Free Her Eyes by Jennifer Cloud, Regan Taylor Page A

life, we have certain things we're going to do to finally get to where we don't have to come back here anymore. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew, and we get tired. We just don't think we can do it, so we want to give up. Now, suicide is a sin, a terrible sin and like the Catholics, they believe you go to hell for doing it. These metaphysical folks, they think that you can come back to do things right.
    "But, sometimes, there is a soul that is maybe more advanced or someone that really wants to live. The body they were in finished what that person needed. That's why sometimes children die. They finished their mission here on earth, and it's time for them to go. But they like it here. So they make a deal with someone who isn't happy or who feels like they can't go on, and when the time is right one soul takes the other's place.
    "Now, I don't know if this is so about Catherine. After the accident, she may have realized what a mean, rotten, snotty, b—"
    "Now, Mary, you know it's wrong to speak ill of the—"
    "She's not dead, Jim. She may have been for a few minutes but she's not dead now."
    "Uh, Mary,” Frank interrupted, “what were you going to say about Catherine and the accident?"
    As if to say, “See, someone thinks I have something important to say,” to her husband, she nodded. “As I was sayin',” she continued, “Catherine wasn't the nicest person around. Self-centered, vain ... never did know what you saw in her. Anyway, she may have realized she made a mess of things and didn't know how to make it right. She thought pretty highly of her looks and maybe she thought that without them she was nothing, a big nothing. You add that in with how rotten she must have known she was, she may have just said, ‘Enough,’ and wanted out. Well about the time she wanted out, maybe another spirit, a nice one, was wandering by, and figured Catherine's body was as good as any other, and when Catherine stepped out, the other one stepped in ... walked in. See what I mean?"
    "I follow you, Mary,” Frank assured her, “but I'm not sure about this. I mean, how does a soul just wander around?"
    "Ghosts, only not scary ones, but the ones that just weren't ready to die."
    "But what about that other person's family? Why not go back to that family?"
    "I don't know about that, the speaker didn't really talk about that, and I don't remember reading much about it. But it seems to me that if that person's job was done, they don't need to be part of that family anymore. And besides, if they have grieved, and went through the funeral and all, they might not take too kindly so someone just popping in and sayin’ ‘Hi, I'm your dearly departed,’ you know?"
    "I suppose."
    "Now, they don't always remember. In one of the articles I read—see I found this very interesting—they said that the new soul comes in and is able to pick things up, and they sort of remember, but they don't really know about the new body or remember a lot about the old. Over time, they forget the old life and become more and more the new person, but because they are more highly evolved, they don't become rotten. What I mean is not pick up the old personality traits."
    "Well, now, I have something to say."
    "What's that, Jim?” Frank nodded to the older man.
    "I remember years ago some actor died, he wasn't all that famous, just been on TV for a couple a months, and he died. Well they donated his body parts, you know heart, lungs, corneas, the usual parts. One guy got his heart, and he talked in a magazine about how he was glad to have this new heart because his old one didn't work too well and he was going to die and this one worked fine. But, he found himself liking other foods and sports he wasn't too fond of before. They called it ‘cellular memory’ or some such thing. The cells in the donated heart remembered what the first person was like. Maybe that's what's going on with Catherine. Maybe whoever donated her eye or skin or both, was a really