"Good night, Eva."

            I kissed my daughter's cheek and sighed, stroking her dark hair. She slept on, unaware of my presence. Sadly, I turned and snapped my fingers which brought me back Up. Zack was waiting for me.

            "You're torturing yourself, Maxie," he pointed out despondently.

            "How?" I asked.

            "By knowing that you can't be with her the way a real mother can."

            "I can still be a mother even though I'm in Here."

            "Whatever," he mumbled.

            "Do you think she misses me?" I looked back Down. I could see my Eva, now only three, asleep in her room through my special window.

            "I doubt it."

            "Zack!" I whirled around in a rage. "You may have been up Here longer than I have but I think I know a little bit more than you do about my child! How heartless can you be?"

            "I don't have a heart," Zack shot me a wry smile. "We're dead, Maxie."

            I put my hands over my ears. "No!"

            "Max, stop." He roughly pulled my arms down. "You have to stop denying the fact that you're no longer in Seattle, no longer with Logan, no longer with Eva."

            "It's not fair," I looked over my shoulder and still saw the image of Eva in a deep slumber in her pink room that I had painted only weeks before she was due. I remember what I had told Logan that day,

            "We're having a girl, I just know it!"

            Logan leaned against the wall and laughed, "How do you know?"

            "Because we're daughter-makers," I sighed blissfully and smeared pink paint across his nose and kissed him.

            A lump caught in my throat. Never again would my lips feel the tingle of my husband's kiss.

            "Snap out of it," Zack said icily. "Live with it. Deal with it."

            I hate you for this, Zack, I thought bitterly. "I'm still going to visit her, Zack. Every night. Without fail. I will see my child and They can't stop me."

            "Whatever," he stressed for the fourth time today. "Keep in mind that They don't really allow stuff like this.

            "How can They not let me see Eva? It would kill me if I never saw her again, never saw her grow up. I still want to be there for her first day of school and her first date and her wedding and—"

            "Okay, okay, I get it," Zack said in a quieter voice. His intense brown eyes flitted from one side to the other as his thoughts tried to keep up with him. "There's a rule I heard about," he stated calmly. "If you die in childbirth, you're allowed to call your child Up once they're of age."

            "Of age?"

            "Eighteen."

            "So…when Eva's eighteen, I can bring her up here?"

            "Only for about thirty minutes."

            "How unfair." I turned back to the window, half-listening to what my brother had to say. Eva looked so much like me. She had my pouty lips, my almond shaped eyes, my hair color and former curls. Even in slumber she was my twin. A doppelganger. A special, irreplaceable part of me. I stood very still and watched her every movement. Only a minute later, a figure moved outside Eva's door and my heart skipped a beat. Who else was hovering over my child? I watched intently. Logan emerged from the shadows moments afterward. I raised an eyebrow in surprise. I'd thought he was asleep. He'd aged terribly since I'd died. It showed in his face and there was a deep sadness etched behind his once brilliant cerulean eyes. Even at 43, an age that was almost impossible for him to be, he looked at least fifty. My heart went out to him and my eyes became teary. I watched him as he wheeled into Eva's feminine bedroom and stroked her hair. He fixed the covers on her tiny bed and kissed her forehead. I was very still and I listened very carefully and I swear I heard him crying. Then he spoke in a hushed tone,

            "Max, she's so beautiful…just like you…the first time I laid eyes on her I knew she would look exactly like you and I would have two of the most beautiful women in the entire world in my life."

            My heart melted. I watched him remove his glasses and wipe a few fugitive tears off of his cheek.

            "Now," he said, his voice cracking, "you're gone and I feel as if I have nothing else to live for…I have no zeal for life left in me, Max…it's all gone. Everything I built my life upon…vanished."

            With tears running down my own cheeks, I turned away from the window, unable to contain the sadness that invaded my entire being.

            "Life ain't fair. If it was, would we be Here?"

            "Guess not."

            Zack hugged me close. "I don't want to see you unhappy, Maxie. I hate seeing you so sad. It just kills me."

            I couldn't help but laugh on the inside. I knew the angle Zack was coming from and as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Life was unfair. I was torturing myself. I looked back Down at Eva and tears pricked at my eyes. I swallowed hard and closed the window.

            "See you in fifteen years, Eva."