This world is big, and so are we
I stay up late, to hear your voice.
This light is here, to keep you warm
This song is here, to keep you strong.
I made a list of things to say
But all I want to say, all I really want to say
Is hold him and keep him strong, while I'm away from here.
Hold her and keep her strong, while I'm away from here.

--Untitled, REM

It happened again. I don't remember when it started. It probably started before I was even aware of it. That's how things usually happened. The world went on, life happened around me, but I was too tied up in my job at fucking CTU to even notice.

The first instance I was aware of was in May. It'd been nearly three months since that awful day, when I'd cradled the heavy, cold body of my dead wife. My Teri.

Let me give you some background. Things had been strained in our marriage for a while now. Having recognized this, I saw that there needed to be some changes. And I was ready. See, I'd made a decision to start noticing things again. To live life, to participate. But that decision had come to late, and Teri had already moved ahead without me, and she told me to leave. I was in shock, mired in disbelief when she told me, holding my overnight bag out to me. I don't know what kind of reaction she expected, and I didn't know what kind of reaction to give her.

Still, I was determined to do what I'd made up my mind to, so my first participatory act as a newly-committed member of the human race was to drive over to Nina Myers' house and cry my way into her bed. As I had expected, she was more than willing to comfort me. Nina was indignant for me, angry for me, and later, she confessed, hot for me. Oh, god, was she ever. We didn't sleep that night, or the next. And then reality sunk in, and the tears were real ones, not crocodile tears used at tools of a vengeful seduction.

I screwed around with Nina at night while spending my days on the phone with Teri, trying to talk my way back home. She'd tell me how bad things were between her and Kim, and the things she was hearing from Kim's teachers, but when I said I'd talk to our daughter, she said she was handling it. Finally, she told me that when and if she was ready, she'd call me. I could take a hint. So, for a while, I took what Nina had to give...and she gave it all quite willingly. Too bad I had no foresight about what she was planning to take.

It's easier for me to believe that somehow, that day went just as Nina had planned. That her ultimate goal was not my death, but my utter emotional collapse. To this day, she denies that.

That's the lead-up, the explanation I've given them over and over. It's guilt, playing tricks on my mind. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy, dammit. I can't believe the alternatives.

Teri's sister, Carol had come down from Northern California, and her parents had come from back east for the funeral. Her parents, heartbroken and not understanding how I could stay in a job that lead to so much sadness and loss for this family, had left at the first polite opportunity. But Carol stayed and helped me pack up the house, take care of the business of putting it on the market. She kept all of Teri's sewing things, and a lot of her personal effects from before our marriage. She went through the things I couldn't bear to be in the same room with, let alone look at or touch.

Kim helped a little, but mostly, she stayed at my folks' house, hiding from me, hiding from everything. And me, not knowing what to do, I let her hide. I figured she needed time, that she'd come back. How wrong I was.

So she wasn't there with me the first time I felt something amiss. No one was. Carol had taken a load of Teri's clothes to a women's shelter, which Teri would have been happy about. I remember that the air conditioner was off. I wasn't living there, and didn't want to pay more of a bill than necessary. So, even though it was easily 80 degrees out, and hotter inside, I left the windows open, relying on the weak, late-spring breeze that found its way to our house from the ocean.

I was in the office Teri and I had shared, packing up my desk, going through years of files that I'd kept, deciding what was necessary and what was to be shredded. I remember thinking that the breeze had picked up, because I felt a chill, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. On that draft was the unmistakble scent of Teri's favorite perfume. That rattled me so bad, I dropped the file I was holding, whirling around with a smile on my face, certain that she would be in the doorway. But it was empty. The shiver that had run through me, that had filled me not with dread, or fear, but with the unmistakable feeling of love dissipated and the emptiness returned. The clock on the wall ticked mournfully, and I was still alone.

We hadn't finished cleaning Teri's things out of the office, and I was able to satisfactorially explain away each thing I'd experienced. We weren't far from the ocean, and it was likely that a cooler front had moved in. Her things were still all over the room, so the breeze had merely brought her perfume out of the curtains, or the cushion on her deskchair. So, I was mollified that I'd imagined it all. At least, that time.

A few days later, as I walked through the now empty living room, I felt the chill again, and it stopped me in my tracks. I felt the blood run out of my face as I was certain I heard her laughing. Teri's beautiful, melodic laugh ringing through my ears, through the very fiber of my soul. I didn't just hear her laugh, I was filled with it. But as soon as the feeling had swept over me, it pulled away again, leaving me shaking and desperate, tearing through the house, certain this time that she was here, and this had all been a dream.'

Carol could sense something was bothering me. Something beyond the obvious, that is. She tried to ask me, as gently as she could, but I couldn't explain to her without sounding like a lunatic, so I just shook my head and said I was getting by fine. She didn't believe me, but she accepted my answer. I heard her on the phone later that day, talking to their other sister, Cynthia, who lived in Japan with her Navy captain husband and hadn't been able to come to the funeral. She told Cindy that she was worried to leave me alone, that she feared I was holding things in, not dealing with them. While that was true, I didn't think I was doing so badly. Then again, we never see how bad we truly handle things, do we?

The next time it happened, Carol was not only in the house, she was in the room with me, leaning against the opposite kitchen counter while we ate some sandwiches she'd picked up. Again, the chill...the feeling of overwhelming emotion. And this time, her voice, a breath of a whisper against my ear. My name, in her sweet voice. "Dance with me, Jack. This is our song." For as long as I live, I will hear that in my head, over and over. And then, as the tickle of her exhalation was still warming my ear, I heard the song. I heard the music, the words...and I blinked away the tears.

Carol carefully asked me what was wrong, and I shook my head, as if it was nothing more than missing my wife. Finally, I swallowed hard, and I asked her if she'd heard anything. When she asked what she was supposed to have heard, I asked if she'd heard music. She only shook her head, looking around us. She finally nodded towards the window, to the windchimes hanging there. I nodded, wiping my eyes, agreeing that those must have been what I heard, even though I knew without a doubt that I'd heard Teri.

The thing was, the more I thought about these incidents, the more they became in my head. Instead of a whiff of her perfume, it was her perfume, her lotion, even the soap she used. The smell of her shampoo, and I could even feel her brush by me as we passed in the hall.

Don't be ridiculous. How is that even possible? She's dead.

Her laughter? It had been in response to how I looked trekking around the house with these boxes piled precariously in my arms. She was there, laughing at me, but in a sweet way, not in a mocking way.

She was not there...she's not anywhere...she's dead and you're losing your mind.

And that song...it had occured to me after the fact that it was our anniversary. The last thing we did before we went to bed on our anniversary was play our song on the stereo and dance in the living room, just holding each other close, renewing our promise. Teri was renewing her promise.

Maybe she didn't know she was gone, that she was supposed to be somewhere else now, not with me. She didn't realize our second chance had been cut short by an assassin's bullet.

Get over it, Bauer.

Carol left, once the house was sold and I was in the apartment. I was grateful for the solitude. I had things to do...I had to go visit all the places Teri and I would go, because I had to find her, I had to feel her, hear her, smell her. She had something to tell me, and I hadn't been listening, but now...I was ready, I wanted to hear what she had to say.

But she wasn't talking. Not anymore. The air never cooled around me, her laughter never floated through me again. Our song was a memory, a distant one. I couldn't even hum it if I wanted to. Had I missed what she said? What was I supposed to know? What was she trying to tell me? I needed to know. At a loss to figure out how, I went everywhere we'd ever been in LA, everywhere that had meant something to us.

Which is how I ended up here, on these cliffs above the blue Pacific, where Teri and I had often gone after a night out, to look at the ocean, steal a few more minutes before we headed home, paid off the babysitter and crawled into bed. It's the one place I can think of where we'd talk, really talk. I'm here, Teri. I'm ready to listen. I'm running out of ideas, and I miss you so much.

There's a way...I know there is. Two steps, and a few seconds later, I'd be with her. It would be so easy... The thought repeats as a cool wind swirls around me and I hover on the edge, I teeter on the brink. And I hear her. And now I know. Two steps.

Now I know.

End

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