Ally tied on her apron, stuck her order pad in her pocket, added her two favorite pens, and pulled her hair up into an efficient bun. The sigh that had been a daily companion for the last four years, two months and three days didn't tag along. Lighter somehow, she shoved open the swinging doors to the kitchen and stepped out into the maelstrom. It was like being hit by a massive wall of sounds all echoing off one another, and as always, Ally was surprised at how much she enjoyed it.

"Hey pretty lady," an old man said with a toothy grin.

"Hey yourself, Mr. Gainer." Ally leaned into the hug the man offered. "Does Mrs. Gainer know you're down here making eyes at me?"

He laughed and Ally heard the rattle in his chest. "Well, since you're here, let me get you a pint on me."

"Ah, now there's a woman who knows how to treat a man." Mr. Gainer kissed her cheek and Ally put in an order for his favorite Samuel Adams lager.

Ally put in orders, took food to hungry families, held a baby who was overtired from the misery of teething, and laughed until her sides hurt. "I'm out for the night, George," she called, ignoring the way her feet were begging to be rid of the demon shoes she was wearing.

"See you tomorrow, Allycat. Be sure to have Sam walk you out."

"Will do."

Sam, the muscle-y bouncer, stood up when she approached. "You look ready to drop."

"Nah," Ally smiled. "This is how I always look. Don't you like it?"

Sam grinned. "Girl, go home, open a good bottle of wine and sleep until your shift tomorrow."

"Wish I could, but mothering duty calls."

"Let them sleep until your shift tomorrow too."

Ally laughed. "My fondest dream."

Two hours later, Ally finally had her last child tucked into bed. She didn't open a bottle of wine, but she did take a hot shower and crawl into bed. Then she pulled the extra pillow close and breathed in the familiar scent of her husband's deoderant. The tears that had flooded his pillow in the beginning trickled out now. "I miss you Davey."

Ally's shift felt like she was being sucked into a vortex. It was slow, deliberate and unavoidable. The tips were good though, so she couldn't complain. "Hey pretty lady," a burly man at the bar said. "Buy you a drink?"

"I don't drink," Ally said flatly.

"Can I cop a soda for you? It's hot as a witch's tit in here."

That had Ally grinning. "Sure, Red Pop, Cary."

"You got it," the bartender said, adding it to the man's tab.

"Alright everyone!" Ally called. "Buster here is right. It's hot as a witch's tit in here and my buddy Cary's got ice cold drinks just begging to be consumed. So, we're gonna play a little trivia. You get the answers right and some lucky sap will buy you a round."

"I'll drink to that," the burly man laughed. "And I'll go first on the buy in."

"Alright, first question." Ally rattled off three quick questions that all got answered with relative ease and had Cary pulling at both taps to meet the orders.

"Well, those were obviously too easy," Ally sighed. "So, my next question is 'How many children do I have?'"

Ally grinned as the men contemplated the figure she wore now with birthing babies. "Three!" a man in the back called out.

"Close!" Ally laughed. "But not right."

"Seven," a man said near the door. When Ally turned his way, she openly gaped as her heart lurched in her chest. The man grinned and walked closer, his gait so familiar that Ally had to clench her hand on the tray she was still holding so it didn't slip from her hand. "It is seven, isn't it?"

"Yes, but how...how are you here? You...you died and damn it, how do you look like you're barely twenty-five?"

"I did it, babe," the man smiled wide. "I went back and it is the wildest ride and highest high you'll ever know." Ally looked at the young man and held up her hand.

"You wait here." Ally turned toward the patrons in the bar. "Thank you all for playing. My friend here is correct. I am a mother of seven. He scores a round from Bull."

The man spoke up. "Put a round for everyone on a tab for me, won't you, Cary?"

"Sure thing," the bartender said, his eyes locked on Ally, sensing something off.

Ally grabbed a huge coffee from the back, along with a large, ice cold Coke and headed out to find the young man from a life she'd put behind her.

"We need to talk," she said, not waiting for him to follow.

She walked out into a crisp December night and took a huge breath. Turning, she eyed the man. "You need to tell me how you're here. Four years ago, you died. I was wrecked for weeks, months. I'm just now starting to lay any sort of foundation for me and our children."

The man kept his distance, but his blue eyes held Ally in a trance. "I know this must seem crazy and it's not without its weird points for me as well. I just...I had to see you. I had to know how you are, and share the beauty of being able to move through time like we always talked about."

"Danny," Ally said softly, as if calming a small child. "We can't...this can't happen."

He smiled and Ally felt her heart break all over again. Didn't he know how much she'd missed him? How losing him had hollowed her out until she'd wanted to die just to stop hurting?

"I don't have any expectations, babe. I know that seeing me here like this must be one hell of a mindfuck. I just want you to know it's possible."

Ally sipped her scalding coffee and watched him. He moved like her husband had, always possessing a fluidity that she envied. At forty-seven, she was fitter than she'd ever been while they were building their family. However, time still took a toll that the younger version of her husband couldn't possibly understand."

"Do you remember dying?"

He looked up now, those crystal sea eyes alight with understanding. "I remember everything," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "I remember my last breath and the way your tears splashed against my cheek. I was gone and then I was moving, aware of myself, but not conscious. And then I was in my body, but when I looked in the mirror it was my 27-year-old self I saw."

Ally shook her head. "I still don't understand. No one gets to escape dying. I certainly didn't get to skip over the grief of watching each of our children process your loss. Do you have any idea what seeing you would do to them?"

"And you think I'd hurt them that way? That I'd purposefully harm them that way?"

"You think I don't hurt because I'm grown?"

Danny ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what I was thinking. I just...I was so excited and I knew you'd understand. We talked about it so much in those last years together. I guess I just wanted you to know it was possible."

Ally put her coffee on a picnic table and sat down. "I do understand your need to share," she sighed, fighting the tears that wanted to clog her throat. "I just wish it didn't hurt so much."

Ally drove home in a daze, struggling to keep her eyes from glazing over as thoughts of the past plagued her. No one tells you how ruthless memories can be, especially when the only man you've ever loved comes popping back from the dead to haunt your present.

She'd given Danny her phone number and asked him respectfully to give her some time. And still, she had no clue what more time was going to get her. She pulled into the small drive of her four-bedroom apartment and turned off her car.

"Mama?" Ally felt a tap on her window and turned her tear-stained face to see the beautiful image of her oldest daughter. "Are you okay?"

Ally scrubbed her hands over her face. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"You look terrible."

"Yeah well, that's what happens when you're 47, a widow and a mother of seven."

"So, this clinches it. You're never getting grandkids."

Ally chuckled at the long-running joke her children loved to tell her.

She climbed out of the car and heaved a sigh as she slung her purse over her shoulder.

"I just had a very long, very weird night at work is all."

"Is that burly guy pestering you again?"

"No more than usual," she smiled. "I let him buy me a Red Pop tonight and I had a very hard encounter with a very good looking, smart, funny, sexy man."

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad."

"It's not, it just...hurt."

Ally walked past her daughter, unable to say more without ripping her daughter's heart out as well. She'd do whatever it took to protect her children from turning their hearts to the ripped-out mess hers currently was.

It took Ally an extra dose of melatonin to even be able to approach sleep. Her mind was plagued by memories of her past and thoughts of a painful future. She tossed and turned, her dreams a muddled mess of moments she could've lived in forever.

"Did you miss me, darling?"

She turned in her dream to see her husband standing there, looking too sexy for his own good. "You never call me darling," she laughed.

"Well, dreams can be funny like that."

"Yes, they can."

"But what if they aren't just dreams?" the man asked, stepping closer.

"Dreams offer me the one thing my reality can't...you."

"But what if your dreams could turn into reality?"

"You mean all I have to do is give up my babies and I can be with you, here?"

"No," he grinned. "I mean, that we can live here in your reality with our babies, but in our young, healthy bodies."

Ally could feel herself slipping. No reality was that nice. And no amount of wishing would bring her husband back to her.

She woke, soaked in sweat and rubbed a hand over her heart where all the pain was. She showered, made her favorite coffee, put a pot on for her young adult children and packed snack trays into the fridge for her youngest four. She sat them on the couch and waited until everyone quieted down. "Mama has to work tonight, as usual. I want you four," she started, eyeing each of her youngest four with her 'mom stare,' to be on your best behavior. I don't want to come home and hear that you gave your older sisters and brother a hard time."

She hugged her children, reiterated emergency contact information, including her former mother-in-law, and gave explicit instructions for the youngest five children to be in bed on time. "If I see anyone awake besides you two," Ally said, "You're all in trouble."

"We know, Mama."

Finally satisfied, Ally headed to work, hoping that her dreams wouldn't step into the bar to haunt her tonight.

An hour into her shift and Ally wanted to drop. Sweat was trickling down her back and her arms felt as if she'd been lifting cement blocks for an hour. "You okay?" Tommy asked. Ally gave him a roll of her eyes and a small smile. Tommy filled all the food orders that came in to accompany the beer, bourbon and soda she was serving. His most popular item was the blooming onion, and he was crazy in love with Cary, who you'd never guess is flamboyantly gay.

"I'm fine," she huffed as she shouldered a tray of food. She had a couple of construction workers who were in for drinks and decided on dinner, a family that had two children who desperately wanted chicken strips, a new mom with a small baby who looked as if she could sleep for a week, and of course, Mr. Gainer, who always wanted a huge plate of nachos the wiry man always managed to finish. "I'll also need another two orders of your blooming onion, three orders of your cheeseburger with fries and a small bowl of your barley soup for Mrs. Ashby. Her baby's ready to form a mutiny if he doesn't get something besides milk." Ally turned and could feel Tommy's eyes on her back as she hauled the tray of food out the door.

Ally had known that Cary's decision to make his bar family-friendly would increase business, but he was going to have to hire another set of hands or she was going to waste away. "I should've hired a new girl," Cary said as he handed down a Guinness to a sailor who was home on shore leave.

"I tried to tell you," Ally grinned. She turned, lowering her now empty tray and nearly plowing over a man who was just sitting down at a booth. "Excuse me," she smiled. "I didn't mean to-"

Her breath caught in her lungs when Danny looked up at her. Struck all over again by his young face, smooth skin and considerably less facial hair; she stood transfixed for a moment. Then, where grief had lived for too long, a simmer anger flared. "You can take his order Cary. And then you can serve it."

Ally stalked back to the kitchen, slipped through the swinging doors and nearly threw the tray in her hands across the room.

"Who are you going to kill tonight?"

Gritting her teeth, Ally shot daggers at Tommy before she closed her eyes to compose herself. "That...that man is back. What did I ever do in any life to deserve this sort of torture?" she asked as tears filled her eyes on a fresh wave of that always present grief. "I've already buried my husband, so why is he haunting me in the skin of a younger him?"

"Oh honey," Tommy said, wrapping her in a hug and stroking her back in comfort.

Ally kept an eye on the younger version of her husband, irritated all the more when he showed no signs of leaving. She headed his way, when Cary stepped in her way. "I can deal with him if you just want to head home," he said, his deep brown eyes full of love and concern. Ally smiled, knowing Cary meant every word and loving him more because of it. "It's okay. I dealt with him for twenty-six years and no matter what he looks like, I know him."

"You're sure?" he asked, making her chuckle when he quirked up one of his dark eyebrows.

"I'm sure," she said, rising on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I do, however, know that Tommy could use some help in the kitchen. Tonight was heavy and he had quite the time. You're going to have to hire a prep cook along with another waitress."

"I can handle that, and Tommy," Cary grinned. "Go home and get some rest."

"That's the plan," she said, eyeing Danny. "Eventually."