Mauricio looked out of the window at the snow-dusted pines surrounding the one-story hospital, then back at Donnally.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Mauricio said. “What do you think? We go somewhere after we die?”

“Sure. In the ground or up in smoke.”

“I mean after that.”

Donnally leaned in toward Mauricio. “You worried about something?”

Mauricio shrugged. “Lying here I came up with an idea about why people need to believe in an afterlife. I don’t know if it makes sense or if it’s just the drugs talking. I’ve been thinking that only bad people need to believe in it. Good people got nothing to be afraid of and nothing to make up for, so oblivion is fine with them.”

Mauricio picked up a plastic cup from the over-bed table and took a sip of water. Donnally pulled a tissue from a Kleenex box and wiped away a drop that slipped by Mauricio’s mouth.

“There’s something in there for you to read,” Mauricio said, setting down the cup and tilting his head toward the side table.

Donnally reached toward the drawer, but Mauricio raised his palm, stopping him. “Afterwards. Everything is just like we talked about.” He then looked toward the open door. “Except one thing.”

Chapter 2

Harlan Donnally stared down at the headstone. It read “Mauricio Quintero,” not “Mauricio Aguilera.”

It bore no epitaph, nor age, nor dates of birth or death, for as Donnally now understood, any further inscription would’ve just compounded the lie that had been Mauricio’s existence.

Right at the end, just before he died, Mauricio had said his true name was all he wanted on the marker. The only part of the Bible he’d acknowledged he believed in was the phrase “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” and he didn’t think there was any reason for people to come honor the fiction he’d created out of his life.