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Montgomery writes about her husband and all the other hidden gems on our street.  Maybe I could convince you, but I doubt it.  It’s too freakish.”
    She shrugged and wiped her nose with a tissue from his bedside table.
    “I love you, Daddy.”
    Part of her hoped that some of the sentiment might sink in and that his soul would feel a little better after she was called home.  Who knew?
    She stayed with him for what felt like two hours, but of course there was no way to measure time when clocks didn’t tick.
    Later, when she settled back to watch the silly TV show with her mother, she felt a tiny bit more at peace.
     
    *   *   *
     
    One week later, she was at the hospital again, in normal time.
    She was alone with her dad, sitting beside him, telling him about her day. She tried to visit every day, knowing any particular day could be his last, wanting to give her mom a break.  Mom sat with Dad twelve hours every day, with never a hint of complaint, but Karen knew she appreciated it when she spelled her off.  Tina also took her fair share of time sitting with him.
    The gasping for air was much worse, and everybody knew the end was very close.
    “I still hate broccoli, you know.”  Karen was trying to make light conversation when she realized Dad had stopped breathing.  She jumped to his side and saw his mouth move, trying to get just one last breath, but nothing was working anymore.  His eyes pleaded with her.
    “I love you, Daddy.  I always have.”
    She held tightly to both his hands and stared directly into his eyes.  He blinked one last time and then stopped even trying to get any air.  He was as frozen as when time stopped for her.
    After a few moments of just being with him, Karen called for a nurse and then phoned her mom to tell her.
     

 
     
     
     
Chapter 5
     
     
    It was more than a year before Karen saw Bobby again. She didn’t miss him.  In fact, he almost never crossed her mind.  Her mind and her heart were with her dad.  His death had left a hole in her soul that she struggled to fill.  When time stopped for her, she walked through some neighbors’ homes, but she didn’t feel the same excitement.  She didn’t even bother to write down what she found in her Secrets Journal.
    Her reaction in her free time wasn’t much different from normal time.  For almost six months, she didn’t crawl out of the hole that consumed her. 
    Early in the new year things changed.
    She woke in the middle of the night. Time was stopped.  It rarely happened in the middle of the night, and the combination of enough time having passed and the relative rareness of a night-time stoppage shook her mind free; she felt positive for the first time since the funeral.
    Excitement.  Curiosity.  Freedom.
    Her special feelings flooded back to her, and she jumped out of bed.  She never knew if she’d have ten minutes, an hour, or half a day to herself, but she didn’t want to waste a single second.
    She knew it made no sense to say she had “an hour” to herself, because with time stopped, the concept had no meaning, but it felt like time was passing to her, and that’s what mattered.
    Curiosity.  Her favorite emotion.  She loved the itch inside her that wanted to know what was going on in the houses down the street.
    She decided to head to a small shopping area nearby.  She called it “downtown,” but really it was just a group of stores that happened to have opened in the same general area: a Starbucks, a used bookstore, a bakery, and a half-dozen others.
    Homes surrounded the stores, and those homes commanded her attention tonight.
    The first two were locked tight.
    The third was different. It was a small, wooden, two-story house with faded brown paint and a sagging appearance that made her expect to find an old husband and wife sleeping soundly.
    The clock had stopped just after midnight.
    The main floor was quiet and dark.  Karen could see a light upstairs and she carefully climbed up.  Even