Beside Me

Prologue

I held Anna May close to my chest. The rain poured down on both of us, but it didn't matter. "Please don't leave me."
She sobbed into my jacket. "I love you. But I can't stay, Harold."
"Why not?"
"You wouldn't understand. You don't know me."
"I do," I begged her quietly. "Try me."
Anna stared up at me, and even in her pain I couldn't help but observe how beautiful she was. "It's too late," she murmured. "You think you know me, Harold, but you don't. There are things you've never known." She looked away. "I've hurt in ways you've never known."
I pulled my head away to stare at her clearly. "What do you mean, Anna? Who's hurt you before?"
She glanced back over at me. "No one, Harold, except . . . myself." Then she looked down and crossed her arms tightly, refusing to look at me.
Seeing her arms so sheltered and covered, I had a thought.
I pulled her sleeve up. She protested, but only once. Then, when I had it up to her elbow, we both stared at her arm.
And the perfect faded little lines across her skin.
She paled. I could barely speak. "Anna May," I finally managed, "Your arm . . ."
But she was gone. Pulling herself out of my hold, she started walking away swiftly.
I couldn't let her get away. "Anna! Look at me!"
She was halfway across the street when she turned around. I knew I had only a moment before she'd leave me, so I spoke quickly. "Anna, I don't care about anything that's happened in your past. And I mean that in the very best of ways. Anna, I don't care, I love you no matter what. Anna."
I saw her face soften, a little pain leaving it. She opened her mouth to speak. I observed how small and delicate she looked, just standing there in the middle of the street. I thought about how much I would like to take her in my arms. I realized that it didn't matter what she was about to say, that I could tell already that she would come back to me. She would speak and I would welcome her voice and she would come back to me and we would be together forever . . .
What I hadn't counted on was the car, coming straight out of the fog. The car, smashing into her even as I stood watching, and believing in a better future.
"Anna!"
Then the scene started replaying, keeping me in its cruel cycle instead of letting me join Anna as I would have liked. I kept seeing her turn, seeing myself speak to her, but from the third person, seeing her expression of . . . was it hope? Was it love? I would never know, and that reality hit me just then, that I would never know the story behind those little white lines, never hear any stories by her, ever again, and I started screaming, screaming her name as the scene replayed over and over again, the agony washing over me, never just leaving me alone, and then everything started to fade and I heard a sound other than my own voice, a beautiful sound I thought I'd never hear again. And it was then that I realized that I was dead too, that I had to be, for the sound I was hearing was Anna May's voice, calling my name, over and over again, over the sound of the rain and my own anguished voice.
But something I couldn't understand. Anna's voice sounded worried, and surely when we were dead there was nothing more to worry about, nothing more to harm us.
And then I felt her hands on my shoulders, and the tears rolling down my cheeks, and I opened my eyes and stopped thrashing and saw my beautiful Anna May sitting right in front of me and I reached out to touch her cheek, to make sure it really was real, and she leaned into my palm, and I knew that this really was her, and we were both alive and fine, that she wouldn't leave me and I would never leave her and both of us would stay together.
"Harold." Her voice was music to my ears.
"Anna May."
"You had another nightmare."
"I know."
"Anything I can do?" she asked.
"Stay beside me?"
"Always."