Free In the First Early Days of My Death by Catherine Hunter

came back to my home, my husband. I had responsibilities. I couldn’t leave Alika. And there was no way I was going to let Evelyn get away with this. So I stayed close to the old neighbourhood. I patrolled St. Catherine Street, roaming from house to house, checking up on my family and on Felix. With so much time on my hands, I realized there were a lot of beautiful things in my neighbourhood, things I’d passed by every day when I was alive and never appreciated, like the tree on the corner.
    At the very end of St. Catherine Street, in front of Felix’s house, a huge silver maple spread out over the sidewalk, so that pedestrians had to push aside its lower branches to pass by. The first day I visited Felix at home, he was contemplating that tree from an upstairs window of his house. I could barely see him through the forest of poplars in his yard, so I rose higher, into the limbs of the silver maple. I saw a squirrel’s nest there, and a pair of squirrels running up and down the trunk with seeds and acorns in their mouths. I remembered reading that squirrels worked so hard because half the time they forgot where they hid their acorns. I’d found that funny once.
    Felix looked very serious, almost morose, and I imagined that he was thinking of me, of my demise. I watched him rub a palm across his forehead, pondering the problem deeply. He seemed intelligent. Dedicated to his job. Upholder of law and order. I was confident that he would set things right. But I wished I’d mentioned Evelyn to him before she got me. I wished I could report her crime like a normal person would, sitting in a police station filling out forms, pointing her out in a line-up. I’d have to leave that to others.
    The wind was growing stronger. Black clouds were filling the sky. Felix Delano turned away from the window and disappeared somewhere inside his house.
    I rose above the silver maple and looked down upon its crown. Its leaves were dark as iron in the evening light, and when the wind passed through its branches, it swayed and tossed, revealing the underside of its leaves, shimmering like pale sage. I had never seen it it for what it truly was — a giant being, rooted to the planet, rustling and breathing. It bent its great body with the wind, bowing sometimes toward the grass and reaching sometimes toward the sky, but always it remained, anchored deep below the surface of the earth.
    I envied it.

    When she sat in the hospital room, watching Wendy’s chest rise and fall with the mechanical rhythm of the respirator, Noni couldn’t feel Wendy’s spirit at all. She could only sense it if she was all alone  —  like that first day in the cafeteria ,  when she felt Wendy so close beside her she imagined her breath on her neck. Or when she heard the low moaning at the window — summer wind, she told herself, she should buy weatherstripping. But she knew the summer wind didn’t sound like that, not unless there was a storm. And there had been no storms since the night that Wendy fell. At these times, Noni feared her sister-in-law had left her body. Had passed on.
    Sometimes, early in the morning, Noni dreamed that Wendy was standing at the foot of her bed. Often the dream was so vivid it terrified her, and she woke trembling. One night she rented the movie Hamlet and afterwards dreamed that Wendy was spurring her on to avenge her death. Even after waking, Noni found it hard to shake the eerie sensation that Wendy was present in her apartment. She could hear Wendy’s voice in her head, whispering urgently, but she couldn’t make out the words.
    Was there anything to avenge?
    Detective Delano seemed to think so. He came to the hospital and questioned Noni about her brother and his marriage to Wendy. Noni answered truthfully. Her brother was a gentle man, he loved his wife, they all loved her.
    He assured Noni that the questions were routine. It was just that it seemed unlikely, he said