“Sit down, Sterling. We’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

Sterling took the seat, acutely aware that all eyes were fixed on him.

One of the women, dressed in an elegant red velvet gown and wearing a tiara, said in a cultured voice, “You had an easy life, didn’t you, Sterling?”

Looks like you did too, Sterling thought, but held his tongue. He nodded meekly. “Yes, ma’am.”

The monk looked at him sternly. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Her majesty did great good for her subjects.”

My God, they can read my thoughts, Sterling realized, and he began to tremble.

“But you never went out of your way for anybody,” the queen continued.

“You were a fair-weather friend,” said a man in shepherd’s garb, seated second from the right.

“Passive-aggressive,” declared a young matador, who was picking a thread off the end of his red cape.

“What does that mean?” Sterling asked, frightened.

“Oh, sorry. That earthly expression came into use after your time. It’s a very popular one now, believe me.”

“Covers a multitude of sins,” muttered a beautiful woman who reminded Sterling of the pictures he’d seen of Pocahontas.

“Aggressive?” Sterling said. “I never lost my temper. Ever.”

“Passive-aggressive is something different. You hurt people by not doing things. And by making promises you have no intention of keeping.”

“You were self-absorbed,” a sweet-faced nun on the end said. “You were a good estate lawyer, tidying up little problems for the ultrarich, but you never lent your expertise to the poor unfortunate who was unfairly losing his home or the lease on his store. What’s worse, you actually considered helping out once in a while and then decided not to get involved.” She shook her head. “You were too much of a good-time Charlie.”

“The kind who jumped into the first lifeboat when the ship was going down,” a saint in the uniform of a British admiral snapped. “A cad, by George. Why, you never once helped an old lady cross the street.”

“I never once spotted an old lady who needed help!”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” they said in unison. “You were too smug and self-absorbed to really notice what was going on around you.”

“I’m sorry,” Sterling said humbly. “I thought I was a pretty nice guy. I never meant to hurt anybody. Is there anything I can do now to make it up?”

The members of the council looked at each other.

“How bad could I have been?” Sterling cried. He pointed toward the waiting room. “In all this time I’ve talked to a lot of the souls who have passed through there. None of them were saints! And by the way, I saw someone who cheated on his income tax go straight to heaven. You must have missed him!”

They all laughed. “You’re absolutely right. We were on a coffee break. But on the other hand, he donated a lot of that money to charity.”

“What about his golf game?” Sterling asked eagerly. “I never once cheated the way he did. And I got hit in the head by a golf ball. As I was dying, I forgave the guy who did it. Not everyone would be that nice.”

They stared at him as his mind filled with images of all the times in his life when he’d let people down. Annie. He was too selfish to marry her, but he always let her keep hoping because he didn’t want to lose her. After he died, it was too late for her to have the family she always wanted. And now she was in heaven. He had to see her again.

Sterling felt wretched. He had to know his fate. “What are you telling me?” he asked. “Will I ever get to heaven?”

“Funny you should ask,” the monk replied. “We’ve discussed your case, and we’ve decided that you seem to be the appropriate candidate for an experiment we’ve been weighing for some time.”

Sterling ’s ears pricked up. All was not lost.

“I love experiments,” he said enthusiastically. “I’m your boy. Try me. When do we start?” He realized he was starting to sound like a jerk.

“ Sterling, be quiet and listen. You are being sent back to earth. It is your job to recognize someone with a problem and help that person solve it.”

“Sent back to earth!” Sterling was dumbfounded.

The eight heads nodded in unison.

“How long will I stay?”

“As long as it takes to solve the problem.”

“Does that mean if I do a good job I’ll be allowed to enter heaven? I’d love to be there for Christmas.”

They all looked amused. “Not so fast,” the monk said. “In the jargon of the day, you have a lot of frequent flier miles to earn before you achieve permanent residence inside those holy gates. However, if you complete your first mission to our satisfaction by Christmas Eve, you will be entitled to a visitor’s pass for twenty-four hours.”

Sterling ’s heart sank a little. Oh well, he thought. Every long journey begins with one small step.

“You’d do well to remember that,” the queen cautioned.

Sterling blinked. He’d have to remember they were mind readers. “How will I know the person I’m supposed to help?” he asked.

“That’s part of the point of this experiment. You have to learn to recognize people’s needs and do something about them,” a young black woman wearing a nurse’s uniform told him.

“Will I have any help? I mean, anyone I can talk to if I’m not sure what to do? I’ll do anything to get the job done properly, you understand.”

I’m babbling again, he thought.

“You are free at any time to request a consultation with us,” the admiral assured him.

“When do I start?”

The monk pressed a button on the council table. “Right now.”

Sterling felt a trap door open beneath him. In an instant he was hurtling past the stars, around the moon, through the clouds, and then suddenly whisking past a tall, brilliantly lit Christmas tree. His feet touched the earth.

“My God,” Sterling breathed. “I’m in Rockefeller Center.”

Marissa’s dark hair cascaded around her shoulders as she twirled around the rink in Rockefeller Center. She had started taking ice-skating lessons when she was three. Now that she was seven, skating was as natural to her as breathing, and lately it had been the only thing that eased the hurt that filled her chest and throat.

The music changed, and without thinking she adjusted to the new, softer rhythm, a waltz. For a moment she pretended she was with Daddy. She could almost feel his hand linked with hers, could almost see NorNor, her grandmother, smiling at her.

Then she remembered that she really didn’t want to skate with Daddy or even talk to him, or to NorNor. They had gone away, hardly saying good-bye to her. The first bunch of times they phoned she had pleaded with them to come back or to let her come visit them, but they had said that was impossible. Now when they called, she wouldn’t talk to them.

She didn’t care, she told herself.

But still, she closed her eyes whenever a car she was in happened to drive past NorNor’s restaurant; it hurt to remember how much fun it had been to go there with Daddy. The place was always crowded, sometimes NorNor played the piano, and people always asked Daddy to sing. Sometimes they’d bring over his CD and ask him to sign the cover.

Now she never went there. She had heard Mommy tell Roy -he was Mommy’s husband now-that without NorNor, the restaurant was really struggling and would probably have to close soon.

What did Daddy and NorNor expect when they went away? Marissa wondered. NorNor always said that unless she was there every night the place would fall on its face. “It’s my living room,” she used to tell Marissa. “You don’t invite people over to your house and not be there.”

If NorNor loved her restaurant so much, why did she go away? And if Daddy and NorNor loved her like they said, why did they leave her behind?

She hadn’t seen them in almost a whole year. Christmas Eve was her birthday. She would be eight years old, and even though she still was very angry with them, she had promised God that if the bell rang on Christmas Eve and they were standing at the door, she would never be mean to anyone as long as she lived and would help Mommy with the babies and stop acting bored when Roy told the same stupid stories over and over. If it would help, she’d even promise never to skate again as long as she lived, but she knew that was a promise Daddy wouldn’t want her to make, because if he ever did come back, he’d want to take her skating.