A few days earlier, we had stood among the stones, the angel watching over us, speaking in quiet tones about faith and doubt, about what remains and what disappears.

Now it was the Fourth of July.

We arrived in Chepachet with the slow energy of a small-town celebration already underway. Cars lined the narrow roads, people drifting in the same direction. We found a place to park and joined them.

We stopped at a bend in the road where the view opened just enough.

And there it was.

The cemetery. Set slightly above us, as if watching again.

She saw it before I said anything.

“Is that our cemetery?”

“Yes,” I said.

That was all it took—the past only days behind us now hovering just above the present.

The parade had already begun. A float drifted by, handmade and proud. Children waved from the back of a pickup. A group of Boy Scouts passed, something in their posture echoing a version of myself from long ago.

Then the air shifted.

At first just color and movement approaching. Then something else entirely.

A procession—not of floats, but of people who seemed to belong to another time.

At their center was Fran.

She moved as if carried by something just beneath the visible world. Her clothing—antique, intricate—felt less like costume and more like continuity. Around her gathered others dressed in the same spirit, each distinct but woven together.

There was a softness to her, a kind of quiet humility wrapped around something unmistakably powerful. Not power over, but power with.

And then, without transition, we were inside it.

Hands reached out—not forceful, but certain. A three-cornered hat was placed on my head. Something feathered draped around Regina’s shoulders. Laughter, music, a swell of brass from somewhere nearby.

We were no longer watching.

We were inside it.

The line between spectator and participant dissolved without permission.

We moved with them, carried by the street itself, surrounded by faces that felt strangely familiar.

Regina belonged here.

There was no adjustment, no hesitation. The grace already in her aligned effortlessly with this world. She was not transformed by it. She was revealed by it.

And I felt it too—that widening sensation, that surrender to something larger than intention. A shared hallucination, if it was that. But too coherent, too alive to dismiss.

The cemetery above us. The angel. The questions of God and doubt.

And now this.

The energy built—not louder, but deeper. Everything seemed to point toward everything else. And within it, Fran—smiling, almost shyly, holding it all together.

We fell into the charm of her world.

Time slipped.

At some point, we were being invited further in. A fashion show. Garments from another century. Regina, of course, would be perfect. And somehow, impossibly, I was to speak, to guide.

There was no deliberation.

Only yes.

And then, as suddenly as it had risen, it began to release us.

The movement softened. The music thinned. The crowd loosened.

We found ourselves back at the car, the door closing with a quiet finality.

For a moment, nothing.

And then laughter.

Recognition—of what had just happened. Of how easily we had stepped into it. Of everything we had agreed to without question.

She turned to me, still holding the last shimmer of it in her eyes.

“Remo, you did it again… another perfect day.”

And then—

“I have tickets to the ballet.”