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face was a combination of shock, disbelief, and reverence. His face paled. “But, David, look closer! It really is a dove. ”
    That statement might not make sense to non-Catholics. In the Catholic Church, the Holy Ghost is a term that describes God’s ability to inspire as well as console, and traditionally the Holy Ghost is symbolized by a dove.
    That’s what David—and the priest, and Donna, and Sarie, and the rest of the twelve—were seeing now. A dove. Not white, as in religious paintings. But gray, its name appropriate, a mourning dove, so-called because of its dirge-like “coo,” so much like a sob. It flapped and swooped and soared.
    “My God,” the sexton said, not intending to sound religious. “I’m terribly sorry. I deeply apologize. I left the door open to make it easy for you to come in, but I should have thought. Sometimes a bird flies in if the door isn’t closed. I’ll try to get the dove out right now.”
    David shook his head, his black irony irrepressible, and anyway the service was all that mattered.
    “No, leave it,” he said, scanning the crypts to his right and left. “This place could use some life.”
    The sexton narrowed his eyes. “You’re sure?”
    “Absolutely.”
    The sexton and the mortician’s representatives relaxed.
    David found out later that an accidental interruption of the service, a distraction such as the dove, sometimes spurred mourners into fits of indignation, into accusations about insensitivity and incompetence.
    Everybody’s different, he thought. In his own case, he welcomed the dove. In fact, in a strange way, he even loved it. For its life. Let it flap and swoop and soar. As long as it doesn’t hurt itself. When Matthew’s in his niche, we’ll take care of the dove.
    The service began. As yet, there was nothing mystical, nothing supernormal about the dove. The door had for convenience been left open. The dove—as coincidence can happen—had by chance flown in. Perfectly explainable. Not usual, but nothing remarkable.
    So far. But then coincidence was added to coincidence until, for David and the other eleven witnesses in the mausoleum’s chapel, the dove became very remarkable indeed.
    As the dove continued flapping, David set the urn on the podium at the front of the chapel. He, his family and friends, along with the sexton and the mortician’s representatives, stepped back to the pewlike chairs. They watched the priest put on a vestment, then open a prayer book and begin the final liturgy for the dead. “Heavenly Father, accept this soul of your faithful departed servant …”
    Throughout, the priest kept glancing nervously from the urn containing Matthew’s ashes toward the dove flapping overhead.
    Then the next coincidence occurred. As the priest neared the end of the prayers, the dove, which till now had been in a panic, suddenly calmed and settled from the ceiling toward a low ledge on the wall of glass.
    The priest held his breath, directed an even more nervous look toward the dove, and resumed his prayers.
    There’s no way to verify what went through David’s mind just then. He later swore to those in the chapel that he knew what would happen next, or at least that one of three things would happen.
    The dove will land on the floor beside the podium that supports Matthew’s urn, he thought. Or the dove will land on the urn itself. Or the dove will land on my shoulder.
    David knew this as certainly as he’d witnessed the fireflies and heard one in particular in the bedroom two nights before, as certainly as he’d felt an unaccountable repose and heard an echo of the firefly’s voice in the church the evening earlier.
    The priest opened a vial of holy water, and the first thing David had imagined occurred. The dove flew down to the floor beside the podium.
    The chapel became very still. The priest’s voice fell to a whisper as he prayed and sprinkled the holy water over the urn.
    The service came to an end. For several instants, no one