At the core of it, life is a test—an opportunity to prove who we are; what we’re really made of. Short as it was, I’d like to think I lived my life well, that when people remember Ike McDermott, they remember he was a good man. When I look back, I’m proud of who I was.

Leaving behind the woman I loved was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and finding peace with the knowledge she was building a life with my brother after I moved on took a strength I didn’t know I had. But George and Charlotte were still alive. I wasn’t. Together, they forged on, and I was okay with that because I knew, one day, Charlotte and I would be reunited.

One day she would be mine.

All I had to do was wait.

Time works differently in the afterlife. Without any ties to the living, it doesn’t so much as slow, but stop altogether. There is no worrying about what is to come, there is only what is.
I didn’t know if four days, or fifty years had passed when I found Charlotte by our tree in my corner of the other side. All I knew was she was here, and I would never have to let her go. I finally had my reward for the life I’d lived.

But I’d soon learn Fate had other plans, and everything I believed about who I was would be tested once again. Only this time, I wasn’t so sure I could stay strong.

This time, I wasn’t sure I could be a good man.