The day before my birthday, my late father came to me in a dream and said “Don’t wear the dress your husband gave you!” I woke up soaked in sweat, because he really had given me that dress not long ago. When the seamstress brought it back and I cut the inside open, I just froze!

The day before my fiftieth birthday, the man who had been dead for three years stood at the foot of my bed and saved my life.

I woke with a gasp, violently ejected from a dream where the water was too dark and the air too thin. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs, a trapped bird desperate to escape. The damp cotton of my nightgown clung to my back, a second skin of cold sweat. My hand fumbled for the lamp switch, knocking over a glass of water before finding the plastic toggle. The room flooded with soft, amber light, but it did nothing to banish the chill that had settled in my marrow.

Beside me, Mark slept on. My husband of twenty years lay turned away from the light, his breathing a steady, rhythmic rasp that usually comforted me. Tonight, it sounded like a countdown.