the face. Rain pattered the thick Gortex of her hood; she felt each drop as a vibration of remembered sound.

She turned her face skyward. Cool water splattered her cheeks and nose and closed eyelids. The icy feel of it refreshed her, reminded her with unexpected force that she was alive. With life there was always hope, and with hope, anything was possible.

Tightening her grip on the briefcase, she started down the hill toward the bus stop, moving cautiously down the rain-slicked sidewalk. Beside her, buses and cars and taxis zipped through the gray drizzle. She could feel the vibrations of the moving vehicles as a gentle humming beneath her feet. The cherished sound-memories of honking horns and blaring sirens echoed through her fertile imagination, reminding her of the days, long ago and before spinal meningitis, when the ordinary noises of life had not been withheld from her.

She was just about to step in a tire-sized mud puddle when she caught herself. She wrenched sideways at the last minute and lurched toward the curb.

After that, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. A messenger-service bicycle slammed into her back and sent her careening into the street. She stumbled on the slick pavement and skidded out of control. Her briefcase flew out of her hand and sailed through the air. It hit the pavement hard and snapped open. Papers scattered and stuck to the bumpy asphalt. Rain riveted them in place.

The acrid stench of burning rubber filled the air. She froze. Heart hammering in her chest, she spun around and saw the bus heading right for her. A scream locked in her throat and issued past her lips as a low, terrified moan. She didn't even have time to pray.

Tess drifted gently on a tide of warm water, wrapped in layers of smooth black velvet. The world around her was soothingly dark. She washed closer and closer to the shore, and knew she should reach out and grab hold, but she was tired. So tired . ..

"Tess, wake up, honey. I've got a schedule to meet." A woman's harsh, gravelly voice pierced the blackness.

Tess edged reluctantly toward consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered, tried futilely to open.

"I think she's awake," came a man's deep, rich voice.

"Really?" The woman's voice again. "Tess? Are you awake?"

She could hear! Tess snap

ped to a sit and glanced wildly around.

There was nothing to see. Nothing?and no one? except a seemingly endless expanse of star-studded night sky. Tiny, eye-splittingly bright lights vibrated and blinked like the Milky Way.

She started to panic. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest, turning every breath into a burning spurt of fire.

Calm down, Tess. Get a grip.

Cautiously she eased back and found that she was sitting in one of those Art Linkletter chairs. She drew a deep, shaking breath and let it out slowly. Her white-knuckled fingers eased their clawlike grip off the cushy armrests. An easy chair. What was so weird about that?

Nothing, she told herself. Nothing at all.

Then she noticed that her feet were dangling in the air.

She gasped. There was no floor beneath her, no walls around her. She was sitting in a black chair in the middle

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of a black void with a thousand stars twinkling all around her. Alone.

She was dreaming, she realized suddenly. Dreaming she was sitting in a chair in the middle of space, dreaming she could hear, dreaming? "Tess?"

There it was again, that scratchy boilermaker-and-tobacco-fed voice, coming at Tess from the nothingness around her. Surely if she were going to dream a voice, it wouldn't sound like that. "Y-Yes?" she said, for lack of something better. "I'm Carol. Your guide. Do you have any questions before we begin?"

Tess started to say, "Begin what?" then changed her mind to the more obvious question. "Where am I?"

There was a long pause before the voice said cautiously, "You don't remember?" "Remember what?" "The ... bus."

Tess stopped breathing. Memory hurled her back onto that rain-slicked Seattle street. She remembered the acrid, stinking smell of burning rubber, the driver's horrified expression through the dirty windshield. Sounds she couldn't possibly have heard battered her with hurricane force: squealing brakes, a honking horn, her own strangled sound of terror.

She'd been hit by the bus. She glanced around. Maybe this wasn't a dream after all. Maybe it was ... the other side. "Am I dead?" There was a sigh of relief. "Yep." Tess shivered and hugged herself. "Oh." "Now that that's settled, let's get on with it," Carol said matter-of-factly. "This here's the theater of second chances. Your life on earth?the first one?it was sort of ..." Carol's scratchy voice trailed off.

"Fine."

"Yes, precisely. But 'fine' isn't good enough. God, in His infinite wisdom, makes sure everyone gets one happy life before they move on. So, hon, you get another chance."

"I don't understand."

"It's simple. Your first life was so-so. Now you get to choose another. I studied your history very closely, and I think I know the problem. Your childhood in the foster care system left something to be desired. What you need is someone special and a family of your own. I've chosen a dozen suitable candidates. Each one needs you as much as you need him. All you have to do is push the button when one of them strikes your fancy."

Tess smiled wryly. "Sort of a 'Dating Game' for the dead? What's next?'Bowling for Celestial Dollars'?"

"Hey, that's good! But?oh, shh. The show is starting. Just push the button when it feels right. I'll do the rest."

A single red button appeared on the chair's stark black arm. Pale red light throbbed against the dark fabric. "It's a dream, right?" Tess said to the voice. "I'm sedated now and in surgery. Am I right?"

"Shh. Watch."

The stars sprayed out in front of Tess slowly melded together, becoming a huge white rectangle wreathed in jet black nothingness. A screen.

She leaned forward. Even though she knew it was a dream, she couldn't help feeling a quick rush of suspense. Her fingers curled nervously around the tufted armrest.

A dot of color appeared in the exact center of the white screen. It started small, no larger than a nickel. For a heartbeat it quivered, silent and alone. Then whaml it exploded into a full-color picture of a man in a gray flannel suit waving for a cab.

He was an attractive man. Young. Obviously affluent.

Tess settled deeper in her chair. Her finger moved toward the button, but she didn't push. Instead, she studied him with the critical, detail-sensitive eyes of a woman used to relying on sight for her impressions of the world. The man was clutching an Italian leather briefcase as if it contained the plans for a nuclear bomb. Or, more likely, a summer house in the Hamptons. His hair was precisely combed, maybe even moussed. There were no laugh lines around his eyes. No earring marred his conservative image. His tie was a regimental blue stripe, his shirt plain white.

Her finger eased off the button.

The scene switched to a snowy hillside. A man in faded blue jeans and knee-length duster was shoving hay into a long wooden feeding bin. Breath billowed in white clouds from his mouth. Behind him was a whitewashed, porched farmhouse that looked a hundred years old.

Tess let the cowboy pass. Someone else could ride the range.

Next came a man playing volleyball on the beach. His body was well muscled, browned to tanning bed perfection. Pale blond hair clung to his sweaty face as he spiked the winning shot. Several women on the sidelines cheered loudly, and he gave each of them a playboy wink. Tess winced. Yuck.

The stud was replaced by a knight in shining armor. Literally. He moved woodenly, clanging with every step across the stone floor, muttering words in a language Tess couldn't understand. The scene looked exactly like a production of Macbeth she'd once seen at a theater for the deaf in Boston.

Tess's finger didn't go anywhere near the button. Egotistical actors weren't for her. She had no desire to be the wind beneath his wings. Men and lives merged into one another, became a hyp-

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notic blur of color and questions and possibilities. Still Tess sat there, her finger hovering over the red button that would supposedly grant her another life. She didn't believe a word of it, of course, but somehow she couldn't hit the button?even to play along. Especially not with the kind of men who kept showing up. (Currently there was a man in a space suit hovering in front of her.)

The spaceman melted away. Slowly the color onscreen softened. A man appeared, standing alone and in the shadows. He was standing beside an old wooden crib, staring down at a baby wrapped in a bundle of woolen blankets. His big shoulders were hunched, his fingers were curled tightly around the crib's top rail. The quiet strains of his breathing reached her ears, filling her senses like long-sought-after music.

Tess felt his quiet desperation like a noose around her neck.

He moved forward, and the shadows fell away, revealing a once handsome and now haggard face framed by jet black hair badly in need of a trim. He stared down at the child. One finger at a time, as if each motion were fraught with danger, he lifted his hand and reached toward the baby's cheek. Halfway there, he froze. His fingers trembled. Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, and he yanked his hand back.

God, how he loves that child.

Then he was gone.

Tess slammed her palm down on the button.

"He's the one?" Carol's voice sounded soft and deceptively close.

Tess nodded slowly, shaken and confused by the intensity of the emotions she'd felt. As someone who'd spent a lifetime isolated and alone, watching, she knew little of stormy passions and wrenching heartache. And yet, when she'd looked into his eyes, she'd seen pain, real pain, and something more. Some dark, aching emotion that ripped past her natural optimism and frightened her.

There had been something about him, something in his defeated gaze that cut like a knife blade through her heart. She'd learned long ago to read people's eyes and see beyond their words, yet never had she glimpsed a soul in such agony.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I felt such ... pain."

"I understand, hon. You've always been a healer at heart. Good luck. You'll need it with that one."

There was a wisp of rose-colored light, a scent of smoke, and then nothing. Tess knew without question that she was alone again.

"What now?" she asked of no one in particular, and flopped back in her chair.

Except there was no chair. No chair, no floor, no walls. There was only an immense sky of midnight black spack-led with stars so bright, they hurt the eyes.

Tess whizzed by the moon and kept falling.

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