“She isn’t in a dark place,” Joan says to the grandmother. “When one dies, the moment of death is very brief. One instantly wakes again, as if roused from a light sleep, and the soul is transported between heartbeats to another world. This child will find herself in a meadow, a place unlike any other. On every wildflower, a butterfly. In every tree, a songbird. The sun never shines too bright, for the hands of the angels moderate its rays, and from their mouths, they blow cooling breezes so the climate is eternally spring. It is a place God reserves for only His most loved, the innocent souls He has called back to Him. In this place, she is no longer an infant but fully grown, yet none will ever covet her beauty or seek to tempt and destroy her. She will never want for anything, but it will be given, before she can even anticipate her desire. She will not feel hunger or pain; her heavenly body will move across the space of this great meadow and spin through orchards resplendent with fruit, of a kind we are unable to cultivate in this world, much less taste. But all the boughs of heaven’s gardens will hang heavy for her, and she will drink from the streams of Paradise, whose water is as pure as it is sweet.”

“Yet she will be alone,” one of the women says, “without those who love her as much as we do.”

“She will have better company than she could ever find in this world,” Joan replies. “The saints themselves will visit her, and she will walk in the footsteps of Margaret of Antioch and Catherine of Alexandria. The angels will play their celestial music, so there is always heavenly song in her ears.”

Some of the women are weeping as she returns the child and turns to leave. The grandmother catches her hand and presses it to her mouth to kiss one of her rings.

“Then you have seen heaven?” she asks.

Joan hesitates only a moment before answering. “Yes, I have seen it.”

She doesn’t say, as she leaves the church, But it is only my version of heaven. The one I created for Catherine, my sister, to console myself in my grief.

She pushes open the doors. Outside, the storm has cleared, and the sun is strong again, the air rain-scented.

Someone must have seen her enter the church and spread the word, because as soon as she steps out, a huge crowd greets her. They think she has just come from prayer, so they doff their hats; they bow. The children offer her bunches of flowers, drooping from the earlier downpour, water dripping from each stem.

She gathers the flowers in her hands, careful not to drop a single one. She walks on.