Page 2 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
Eleven hours left. Annie leaned on Paulo’s arm and glanced around the ballroom. The celebration was winding down. Pieces of cake were half eaten, and women’s high-heeled shoes were kicked off under the tables. It was a small affair—Annie didn’t have much family—and she had chatted with nearly all the guests, many of whom had gushed, “Let’s see each other more often!”
Paulo turned to Annie and said, “Hey, I made you something.” Annie smiled. He was always making her little gifts. Wooden figures. Trinkets. He had learned to carve and paint in Italy, where his family moved when he was a teen. Back then, Annie thought she would never see Paulo again. But years later, on her nursing job, she walked past a hospital wing that was under construction, and there he was, working as a carpenter.
“Hey, I know you,” he said. “You’re Annie!”
Ten months later, they were engaged.
Annie was happy at first. But as the wedding approached,she grew anxious. She began losing sleep. “Whenever I plan things, they don’t work out,” she told Paulo. He put his arm around her shoulders and reminded her that she didn’t “plan” to bump into him that day at the hospital, right?
Annie raised her eyebrows. “How do you know?”
Paulo laughed. “There’s the Annie I’m gonna marry!”
But her worry remained.
***
“Here,” Paulo said now, handing her a small, yellow, wiry creation, soft and fuzzy, with oval ears on top and oval feet on bottom.
“A rabbit?” Annie said.
“Uh-huh.”
“From pipe cleaners?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get this?”
“I made it. Why?”
Annie shifted on her feet, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. She looked across the floor and saw the old man from before. His chin was thick with salty whiskers and his suit was outdated by thirty years. But his skin was what drew Annie’s attention; it was strange, almost radiant.
How do I know this man?
“Don’t you like it?”
Annie blinked. “What?”
“Your rabbit.”
“Oh. I love it. I do.”
“I do,” Paulo repeated, as if mulling it over. “We’re saying ‘I do’ a lot today.”
Annie smiled and rubbed the small creation. But something cold shot through her body.
***
A pipe cleaner rabbit—like the one Paulo just gave her—had been in Annie’s hands the day of the fateful accident, a gift from the whiskered old man she was seeing now at her wedding.
A man who died more than twenty years ago.
His name was Eddie. He had worked at Ruby Pier. His job was fixing rides. Every day he greased the tracks and tightened the bolts and walked the park looking and listening for trouble. He kept pipe cleaners in his work shirt pocket to twist into toy figures for the younger customers.
The day of the accident, Annie had been left alone by her mother, who’d gone off with her latest boyfriend.Eddie was gazing at the ocean when Annie approached, wearing cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt with a cartoon duck on the front.
“’Scuuuse me, Eddie Maint’nance?” she said, reading the patch on his shirt.
