Boats passed by sending currents of water washing up onto the riverbank. Fable sat down on the picnic table bench beside Jerry Miller. Dumbfounded and speechless, yet with so many questions swarming her brain, she said nothing. She could only sit there.

“It’s me, Fable,” he told her. “It’s Daddy.”

“No,” Fable stuttered. “It isn’t possible.”

“Honey, you know everything is possible.”

Fable stood up again; this time anger replaced her confusion. This man was crazy. There was no other explanation.

“How dare you say you are my father! My father is dead. He died a long time ago. You are cruel and unbalanced.”

“Ask your mother,” Jerry replied. “She brought me back. You know it can be done.”

Fable was as confused as before. “You don’t even look like him. I mean, yes you have a similar look as my Dad, but you are not him. This is not my father’s face.”

“She chose a man who resembled me,” Jerry explained. “Jerry Miller looked the most like me, so Mama chose him.”

“It’s not possible.”

He was growing weary of finding ways to make her believe. He thought he would try once more, this time using some history to make his case. “Your name is Fable Marie Blanchard. When you were born you weighed 6 lbs., 3 oz. You were born in February, a week early, because your Aunt Artemis could not control her powers very well. It was freezing cold, and she began to worry that the water pipes under the house might burst. But her thought about the pipes ricocheted, and your mother’s water broke.”

“Mother could have told you that.”

“You once had a cat named Mr. Ice Cream. Mr. Ice Cream killed Beryl’s pet rat Ricco. Your Aunt Nacaria is a shadow on the wall. Olympia has been married three times. You lost your first tooth when Seth tied one end of string to it and the other to his bow and arrow set. He shot the arrow into the air and yanked your tooth out...”

Fable was shaking now. This man knew too much.

“You cried for two hours,” Jerry continued. “I spanked Seth and I bought you a new toy so that you wouldn’t tell how you lost the tooth. Demitra had told me not to buy Seth the bow and arrow set, but I did anyway because I’d had one at his age. The toy I bought you was one of those Barbie heads where you could fix the hair in different styles. You styled that Barbie’s hair every day over and over for weeks until it broke off.”

Fable’s face said all he needed to know. She believed him. She had never told the truth about how that tooth had come out, and neither had Seth. It wasn’t just the tooth though; she could feel this was real. She could feel her father inside Jerry Miller.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to break out my ace in the hole,” he laughed. “The memory that’d really have cinched it.”

“What memory?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” her father grinned.

“I think I do,” she said, still skeptical. “But just for extra evidence…”

“When you got your first period on that fishing trip with me…”

“Okay, stop!” Fable cringed.

“Nope, you wanted more proof I am your Dad. I stopped at that backwoods store and got all I could find that might help. Ace bandages and gauze tape.”

“I thought I’d die of embarrassment,” Fable laughed. “I never told anyone about that.”

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“Neither did I.”

She looked into Jerry Miller’s eyes and saw her father looking back at her through them. “It is you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, baby. Daddy’s back.”

Fable fell into his arms, weeping as hard as she had the day he died. He gripped her tightly and let her cry. “Daddy, I’ve missed you so much. My heart has never been the same. Please never leave me again,” she sobbed. “Please don’t go back. I have been so empty without you. Please never leave me again.”

Larry Mariner held his daughter. To finally be able to hold his baby again was sublime. His eyes began to stream as his big hands clutched her more tightly to his chest. His baby girl. Oh, how he’d wanted to hold her, and her sister, on Thanksgiving. Now he got to hold Fable, at least, in his arms.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, kissing the top of her head as he wiped the tears from her face and his own. “But I am going to need your help. That is why I had to see you today. I had to tell you who I really am, because I need you to help me stay.”

She squeezed his hand tightly in her own and smiled at her father, “What can I do?”

He took a deep breath and tried to explain his dilemma, “Your mother and I want to get married. The problem is this body belongs to someone else. Jerry Miller has a family. He has two parents and an ex-wife.”

“Any children?”

“Thankfully, no children,” he continued. “But enough real relatives to stand in our way. Besides that, no one but you, me, and Demitra know who I really am. We have to keep it that way. We can’t even tell Beryl—not right now at least. Your mother could get into real trouble for what she has done. If the Consort found out, she could end up like Nacaria.”

A terrible thought came into Fable’s mind. She didn’t want to ask because deep down she wasn’t sure if she was prepared for the answer. But she had to know. She had to know what price had been paid for her father to be returned to her.

“Did she kill Jerry Miller?”

“No,” Larry said. “Not technically.”

Fable grimaced as butterflies swarmed into her insides. That did not sound like a very good argument. She braced herself for the rest of the story. Sitting quietly, listening, as she looked out over the water again, she heard her father explain the circumstances of his return. Demitra had been doing this for years on their anniversaries—finding some random stand-in, or even hiring one if necessary. She would temporarily infuse her husband Larry’s soul into the unsuspecting man’s body and have a short-lived reunion with the man she never stopped loving. Fable understood it was far more complicated than that. Her father’s soul had long split into fragments, finding new life in other beings, or plants, or animals. To reconstruct that energy field meant stealing pieces of someone else to rebuild someone long dissolved. That alone carried massive repercussions. Yet Fable did not care. It was her father. Whatever it took to bring him back was worth it.

“What do you want me to do, Daddy? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

“You could get in a lot of trouble too, Fable. That’s why your mother hasn’t wanted us to tell you about me returning. She wants us to figure a way on our own.”

“I’ll do anything it takes to keep you in my life,” Fable declared. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

“This time, your mother chose this body because she wanted to make it permanent. Last time we did this we decided we simply could not go on with sporadic visits. We want to have our life back. Be together every day again. Jerry was a perfect man to take over. He has no real encumberments except for his parents…and his work. He has no deep relationships. No one gets hurt if he fades away. We naively thought we could do this without arousing suspicion, but it is not working.”

“What is going wrong?”

Jerry Miller’s nose pulled to the side in that signature Larry Mariner way, as he explained. “Jerry’s job wasn’t too difficult to take care of. Suspicious as it was, when I called in and quit, it was accepted. However, his parents are proving more difficult to handle. They have heard about the job loss and are growing concerned. They keep calling and texting. I return the texts, replying that everything is fine, but they insist upon seeing me.”

“Well, you are in his body,” Fable pointed out. “No matter what they think of Jerry’s decisions, they certainly aren’t going to suspect you’re not him.”

“But what if seeing them wakes Jerry up and he tries to come back?”

Fable gave him a concerned look. “Wait a minute,” she said. “He could come back?”

“We aren’t sure,” Larry admitted. “He’s in here with me, I can feel him. I don’t understand all this stuff; you know that. I don’t think even Demitra knows exactly what she’s done. All I know is I am attached to Jerry’s body now and fighting to keep it. I can’t go back to death. I know you all believe energy disperses and joins new energy and life keeps going on—and maybe it does—but to me death was death. Nothingness. I want to be with my wife and children again!”

“Tell me what to do.”

“Go to Birmingham to see his parents. Find out everything you can about Jerry Miller, so that I can play him convincingly.”

“Done.”

“See if you can figure out a way to meet them casually.”

“No need to say anymore,” Fable nodded, finally seeing the whole picture. “You need enough information to really sell that you’re really their son and haven’t gone insane. Leave the Millers to me. I’ll figure something out.”

Larry hugged his daughter close. “I knew I could count on you. I love you so much, baby girl.”

“And I love you, Daddy. Don’t worry about a thing. There is no way on earth I’m losing you again.”