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      1

      Amy Ryan was safe in her bed, drifting in that place where slumber and wakefulness mesh into a tranquil twilight, when she distinctly felt someone grasp her big toe and wriggle it.

      “Amy.”

      She groaned and pulled the covers up over her head. Two full years had passed since her handsome, healthy young husband, Tyler, had died on the operating table during a routine appendectomy. She couldn’t be hearing his voice now.

      “No,” she murmured. “I refuse to have this dream again. I’m waking up right now!”

      Amy’s toe moved again, without orders from her brain. She swallowed, and her heart rate accelerated. Quickly, expecting to find eight-year-old Ashley’s cat, Rumpel, at the foot of the bed playing games, she reached out and snapped on the bedside lamp.

      A scream rushed into her throat, coming from deep inside her, but she swallowed it. Even though Tyler was standing there, just on the other side of her blanket chest, Amy felt no fear.

      She could never be afraid of Ty. No, what scared her was the explicit possibility that she was losing her mind at thirty-two years of age.

      “This can’t be happening,” she whispered hoarsely, raising both hands to her face. From between her fingers, she could still see Tyler grinning that endearing grin of his. “I’ve been through counseling,” she protested. “I’ve had grief therapy!”

      Tyler chuckled and sat down on the end of the bed.

      Amy actually felt the mattress move, so lifelike was this delusion.

      “I’m quite real,” Tyler said, having apparently read her mind. “At least, real is the closest concept you could be expected to understand.”

      “Oh, God,” Amy muttered, reaching blindly for the telephone.

      Tyler’s grin widened. “This is a really lousy joke,” he said, “but I can’t resist. Who ya gonna call?”

      Amy swallowed and hung up the receiver with an awkward motion of her hand. What could she say? Could she dial 911 and report that a ghost was haunting her bedroom?

      If she did, the next stop would not be the Twilight Zone, it would be the mental ward at the nearest hospital.

      Amy ran her tongue over dry lips, closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again, wide.

      Tyler was still sitting there, his arms folded, charming smile in place. He had brown curly hair and mischievous brown eyes, and Amy had been in love with him since her freshman year at the University of Washington. She had borne him two children, eight-year-old Ashley and six-year-old Oliver, and the loss of her young husband had been the most devastating experience of Amy’s life.

      “What’s happening to me?” Amy rasped, shoving a hand through her sleep-rumpled, shoulder-length brown hair.

      Tyler scratched the back of his neck. He was wearing slacks and a blue cashmere cardigan over a tailored white shirt. “I look pretty solid, don’t I?” He sounded proud, the way he used to when he’d won a particularly difficult case in court or beaten a colleague at racquet ball. “And let me tell you, being able to grab hold of your toe like that was no small feat, no pun intended.”

      Amy tossed back the covers, scrambled into the adjoining bathroom and frantically splashed cold water on her face. “It must have been the spicy cheese on the nachos,” she told herself aloud, talking fast.

      When she straightened and looked in the mirror, though, she saw Tyler’s reflection. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded.

      “Pull yourself together, Amy,” he said good-naturedly. “It’s taken me eighteen months to learn to do this, and I’m not real good at sustaining the energy yet. I could fade out at any time, and I have something important to say.”

      Amy turned and leaned back against the counter, her hands gripping the marble edge. She sank her teeth into her lower lip and wondered what Debbie would make of this when she told her about it. If she told her.

      Your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something, her friend would say. Debbie was a counselor in a women’s clinic, and she was working on her doctorate in psychology. It’s time to let go of Tyler and get on with your life.

      “Wh-what did you want to—to say?” Amy stammered. She was a