“I don’t see any people. Do you?” he asked.

“I see Gramma and Grandpa sitting on a long bench, way over there,” his mother said pointing off to the west. “And other here, I see your Aunt Stella.”

But Derek, try as he might, could never convince himself to see any people in the clouds. No matter how strong his imagination may have been, he couldn’t put heads on top of shoulders and legs beneath a torso.

Derek’s parents were as middle-class as one could imagine. His father worked on the Ohio State Campus in the print shop for over thirty years, and his mother worked part-time at the college bookstore. Derek always felt that his parents would always be there for him. Supporting his decision when he told them he was going to join the army, his decision to re-enlist after his four-year hitch, his falling in love with and marriage to Lucy, and his decision to join the Columbus City Police Department.

His parents were with him each step he took, during each phase of his life. When Lucy was killed, it was his parents who tried to console him, to comfort him and to make sure that he didn’t allow his grief to drive him so far away from them that they couldn’t reach him.

When Derek told his parents that he had quit the police force, his parents only offered support.

“I didn’t like you doing that work anyways,” his mom said.

“I don’t blame you at all, son,” he father offered. “There are plenty of opportunities for a young man like yourself that don’t involve risking your life every time you go to work. Plenty of opportunities.”

But Derek wasn’t interested in spending his days in a safe, practical job. He wanted to do what he could to make sure that someone else’s wife wasn’t murdered because a police force had to follow protocols.

“I’m going to start my own detective agency,” he told his parents.

“Like a private investigator?” his mother asked.

“Sort of. But more like a private detective.”

“Oh Derek, I’m not sure about that. There are too many bad people out there. Too many for even the police to handle.”

He thought of Lucy and the “bad person” who the police couldn’t handle. He thought of her face, her pleading eyes, staring at him through the bank’s front window.

“That’s exactly why I want to do this,” he said.

It was the way he said it that told his parents that his decision was already committed to and nothing they could say would convince him to take a more practical and safe job.

Starting a “freelance detective” agency wasn’t easy at first. Derek had no idea of how to get his name out in the public. He started with Google Ad Words, a dedicated Facebook page and a website that he had custom designed.

Nothing.

For the first six months, the only public interest shown to Derek’s agency was expressed by police agencies and private investigators.

“It’s vigilantes like you who make it even harder for the ‘real’ police to do their jobs.”

“Don’t try to be cute with your title, Mr. Cole. A catchy title won’t make up for the fact that you have very little actual police experience.”

Derek also received a few emails from prospective clients. All of those turned out to be people looking for some “less than legal” work to be done.

It wasn’t until his seventh month in business - when his savings were all but dried up - when he signed his first paying client. Derek was hired to locate an accountant who absconded with over $500,000 from the firm where he was a partner. Following the leads his client gave him and his uncanny ability to read people, Derek located the accountant six days after his services were retained.

“That was some impressive work,” his client told him. “The police had no chance of finding him. Their trail went cold two days after the money was stolen.”

Derek received fifteen percent of the recovered money. More importantly, he earned a very satisfied client who promised to “spread the word.”

Clients then began streaming to Derek. One after another, Derek accepted cases that, for whatever reason, the local, state, or federal authorities couldn’t solve. His reputation was building, and Derek was sure that his parents would now be proud of their son and his bold decision to start his own detective agency.

But now he was sitting in a plane, desperately trying to see something in the clouds that he had never been able to see before. He wondered why so many people - other people - told stories of being visited or of receiving a sign. And why he, as hard as he tried to see and to hear, never received any sign that she was still with him.

As the plane rose through and then above the clouds, Derek turned his gaze to the horizon. In the distance, he could see nothing but a blanket of clouds falling ever further from him and a dark sky above.  He craned his neck, hoping to see something in the stars that were visible. Somewhere, off in the distance, he knew that the sky and clouds would meet. Maybe there, he thought, is where he would find a sign. A token of hope that she was waiting for him to notice.

She had been gone for over three years and for three years Derek had struggled to remember her face. Not the face he could easily remember by looking at pictures, but her face when her smile was not for a camera, but for him.

The only memory he could easily recall of her face was a poison to him. That final vision of her face, pressed against the glass, the consuming blackness of the pistol held against her temple and, behind her terrified face, his face. The face of the man whom Derek had never seen before and whose face he could recall in greater detail than the face of his own wife.

As he sat thinking about Lucy, he found his fingers tracing the scar on his left cheek, recalling the pain, the depression, the anger that caused the scar. He remembered the look on his mother’s face when she arrived at the hospital. How his father looked at him as he leaned against the far wall of Derek’s hospital room, seemingly wishing the room was five times the size but still glad he could be there for his son. He remembered the embarrassment he felt when he explained what had happened and how he knew the doctors didn’t believe his story.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” a flight attendant asked. She was leaning in close to Derek, closer than she did to any other passenger. She was attractive, no doubt, and she seemed to Derek to be the type of woman who understood the effects her appearance had on men.

“Scotch, on the rocks, please,” he answered, shaking the memories from his mind.

“We only have Dewar’s. Is that okay?”

“Fine. Dewar’s is fine.”