Craig finally dragged his gaze away from Jesse. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe the fact that I’m not supposed to be dead?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to be patient. Because the thing is, of course, everybody thinks this. That they died too young. I’ve had folks who croaked at age 104 complain to me about the injustice of it all.

But I try to be professional about the whole thing. I mean, mediation is, after all, my job. Not that I get paid for doing it or anything, unless you count, you know, karma-wise. I hope.

“I can certainly see why you might feel that way,” I went on. “Was it sudden? I mean, you weren’t sick or anything, were you?”

Craig looked indignant. “Sick? Are you kidding me? I can bench two forty, and I run five miles every single day. Not to mention, I was on the NoCal crew team. And I won the Pebble Beach Yacht Club’s catamaran race three years in a row.”

“Oh,” I said. No wonder the guy seemed to have such a wicked build beneath his Polo. “So your death was accidental, then, I take it?”

“Damn straight it was accidental,” Craig said, stabbing a finger into my mattress for emphasis. “That storm came out of nowhere. Flipped us right over before I had a chance to adjust the sail. Pinned me under.”

“So…” I said hesitantly. “You drowned?”

Craig shook his head…not in answer to my question but out of frustration.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” he said, staring unseeingly at his shoes…deck shoes, the kind guys like him—boaters—wear without socks. “It wasn’t supposed to have been me. I was on my high school swim team. I was first in the district one year in freestyle.”

I still didn’t get it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem fair. But things will get better, I promise.”

“Oh, really?” Craig looked up from his shoes, his hazel gaze seeming to pin me against the far wall. “How? How are things going to get better? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m dead.”

“She means things will get better for you when you’ve moved on,” Jesse said, coming to my rescue. He seemed to have gotten over the pirate remark.

“Oh, things will get better, will they?” Craig let out a bitter laugh. “Like they have for you? Looks like you’ve been waiting to move on for a while, buddy. What’s the holdup?”

Jesse didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really anything he could say. He didn’t, of course, know why he hadn’t yet passed from this world to the next. Neither did I. Whatever it was that was trapping Jesse in this time and place had a pretty solid hold on him, though: It had already kept him here for over a century and a half and showed every sign of hanging on—I selfishly hoped—for my lifetime anyway, if not all eternity.

And while Father Dom kept insisting that one of these days, Jesse was going to figure out what it was that was keeping him earthbound, and that I had better not get too attached to him since the day would come when I would never see him again, those well-meaning warnings had fallen on deaf ears. I was already attached. Big time.

And I wasn’t working too hard on extricating myself from that attachment either.

“Jesse’s situation is kind of unique,” I said to Craig in what I hoped was a reassuring tone—both for his sake as well as Jesse’s. “I’m sure yours is nowhere near as complicated.”

“Damn straight,” Craig said. “Because I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“Right,” I said. “And I’m going to do my best to get you moving on to that next life of yours….”

Craig frowned. It was the same frown he’d been wearing all through dinner, as he’d gazed at Jake’s friend Neil.

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I meant. I mean I’m not supposed to be here. As in, I’m not supposed to be dead.”

I nodded. I had heard this one before, countless times. No one wants to wake up and discover that he or she is no longer alive. No one.

“It’s hard,” I said. “I know it is. But eventually you’ll adjust to the idea, I promise. And things will be better once we figure out what exactly is holding you back—”

“You don’t get it,” Craig said, shaking his dark head. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. What’s holding me back is the fact that I’m not the one who’s supposed to be dead.”

I said hesitantly, “Well…that may be. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“What do you mean?” Craig rose to his feet and stood in my bedroom, looking furious. “What do you mean, there’s nothing you can do about that? What am I doing here, then? I thought you said you could help me. I thought you said you were the mediator.”

“I am,” I said with a hasty glance at Jesse, who looked as taken aback as I felt. “But I don’t dictate who lives or dies. That’s not up to me. It’s not part of my job.”

Craig, his expression turning to one of disgust, said, “Well, thanks for nothing, then,” and started stalking toward my bedroom door.

I wasn’t about to stop him. I mean, I didn’t really want anything more to do with him. He seemed like kind of a rude guy with a chip on his big swimmer’s shoulders. If he didn’t want my help, hey, not my problem.

It was Jesse who stopped him.

“You,” he said, in a voice that was deep enough—and commanding enough—to cause Craig to stop in his tracks. “Apologize to her.”

The guy in the doorway turned his head slowly to stare at Jesse.

“No freaking way,” was what he had the lack of foresight to say.

A second later, he wasn’t walking out—or even through—that door. No, he was pinned to it. Jesse was holding one of Craig’s arms at what looked to be a fairly painful angle behind his back, and he was leaning heavily against him.

“Apologize,” Jesse hissed, “to the young lady. She is trying to do you a kindness. You do not turn your back on someone who is trying to do you a kindness.”

Whoa. For a guy who seems to want nothing to do with me, Jesse sure can be testy sometimes about how other people treat me.

“I’m sorry,” Craig said in a voice that was muffled against the wood of the door. He sounded like he might be in pain. Just because you are dead, of course, does not mean you are immune to injury. Your soul remembers, even if your body is gone.