Chaz:

There are moments that echo with beauty, like notes in a piano solo. They stir the soul, and then, like pebbles dropped in a pool, they ripple ever outward. The memory of one perfect moment can make you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture it, to reinvent it, to prove it really happened.

I slept. I don’t know how long. At times it felt like my head would explode from Skellar’s psychotropic cocktail, but somehow I managed to sleep through the pain, aware of it in some helpless nightmarish way, unable to stop it or wake up.

And then autumn sunlight poured into the living room, beams of honey, thick and sticky sweet with humidity. I woke slowly, with a sense of heat centered in my chest. And an unusual feeling of peace.

My eyes flicked open, blinded for a moment by the cascading light. Then I saw her—my niece—curled up beside me on the narrow sofa, her head resting on my chest. Her mouth was open and she was snoring softly. A slow, steady purring sound, almost like a kitten. My right arm ached, but I knew if I moved, it would wake her.

It would destroy this perfect moment.

I kissed her forehead, damp and feather soft. She sighed.

I lifted my gaze and saw Angelique sitting in the chair across from us, her legs tucked beneath her, both hands holding a cup of coffee. Her hair hung over her shoulder in glimmering waves and she was wearing a black dress and boots. She smiled quietly.

There was something about the three of us together in that morning of golden light that felt right. Complete.

This doesn’t belong to me, I reminded myself. Isabelle’s not my daughter, Angelique will be gone in a few days. All of this is borrowed. Imagined.

Still. If all of eternity could reside in one moment, this was the moment I would choose. This was the single note that I would want to resonate in my heart.

I wished that it could have lasted one more minute.

But even as I acknowledged its perfection, it began to dissolve.