“ ‘You’re my darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t stare at the pretty furniture, it doesn’t matter.’ But I couldn’t help it because only a moment ago—when I’d taken the lamp from the chest—it had been familiar and now it was different again, all those violet satin black-framed chairs, and there came a sudden chorus of voices, of people saying the Rosary!

“Candlelight flickered on the ceiling. Something was wrong, and terribly terribly sad.

“I was off balance. I was about to fall. I turned around. The sound of the voices was an inundation. And the room was full of people—people in black, seated on chairs and couches and in little gold folding chairs—and a man was sobbing.

“Others were crying. Who was the little girl who stared at me?

“There was a coffin lying before the front windows, an open coffin, and the air was heavy with flowers, drenched with flowers, the waxy smell of lilies, and then up out of this coffin there rose a blond-haired woman in a blue dress. In one swift gesture, as if she rode an invisible tide, she had come up out of the coffin and stepped down on the polished floor.

“ ‘Lynelle,’ I cried out. But it wasn’t. It was Virginia Lee. How could I not know the lovely little face of Virginia Lee! Our blessed Virginia Lee. The little girl let out a baleful cry, ‘Mamma!’ How could a woman rise from a coffin?

“ ‘You leave this house alone!’ she cried, and she reached out in a perfect fury at the woman who stood with me, her white hands almost touching her, but the woman at my side drove her back with a great hissing sound, a flash and sputtering, and the figure of Virginia Lee, our blessed sweet Virginia Lee, our household saint, the figure of Virginia Lee, and the coffin, and the bawling child, the mourners—all of it blinkered and went out.

“The chorus of voices died away, as if it were a wave on the beach being sucked back into the ocean. Hail Mary Full of Grace and then nothing. Breeze and the flicker of the oil lamp in the shadows, and that smell of burning oil.

“I was too dizzy to stand. She clung to me.

“The silence crashed around us, and I wanted to say something, I wanted to ask something; I tried to form the thought, Virginia Lee had been here, but I was holding the woman again and kissing her—and I was so hard it was painful, I couldn’t keep it back much longer, it was worse than waking from a wet dream—and saying, ‘No, I won’t let it go on, I can’t do that. That’s a mortal sin.’ But she said,

“ ‘Quinn, my darling Quinn. Quinn, you are my destiny.’ It was so inexpressibly tender. ‘Take me to my room.’