"He misses you too, Amy."

The woman kneeling beside the grave jumped and looked into the gray curtain of rain beyond her umbrella. The speaker knelt beside a fresh grave, tracing a design in the dirt with her finger while not seeming to notice the cold rain of November. Even her white dress was untouched. She looked up through a veil of red hair – not carrot-colored but real rich red – and smiled a little sadly. The girl was almost insanely young, maybe not even twenty-four, with eyes the color of heather on a Scottish hillside. Eyes that had the shimmery look of imminent tears.

"My job isn't fun," she confided and got up. Not so much as a wet spot on her knees marred the white dress. "You can call me Charon, if you want. Better than some of the names people have given me over the years. Mors, Ankou, the Grim Reaper, Azrael… All me. I'm the guide that takes the dead to their destination. Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. Mike was crying the whole way…" The girl sighed and ruffled her hair in a breeze that only seemed to affect her. Her white dress rippled, and Amy suddenly realized that the breeze was coming up through the grave behind Charon.

"He was mourning losing you," she continued and tapped Amy's umbrella with her fingers. The raindrops on the surface vanished. "He didn't mind dying, not after the illness. What he regretted was leaving you all alone. So I made a deal with him."

A white vapor was rising from the fresh grave and taking on the form of a man as the spirit guide spoke.

"He always has a window down here to watch you. He has permission to come down and comfort you when you are in need. He's a good man. We hated to take him…."

The white form of a little old man had fully formed, and Charon bowed. "Duty calls… But he misses you, Amy, and he loves you." She patted the other woman's arm and turned back to the spirit she needed to take along. "I'll be checking on you when I'm here. Take care, Amy."

Amy watched as the pair walked away through the cold November rain and vanished from sight. Somewhere above, a tear rolled down a man's cheek as he watched. And mourned.