Chapter 4
My head is a gong.
I squint to see clouds, but they dissipate even more quickly than they appear. As they part in front of my eyes, there is light, nearly white.
Is this heaven?
Adjusting, my eyes scan the space, grasping for equilibrium and understanding. I hoist myself onto one side. I’m on the floor, and it’s gold. Cold, too. Also billowing with white tulle in an ethereal overlay.
My nose.
I touch it gingerly and ascertain that the pain is radiating from its tip to the edges of my whole face—my hairline, my jaw. I reach up to massage my cheeks, which are warm. I smack my lips and feel comforted to note they are reliably sticky with gloss.
What happened?
Before me stand two white podiums, sleek and boxy, one taller than the other. I rise, approaching them cautiously. Atop one is a big golden . . . needle? Twelve inches long maybe, it’s more like a pointed spear with a handle lacquered in pearls.
On the other pedestal sits a pink pickleball, just like the one I took square in the face. The memory dawns, albeit hazily. I realize I’m still wearing my white polo dress, which I must admit fits perfectly into this fever dream.
Behind the podiums, I spy oversized clear balloons, precisely like the ones at my birthday brunch.
I count them: ten. Each balloon contains a different floating object and is tethered to the ground by a string of twinkling fairy lights.
And in one final, intricate detail, each balloon bears a paper tag penned with swirling calligraphy: 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29.
I take in more of the space. White satin fabric ripples down the room’s walls. I notice I’m increasingly comfortable with each new breath I indulge. I’m thankful I’m still, in fact, breathing. Lungs full of air seem like a good sign, right?
“Welcome, Sutton.”
The female voice reverberates, and I startle, flying forward then breaking my fall on the taller podium, the one with the golden needle.
It’s a pretty needle, yes, but still a needle.
I don’t need to impale myself and make matters even more complicated.
“Geez!” My gaze flies around, seeking the source of my greeting.
It’s then that I see her, in the back of the room. Red hair cascading in waves. Milky-fair skin and ivy-green eyes. Delicate features, somehow both pointy and soft. She wears a silky white robe. She is shining—angelic.
Of course she is wearing white.
I don’t know what to do except demand the obvious. “Where am I? And who are you?”
She floats closer to me, smiling. “You could call me a guide of sorts.”
I hoot. “What, like my guardian angel or something?”
“If it helps you to think of me that way.”
“Right,” I drawl. “And it’s my twenty-first birthday.”
Unflinching at my sarcasm, she comes closer still, until we are face-to-face.
I swallow and stiffen then, staring. Not only because of her flawless features and statuesque presence, at which I can’t help but gawk, but because she’s seeing me.
Seeing absolutely all of me, from beginning to end. I feel it.
“Guardian angels aren’t really a thing,” I chide beneath her gaze, shifting in my scuffed-up sneakers, a contrast to the perfection sparkling everywhere. “Or . . . guides. Or whatever.”
“What makes you say that?” Her voice is harp music, calming.
My shoulders shrug. “I just . . . can’t imagine that. What, every human walks around with a good spirit lurking, protecting her?”
“Well, it doesn’t work exactly like that.”
“How does it work, then?”
She smooths her pillowy sleeves. “We’re here when you need us. Which is both often and not often. We only interfere when given permission and only when unequivocally necessary.”
Unequivocally necessary? I’d been a little grumpy about life lately, but what almost-forty-year-old wasn’t?
“So . . . what?” I ask. “You brought me here to save me?”
Should I be offended or flattered?
Her smile broadens. “In a way, yes. You made a birthday wish, from the deepest parts of yourself, and that wish was heard.”
I flip back to my past birthday wishes—begrudgingly, at first, before softening as I consider them.
At ten, I wished with all my heart for a puppy, and three months later, my dad folded, flying to Idaho to retrieve our family’s first puppy, a Siberian husky named Sascha.
At sixteen, I wished for a car, and my used white Volkswagen Beetle came to fruition.
At eighteen, I wished for a best friend in college, and into my life came Quinn.
My wishes haven’t all been answered—seeing the Matterhorn with my mom, winning the lottery—but I had to admit some came true.
Maybe the ones that mattered the most, the ones that felt more like prayers.
Did God actually hear my requests, however childlike, and take them seriously?
Even still, this didn’t mean I had a guardian angel.
I peer over her sloping shoulder to the balloons, and the glow of them fills me with wonder. “What are those, then? If you have all the answers, what in heaven’s name are those things?”
“They’re your twenties.”
Stop it.
“In another life, that is,” she continues. “Everyone has roads not taken. Lives not lived, other selves they could have been. You, for instance, chose to marry Reid at twenty-two, become a mother at twenty-six, and follow that wonderful path, leading you here, to your fortieth birthday.”
My eyeballs bulge. How does she know all of this?
“You wished to be young again,” she proceeds, “and you echoed Sierra’s prayer.”
What prayer?
That’s right: Loved, happy, and free. Eyes shut in desperation, I’d blown out the candles. Was this my own 90 Minutes in Heaven? Flesh and blood elsewhere, soul in this holy place? Was she my Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life, saving me from my own bridge?
I blink then look from balloon to balloon.
Twenty. A cookie jar.
Twenty-one. A sparkly heel.
Twenty-six. A snowflake.
Twenty-seven. A Ferris wheel.
Twenty-nine. The Statue of Liberty.
Every item feels both exotic and comforting, foreign and familiar, mine and someone else’s entirely—all of this, all at once.
I stand in a paradox of apprehension and possibility, sensing the urge to both reach out and grab every string, greedy with curiosity, and to back away slowly, forever. Back to Reid, back to the country club, back to whatever brought me here.
My gaze darts to the podiums now, to the spear and the ball. “Tell me more,” I risk. “Angel.” Despite my doubts, the word feels like the simplest name I can give her. The moniker also keeps her from seeming scary.
“These are your twenties in the world where you never met Reid,” she explains, floating over to balloon 21.
“Here”—she points—“is obviously where that happened. Of all the critical decision points and forks in the road of becoming Sutton, this is the one that most powerfully influenced your twenties and future decades. In these years, though, Reid is not in your life. At all.”
My heart pinches. “What about our kids?”
“Well, how would your children exist without you and Reid ever meeting?” She allows this to settle.
Panic rises. “You took me away from my family?”
“Yes,” she confirms. “But with a higher purpose. This is your life without marriage and motherhood—and every element stemming from those two things. And it’s something you must experience. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
I swallow.
“These are the years of another life,” she says. “Your single twenties.”
I squeeze my eyes shut now, and I’m taken back to a memory, back to a hospital bed.
Head heavy post–emergency C-section, heart swollen with brand-new love, lips quivering with shock and gratitude for the miracle.
Not one daughter, but two. My doctor places the twins on my chest. One of the best days I’ve known.
Max would arrive soon to meet them, planting plucky three-year-old kisses on their pink heads.
“I love you,” he said. “And you! I’m your big brother, Max!
” Oozing pure love, no hate back then. Our family complete at last.
This creature took that away from me? I scan the room for any sign of that day, of that part of me—the biggest, best part, no matter what.
But there are no toys, diapers, pregnancy tests, baby booties, or pacifiers.
No mother lived these twenties—especially not the mother of a toddler and twin babies.
My gaze lands instead on the 28 balloon, hovering, holding a broken heart. Red. Cracked in shards down the center.
I shiver.
What would break my heart in that life?
I both need to and have zero desire to know. My eyes narrow at my supposed messenger. “So . . . what, then? What now?”
“Well, you’re here because you want to be—at your core.
Because you’re not sure what you want—and God sent you here to find clarity.
” She pauses. Next to the taller pedestal, she picks up the golden spear.
“You’ll take this, and then you’ll choose.
Any balloon you want, in any order you want.
Pop the balloon . . . and you’ll appear in that year. ”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I consider her offer, glancing around once more. New York? I like cookies. I’ve always wanted to spend more time in the snow. “How long will I stay?”
“As long as you want.”
“And if I want to come back?”
Her lips form a crescent. She approaches the pickleball. “You’ll simply hold this in your right hand and count to twenty.”
“Ha! Twenty. Fitting.”
“All of this is perfectly fitting—to you, Sutton. To what you need. You’ll see. Squeeze the pickleball, count, and you’ll return to this room.”
“Okay.” I’m listening, weighing this outlandish prospect. Jet-setting around through time and space—through my twenties—as me, but single and childless, with my older and wiser brain, I suppose.
No client meetings. No dinner to cook. Nobody’s needs but my own. It sounds like a frolicking nineties romantic comedy. Like a vacation.
A dream?
But Reid—my Reid and our kids. The loves of my life, this life. I look down at my toes. “What if I don’t like it?” I ask. “What if I want to return to my old life, my real life, to my fortieth birthday party?”
Shadows fall over the angel’s eyes, briefly, then disappear. “You can only do that if one thing happens.”
I nod. Go on.
“Your wish brought you here—your prayer. From your unsettled spirit, you wanted to be young again. So you can only go back if you are certain—with all of your heart, mind, and soul—that your old life is what you want.”
“So, what? Click my tennis-shoe heels and say There’s no place like home? And I’ll go back? Be thirty-nine again?”
“I wish it were that simple.” She sighs. “But you don’t get to decide. You’ll just have to trust the process. If you transform, you can return. But that won’t happen as long as you’re longing for”—she spreads her arms into fabric wings—“what you don’t already have.”
I stiffen. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“So is turning forty.” She smiles. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need this.” She extends the spear’s pearl handle to me. “Take it. You can have some time to think—if you want.”
“Do I have a choice?” I ask. “Could I return right now, if I wanted to?” I fear I know the answer already.
You have work to do, Sutton.
Trust the process, this gift.
I don’t know where the voice comes from. Is it mine? Or God’s? Unsure, I accept the bedazzled handle before she even gives her response.
Tilting her head, she looks pleased. “I’m afraid the only way out—”
“Is inside these balloons,” I finish. I reach for the pickleball next. I still have so many questions. “How will I know what to do?” I blurt. “How will I know where I am, who the people are, what in the world to do next?” I traverse the floor, pondering the unknowns.
“I think you’ll be surprised at how much feels familiar to you,” the angel says.
“Like déjà vu—but with extra-strength contacts on. You’ll still be you.
In places you love, somewhere in your soul, doing things you are drawn to and finding people you need.
At the core, we remain ourselves in every possible life.
You will have help, as needed. Everything will make sense, as much as it needs to, for you to find your way. And to thrive.”
I laugh at this claim. Thrive seems generous. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
Her vow appears genuine, like a jewel.
I thumb the magic wand in my hand. Like a magnet, then, the 21 balloon lures me. It’s the most familiar of them all. I could pick that glittery four-inch heel from a warehouse of shoes the size of a continent. My twenty-first birthday. The night I met Reid.
Or didn’t?
This is not about Reid. Clearly, it’s about me. The woman I am, and was—and wasn’t, but can be now. Cautious excitement begins to spread through me, increasingly, the closer I step to the shoe.
To that dress.
To that night.
Let’s go be young again.
Pink sequins and steak and sushi and girlfriends and cute boys staring our way.
The Los Angeles skyline, sparkling.
I’m still Sutton—but I’m twenty-one again.
I feel it.
I feel her.
Pop!