“Yeah, I bet your mom told you that. Ugly time,” he says. Isabelle can hear the coffee start to drip behind her; the smell of it makes her mouth water. “Your mom tell you not to speak to me, too?”

Isabelle looks at him quickly and shakes her head, alarmed at this misunderstanding.

“Then what? Just shy?”

She shrugs.

Her uncle nods slowly. “Silent spells,” he says. “Julian of Norwich had one. After she was sick. She’s a mystic, too, like us.”

Isabelle blinks. Mystic, she thinks. Mystical, mystery—a mystic must be something good. She wants him to go on about mystics, but he gets up to take a mug from the cabinet. She watches him. The coffee hasn’t finished brewing yet, but he pulls the pot out anyway and pours what’s there into his mug; Isabelle cringes at the hiss of coffee dripping onto the hot plate while the pot is gone. It will burn, she knows, and stain.

“I lost my whole platoon in the war, know that?” Her uncle sits across from her again, stirring his coffee with his finger. “Found them later, though.” His mouth grimaces around a sip. “When I was a kid,” he says, “I was looking through family photos. Knew everyone in the pictures, but then I came to one where I didn’t recognize anybody. Lot of guys around a big table. Young guys. Tons of food, silver platters, wine, flowers on the table—big table, like a banquet table—everyone all smiles. Went downstairs and found my dad to ask him who these people were, brought him back upstairs, picture was gone. Nowhere.” He takes another sip, frowns around this one, too. “And it had been there. I saw it.” He points at his eyes.

“Got back from the war and started seeing this minister, good guy, been in a war himself. Dead now. But what he said was that when you die, you get welcomed into heaven with a big banquet, and what he described was exactly like that picture. Course, I hadn’t thought about that photograph in years, but I pictured it, and I could remember every detail. The banquet like the minister described, and all the people eating and smiling, and all of a sudden I knew.” He leans forward. “All of a sudden I recognized the faces.” He sits back. “My men,” he says.

Isabelle blinks. This is unlike any story she’s heard before.

“I don’t tell that story to just anyone.”

Isabelle licks her lips.

“But you’re different,” her uncle says. “I can tell that. I can recognize that in you.”

Isabelle breathes in deeply and sits forward, eager for her uncle to go on, to tell her more.

He points to his eyes again and smiles. She waits. Then, “Charcoal,” he says. “You look like a raccoon.”