Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

THE COMPANIONS David Morrell

Frank shouldn’t have been there. On Thursday, unexpected script meetings required him to fly from Santa Fe to Los Angeles. His discussions with the film’s director and its star ended on Friday evening. Usually, he would have spent the weekend with friends in Los Angeles, but he loved opera, and he had tickets for the next night when Santa Fe’s opera company was premiering Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, a work Frank had never seen. The tickets included a pre-performance dinner, along with a lecture about the composer.

“You just arrived in L.A., and now you want to fly back?” his wife, Debby, asked when he phoned. “If there’s an Ultimate Commuter award, I’ll nominate you for it.”

“I’ve really been looking forward to this,” Frank answered. Using his cell phone, he sat in his rented car outside the newest Beverly Hills restaurant, where the final meeting had ended. “Do you remember how many times I called the box office and kept getting a busy signal? The person I spoke to said I got the last two tickets.”

“The dinner’s supposed to be in a tent behind the opera house, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, the tent might not be standing. Yesterday the monsoons started.”

Debby referred to a July weather pattern in which moist air from the Pacific streamed into New Mexico, creating rains that were often violent.

“The storm was really bad,” Debby continued. “In fact, there’s another one coming. I shouldn’t be on the phone. It isn’t safe with the lightning this close.”

“I bet tomorrow will be bright and sunny.”

“It’s not supposed to be, according to the weather guy on channel seven. How were your meetings?”

“The director wants me to change the villains from presidential advisors to advertising executives. The star wants me to include a part for his new girlfriend. This opera will be my reward for listening to them.”

“You’re that determined? Be prepared to get wet.” The prolonged boom of thunder echoed behind Debby’s voice. “I’d better hang up. Love you.”

“Love you,” Frank said.

Frank’s plane was scheduled to leave Los Angeles at ten in the morning, but it didn’t take off until two.

“Bad weather in New Mexico,” the American Airlines attendant explained.

The jet came down through dark, churning clouds for a bumpy landing in Santa Fe shortly after five. The overcast sky made the afternoon dark.

“It’s been raining all day,” an airline employee told Frank. “This is the first break we’ve had.”

But a new storm beaded Frank’s windshield as soon as he got into his car. Poor visibility slowed traffic so that what was normally a fifteen-minute drive home took three times that long. Frank pulled into his garage at six. The dinner at the opera was supposed to start at seven.

He’d made various cell-phone reports to his wife. Even so, Debby looked relieved, as if she hadn’t seen him for weeks, when he walked in. To her credit, she was dressed, ready for the evening. “If you’re game, I am. But I think we’re both nuts.”

“I’m afraid I’m more nuts than you.”

“The umbrella’s in here.” Debby pointed to a knapsack they always took to the opera. The theater’s sides were open—people who dressed for daytime summer temperatures could feel frozen as the mountain air dropped from ninety to fifty degrees at night. “I’ve also got a blanket, a thermos of hot chocolate, and our raincoats. This had better be a good opera.”

“Look.” Frank smiled out the kitchen window, pointing toward sunlight peeking through the clouds. “The rain stopped. Everything’s going to work out.”

The theater was eight miles north of town. As Frank headed up Route 285, traffic was fast and crazy as usual, drivers changing lanes regardless of how slick the pavement was.

Debby pointed toward a police car, an ambulance, and two wrecked cars at the side of the road. “They’re putting somebody into the ambulance. My God. Somebody must have died. They covered the body.”

Traffic threw up a gritty spray that speckled Frank’s windshield. Troubled by the accident, he turned on the windshield wipers and reduced his speed. Horns blared behind him, vehicles racing past. Straining to see beyond the streaks on his window, he steered toward an exit ramp and headed up a hill toward the opera house.

There, he walked with Debby to a tent behind the theater. A bottle of wine stood on each table.

Half the seats were empty.

“See, not everybody’s crazy like us,” Debby said.

“Like me.”

After choosing salad and chicken from a buffet, they sat at a table.

Frank glanced toward the entrance. Two men entered, surveyed the empty seats, saw Frank and Debby alone, and came over.

One of the men was short, slight, and elderly, with white hair and a matching goatee that made him look rabbinical. The other man was tall, well built, and young, with short, dark hair and a clean-shaven, square-jawed face. They both wore dark suits and white shirts. Their eyes were very clear.

“Hello,” the elderly man said. “My name’s Alexander.”

“And I’m Richard,” the other man said.

“Pleased to meet you.” Frank introduced Debby and himself.

“Terrible weather,” Alexander said.

“Sure is,” Debby agreed.

“We drove all the way from Albuquerque,” Richard said.

“I can beat that,” Frank told them. “I came all the way from Los Angeles.”

The two men went to get their food. Frank poured wine for Debby and himself, then offered to pour for Alexander and Richard when they came back.

“No, thanks,” Alexander said.

“It makes me sleepy,” Richard said.

The pair bowed their heads in a silent prayer. Self-conscious, Frank and Debby did the same. Then the four of them ate and discussed opera, how they preferred the Italian ones, could tolerate the German ones, and felt that French operas were sometimes an ordeal.

“The rhythm’s so ponderous in some of them,” Frank said, “it’s like being on a Roman slave ship, rowing to a drumbeat, like that scene in Ben-Hur.”

“But Carmen’s good. A French opera set in Spain.” Richard found that amusing. “And tonight’s opera is French. I’ve never heard it, so I have no idea whether it’s worth our time.”

Frank was pleased by how easy they were to talk to. They had an inner stillness that soothed him after his frustrating Hollywood meetings and his difficult journey home.

“What do you do in Albuquerque?” Debby asked Richard.

“He doesn’t live there. I do,” Alexander said. “I’m a retired computer programmer.”

“And I’m a monk,” Richard said. “I live at Christ in the Desert.” He referred to a monastery about thirty miles north of Santa Fe.

Frank hid his surprise. “I assumed the two of you were together.”

“We are,” Alexander said. “I often go on weekend retreats to the monastery. That’s where Brother Richard and I became friends.” Alexander referred to the practice of leaving the clamor of everyday life and spending time in the quiet of a monastery, meditating to achieve spiritual focus.

“Alexander doesn’t drive well at night anymore,” Brother Richard said. “So I went down to Albuquerque to get him. This opera has a subject of obvious interest to us.”

What he meant was soon explained as the after-dinner lecture began. An elegant woman stood at a podium and explained that Dialogues of the Carmelites was based on a real event during the French Revolution when a convent of Carmelite nuns was executed during the anti-Catholic frenzy of the Reign of Terror. The composer, the speaker explained, used the incident as a way of exploring the relationship between religion and politics.

As the lecture concluded, Frank wished that he’d followed Alexander and Brother Richard’s example, abstaining from the wine, which had made him sleepy.

The group got up to walk from the tent to the opera house.

“It was good to chat with you,” Frank said.

“Same here,” Brother Richard said.

By then it was half past eight. Santa Fe’s operas usually started at nine. Darkness was gathering. Alexander and Brother Richard proceeded into the gloom, while Frank and Debby went to restrooms near the tent.

Minutes later, after a chilly walk, Frank and Debby entered the opera house, made their way through the crowd, found the row they were in, and stopped in surprise.

Alexander and Brother Richard were in the same row, five seats from Frank and Debby.

Smiling, the two men looked up from their programs.

“Small world,” Debby said, smiling in return.

“Isn’t it,” Alexander agreed. Frail, he shivered as the wind increased outside, gusting through the open spaces on each side of the opera house.

“Could be a better night,” Brother Richard said. “Let’s hope the opera’s worth it.”

Frank and Debby took their seats. A row ahead, a well-coiffed woman in a flimsy evening gown hugged herself, typical of many in the audience, presumably visitors who hadn’t been warned about Santa Fe’s sudden temperature drops.

As the wind keened, Debby looked over at Alexander, noticing that he shivered more violently.

“I’ll lend him our blanket,” she told Frank.

“Good idea.”

The five intervening seats remained empty. Debby went over, offered the blanket, which Alexander gladly took, and held out the thermos of hot chocolate, which he also took.

“Bless you, how thoughtful.”

“My good deed for the day,” Debby said when she came back.

Ten minutes into the opera, Frank wished that he’d stayed with his friends in Los Angeles. Dialogues of the Carmelites turned out to be aptly named, for the cast droned its musical lines in a dreary operatic approximation of dialogue. Although the female singers needed to lower their pitch to accommodate the atonal effects, they nonetheless gave the effect of screeching.

Worse was the libretto, which had been translated into En-glish and took one of the most unspiritual approaches to religion that Frank had encountered, claiming that the Carmelite nuns were emotional invalids dominated by a masochistic abbess who convinced her charges to linger and wait to be executed so that she could prove how powerfully she controlled them.

Halfway through the first act, lightning flashed. The storm clouds unloaded, sending a torrent past the open sides of the opera house, causing the audience in those sections to retreat up the aisles.

Nature as critic, Frank thought.

He had a headache by the time the seemingly interminable first act ended. Ushers hurried to the wet seats near the open sides, toweling them. As Frank and Debby stood, they found Alexander and Brother Richard coming over.

“I don’t know how I’d have gotten through that act without your charity,” the elderly man said, looking even colder.

“A terrible opera,” Brother Richard added. “You should have stayed in Los Angeles.”

“Don’t I wish.”

“Thanks for the blanket and the thermos.” Alexander returned them. “We’re going home.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Well, we enjoyed meeting you.”

“Same here,” Brother Richard said. “God bless.”

They disappeared among the crowd.

“Well, if I’m going to be able to sit through the second act, I’d better stretch my legs,” Frank said.

“You’re determined to stay?” Debby asked.

“After all the trouble I went through to get here? This damned opera isn’t going to beat me.”

They followed the crowd to an outside balcony. The rain had again stopped. There were puddles in the courtyard below them, where well-dressed men and women drank cocktails, coffee, or hot chocolate. In the distance, lightning lit the mountains. Everybody oohed and aahed.

Frank shivered, then pointed at something in the courtyard. “Look.”

About a third of the audience was leaving through the front gate. But coming from the opposite direction, from the parking lot, Alexander and Brother Richard emerged from the darkness, making their way through the courtyard. What puzzled Frank wasn’t that they had left and were coming back. Rather it was that a spotlight seemed to be following them, outlining them, drawing Frank’s attention to their progress through the crowd. They almost glowed.

The two men went into the gift shop across from the balcony. Almost immediately they returned without having bought anything and again made their way through the crowd. They disappeared into the darkness past the gate.

“What was that all about?” Debby asked.

“I have no idea.” Frank couldn’t help yawning.

“Tired?”

“Very.”

“Me too.”

Frank yawned again. “Know what? If this opera’s bad enough for Alexander and Brother Richard to leave, I’m going to bow to their superior taste.”

“After all the trouble you took?”

“It takes a real man to admit a mistake.”

“That ‘real man’ stuff turns me on. Yeah, let’s go home.”

The parking lot was well lit. Even so, the low clouds made everything gloomy as Frank and Debby stepped over puddles, trying to find their car.

“Has to be around here someplace.” Frank sensed that the angry sky was going to unload again. “Keep that umbrella handy.”

Behind him, from the theater, he heard faint music as the orchestra started the second act. The only two people in the parking lot, he and Debby walked along another row of cars when movement to the left attracted his attention. He turned toward the edge of the lot, seeing two men emerge from the darkness and approach them.

Alexander and Brother Richard.

“What are you doing here?” Frank asked in surprise. “You left ahead of us.”

“We’re looking for our car,” Alexander told him.

“There.” Brother Richard pointed. “Over there.”

With a tingle of amazement, Frank saw that his SUV was next to the sedan that Brother Richard indicated.

“Good heavens,” Debby murmured.

Thunder rumbled, as the four of them went to their two cars.

“Drive safely.” Alexander eased his frail body into the passenger seat.

“You, too,” Frank said.

Brother Richard got behind the steering wheel.

Watching them drive away, Frank said, “Can you believe that? All those coincidences?”

“Weird,” Debby said.

Following them down the winding road that led to Route 285, they watched Alexander’s headlights find an opening in the speedy traffic. The sedan headed north.

“And weird again,” Frank said.

“What do you mean?” Debby asked.

“They told us Alexander lived in Albuquerque and that Brother Richard had driven down there to get him.”

“So?”

“Why are they going in the opposite direction, north instead of south?”

“Maybe Alexander’s too tired for a long drive and they’re taking a shorter trip up to the monastery.”

“Sure.”

Another thunderstorm hit just as they arrived home.

The next morning Frank opened the Santa Fe New Mexican and found an article about the return of the monsoons. A weather expert commented that the storms were expected to linger for several weeks and would help to replenish the city’s reservoirs, which were low because of a dry spring. A forest-service official hoped that the rains would reduce the risk of fires in the mountains. Along with the good news, however, there had been numerous traffic accidents, including one that had killed two men the previous evening.

One of the victims had been a monk, Brother Richard Braddock, who lived at Christ in the Desert Monastery, while the other victim had been a companion, Alexander Lane, from Albuquerque.

“No,” Frank said.

Debby peered up. “What’s the matter?”

“Those two men we met last night. It looks like they got killed.”

“What?”

“In a traffic accident. After they left the opera.” Frank quoted from the story. “ ‘Wet pavement is blamed for causing a pickup truck to lose control Saturday evening and slam into a vehicle driven by Brother Richard Braddock on Route 285 one mile south of the Santa Fe Opera exit.’”

“South of the opera exit? But we saw them go north.”

Frank stared. “You’re right. They couldn’t have been hit south of the exit.” He reread the story to make sure he’d gotten the details right. “ ‘Last evening’?”

“What’s wrong?”

“‘Saturday evening’? That doesn’t make sense.” Frank went into the kitchen, looked for a number in the phone book, and pressed buttons on his cell phone.

“State Police,” a man’s Hispanic-accented voice answered.

Frank explained what he needed to know.

“Are you a relative of the victims?”

“No,” Frank said. “But I think I met them at the opera last night.”

The voice paused. Frank heard a page being turned, as if the officer were reading the report.

“Not likely,” the voice said.

“Why not?”

“The operas usually start at nine, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“This accident happened almost two and a half hours before that. At six-forty.”

“No,” Frank said. “At the opera, I talked to a man named Richard who said he was a monk at Christ in the Desert. He had a friend named Alexander, who lived in Albuquerque. That matches the details in the newspaper.”

“Sure does, but it couldn’t have been them, because there’s no mistake—the accident happened at six-forty. Must have been two other guys named Richard and Alexander.”

Frank swallowed. “Yes, it must have been two others.” He set down the phone.

“Are you okay?” Debby asked. “You just turned pale.”

“Do you remember when we were driving to the opera last night, we passed an accident?”

Debby nodded, puzzled.

“You saw a body with a sheet over it being loaded into an ambulance. There were actually two bodies.”

“Two?”

“I think we’d better take a drive to Christ in the Desert.”

A map led them through a red canyon studded with juniper trees. With a wary eye toward new storm clouds, Frank rounded a curve and navigated the narrow, muddy road down to a small pueblo-style monastery on the edge of the Chama River.

When he and Debby got out of their SUV, no one was in sight.

A breeze gathered strength, scraping branches together. Otherwise there was almost no sound.

“Sure is quiet,” Debby said.

“Looks deserted. You’d think somebody would have been curious about an approaching car.”

“I think I hear something.” Debby turned toward the church.

“We pray to the Lord,” a distant voice echoed from inside.

“Lord, hear our prayers,” other distant voices replied.

“We’d better not intrude. Let’s wait until they’re finished,” Frank said.

Quiet, they leaned against the SUV, surveying the red cliffs on one side and the muddy, swollen river on the other.

Storm clouds thickened.

“Looks like we’ll have to go inside soon whether we want to or not,” Debby said.

The church’s front door opened. A bearded man in a monk’s robe stepped out, noticed Frank and Debby, and approached them. Although his expression was somber, his eyes communicated the same inner stillness that Richard had the night before.

“I’m Brother Sebastian,” the man said. “May I help you?”

Frank and Debby introduced themselves.

“We’re from Santa Fe,” Frank said. “Last night something odd happened, and we’re hoping you might help explain it.”

Brother Sebastian, looking puzzled, waited for them to continue.

“Yesterday…” Debby looked down at her hands. “Was a monk from here killed in a car accident?”

Brother Sebastian’s eyes lost their luster. “I just came back from identifying his body. We’ve been saying prayers for him. I wish he’d never been given permission.”

“Permission?”

“We’re Benedictines. We’re committed to prayer and work. We vowed to live the rest of our lives here. But that doesn’t mean we’re cloistered. Some of us even have driver’s licenses. With special permission, we’re sometimes allowed to leave the monastery—to see a doctor, for example. Or, in yesterday’s case, Brother Richard was given permission to drive down to Albuquerque, get a friend who often comes for retreats here, and attend the opera, which has a religious theme and which we thought might have a spiritual benefit.”

“It wasn’t very spiritual,” Debby said. She explained about the bleak nature of the opera and then said, “Last night at the theater we met a man named Richard who said he was a monk here. He had an elderly friend named Alexander who said Richard had driven him up from Albuquerque.”

“Yes, Brother Richard’s friend was named Alexander.”

“They sat next to us at a pre-opera dinner,” Debby said. “Then it turned out they were just a few seats away from us in the same row at the opera. When we left early, we crossed paths with them in the parking lot. Their car was next to ours. The whole thing felt strange.”

“And strangest of all,”“ Frank said, speaking quickly, “the state police say Brother Richard and his friend Alexander died at six-forty, south of the opera house, so how could we have met them at the opera and watched them drive north afterward?”

Brother Sebastian’s inner stillness changed to unease. “Perhaps you’re misremembering the names.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t misremember that one of them said he was a monk here,” Frank said.

“Perhaps the newspaper got the time and place of the accident wrong. Perhaps it happened after the opera.”

“No,” Frank said. “I phoned the state police. They agree with the newspaper. The accident happened at six-forty.”

“Then you couldn’t have met Brother Richard and his friend at the opera.”

“It certainly seems that way,” Debby said. “But this is making us crazy. To help us stop thinking about this, if you have a photograph of Brother Richard, would you mind showing it to us?”

Brother Sebastian studied them. “Superstition isn’t the same as spirituality.”

“Believe me, we’re not superstitious,” Frank said.

Brother Sebastian studied them another long moment. “Wait here, please.”

Five minutes later the monk returned. The wind was stronger, tugging at his brown robe and kicking up red dust. He held a folded newspaper.

“A journalist from Santa Fe came here last summer to write a story about us. We saw no harm in it, especially if it encouraged troubled people to attend retreats here.” Brother Sebastian opened the newspaper and showed Frank and Debby a color picture of a man in robes standing outside the church.

Frank and Debby stepped closer. The photograph was faded, but there was no mistaking what they saw.

“Yes,” Frank said. “That’s the man we met at the opera last night.” The wind brought a chill.

“No,” Brother Sebastian said. “Unless the state police are wrong about the time and place of the accident, what you’re telling me isn’t possible. Superstition isn’t the same as spirituality.”

“I don’t care how logical he insists on being,” Frank said. “Something happened to us.” Guiding the SUV along the muddy road, he added, “Last night, do you remember how bad the storm was when we arrived home?”

“Yes. I was glad we weren’t on the road.”

“Right. The storm didn’t quit until after midnight. It shook the house. If we hadn’t left the opera early, we’d have been caught in it. The newspaper said there were several accidents.”

“What are you getting at?” Debby asked.

“If Brother Sebastian heard me now, he’d say I was definitely superstitious. Do you suppose…”

“Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

Frank forced himself to continue. “Alexander and Brother Richard gave us the idea of leaving early. We followed them. As crazy as it sounds, if we’d stayed for the entire opera and driven home in the storm, do you suppose we might have been killed?”

“Are you actually suggesting they saved our lives? Two ghosts?”

“Not when you put it that way.”

“It’s impossible to know what might have happened if we’d driven home later,” Debby said firmly.

“Right. And as for ghosts…” Frank’s voice drifted off. He reached the solid footing of the highway and headed back to Santa Fe.

One year later, Frank again saw Alexander and Brother Richard.

It was a Saturday morning in late August. He and Debby were in downtown Santa Fe, buying vegetables at the farmers’ market. As they carried their sacks toward where they’d parked on a side street, Frank saw a short, slight, elderly man with white hair and a matching goatee. Next to him was a tall, well-built young man, with short, dark hair and a square-jawed face. Unusual in the farmers’ market atmosphere at nine in the morning, they both wore dark suits and white shirts. Their eyes were very clear.

“Those two men over there,” Frank said, pausing.

“Who?” Debby asked. “Where?”

“Next to the bakery stand over there. An old guy and a young guy. You can’t miss them. They’re wearing black suits.”

“I don’t notice any—”

“They’re staring straight at us. I feel like I’ve seen them before. They have a…”

“Have a what?”

“Glow. My God, do you remember the two guys from…”

As Frank moved toward them, they turned and walked into the crowd.

He increased speed.

“What are you doing?” Debby called.

Frank caught a glimpse of the black suits within the crowd, but no matter how urgently he tried to push past people buying from various stands, he couldn’t get closer.

“Wait!”

Vaguely aware of people staring at him, he saw the black suits disappear in the crowd. After another minute of searching, he had no idea which direction to take.

Baffled, Debby reached him.

“The two guys from the opera,” Frank explained. “It was them.”

“The opera?”

“Don’t you remember?”

People bumped past him, carrying sacks. Frank stepped onto a crate and scanned the crowd, looking for two men in black suits, but all he saw were people in shorts and T-shirts.

“Damn it, I had so many questions.”

Debby looked at him strangely.

Tires squealed. Metal and glass shattered. A woman screamed.

Frank ran toward a side street. Peering through the crowd, he and Debby saw what used to be their SUV. A pickup truck had slammed into it. A woman lay on the pavement, next to a bicycle, its wheels spinning.

“I saw the whole thing,” a man said. “The truck was weaving. Driver must be drunk. He swerved to avoid the girl on the bicycle and hit that car parked over there. It’s a lucky thing no one was killed.”

“If I hadn’t noticed them,” Frank said, watching a tow truck haul their SUV away, “if they hadn’t distracted me, we’d have been at our car when the accident happened. They saved us. Saved us for a second time.”

“I didn’t see them. The opera? How could it be the same two men?”

The third time Frank noticed them was five years later. Thursday. December 10. Seven P.M. Debby had been recovering from a miscarriage, her fourth in their fifteen-year marriage. Finally accepting that they would never have children of their own, they discussed the possibility of adopting. Now that Debby felt well enough to leave the house, Frank tried to raise her spirits by taking her to a restaurant that had recently opened and was receiving fabulous reviews.

The restaurant was near Santa Fe’s historic plaza, so after they parked, they walked slightly out of their way to appreciate the holiday lights on the trees and the pueblo-style buildings.

“God, I love this town,” Frank said. Snow started to fall. “Are you warm enough?”

“Yes.” Debby put her hood up.

“Those two guys can’t be,” Frank said, noticing the only two other people in the area.

“Where?”

“There. Over by the museum. All they’re wearing is suits.”

Frank realized that one of them was short, slight, and elderly, with white hair and a matching goatee. Next to him was a tall, well-built young man, with short, dark hair and a square-jawed face.

“My God, it’s them,” he said.

“Who?”

Even at a distance, their eyes were intense.

“Hey!” he called, “Wait. I want to talk to you.”

They turned and walked away.

“Stop!”

They receded into the falling snow.

Frank hurried toward them, leaving the plaza, heading along a quiet street. The snow fell harder.

“Frank!” Debby called.

He looked back. “They went toward the restaurant!”

“Frank!” This time the word came from Alexander where he waited with Brother Richard in front of the restaurant.

Frank stepped toward them and felt his shoes slip on ice under the snow. He arched backward. His skull shattered against a lamppost.

Standing next to Alexander and Brother Richard, Frank watched Debby slump beside his body, sobbing. A siren wailed in the distance. People emerged from the restaurant and approached in shock.

Oddly numb, Frank couldn’t feel the cold or the snow falling on him. “I’m dead?”

“Yes,” the elderly man said.

“No.”

“Yes,” the young man said.

“I don’t want to leave my wife.”

“We understand,” Alexander said. “We had people we didn’t want to leave either.”

Snow fell on Debby, covering her coat as she sobbed next to Frank’s body. Bystanders gathered around her.

“Ice under the snow?” Frank asked. “I died because of a crazy accident?”

“Everything in life is an accident.”

“But you lured me toward it. You distracted me so I’d walk faster than I should have in the snow. I told Debby you were guarding us, but she didn’t believe me.”

“She was right. We’re not your guardians.”

“Then what are you?”

“Your companions. We stopped you from dying when you weren’t supposed to, and we helped you to die when it was your time,” Alexander said.

“We died as you drove past our wrecked car on the highway, going to the opera,” Brother Richard continued. “The rule is, you bond to someone in the vicinity of where you die. Then you help that person die when he or she is supposed to, and you stop it from happening sooner than it’s supposed to. Everything in its time.”

“The opera?”

“You weren’t supposed to be there. The storms, the difficulty of flying home from Los Angeles, they were supposed to make you stay away. When you went to such extreme efforts to come back to Santa Fe and go to the opera, we had to convince you to leave early.”

“You’re saying Debby and I would have been killed in a car accident if we stayed until the opera was finished?”

“Yes. In a crash in the storm. But only you. Your wife would have survived.”

“And at the farmers’ market?”

“You’d have been killed when the truck swerved to avoid the bicyclist.”

“Only me?”

“Yes. Again your wife would have survived.”

“I don’t want to leave her,” Frank said.

“Everybody dies. But in this case, you won’t be leaving her. She was so near you when you died that you’re now her companion.”

Frank slowly absorbed this information. “I can be with her until she dies?”

“Until you make sure that she dies when she’s supposed to,” Brother Richard said. “Eight months from now, she will die falling from a stepladder. Unless you stop her. Because that’s not her time. Six years from now, she will die in a fire. Unless you stop her from going to a particular hotel. Because, again, that’s not her time.”

“When will she die?”

“Twelve years from now. From cancer. That will take its natural course. You won’t need to assist her.”

Frank’s heart felt broken.

“She’ll have remarried by then. She and her new husband will adopt a little boy. Because you love her, you’ll share her happiness. Afterward, she, too, will become someone’s companion.”

“And after we fulfill our duty?” Frank asked.

“We’re allowed to find peace.”

Frank gazed at his sobbing wife as she kneeled beside his body. Blood flowed from his skull, congealing in the cold.

“One day I’ll be allowed to talk to her as you and I are talking?”

“Yes.”

“But in the meantime, she’ll eventually love someone else and adopt a child?”

“Yes.”

“For fifteen years, I was her companion. All I want is for her to be happy. Even if it means not sharing her happiness…”

Frank at last felt something: the sting of tears on his cheeks.

“I’ll be glad to be a different sort of companion to her for the rest of her life.”