As Close as Sisters by Colleen Faulkner Page B

her instructions with my two left thumbs.
    “Both, I think.”
    “Ah, there it is.” I didn’t know why I was so delighted. Actually, I did. Because something had just occurred to me. “Aurora, what would you think of me doing a video diary this month? Instead of the usual written account? Think that would fulfill my obligation?” I looked at her through the lens of the camera in my phone. “This would be way easier.”
    Aurora shrugged. “I like reading the stuff, but I guess. It might be cool.”
    Lilly walked onto the porch, with Janine following behind her, carrying a tray of glasses of iced tea and sodas. I hit the record button again.
    “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Lilly announced. “Just waiting on the rice.”
    I watched them, via my cell phone screen. It gave me an interesting perspective. Janine looked funny carrying the tray, walking behind Lilly like she was her maid: Lilly in her pristine sundress, Janine in her baggy board shorts and a K-Coast T-shirt. What was even funnier was that Fritz was following dutifully behind her . Which made it crowded on the front deck. And everyone was talking at once.
    “Unsweetened,” Janine told Mia, pointing at one of the iced tea glasses. She pointed to another glass. “Coke.”
    “Nope, just one,” Lilly was telling Maura as she rubbed her protruding abdomen.
    Aurora grabbed a glass of iced tea and set it down on my armchair, filling my screen with the glass. I’d have to learn to use the focus button.
    “Sugar?” Aurora asked.
    I hit the red button. The video stopped. “Please.”
    We sat on the deck and sipped our drinks; Lilly and I in the chairs, Janine standing, Aurora and my girls perched on the rail. Everyone talking, and Lilly was getting loud—to be heard—and it was . . . glorious. I was so happy. The five most important people in the world to me were at arm’s length.
    I listened to Maura giggle over something Lilly said. I heard snatches of conversation between Janine and Mia; they were talking about where Mia would be applying to college. As I listened, I felt as if I was taking a step back from them. One minute I was in the fray, the next, I was an outsider. Watching, but not participating.
    Would it be like this when I was dead? Would I be able to watch my daughters interact with my best friends from the clouds? Would my spirit hover over my daughters? Guide them? Would I ring bells on Christmas trees? Would my face appear in condensation on glasses, to let my daughters know I was with them, in spirit if no longer in the flesh? Or would it be like one of my assistant librarians had said: When you died, you just no longer existed?
    One would think that dying would force one to come to some conclusions about death. So far, I hadn’t. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it, because I had. A lot. I was envious of my friends who had strong religious beliefs—who knew what was going to happen to them when they died. I wrote “Methodist” on forms when asked of my religious affiliation, but only because when I was a kid we’d gone to a Methodist church on Christmas and Easter. My mother now attended regularly and belonged to a prayer group at her local church. I got the feeling, though, that the women spent as much time drinking tea as they did praying. She said they prayed for me all the time, though exactly what they were praying for, I wasn’t sure. For me to be healed. Or at least not die, I suppose. I found it hard to believe old ladies drinking tea could save me when science couldn’t. But I wasn’t so convinced that I had asked my mother and her friends not to pray for me.
    Fritz sat down beside my chair, and I glanced at him. We were both outsiders.
    He looked at me, at the others, and then at me again. I felt as if he was trying to communicate something to me, but I’m not good at doggie language. We didn’t even have a dog anymore. Our border collie had died two years ago. We had planned on getting a puppy,