Free Aftershock by Sandy Goldsworthy

 

     
    Images on the glass walls taunted him.
    “We found your wife’s soul in Emma Bennett,” his partner said the day before.
    Ben sat there for hours, long after the other agents left for the day. He didn’t need any witnesses when he reviewed the file of his soul mate, the wife he lost when he died in World War II at Pearl Harbor.
    Photographs of Elizabeth’s past surrounded him, hovering in holograms around the room. Wedding pictures and childhood images brought back memories of their last life together.
    When Ben reached the Afterworld and learned his wife had years left to live, he joined the Bureau of Investigation. Being an agent allowed him to travel to earth disguised as a human. He wanted to watch over Elizabeth and their son.
    By the time Ben’s training was completed and he was finally free to roam earth, months had passed. He never saw his wife again. Ben sat in this same room at the agency’s headquarters when Elizabeth didn’t transition as expected, and no one could locate her whereabouts.
    “There are millions of souls, Ben,” his commanding officer said back then.
    He agreed there were millions of souls, but only one that mattered to him. Searching for Elizabeth for decades, isolating himself at times, he always wondered what happened to her. In those years, the bureau became his family, and he threw himself into his work.
    Memories filled his mind as his life with Elizabeth flashed before him in a slideshow on the walls. Suddenly, it was fall, 1931.
    Elizabeth Emmaline Hudson was sixteen years old and the most beautiful girl Benjamin had ever seen. She had shiny, brown hair and bright, blue eyes that smiled when she spoke, but when she looked at him, they sparkled.
    It was a crisp, Saturday afternoon. At sixteen, Benjamin was too old for chores, he thought. But when his father ordered him to take the truck into Riverside to pick up groceries for his mother, he obeyed. He had plans to go into town with some buddies and catch a movie, but his father told him that would have to wait.
    Benjamin climbed into the family’s pickup truck and turned the ignition, pumping the clutch, and hoping for an easy start. The old truck had its quirks, but it was all they could afford. It chugged to life, and he began his ten-minute drive to the city.
    He almost stopped at Walt Crandon’s on the way, but thought better should his father find out. Any deviation from his father’s direct instruction would be met with harsh words, not to mention more wood chopping before winter set in.
    Benjamin rarely went into Riverside. Most of his friends went into Westport, a larger city with a movie theater, which was the same distance from his house on the lake. He parked the truck in front of the store with the dark green sign that read “Hudson Grocery.” Through the front window with the yellow and white letters spelling “General Store, Est. 1894,” he could see Walt’s mother speaking with an older, heavyset man. He figured it was Mr. Hudson. Benjamin watched them for a second or two. Mrs. Crandon pointed out vegetables, which the man placed in a crate. Benjamin’s mother raved over the fresh produce carried at the store. It appeared that Walt’s mother preferred their selection, too.
    Benjamin got out of the truck and checked his reflection in the window before walking inside. He heard that Elizabeth helped her father in the store on weekends. In case he would see her, he smoothed his dark brown hair back.
    The store was bigger than he remembered, with several baskets of apples and squash in front. Mrs. Crandon was too busy ordering Mr. Hudson around for either of them to notice that he walked in, or hear the bell that rang when he shut the door. The floorboards creaked as he walked slowly past the russet potatoes to the counter. He stood patiently waiting his turn.
    As Benjamin began daydreaming of all the things he could be doing, he heard a voice behind him. It was soft and delicate. “May I help you?”