Tears rose in her eyes. “You won’t be the same, you know. You can’t come this far in and stay this long and go back unchanged.”

“I understand, but I have to go back. I can’t leave Grampy there on his own.”

I started to cry, and I didn’t even know why, Grampy. I sobbed as I held that leather book to my chest. Before I knew it, she was there, putting her arms around me. The reason the valley and the hills and the sky, even though it was gray, felt so kind and warm was because of her. It was all her. It was all some beautiful extension of who she was.

My grandma. Mary.

“Do you want to know what’s in the book?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“It’s a journal of the most beautiful moments you’ve ever read about. The woman with silver hair has a difficult job, and she kept this journal through the years, writing down all the beauty she’s seen. Maybe as a reminder that even in death, beauty abounds.”

“That’s hard to believe,” I said.

“It is.” She sighed. “It is very hard to believe. Maybe that’s why she needs this journal so badly. So that she can remember.”

“How was there beauty in your death?” I asked her without even thinking. “You died so young, with a child. Where’s the beauty in my dad losing his mom?”

I wept again.

“Pearl, look over here.” She took my hand, and I followed her around a corner. “What do you see?” she asked, and I realized I was looking into a mirror.

“I see me.”

“There is beauty even in death,” she said again.

I think she was saying that if she hadn’t died, you wouldn’t have left, my parents wouldn’t have met, and I would never have been.

“You should go,” she said. “Any longer and you won’t be able to go back at all.”

I wiped my eyes on my clothes and sniffed. “Yeah. Of course.”

I turned and walked to the door, and she came with me outside, even to where the path left the house and went back toward the stone wall. I didn’t look back because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to leave her—she felt so kind and wonderful, like everything that’s good about being home. Everything inside of me wanted to stay there with her. I walked the path, and she was still coming along with me.

I shouted to her over my shoulder, “You’ll still be here someday when I come back?”

“Always,” she called back to me.

I crawled over the low stone wall and began walking to the beach, clutching the book. Then I heard someone else, another kind voice, this one light like the air.

“Mary, I was walking up in the mountains, and did you know there are two new lambs?” Her voice stopped, and I knew she had reached the one she called Mary, and I knew without even turning around that they were both standing at the low stone wall, watching me walk away.