And so the sniping continues; we sit at the kitchen table and talk and when that fails—after I lose my temper with my father, who has suggested I might get a job in the casino industry, if the college professor thing doesn’t pan out—we look for things to do. We drive out to the Desert Museum, in the foothills outside of town, a beautiful place where the plants and wildlife of Sonora are displayed along long looping trails, in habitats artfully contrived to look like the real thing—a rocky cliff for bighorn sheep, a den for mountain lions, a huge scrubby enclosure for the javelinas, one of which, Edith informs us, once bit her on the butt. Larry and Edith walk more slowly than Paul and I, and fall behind, and when we come to a fork in the path I can’t stop myself; I pull him in the rougher, less-traveled direction, heading off into the scrub where I know my parents won’t go, and I take a deep, childish pleasure in walking with him in the sun far out of the reach of their conversation, and I make sure we look at every single display.

And so my parents and I make it clear, over the course of a weekend, that reconciliation and resolution are things that happen in stories, and are never complete in this life.

In spring the Virgin Mary appeared in Salt Lake City, on a stormy night in the barrio near downtown—only seven blocks, really, from the Mormon Temple, but a world away. A man was waiting for a bus at the edge of a small city park, a strip of bricked playground and large trees. I’ve heard two versions: either there was a crack of lightning, which caused a limb to fall, or the lightning caused the man to turn, beneath his umbrella, to see what was illuminated in the scar where a long-ago limb had fallen or been cut away.

Centered in the circle of the tree’s wound was the silhouette of the Virgin of Guadalupe, slick with rain. Because the man at the bus stop was devout, he first prayed and then ran to fetch someone else to see it. News of the apparition began to travel through the neighborhood before the thunder even stopped.

When the storm was over, the Virgincita remained as shiny as she had been before, when she’d gleamed with what had seemed to be rainwater. Now it became apparent that what poured from the image were her tears, which came both from her eyes and from the region of her heart. Through the night, and all the next day, and then through the days thereafter, the apparition in the tree was attended by the faithful, and her weeping did not cease.