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We stopped in front of my room.

"Take a nice shower. Ill be waiting for you downstairs." She shook her head and smiled at inc. "You look just the way I did afterward. The main thing to remember now. Noble, is you've crossed over, really crossed over, and you'll be seeing and hearing them all the time. It's the gift, the gift that binds you to me forever."

She kissed me on the forehead. Then she left me and descended the stairs.

I went into my room and began to undress to take that shower. Before I did. I went to my window and looked down. Something had drawn me to it.

There below, walking slowly and talking, were my three cousins who had died years and years before I was born:

Mildred, Louise. and Darla, all sisters. They were exactly as they were in the pictures on the hallway wall below, wearing the same calico dresses, their hair the same style. They paused as if they had heard something, and then the three of them looked up at me.

And they smiled.

I watched them walk on until they were entering the woods and disappearing in the shadows.

I wasn't trying hard to see them just to please Mommy. I thought, and this was certainly not a dream.

After all, weren't they all there for me as well? And wouldn't they be forever and ever?

18

Celeste

.

Shall I say that never a day passed now without

my seeing or feeling a spiritual presence? It wouldn't be a lie. Finally. I was truly like Mommy with her powerful spiritual vision. We shared the world as would two sisters who had inherited heaven and earth, happy for each other.

In the evening after all our daily chores were done and we had eaten a wonderful dinner, she would play the piano and I would sit nearby and read or sometimes just sit and listen with my eyes closed. On wonderful nights like that we were often not alone. Many members of our spiritual family were there sitting on the settees and chairs or just standing about and smiling. Children, my many cousins, were sitting on the floor, being quiet and behaving. All of them stole glances at me and smiled and waited anxiously for me to smile back.

Although I still didn't tell Mommy. I saw Noble more and more. too. He followed me about the farm, criticizing my work, telling me he could do it better. At first he made me nervous, and then, mainly because of Daddy. I humored him and didn't take his comments to heart. I could almost say he haunted me, however, because as he grew more comfortable being in my presence, his complaints became more personal and more frequent. He was like a bee buzzing at my ear. No amount of swatting at him would drive him away.

One night I woke and saw him squatting beside my bed. He looked up at me. and I saw he had been crying.

"Why are you crying?" I asked him. "I thought there is never any sadness where you are."

"Maybe just for me," he muttered,

"I'm trying my best. Noble. I'm doing

everything you would do as well as you would do it. I've even begun to rebuild your fort. haven't I?"

"I'm not crying because of all that," he said as if I were stupid.

"Then what? What's making you so sad?"

He looked like he wasn't going to tell or he was afraid to tell. His eyes shifted about the room to be sure we were alone. I saw no one else either.

"I don't like wearing your dress," he said, "and your amulet. I want my own. I like my worm."

I simply stared at him. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I could never mention such a thing to Mommy, of course.

"You're not wearing a dress now," I pointed out.

He smirked.

"You don't know anything. I have to be like this when you see me, but every other time I'm in that dress. and I don't like it. Our cousins are laughing at me behind my back" he told me.