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really happening again?
    Maggie squeezed him gently.
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    Jamie swallowed. The problem was, the same mind that could suspend its di sbelief had the capacity to be rational. A man who had walked for forty-t wo years before surviving an accident wouldn't be fooled by bells and whi stles. A man who had touched his wife and moved within her body and felt her sweat drying on his own skin would not remain satisfied with a resurr ected memory. When you came down to it, no matter how good Jamie was at w hat he did, a virtual world could never be the real thing. Jamie cupped his hands over Maggie's breasts and grazed his teeth along her neck. "You have a point," he said.
    /f you aren't spooked about that kind of thing," Zandy Monroe said, "I can g o find Hugo."
    Allie shrugged. Sitting in the driver's seat of the pickup truck beside the body of Maggie MacDonald, she wasn't frightened, and surely Cam would have wanted his sergeant to dispose of the body with the local undertaker, even if he hadn't explicitly said so. "We're not going anywhere," she said, smi ling at Zandy.
    She had sent Mia back to the flower shop and told her to make as many funera l decorations as she could until Allie herself returned. Roses, she had said
    . Use as many as we've got. She also told her to find bluebells, which stood for constancy, and gillyflowers, for the bonds of affection. Now, she glanc ed at Maggie's smooth, pale skin. Rue, she thought, for sorrow. I should hav e told her about rue.
    With Zandy gone, Allie leaned closer to the dead woman. She glanced out th e window up and down the street, then laid her palm against Maggie's cheek
    . It was cold and firm to the touch. Allie drew back her fingers and tucke d her hand inside her pocket.
    Hugo Huntley came back with Zandy a few minutes later. He was the local mo rtician, and like everyone else on Main Street, had been in the crowd when James MacDonald had driven up to the police station. "Allie," he said, by way of greeting. He peered at the body through thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look very tiny and sunken in his face.
    "She's dead," Zandy said flatly.
    "Well yes." Hugo nodded. "I can see that." 7j&n&] carried Maggie MacDonald across the street to Huntley's Funeral Pa rlor, downstairs to the embalming rooms. To Allies
    Jodi Picoult
    shock, Maggie's body had already begun to freeze into the rigid position of sitting upright, so that even slung over Zandys shoulder, her knees bent sti ff and jutted into his abdomen instead of hanging slack.
    Zandy laid the body on its side and turned to Allie. "You can probably go n ow, Mrs. Mac," he said.
    Allie shook her head. "I made that man a promise. If you stay, so do I." They both turned to look at Hugo, who had donned a white lab coat and roll ed Maggie MacDonald's body onto her back, so that her knees peaked in the air. For a horrible moment, Allie remembered how funerals were done centur ies ago, and she had a brief vision of the laying out on a scarred kitchen table, where strong arms broke bones knotted by rigor mortis until the bo dy lay flat enough for a coffin. She turned away, the sweet mix of disinfe ctant and embalming fluid making her feel sicker.
    "I don't think you should really do anything yet," Zandy said to Hugo. "Leas t, not till Cam says so." Hugo doubled as the town's forensic expert, althou gh his police experience was limited to an autopsy some ten years back that had turned out to be much less of a mystery than originally thought: the dec eased, believed to be poisoned, had died of cirrhosis of the liver. Hugo peered closer at the body. "I won't do anything, but I'm going to get he r out of these things and take some Polaroids. No matter what, that's the fir st step."
    Allie swiftly glanced at the door before crossing her arms over her chest an d steeling herself to bear witness. Zandy leaned against a tray of medical i nstruments, scratching at a brass button on his heavy coat and pretending no t to watch as Hugo wrestled