A Date on Cloud Nine Read Online Free

understand, because then we won’t have anything to live on.”
    Elizabeth cleared her throat gently, warningly, and mouthed, “Have faith.”
    Lilly sighed. “Okay, strike that last part.” But already her mind was spinning through ideas of how to sock some money away.
    “I think we need to give her some guidelines, John.”
    Yeah. Guidelines. Giving away everything was so foreign a concept, there was no way she could undertake it on her own.
    “It’s a test. She needs to gain this insight on her own,” John said.
    “Well, it hasn’t worked the last two lifetimes. We should give her a little help.”
    John checked his clipboard again. “Hm, I’m already overbooked. Do you have time?”
    “I have a few minutes.”
    “Okay, then. Congratulations, Lilly, it looks like you’ll be going back immediately.”
    Good, she’d have time to work on a loophole.
    “Not in this lifetime,” John said, grinning, then sobered again. “I’ll just say my piece and then turn you over to Elizabeth. Remember, Lilly, you have to prove you’re capable of change from the get-go, or you’ll be back here before you know it.”
    “I’ll work on it, I promise.”
    “As a matter of fact, you might want to rethink the whole thing right now.” John’s tone turned ominous. “Because if you take this second chance and fail in any way, there will be repercussions.”
    Lilly swallowed before she asked, “You mean…?” She didn’t want to suggest hell.
    John’s grin was devilish. “Not exactly.”
    He moved off, a light receding into darkness, with no definite beginning and no definite end, leaving Elizabeth and Lilly to finish up.
    “What’d he mean?”
    Elizabeth held out her hand. “I can show you.”
    Lilly stepped forward and reached out, expecting to feel nothing. Instead, Elizabeth’s hand was solid and warm in hers, as comforting as a grandmother’s should be.
    “Close your eyes. Good, now clear your mind.”
    “Okay.”
    Elizabeth sighed. “Really, Lilly, if you don’t stop thinking about money, you’re going to fail miserably.”
    “Sorry.”
    “And I stress the word miserable .”
    Lilly cleared her mind as best she could and saw what Elizabeth meant. She didn’t want to say she had a vision, but she did feel as though she were looking down on a scene.
    There, standing by a large, ornate gate was St. Peter. He was positioned to one side, greeting new arrivals, shaking their hands, welcoming them in. To the other side, a line of very bored-looking people stretched to infinity.
    Lilly didn’t do lines.
    “Notice anything?” Elizabeth asked.
    “They’re all dressed differently.”
    Men and women, rich and poor, wore a wide variety of garb: pantaloons, bustles, cowboy boots, suits of armor, peasant rags, loincloths, ruffled collars, crowns, and powdered wigs, among others. She couldn’t view the wholeline, yet she knew every time and place and class was represented.
    “Some people have been in line a long, long time,” Elizabeth warned, and Lilly understood this would be her fate if she failed.
    “Pretty darned close to hell, if you ask me.”
    “You were pretty quick to agree to go back. Want to change your mind and stay?”
    Lilly realized she wouldn’t be going right in; otherwise she wouldn’t be in Transition now. She’d be in line with everyone else.
    “Not so far back, though,” Elizabeth said.
    “You know I’d never give up the chance to have a baby.”
    She saw St. Peter’s smiling face as he welcomed the next new arrival, and she knew she wanted that, too, a Go directly to heaven pass.
    “Good choice.” Elizabeth released Lilly’s hand and broke the connection to her dubious future. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, I’m afraid. To carry a baby full term, you have at most a few weeks to complete the first step. After that, well, John’s been in charge of Transitions for several centuries now. He demands—let’s see, how can I put this?—a high level of