She heard a knock on the door, and yelled, "Come in!
It was Lauren, who came bearing a bag of cookies.
"What's going on with you Lizzie?" she asked nicely. "I brought cookies."
"What do you want?" Lizzie asked jokingly.
"I just wanted to know if there was anything you wanted to talk about, and since our relationship is so hot and cold, I brought cookies to ease the pain," she explained.
"Don't worry, the procedure will be painless today," Lizzie said. "I have a few questions to ask you."
"Shoot," Lauren replied while cramming a cookie in her mouth.
"I thought Gordo and I were soulmates, so who is Erica?"
Lauren swallowed her cookie.
"Well.....it's really complicated. Are you sure you want me to explain it all?"
"Yes."
"Okay, well, everyone alive has one soulmate, right?" Lauren asked Lizzie.
"Right."
"But what if that one soulmate is killed? Are they supposed to go on living without anyone? What if they want someone to be with?"
"I never thought of that," Lizzie said, thinking of the new possibilities.
"That's where Erica comes in."
"But...she looks just like me," Lizzie said, suddenly confused.
"That's because she is part of you. Your still-living subconscious."
"My what?"
"You had unsolved problems before your death, and you deeply just want Gordo to be happy right?" Lauren tried to explain. "That is where she comes into play."
"Wait....."
"Erica is a part of you that is still living."
"She's not a real person?" Lizzie asked, even more confused.
"She is a real person...with the same birthday as you, with the same looks, and the same personality?"
All of the facts were running around Lizzie's head.
"She was alive at the same time as me?"
"Yep. But you never met, and now she is filling the void in Gordo's life."
Lizzie was about to have a headache, if people in heaven could even have headaches.
"Okay, let's just let it die, and let it be," she said, hoping to end this mind-boggling conversation.
Lizzie and Lauren continued to make insignificant small talk, until Victoria Smith burst through the room.
"Lizzie, I walked as fast as I could here," she said, almost out of breath.
"Walked?" Lizzie asked. "Why didn't you just run?"
"Proper ladies don't 'run,'" she said, smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress. "Anyways, you must turn on Miranda's channel right away. I was watching young Victoria, and she is at the hospital right now. Miranda is in labor!"
"OH MY GOSH!" Lizzie yelled in joy, and scrambled to find the remote.
Miranda was in the hospital, and she was struggling through labor. Lizzie knew that she should be there, and closed her eyes, wishing she was.
Then everything went black.
"PUSH, Miranda, PUSH!" a nurse standing by her yelled. "You're doing great, keep on doing it."
Miranda looked over to her right, where Danny Kessler stood, still in his tux. He was holding her hand tightly, and he smiled at her, kissing her hand as she looked over at him.
Suddenly, Miranda felt a warm, serene, and calm spirit come over her. She looked over to her left, where thorugh the window she saw Gordo, Matt, Victoria watching in a window. Her parents were standing to her left as well, but she felt yet another presence in the room.
She looked to her left hand again. Lizzie was holding it, or it was the angel of her. She had a flowing, white dress, and a single gold chain around her.
"Miranda, you can do it. I wish I could be here with you physically, but know that I am always here with you in spirit."
Lizzie squeezed her hand, as Miranda watched her in amazement.
"Miranda, I love you so much. Good luck."
Suddenly, Miranda's labor pains diminished drastically, and she gave one last push. When she heard the cries of her infant, she knew it was over.
"It's a girl!" the nurse exclaimed, and everyone cheered in joy. Danny kissed her on the cheek, and her parents rushed up to her side.
Miranda looked over to her left, but Lizzie had disappeared.
"Honey, you were so great," her mom exclaimed.
"Lizzie was here...and it all felt painless," Miranda explained, and her dad rubbed her forehead.
"That must have been the pain medication, sweetie."
As the nurse cleaned up her baby girl, and handed her to Miranda to hold, her parents watched with pride.
"What is her name?" the nurse asked.
"Elizabeth...Elizabeth Brooke Sanchez," Miranda answered confidently.
"Or how about Elizabeth Brooke Kessler?" Danny proposed, and knelt down beside the bed.
"What are you doing, Danny?" Miranda asked.
"I was going to ask you at the prom, but I guess this is a great moment. Will you marry me?"
"Marry you?" Miranda asked, speechless.
"I want to spend my life with you, and I want to help you with your child...I just can't wait any longer."
"Neither can I. Of course I will," Miranda answered, with tears in her eyes.
Lizzie was transported back to heaven, where she had tears in her own eyes.
"That was awesome," she said. "I am so happy"
However, her happiness could have been shot down at the discovery of what was on another channel. Past her mother's (whose was all black), to a channel she had never been before.
Sam Mcguire looked through the contents of his closet, and finally found what he was looking for. He pulled out a small box, and opened it. Newspaper clippings and photos of his deceased daughter Lizzie spilled out, and he started to cry.
Young Hilridge Student Killed in Hit-and-Run Accident, he read off of one of the articles on the top. Lizzie was dead, nobody knew who it was.
Except for Jo Mcguire.
Sam crumbled the article in his hands. She wasn't supposed to know. How did she know?
He picked up an envelope that laid at the bottom. It was from his wife, shortly after he left her.
I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, AND I KNOW THAT ITS YOUR FAULT. YOU KILLED OUR DAUGHTER.
A huge tear dropped to the note, blearing the text on the note, as he flashbacked to what happened that day.
The day that derailed his delicate life as he knew it.
FLAHSBACK
He picked up his briefcase, and grabbed a glass of orange juice as he ran out the door. His wife, who was sitting at the kitchen table glared at him from her glasses, and did not say a word to him as he left their house.
At work, his mistress called him, and asked him to meet at three o'clock. He looked at his watch, which read 2:30, and felt that he should leave early and get her a bouqet of flowers.
As he was driving down the street, he saw his children's high school on the left. He felt a sudden pang of guilt as he thought about what he was doing to them. Sam's phone rang, and the answer only intensified his grief.
"Why aren't you at work?" the impatient voice of his wife asked.
"I am at work."
"Your secretary told me that you left at 2:30. Where are you?" she yelled on the other end.
"Jo...please just calm down.." Sam tried to calm his angry wife.
"No, I won't calm down. You are going to see your mistress! Think about your children-"
Sam shut the phone off, cutting off his wife. Though they had stopped talking, he still felt really jumpy, and was not paying attention to the road, as he felt a distinct thud.
What did I hit? he asked himself absentmindedly, but did not stop for a second. He drove on quickly; he was very late to meet his mistress.
An hour later, his phone rang again, and it was his wife.
After she had said the worst possible thing, Sam began to connect two and two together. He killed his daughter....he was driving the car....and he was going to cheat on his wife.
It was all too much, and Sam just broke down in the middle of the restaurant.
"What's wrong?" his girlfriend asked.
"I have to stay with my wife...we can't do this anymore."
"What happened?"
"She knows," Sam said, dejectedly. Even though Jo had not come out and said it, he knew that she knew.
About two weeks after Lizzie's death, the T.V. mentioned her death in passing as a filler story on the news. Something about how her killer had not been caught, and how they found more clues. The details were going to be on at ten.
Sam came home from work around eight, earlier than what he usually had been in the last weeks. The time he spent with Jo and Matt was extremely awkward, and he honestly could not remember having a significant conversation with either of them. Most of his time off of work he spent at his girlfriend's, for after a couple of days, he had gone back to her.
He knew a couple of things, though. Matt was giving up soccer, and acting out at school. Jo knew that he was cheating on her, but she wanted everything to be alright for the time being.
But that night, he came home to find Jo sobbing.
"Sam....she's dead," Jo said through her tears.
Matt just continued to stare off into space, looking at one space on the wall, not moving at all.
"Matt..." Sam began to say, gently stroking his son's hair, but Matt quickly jerked his head away.
"How can you even comfort me? You're a monster!" Matt yelled, jumping out of his seat. "You were going to see your mistress."
"I can't believe you," he yelled once more, and he collapsed on the couch in a crying heap.
Jo just glared at Sam, and instantly went to comfort her son.
"Matt...please don't do this right now."
"You don't understand. She was the only not busy enough to care about what I was doing. In the stands at state soccer, which one of you was there? Neither of you. You conveniently forgot about it because you wanted to avoid each other. Lizzie was the only one there," Matt choked through his sobs. "You missed the soccer banquet when I got my award because you were in counseling....but Lizzie was there. She even made dessert for the potluck dinner."
"This isn't my fault," Sam said defensively.
"Yes it is," Matt shot back. "You want to know that Lizzie cried this morning over your fighting? I told her to get over it."
Suddenly Sam was overcome with emotion...the emotions of the past two weeks caused him to snap.
"Maybe if you weren't such a druggie loser, none of this wouldn't have happened," Sam yelled back. "Your pot smoking caused the rift in your mother and I's relationship, not anything I did."
Jo glared at Sam with dark, angry eyes.
"It was your cheating that caused the rift. He had nothing to do with it."
Sam threw his hands up into the air in exasperation.
"I can't take this anymore...I'm leaving," he yelled. He looked to Matt, whose face almost had an expression of relief, and then to Jo, who crumbled onto the floor.
"Fine, go. We don't want you here," Matt yelled. "Be with your girlfriend, and escape the reality."
"I will."
With those two cold words, Sam went up to his room to pack his bags, and Jo continued to sob. Matt hugged his mother, but she seemed to be frozen in shock.
Sam shoved all of his things into a couple of bags, and rushed out the door. He didn't actually have much, because he had moved a lot of his stuff to his girlfriend's house in the past couple of months. As he gave one last look to his wife and his son, he felt relieved that he would never have to face the guilt of killing Lizzie ever again.
