Not surprisingly, Goldie hardly slept that night. Although all of her questions had been answered about why she’d awakened in Sparkledove, Colorado, in 1942, she now had to absorb an entirely new set of facts. The biggest being that God was real. Angels were real. The afterlife was real. There was no question about it. Like billions of others, she had always drifted back and forth about God, most times believing, but sometimes doubting. Now, she had to stare it straight in the face. There would be judgment. Choices had consequences. Then, there was the choice before her: where was she going to live out the remainder of her life? She felt special yet humbled all at once. She suspected hers was a choice few others got to make.
The following morning, Saturday, December 10th, she was waiting on the plank sidewalk for Clara to open her store. At 9:55 a.m., Clara walked out of Miller’s, where she sometimes went to grab some coffee and catch up on the latest gossip with Deke and Chad Miller. Seeing Goldie waiting for her, she flashed a big smile and crossed River Street.
“There she is,” Clara announced. “The talk of the town. How are you, honey?”
Goldie waited until she was closer before answering so nobody else would hear.
“I know you’re not from this time, Clara,” she began. “I also know Stu Frey’s an angel.”
The older woman paused briefly, surprised, but then recovered and smiled. “Say, youarea good investigator, aren’t you?” She dipped a hand into her overcoat pocket. “You’d best come inside. I think I’m going to open a little late this morning.”
She unlocked her front door and stepped inside, the wooden floor squeaking as she did. But she didn’t turn around the sign hanging on the door’s glass from “Closed” to “Open.” Once Goldie was inside, she locked the door again, took off her winter coat, and carried it to the back room.
“I always thought you might’ve been a displaced soul,” she said as she went. “Right from your first day in town. But, to his credit, Stu never gave you up.”
“He wanted me to talk to you,” Goldie shared.
“Stu?”
“Yeah.”
“About what?”
“He gave me a choice to either stay here or go back to my own time.”
“And what time is that?”
“New York City in the 2020s.”
Clara nodded, hung up her coat in the back, then returned to the front of the store.
“The 2020s,” she mused, shaking her head as if she hardly believed it, but she did.
“He said that others before me have been given the option to stay or go,” Goldie continued. “Then he said I should talk to you. My challenge was the Banyans. What wasyourchallenge?”
The mostly white-haired woman who always wore slacks started to move around the store, plugging in Christmas lights for various displays.
“I didn’t wake up in Sparkledove like you. I moved here later. I woke up in Aurora, Colorado. It’s on the other side of Denver, about sixty miles away.” She plugged in some lights, then moved to another display. “Like Stu no doubt said to you,mygood versus bad choices were very much fifty-fifty. I was only twenty-three at the time, but even then, my choices toward the light and dark were pretty contradictory. Maybe I’ll tell you about ‘em sometime. But what you asked is: What was my challenge? I discovered and foiled a bank robbery that also involved the kidnapping of three small kids. That was over forty years ago.”
Goldie did some quick calculating in her head while Clara continued to plug in lights.
“So, you woke up in Aurora in the late 1890s?”
“1900 to be exact.”
“And you decided to stay?”
“Yes.”
“Did you replace another version of yourself in Aurora?”
“No. Stu’s told me a little about how that can happen, but it’s different for different people.”
“Where did you live before you woke up in Aurora?”
“Stevens Point, Wisconsin,” she answered, plugging in more lights. “I was in a car accident with a girlfriend. We were both pretty baked at the time and were driving back from a movie theater where we’d just seenSaturday Night Fever.That was in 1977. Is John Travolta still a big heartthrob?”
“Yeah, if you’ve got a pacemaker.”
