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a stranger during a family spat. I tried to leave the sisters to their incomprehensible argument, but when I said goodbye and reminded Althea that Rowdy and I would be back on Friday, Ceci announced that she was leaving, too. Hugging Althea and kissing her tenderly, she said, “I love you dearly, you know.”
    Althea replied, “I love you, too, Ceci. Thank you for coming. You have brightened my life since the day you were born.”
    In the corridor, Ceci tagged along with Rowdy and me. “It breaks my heart that Althea has to be in this place,” she confided, “but she was completely unable to manage. She’s ninety, you know.”
    I pressed the elevator button. “Rowdy, wait.”
    “But she’s as bright as ever. She was always the smart one. George, our brother, was the practical one.”
    “And you’ve always been the pretty one?” I smiled. Ceci beamed. Then her face, which really was pretty, turned grave. As the elevator doors opened and we stepped in, she said, “The one who never gets taken seriously. Simon, for example. When I lost my Simon, all I heard from everyone but Althea was ’only a dog.’ ” She repeated the phrase. “ ’Only a dog.’ ” Ceci and Rowdy and I were alone in the elevator. “I understand about Simon,” I said impulsively. “Sometimes I still miss my Vinnie in the same way.”
    “Is he still with you?”
    “She,” I corrected. “Yes, she is.” It was painful to talk about Vinnie, and the more vividly I sensed her presence, the more painful it became. I rested a hand on Rowdy’s head. He entered my life soon after Vinnie died. He did not replace her. Rather, he came to me as my personal therapy dog.
    Placing a gentle little hand on my arm, Ceci said, “They aren’t gone, you know.”
    “They are and they aren’t. I always remind myself that all Vinnie did was die. She didn’t stop loving me.” It was a moment of odd intimacy. As the elevator reached the first floor and the doors opened, Ceci dug into her purse, found a packet of tissues, and handed me one. I blew my nose.
    “I’ve upset you,” she said. “There’s no need, really. Until six months ago, I felt the same way. Since then, I have had the great comfort of communicating with Simon and knowing for certain that his abiding presence is more than a lonely woman’s foolish hope.”
    I cleared my throat. “I need to sign out and get my raincoat. It was very nice to meet—”
    “Oh, I’ll come with you.” As I returned my little volunteer’s badge to its place on a bulletin board in the office, signed out, and retrieved my raincoat, Ceci went on and on. Simon spoke to her, she informed me. It was a great comfort, she said again, to receive messages from Simon. I couldn’t help wondering, of course, whether Ceci also communicated with her late husband, Ellis. If not, didn’t the man’s spirit sense her preferential treatment of the dog? Weren’t his feelings hurt? But I lacked the courage to ask.
    On the way out, we passed through the lobby, and I managed to shake Ceci for a couple of minutes so that Rowdy and I could say goodbye to the people gathered there, but she waited and trailed me through the doors to the parking lot. Ceci kept assuring me that what the unenlightened mistook for death was, in fact, a state of trance. Meanwhile, Rowdy devoted himself to what I assume is the exclusively earthly activity of making repeated passes at a shrub near my car and finally drenching it. The male dog’s question about eternity: Is there pee after death? I did not ask Ceci whether she’d interrogated Simon on the subject. Simon, she said, told her that he was happy running and playing. Was that what Vinnie told me?
    “My, uh, beliefs stop a little short of yours,” I confessed.
    “But there’s no need!” Ceci cried.
    “There seems to be for me.”
    “You do sense her presence?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you able to speak with her?”
    I seldom discussed the subject. I especially avoided it when my friend