I am sitting on a couch next to my cousin, M. The house we are in feels new, not a match for the vintage furnishings surrounding us. I can sense that our grandmother, still living, is seated on a smaller bench to our left but I do not ever see her. Across the room, my mother is seated in a red velvet chair with a tall back. Standing casually behind her is my grandfather who has been dead for years. He looks good—perhaps a little thin in the face. He paces back and forth with his eyes in our direction.

I lean toward my cousin, my eyes still fixed upon my grandfather, “Do you see Grampa over there behind the chair?” She rolls her eyes, “Ohhh…yeah,” (where the “yeah” is emphasized by its being laughed rather than spoken) as though this was a common and unsurprising occurrence.

I get up and walk across the room with the intention of having a conversation with my grandfather. Instead, the ghost of my mother, who is not even dead, shows me a map and advises me that I should move to the place on the map marked with an “X”.

Although I have numerous reasons for not taking her advice, I tell her, “I’ll look into that”.