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Hours later she was walking through the cemetery with pink tea roses in her hand—her mom’s favorite. It was a gentle summer twilight, birds singing in the huge maple and elm trees that adorned the grounds. A few other families were visiting but the cemetery was quiet. She glanced to the west, where the setting sun was casting long shadows through the spiked iron gate.

She walked past the meditation pond and mausoleum until she came to her mother’s grave. Carole Reeves, beloved wife and mother. Vanessa blinked back her tears. Her vibrant, fun-loving mother had died of breast cancer four years ago and she had never stopped feeling the basic unfairness of it all.

“Hey there, darlin’.”

She turned to see a middle-aged man behind her. Instinctively she clutched her handbag and glanced around to make sure other visitors were still present in the cemetery. Then she took a look at his jeans, sweatshirt and baseball cap and relaxed. This guy just didn’t seem menacing.

In fact, despite his sunglasses, he seemed downright familiar. Probably he was the cemetery caretaker, here to remind her that the gates would be closing soon.

“Oh—hello. Is it closing time?” She glanced again at the sunset. “I didn’t realize the time.”

“No, no, you’re fine. I’m just saying hi.”

His deep southern accent was also familiar. So was his voice. He almost sounded—ridiculous as this was—like Elvis Presley. She had Elvis on the brain today.

He nodded at her mother’s grave. “That your momma?”

“Yes. She passed away a few years ago. Breast cancer.” Tears rose to her eyes and she tried to brush them away.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Losing your momma is a terrible thing. I lost mine young too.”

Just like Elvis, she thought. The more this guy talked, the more he sounded exactly like him. On the other hand, the silver hair poking out from his baseball cap, and the portly belly pushing at his sweatshirt, didn’t exactly evoke the popular image of the sexy, raven-haired star.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “Was it cancer?”

“Heart attack.”

A peaceful silence settled between them as they regarded her mother’s grave. A faint breeze stirred the grass as the man adjusted his baseball cap. She glanced sideways at him. Yes, his resemblance to Elvis was remarkable. He could have been a middle-aged, pudgy Elvis gone gray. Just like Elvis would look if he were alive.

Be real, she scolded herself. Elvis had died decades ago and he had been in his early forties then. He would be an old man now—if the legends about him hoaxing his death were true.

But this man was in his late fifties at the most. Maybe a well-preserved sixty. Still she glanced curiously at him. Finally she had to say it.

“I’m sure you hear this all the time,” she began, “but you look just like Elvis Presley.”

The man didn’t smile or even look at her.

She waited for a response. The man lifted his head and stared right at her. There was just enough light in the cemetery for her to see through the dark lenses of his sunglasses…and right into his pale blue bedroom eyes, just like Elvis’s. She looked at his lips. Elvis had always had the most distinctive lips, sensuous and unique, even after his weight gain.

So did this man.