“Very good,” he smiled.
“If I go back, will I remember what happened here?”
“Of course you will. You don’t learn anything from all this if you don’t.”
“A-and if I choose to stay? Will I remember my life in New York?”
“Again, yes. That’s part of the lesson. But you won’t be allowed to use your knowledge of the future for personal gain. No betting on the World Series where you know who wins. Or buying stocks that you know will take off. Oh, you could try. But I’d know and it wouldn’t work out.”
She glanced around with a furrowed brow until her eyes fell upon the confessionals.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just give me a clean slate in confession or somethin’?”
“Would you have learned anything?” he asked.
Her shoulders slumped. “P-probably not.”
He looked her over.
“You okay?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Any gut reaction to staying or going?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
He smiled a little. “If it helps, you’re not the first to be in this situation.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Others have shown up unexpectedly in Sparkledove before.”
She paused for a moment, then her eyes widened with realization.
“Claude Bolton! And the woman in the white nightgown!”
“Her name was Agnes Dundee,” Stu nodded. “Like you, both Claude and Agnes were souls on the bubble. Both were given the opportunity to make choices and redeem themselves through different circumstances. Both might’ve been given choices to stay or go as well, but neither could cope with being displaced.”
“So they killed themselves,” Goldie concluded.
“Purgatory isn’t easy, Goldie,” Stu affirmed.
“And God just keeps them trapped here?” she asked, annoyed at the unfairness of the notion. “So, they can kill themselves day after day? Year after year?”
“No. They’re not caught in some continuous loop,” Stu corrected. “They chose to reveal themselves to you the only way they could. But there are limitations to what they could do. By showing you what happened to them, they made you curious for answers. They were telling you to keep going. Not to give up. And see? You didn’t.”
She thought for a moment. “So, where are Claude and Agnes now?”
“Going home.”
“What do ya mean?”
“I mean, they helped you, you prayed for them, and they’re going home.”
“I never prayed for—” she began to say. But then stopped and remembered what she said the second time she saw Agnes, the same morning she was chased by the mountain lion: “God, why don’t you help these poor souls?”
“Go look outside,” Stu suggested.
