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And would it blur the Christmas glee

My Stocking hang too high

For any Santa Claus to reach

The Altitude of me —

Emily Dickinson, “’Twas just this time, last year, I died”

"I used to be an angel, but I came back down to take care of you," Grandpa Norman liked to tell us. Then, with a wink he'd say, "With two rascals like you, your mom needs all the help she can get!"

It always drove Mom crazy, when Grandpa told us his stories about Heaven. "Don't start that up again, Dad," she warned. "You're giving them strange ideas."

"Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes," he quoted.

To that, she could only shrug and throw up her hands, declaring, "And this is why all the kids on the block think you're Dumbledore in disguise." She was only half right; it was mostly because he had the glasses and the twinkling eyes to match.

Once, my little sister dared to interrupt with her own contribution. "There is no idea," she said very seriously, "without I." She'd just turned four, and I was seven and a half. Given that context, I thought it was actually pretty clever.

"Eat your cereal, Josie," Mom said wearily. "You too, Robert," she added when I opened my mouth.

When Mom was out of the room, however, my sister and I begged Grandpa to tell us what it was like to be an angel. "Did you look old?" I asked, mouth full of chocolate milk and Cinnamon Crunch.

"Could you fly?" Josie said loudly.

"Patience is a virtue, young lady." Grandpa tapped her nose as she giggled madly. "Well, Rob, sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. Up there, you could be whoever and whatever you wanted to be. If I felt young, I looked young. If I felt old, I looked old."

Josie wriggled in her seat, unable to contain her excitement. "Did you have wings?"

He poked her plump tummy, and she squealed with delight. "Yes, Josie. But only if I needed them." He chuckled. "Did I ever tell you two the story of the first time I flew?"

"No!" said Josie. I remembered it, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to hear it again. We both scooched our chairs closer, cereal forgotten.

"Well, all right. It's not that long of a story. One day, pretty soon after I arrived, I started to grow restless with staying in just one little patch of Heaven. I decided to explore as much as I could, so I packed some jerky, told your Grandma I'd be back in a few days, and set out."

"You can get hungry in Heaven?" I asked doubtfully.

"No," he said, ruffling my hair. "But it was still fun to eat sometimes."

He continued. "Well, I kept walking and walking, and let me tell you kids, Heaven is a beautiful place. If I said to myself, 'A fountain right there would look perfect,' then poof! Before I could blink, a fountain had sprung up out of nowhere!" Josie clapped her tiny hands, and Grandpa nodded, pleased to see her amusement.

"At one point, I thought to myself: if only I could see the Manhattan skyline, just one more time. And can you guess what happened?"

"Poof!" said Josie.

"The next second, I was walking the streets of New York City! Everything was exactly as I remembered it, and as I explored the city, I couldn't help but keep looking up at all the skyscrapers and billboards - they were just that shiny in the sun. Well, I guess I wasn't looking where I was going, because one second I was walking on solid concrete and the next second - "

He pounded the table so hard that our spoons clattered and we jumped in our seats.

"Woosh! I fell right through an open manhole!" Josie cracked up, and I laughed so hard that milk went up my nose. "Well, since I was up in the sky and not in the real Manhattan, I fell right through the clouds and kept on falling. Let me tell you, I had to learn how to fly pretty quickly then!"

"Ki-ids!" Mom poked her head back into the kitchen, phone in one hand. "What have I told you about shouting when I'm on the phone?" We didn't dare look at Grandpa, fighting to hide our giggles. Humming innocently, he nonchalantly nibbled his toast as if he'd been doing nothing else the entire time.

Mom glared. "Dad, I swear..." The phone rasped static, and she put it back to her ear. "What? Nothing, honey. It's just the kids acting up again. Have a good day at work." She hung up before turning her appraising eye back on us, her most fearsome This-Mom-Means-Business look plastered on her face. Then, she sighed. "Robert, pack your backpack while I get Josie ready for school."

Mom was at her most frazzled as she ushered us both out of the house. Josie immediately waddled to her side of the car, whining in frustration when it didn't open at her demands. "Mooooom!"

"Be there in a second, sweetie," Mom called. She turned to lock the front door, only to find Grandpa standing in the open doorway. His eyes were somber, and he wasn't smiling.

"Sophie," he said slowly. "Come inside for just a moment." Behind him, the sounds of the television blared indistinctly, and I remember thinking that it wasn't fair Grandpa got to watch TV on school days and I couldn't.

"They're going to be late for school," Mom snapped. She was annoyed, which could explain her impatience - but looking back, I think some part deep inside of her recognized that this was not something she wanted to see. If only she could take us to school first -

"Sophie," he said again. "I think you need to see this."

She pushed roughly past him, disappearing into the darkness of the living room. The blinds were closed as usual, because Grandpa didn't like how the noonday glare hurt his eyes.

Josie and I tried to follow her, but Grandpa stood firmly in the doorway, blocking us from entering any further. I tried to peer around him, but all I could see was Mom's back. I could hear her crying.

"I don't understand," she said. "It's not real, it's a hoax, it's - "

"Shh, shh," he hushed, going to her. The way finally free, Josie and I burst into the house. Behind the silhouette of my grandfather embracing his daughter, I caught the shaky image of two towers, and smoke.

"Oh God, I just talked to him. I need to go - I need to go now - no, maybe I should call first, maybe he got out in time, maybe he stepped out for a coffee or something - "

"Shh," he said. They shifted, and I saw the caption in huge letters: WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER. There was a man falling on the screen. He tumbled through the air, head over feet. He fell for so long.

"Dad, I need to go now. I've got to go to him, he'll wonder where I am, I've got to - "

"Shh." I couldn't see their faces. It was too dark. "Sophie, not in front of the kids."

I did not understand how my dad could be 'missing'. Then later, how he could be 'dead'. It didn't make any sense. I had the image of the falling man burned in my memory, only sometimes I saw him wearing my dad's favorite red tie.

Josie was even more confused than I was, which was probably why she could put on a braver face. At the funeral, she could only look with a mixture of befuddlement and frustration from Mom to Grandpa to me, three identical ashen faces carrying no expression at all. She put her chubby arms around Mom's neck, anxious to comfort her. "It's okay," she said stubbornly, words rounded by the littleness of her mouth. "I'm sure it was just an accident."

I knew it wasn't an accident.

In the car on the way home, Grandpa tried to keep Josie's spirits up with more stories. Mom's hands were stiff on the steering wheel, but she didn't interrupt. As I listened to Josie laughing at Grandpa's kooky descriptions of flying lessons and cloud sculptures, I tried to laugh along, but there just wasn't enough air.

Right then and there, that's when I decided. That day, I decided to stop believing Grandpa's stories. I stopped believing in angels.

We moved to California. Mom got a new job at a school in Los Angeles, or close to it. I remember the cultural shock of palm trees, a dry yellow sun, and more gleaming bronze skin than I'd ever seen in my life, including the one time when we got flashed by a crazy in Central Park. I think Mom was hoping that the unfamiliarity would help, as if by putting 2000-plus miles and three time zones between us and there would make there go away. We could pretend that it had always been like this, just the four of us.

And it worked, to some degree, at least for my sister and me. Children heal faster than adults - can recover from a broken bone in a way no parent could, as if it had never been anything but whole. Something about an accelerated growth rate.

The younger you were, the easier it was. Even as I learned to smile again, I could still feel the pieces missing from my life, as if a vacuum had eaten its way into my chest. But as I watched Josie growing up, I could see that she saw Dad as more of an absence than a loss. Sure, it sucked that she didn't have a father. But she still had Mom and me and Grandpa. Especially Grandpa, with his neverending supply of stories.

"Is Heaven nice?" little Josie asked. "Are people happy there?"

Grandpa's eyes flickered toward Mom, but she didn't look up at him. She went into another room.

"Well, sweetheart, I like to think that people were happy there. Some people didn't want any possessions or company - and they'd be left alone, just like they wanted. Others, like your Grandma and I, preferred a roof over our heads and silverware in the cabinets and company in our chairs - and we got that, too. No one was allowed to own any living thing, though, not even the plants. The gardens were for everyone."

"And you didn't have to go to school?" Josie asked, eyes round. That was her favorite part.

"If people wanted to sit around and do nothing all day - well, that was just fine. And if people were the working type, they'd be given work." Grandpa chuckled at Josie's face - evidently, she couldn't imagine anyone actively looking for work to do. "Myself, after a few weeks of just staying at the house with your Grandma, I knew I needed a job to keep me honest and give me some purpose. I wanted to be useful. So I went up to the Big Guy and - "

"So you could talk to him whenever you want?" Josie interrupted.

Grandpa shook his head. "Not whenever I wanted, but whenever I needed to." Josie didn't seem to quite understand the distinction, but he went on. "Anyway, I got a uniform and a watering can and was assigned to Cloud Number 2368142."

At this, I couldn't stop the snort of laughter from escaping my throat. "So you just watered one cloud all day?"

"It was over Seattle."

I struggled to keep the thick scorn from my voice. I didn't try too hard, though. "If everything was so great up there, why'd you leave? Did you get kicked out?"

"More like... I'm taking a vacation." If Grandpa heard my derisive tone, he didn't show it. He looked more thoughtful than offended. "You know, it wasn't easy getting them to let me come down here. I don't think it's been allowed for a really long time. Even your Grandma begged me not to leave." His eyes grew soft and shiny. "But, I knew I had to, for you, and you," he said, sliding his gaze from me to Josie.

I felt all wormy inside for being so mean, like I'd eaten too many potato chips. But then he flashed us a huge grin and said flippantly, "It's really quite the epic story. You're going to have to remind me to tell you sometime." Josie laughed. My guilt evaporated on the spot.

I mean, it didn't make sense. Angels are dead people. Grandpa definitely was not dead. The timeline just couldn't work out.

Josie didn't mind the logical inconsistencies. She only cared about the stories themselves. They held her fascination, as much with the storytelling as with the contents. As early as middle school, she began to write them down.

Her first poem - it was a haiku - went like this:

My Grandpa is an
Angel from Heaven who came back
To take care of Us -

Her English teacher called it highly creative and gave her full marks, even though the second line had too many syllables.

Around this time, Josie also began asking about Heaven in more detail - probably looking for more material to write about. She wanted to make sure she got it right. "Did you ever see a demon from Hell?" she asked Grandpa. She had a little notebook with her, a number two pencil jammed in its spiral binding.

"You know what, Josie, I don't think I ever did," Grandpa said thoughtfully.

"But if you never saw one, how could you fight them?" she said, frustrated by what was looking to be a complete lack of a story.

"Well, we never really did have to fight them."

"Oh." She looked disappointed. "I thought all angels were supposed to fight demons."

"Hmm, not really. I don't think Heaven was ever really about the fight between good or evil. You can write that down," he said, evidently amused by Josie's crestfallen expression.

"So you weren't allowed to fight in Heaven?"

"Something like that. No - wait," he said, frowning, and I looked up. Never had he second guessed himself before. It was part of what kept his stories so convincing. "I remember," he continued slowly, as if pulling the memory from somewhere deep inside, "there was this pair of brothers. When they'd been alive, the two had been some of the greatest boxers in American history."

"Oh, goodie," Josie said, pulling out her pencil and writing with an air of great self-importance.

"Buddy and Max, the two were called. The older of the two, Max, had died almost 30 years before Buddy, but it seemed like only a second before they were reunited. Time passes differently up there.

"My, those two certainly loved to box! It was more than a job or a show to them - it made them feel alive again. Sometimes they'd attract an audience, but they didn't mind. I watched a couple fights, myself," he said with a little chuckle.

"Well, one day they were boxing as usual, and a good crowd had gathered around them. It was the eleventh round, two minutes in. Both men were going at each other hard, with no signs of letting up. Then, wham! Max knocked Buddy under the chin, and he flew backwards, landing on someone in the crowd.

"We heard a yell, and when Buddy got back up again, we could see the poor bystander underneath holding his arm in intense pain. Then, as we watched, the arm straightened itself out, and the man moved it back and forth, clearly surprised to find it completely unhurt.

"That's when everyone heard a huge, rumbling voice boom over the crowd. It simply said," and Grandpa's eyes wrinkled in the corners with mirthful anticipation, "THAT'S ENOUGH, BOYS."

Josie applauded, and Grandpa got up from his recliner just long enough to take a bow. "You see," he said eagerly, "It wasn't a problem that they were fighting until someone else got hurt - "

"Josie, time for homework," Mom called from the kitchen.

"Coming," Josie yelled back. Swiftly, she kissed Grandpa on his crinkly forehead and flew upstairs, her precious notebook held to her chest.

"Robert," Mom said as she came into the room, "I need you to - young man, where are you going?"

"Out," I said, walking through the front door before she could get another word in.

I went to my girlfriend's house. I caught Lucy's eye through the living room window from behind her parents' backs, and watched with satisfaction as she made some excuse to leave.

"What's up?" she said when she opened the door, a little breathless.

"I just needed to get out of the house." She waited for me to elaborate. "My Grandpa was telling his stories again."

"Oh, Rob."

"He's crazy. Boxing in Heaven? Seriously? And broken arms," I said angrily. "Who gets broken bones in Heaven?"

"Oh, Rob," she said again, taking my hand.

Looking back, I realize I came across a lot more angsty than I was really feeling. Of course, this only served to endear her to me further. We were young, and that sort of thing was cool.

As I grew older, even I couldn't hold onto such hormone-driven anger. It got easier when I went off to college. UCLA was close enough that I could visit whenever I wanted, but other than holidays and summers I mostly stayed on campus. I could think kinder thoughts when I wasn't home. Grandpa was just trying to help, in his own way.

Josie certainly continued to love him for it. In high school she grew up into a passionate artiste who enrolled in creative writing workshops, acted in all the school plays, and insisted on being called Josephine. I don't know where she got it from - Mom certainly was as bewildered as I was - but Grandpa embraced it full force. The two had a whole secret language that Mom and I could never crack.

"Grandpa," Josie teased, "you're giving the kids strange ideas again."

"Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes," he intoned, stroking his scruffy beard with affected wiseness.

"There are some ideas so wrong, that only a very intelligent person could believe in them," she returned.

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

"Amen," she conceded, laughing.

Her questions became cheekier, too. "Is there sex in Heaven?" she asked bluntly, during the first summer I came home.

"Josie - Josephine!" Mom chided, flabbergasted.

"What? It's a very important question." Josie fingered the wavy curls in her hair, nails painted so bright that they could only be matched by her eyeshadow. I always wondered how girls learned to do all that stuff. She certainly didn't learn it from Mom. "I'm waiting, Grandpa," she said primly.

Grandpa opened his mouth to reply, but catching Mom's venomous glare, he coughed nervously instead. "Maybe when you're a little older, young lady."

Josie, unfazed, flipped her notebook to her next question. "What religion is your Heaven based on? I mean, it seems to be some kind of Christianity for sure. Catholic? Protestant? Eastern Orthodox?"

"One, what makes you so sure it's Christian, and two," he said, eyes gleaming mischievously as he put a finger to his lips, "no spoilers."

Josie chucked her notebook at his head, and he laughed with childish glee.

Later, when I picked Josie up from theater camp, I saw her telling her friends something that made them laugh. I couldn't hear them, but I could see the expression on their faces: amusement, for sure, but also condescension, and a flickering suggestion of fear. In the car, I asked her lightly, "What were you guys talking about?" But I thought I could guess.

"Just one of Grandpa's stories," she said, knowing full well what my reaction would be.

"Josie, why - "

"It's Josephine." She flipped her hair thoughtlessly in that maddening way that teenage girls use, to show just how little they care about what you're going to say next.

"Josie," I said firmly, and she rolled her eyes. "I told you already, you shouldn't talk about this stuff with other people. It's not...smart."

"What, because it's not real?"

"Because I'm afraid you think it is," I said gently.

She harrumphed, slouching in her seat rebelliously. "They're just stories. What's wrong with telling people stories? Stories are meant to be told."

My grip on the steering wheel tightened, and I remembered the horrible car ride home from the funeral, so many years ago. "They're Grandpa's stories," I said, trying to appeal to her from another angle. "They belong to him."

Josie turned to me with a stubborn expression I knew all too well, round eyes dark with smudgy eyeliner and glittery shadow. "You can't own living things in Heaven," she said.

Josie barely spoke to me for the next three years, though that might have been my own fault. I threw myself into college work, even staying over for the summers. Mom protested, but I put my foot down. "It's part of being premed, Mom. You don't know what it's like," I said exasperatedly. "I've got to get as much research and clinical experience as I can. If I don't, there's no way I can compete when it comes to applying to med school."

"I still don't understand why you can't come home for just a month," she said, sounding even more hesitant through the distortion of the speaker phone. "We miss you."

"I can visit for a week," I promised. I kept my word, but spent most of the week in my room sleeping. I came out only to eat.

On June 10th, 2015, I graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's Degree of the Sciences in Molecular Biology, with honors. The sun was hot and dry, as expected. The black square of my graduation cap didn't provide much shade, and I was glad to throw it in the air at the ceremony's end. Carefully, though. I made sure to toss it straight and low, so I could catch it as it fell.

Josie and Mom waited for me outside of the stadium. Mom had wanted to take photos on the field, but I told her it would be too crowded. After I picked up my diploma, we celebrated over a huge dinner with my friends and their family. My roommate started flirting with Josie, and I had to take him aside to tell him that he wasn't her type.

It was only on the next day, when we'd finished packing everything into the minivan, that they dropped the bomb on me.

"You should probably know," Mom said haltingly - every time she talked to me nowadays, it was like she was tiptoeing past a beehive - "that Grandpa hasn't been feeling too well lately."

"Oh, really?" I said distractedly, as I tried to decide if the desk lamp would fit better in the trunk or in the back seat.

"He had a heart attack."

I turned around sharply. "What? When?"

"About a month ago."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" I was half-way to shouting. Mom looked positively terrified.

Josie spoke up. "You were working on your thesis. We didn't want to bother you." Beneath her hostile glare, I could read what she really meant: You didn't want us to bother you.

"It wasn't your call," I snapped. Her eyes were narrowed and hard. Mine were just angry.

Mom put her hands around my shoulders, and I shrugged them off. "We can talk about this later, okay?" she coaxed. "Let's just get home first."

I didn't argue, but no one talked for the entire car ride home. When we finally pulled into the garage and unlocked the door, Josie immediately ran upstairs. Mom sighed. "She spends all her time with him now," she explained. "I'd better go up and make sure she doesn't overexert him." So I was left alone to do the unpacking.

I deliberately took my time, stacking all the boxes neatly in the corner of what used to be my bedroom. Mom had tidied it up in anticipation for my return home. Everything looked exactly as I remembered it, or at least a better, cleaner version. It felt weird, but right.

I felt the sudden urge to jump on my perfectly made bed, and pretend that the rest of the day would just go away. But as tempting as it was, I couldn't stay in the secure comfort of nostalgia forever. Reluctantly, I went to find my family.

When I entered Grandpa’s bedroom, I could immediately tell something was wrong. Grandpa was sitting against the headboard, a plethora of pillows propping him up. He looked tired, but alert. Josie was standing next to him, leaning forward aggressively. In contrast, Mom was practically on the other side of the room, arms folded protectively around her brittle frame. I came in just as Josie was shouting, " - but you never believed him! Your own dad, and you think he's a liar!"

Then she saw me, and her hostility flamed to new heights. "You're even worse," she spat, jabbing her finger at me. It hurt, even through twelve feet of air. "You stopped believing."

"I... I think I left something in the oven," Mom said faintly, brushing past me. It was the worst excuse I had ever heard.

I whirled on Josie furiously. "You - "

"No, you - "

Grandpa stopped her with a hand on her elbow. He looked at me. "Go to her for me," he said wearily.

I found her in the kitchen. The oven was powerless and cold. She stood by the sink, absentmindedly sorting dinnerware into the dishwasher.

I realized, with an odd twinge in my chest, that she was getting old. Fine lines sprawled across her face, a collection of too many crow's feet and too few laugh lines. Somewhere in the time that Grandpa had progressed to elderly, Mom had become middle-aged.

"Josie has no right," I said heatedly, and she looked up at me, startled. "Grandpa - "

"No, Robert." She shut the dishwasher and dried her hands, taking a seat at the dining table. She patted the chair next to her. "Let me tell you a story," she said.

I hesitated, but she looked so hopeful that I couldn't refuse. I joined her, waiting for her to begin.

"A couple days before they found your dad's body, your grandfather wanted to talk to me. He said that he had a message from your dad."

My face tightened reflexively. I could already see where this was going.

"I kind of broke down," she admitted. "I thought he meant that they talked on the phone or something, that somehow your dad was safe." Her eyes closed briefly, then flickered open, once again composed. "He told me that - he told me that your dad didn't want me to worry about him, and that he wanted to let me know that he loves me, and the children too."

It was that last part that really got to me. "Why would he do that to you?" I said, feeling the old anger coming back. "I always knew Grandpa was crazy, but to be downright cruel - "

She flinched at the harshness of my words. "I don't think he meant to hurt me. He didn't want to tell me at all. He said that your dad made him promise." Tentatively, she put her hand over mine. It felt so much softer than I'd remembered, like a favorite shirt worn down after many long years. "I could imagine your dad doing something like that," she said quietly. "He was never that good at knowing how much kindness can hurt people."

I was tempted to jerk my hand back but I was afraid that if I did, she might shatter. "So, what are you saying?" I said, raw with bitterness. "You believe him? That everything he says, about Heaven and angels and Dad, is true?"

Her hand gripped mine with more force, and beneath the velvet softness of her skin, I could feel the delicate strength in her aging bones. A wave of reassurance inexplicably washed over me. "All I'm saying is, it's not a lie."

We went back upstairs. Grandpa was dozing, Josie half-asleep in a chair beside his bed. As we appeared in the doorway, Josie sprang up defensively, chin jutting forward as if she could somehow create a forcefield around Grandpa with a death glare alone. "Josie, back off," I warned. When she didn't move, I added, "You can't own living things in Heaven." She relented then, though grudgingly.

"The gardens...are for everyone," Grandpa said faintly, stirring slightly. Mom was by his bedside in a heartbeat.

"Hey Daddy," she said, and suddenly I felt such an overwhelming longing for my own dad, I could hardly breathe.

"Hey there, Sophie honey," Grandpa said. He looked up at my sister, scowling over him. "Josephine has something to say to you, don't you sweetheart?"

Josie fidgeted, but finally she mumbled, "I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean what I said."

"Good girl. Now let me talk to your brother."

I moved forward, stumbling on the carpet. "Hi, Grandpa. I'm here."

"It's been a while," he said matter-of-factly, eyes twinkling.

"Sorry, Grandpa."

"Don't make your Mom worry so much. And Josephine here, she acts tough, but she misses you." Josie turned pink and gave a little "humph", but didn't interrupt.

"And you, you're what now, twenty?"

"Twenty-two. Josie's almost nineteen," I added, then immediately regretted it. He wasn't senile.

But he didn't seem offended. "You're going off to medical school, I hear."

"Yeah, I got into the M.D. program at Stanford. I start in September."

"And Josephine's up at NYU nowadays on a scholarship," he sighed, face crinkling into a proud grin. "Must be in the genes."

"Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude," quoted Josie.

"That's my girl," Grandpa laughed, and my heart swelled at the sound. But after a while, the laughter turned to an awful wheezing sound, and he had to stop.

"Don't push yourself, Grandpa." I rearranged the pillows beneath his head, not sure what else I could do.

"I think I've overstayed my vacation," he said, still smiling peacefully.

"Not yet," Josie said fiercely.

"Not yet," he agreed. “But soon.” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “Your Grandma begged me not to go…”

Josie looked like she wanted to argue again, but Mom spoke before she could. "Tell Mom that I say hello - and Mark, tell him that I love him." It took me a moment to place Dad's name. It had been so long since anyone had said it.

"Don't you worry, Sophie," Grandpa said, opening his eyes again. They looked so bright. "For him, it'll seem like you joined him in a blink of an eye. Time...passes differently up there..."

Though Josie's tears were falling freely, her voice was low and steady. "You'll have wings, but only when you need them."

"And - " I tried to speak just as calmly, but my throat felt too raw. "And you can be whoever you want to be."

Our eyes locked. Between shallow breaths, he spoke slowly and deliberately. "And it was never about...the fight between...right or wrong."

I took his hand and squeezed it tight, to let him know I understood.

He didn't die that day, or the next. When he finally let go, I had just moved into my new apartment in Palo Alto. Mom called me the next morning to the deliver the news, and for some reason I wasn't surprised at all. "Could you call Josephine for me?" she asked, and I could tell she was going to cry again. "I think it's better if she hears from you."

After she hung up, I dialed Josie's cell. It was around lunchtime in New York, and she picked up after the first ring. "Josie," I started, and she knew immediately what I needed to say.

Josie and I both took a week off for the funeral, and to make sure Mom was all right living alone. I have never seen Josie and Mom hug each other so many times. Part of me could only shake my head at the ridiculous sentimentality of girls, but another part of me wished I could join in, too.

"I just can't believe he's finally gone," Mom kept saying.

"He was almost eighty years old," I reminded her. We were in the kitchen, her sanctuary and domain, figuring out how to fit all of the food from neighbors and friends into our single refrigerator.

"Well, yeah, but..." She shrugged. "I always thought he might even outlast me. He's been through so much, but it never slowed him down. You know he had a heart attack before, right?"

This was news to me. "I don't remember that."

"I guess you wouldn't. You were probably only three or four at the time. Josie was only a couple of months old, I think." She smiled at the memory. "The doctors say that he was actually clinically dead for a couple minutes, but he pulled through stronger than ever."

"He...died?" I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

"Only for about two minutes, they said." The doorbell rang, and she sighed. "That's either more flowers or potato salad. I'll get it."

When she came back with a pan of baked macaroni, we let our conversation drift to other things. But I kept remembering Grandpa's voice in my head, gravelly and warm: Time passes differently up there...

I found Josie in her room, swathed in her fluffy purple comforter despite the autumn heat. She was lying on her stomach, a huge book propped up on the pillow in front of her.

"Hey Josie," I said, sitting on the corner of the bed.

"Sup, Bobby.” She didn’t bother to turn her head.

"Don't call me that. No one calls me that. It's weird."

"Then don't call me Josie," she said. I could see the tiniest of smiles in the corner of her mouth.

"Sure thing, Josie."

She snorted, but let it go. "You remember that tiny airport Grandpa took us to one time, in Santa Barbara?" she said conversationally. "I was thinking of taking up pilot lessons." She flipped a page, then flipped it back. "If I work hard, I can get a license in less than a year."

"Mom would freak," I reminded her, thinking about how paranoid she'd been when Josie and I started driving.

Josie shifted deeper in her blanket cocoon, and her words came out muffled. "They say a small plane can reach altitudes of 10,000 feet."

I regarded the back of her head for a long while. "I'll talk to Mom."

"Thanks."

"What's that you're reading?" I asked, resting my chin on her shoulder.

"Emily Dickinson," she said, leaning her head on mine. Her hair obscured most of my view, but I could make out one stanza:

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me—

"Huh. Kind of morbid, isn't she?"

"Well, she was one of my favorites as a teen," she admitted, finally turning to look at me.

I raised an eyebrow. "You know you’re still technically a teenager, right?"

"Oh," she said, genuinely surprised. "Yeah. I forgot, I guess."

Description
And would it blur the Christmas glee

My Stocking hang too high

For any Santa Claus to reach

The Altitude of me —

Emily Dickinson, “’Twas just this time, last year, I died”

"I used to be an angel, but I came back down to take care of you," Grandpa Norman liked to tell us. Then, with a wink he'd say, "With two rascals like you, your mom needs all the help she can get!"

It always drove Mom crazy, when Grandpa told us his stories about Heaven. "Don't start that up again, Dad," she warned. "You're giving them strange ideas."

"Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes," he quoted.

To that, she could only shrug and throw up her hands, declaring, "And this is why all the kids on the block think you're Dumbledore in disguise." She was only half right; it was mostly because he had the glasses and the twinkling eyes to match.

Once, my little sister dared to interrupt with her own contribution. "There is no idea," she said very seriously, "without I." She'd just turned four, and I was seven and a half. Given that context, I thought it was actually pretty clever.

"Eat your cereal, Josie," Mom said wearily. "You too, Robert," she added when I opened my mouth.

When Mom was out of the room, however, my sister and I begged Grandpa to tell us what it was like to be an angel. "Did you look old?" I asked, mouth full of chocolate milk and Cinnamon Crunch.

"Could you fly?" Josie said loudly.

"Patience is a virtue, young lady." Grandpa tapped her nose as she giggled madly. "Well, Rob, sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. Up there, you could be whoever and whatever you wanted to be. If I felt young, I looked young. If I felt old, I looked old."

Josie wriggled in her seat, unable to contain her excitement. "Did you have wings?"

He poked her plump tummy, and she squealed with delight. "Yes, Josie. But only if I needed them." He chuckled. "Did I ever tell you two the story of the first time I flew?"

"No!" said Josie. I remembered it, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to hear it again. We both scooched our chairs closer, cereal forgotten.

"Well, all right. It's not that long of a story. One day, pretty soon after I arrived, I started to grow restless with staying in just one little patch of Heaven. I decided to explore as much as I could, so I packed some jerky, told your Grandma I'd be back in a few days, and set out."

"You can get hungry in Heaven?" I asked doubtfully.

"No," he said, ruffling my hair. "But it was still fun to eat sometimes."

He continued. "Well, I kept walking and walking, and let me tell you kids, Heaven is a beautiful place. If I said to myself, 'A fountain right there would look perfect,' then poof! Before I could blink, a fountain had sprung up out of nowhere!" Josie clapped her tiny hands, and Grandpa nodded, pleased to see her amusement.

"At one point, I thought to myself: if only I could see the Manhattan skyline, just one more time. And can you guess what happened?"

"Poof!" said Josie.

"The next second, I was walking the streets of New York City! Everything was exactly as I remembered it, and as I explored the city, I couldn't help but keep looking up at all the skyscrapers and billboards - they were just that shiny in the sun. Well, I guess I wasn't looking where I was going, because one second I was walking on solid concrete and the next second - "

He pounded the table so hard that our spoons clattered and we jumped in our seats.

"Woosh! I fell right through an open manhole!" Josie cracked up, and I laughed so hard that milk went up my nose. "Well, since I was up in the sky and not in the real Manhattan, I fell right through the clouds and kept on falling. Let me tell you, I had to learn how to fly pretty quickly then!"

"Ki-ids!" Mom poked her head back into the kitchen, phone in one hand. "What have I told you about shouting when I'm on the phone?" We didn't dare look at Grandpa, fighting to hide our giggles. Humming innocently, he nonchalantly nibbled his toast as if he'd been doing nothing else the entire time.

Mom glared. "Dad, I swear..." The phone rasped static, and she put it back to her ear. "What? Nothing, honey. It's just the kids acting up again. Have a good day at work." She hung up before turning her appraising eye back on us, her most fearsome This-Mom-Means-Business look plastered on her face. Then, she sighed. "Robert, pack your backpack while I get Josie ready for school."

Mom was at her most frazzled as she ushered us both out of the house. Josie immediately waddled to her side of the car, whining in frustration when it didn't open at her demands. "Mooooom!"

"Be there in a second, sweetie," Mom called. She turned to lock the front door, only to find Grandpa standing in the open doorway. His eyes were somber, and he wasn't smiling.

"Sophie," he said slowly. "Come inside for just a moment." Behind him, the sounds of the television blared indistinctly, and I remember thinking that it wasn't fair Grandpa got to watch TV on school days and I couldn't.

"They're going to be late for school," Mom snapped. She was annoyed, which could explain her impatience - but looking back, I think some part deep inside of her recognized that this was not something she wanted to see. If only she could take us to school first -

"Sophie," he said again. "I think you need to see this."

She pushed roughly past him, disappearing into the darkness of the living room. The blinds were closed as usual, because Grandpa didn't like how the noonday glare hurt his eyes.

Josie and I tried to follow her, but Grandpa stood firmly in the doorway, blocking us from entering any further. I tried to peer around him, but all I could see was Mom's back. I could hear her crying.

"I don't understand," she said. "It's not real, it's a hoax, it's - "

"Shh, shh," he hushed, going to her. The way finally free, Josie and I burst into the house. Behind the silhouette of my grandfather embracing his daughter, I caught the shaky image of two towers, and smoke.

"Oh God, I just talked to him. I need to go - I need to go now - no, maybe I should call first, maybe he got out in time, maybe he stepped out for a coffee or something - "

"Shh," he said. They shifted, and I saw the caption in huge letters: WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER. There was a man falling on the screen. He tumbled through the air, head over feet. He fell for so long.

"Dad, I need to go now. I've got to go to him, he'll wonder where I am, I've got to - "

"Shh." I couldn't see their faces. It was too dark. "Sophie, not in front of the kids."

I did not understand how my dad could be 'missing'. Then later, how he could be 'dead'. It didn't make any sense. I had the image of the falling man burned in my memory, only sometimes I saw him wearing my dad's favorite red tie.

Josie was even more confused than I was, which was probably why she could put on a braver face. At the funeral, she could only look with a mixture of befuddlement and frustration from Mom to Grandpa to me, three identical ashen faces carrying no expression at all. She put her chubby arms around Mom's neck, anxious to comfort her. "It's okay," she said stubbornly, words rounded by the littleness of her mouth. "I'm sure it was just an accident."

I knew it wasn't an accident.

In the car on the way home, Grandpa tried to keep Josie's spirits up with more stories. Mom's hands were stiff on the steering wheel, but she didn't interrupt. As I listened to Josie laughing at Grandpa's kooky descriptions of flying lessons and cloud sculptures, I tried to laugh along, but there just wasn't enough air.

Right then and there, that's when I decided. That day, I decided to stop believing Grandpa's stories. I stopped believing in angels.

We moved to California. Mom got a new job at a school in Los Angeles, or close to it. I remember the cultural shock of palm trees, a dry yellow sun, and more gleaming bronze skin than I'd ever seen in my life, including the one time when we got flashed by a crazy in Central Park. I think Mom was hoping that the unfamiliarity would help, as if by putting 2000-plus miles and three time zones between us and there would make there go away. We could pretend that it had always been like this, just the four of us.

And it worked, to some degree, at least for my sister and me. Children heal faster than adults - can recover from a broken bone in a way no parent could, as if it had never been anything but whole. Something about an accelerated growth rate.

The younger you were, the easier it was. Even as I learned to smile again, I could still feel the pieces missing from my life, as if a vacuum had eaten its way into my chest. But as I watched Josie growing up, I could see that she saw Dad as more of an absence than a loss. Sure, it sucked that she didn't have a father. But she still had Mom and me and Grandpa. Especially Grandpa, with his neverending supply of stories.

"Is Heaven nice?" little Josie asked. "Are people happy there?"

Grandpa's eyes flickered toward Mom, but she didn't look up at him. She went into another room.

"Well, sweetheart, I like to think that people were happy there. Some people didn't want any possessions or company - and they'd be left alone, just like they wanted. Others, like your Grandma and I, preferred a roof over our heads and silverware in the cabinets and company in our chairs - and we got that, too. No one was allowed to own any living thing, though, not even the plants. The gardens were for everyone."

"And you didn't have to go to school?" Josie asked, eyes round. That was her favorite part.

"If people wanted to sit around and do nothing all day - well, that was just fine. And if people were the working type, they'd be given work." Grandpa chuckled at Josie's face - evidently, she couldn't imagine anyone actively looking for work to do. "Myself, after a few weeks of just staying at the house with your Grandma, I knew I needed a job to keep me honest and give me some purpose. I wanted to be useful. So I went up to the Big Guy and - "

"So you could talk to him whenever you want?" Josie interrupted.

Grandpa shook his head. "Not whenever I wanted, but whenever I needed to." Josie didn't seem to quite understand the distinction, but he went on. "Anyway, I got a uniform and a watering can and was assigned to Cloud Number 2368142."

At this, I couldn't stop the snort of laughter from escaping my throat. "So you just watered one cloud all day?"

"It was over Seattle."

I struggled to keep the thick scorn from my voice. I didn't try too hard, though. "If everything was so great up there, why'd you leave? Did you get kicked out?"

"More like... I'm taking a vacation." If Grandpa heard my derisive tone, he didn't show it. He looked more thoughtful than offended. "You know, it wasn't easy getting them to let me come down here. I don't think it's been allowed for a really long time. Even your Grandma begged me not to leave." His eyes grew soft and shiny. "But, I knew I had to, for you, and you," he said, sliding his gaze from me to Josie.

I felt all wormy inside for being so mean, like I'd eaten too many potato chips. But then he flashed us a huge grin and said flippantly, "It's really quite the epic story. You're going to have to remind me to tell you sometime." Josie laughed. My guilt evaporated on the spot.

I mean, it didn't make sense. Angels are dead people. Grandpa definitely was not dead. The timeline just couldn't work out.

Josie didn't mind the logical inconsistencies. She only cared about the stories themselves. They held her fascination, as much with the storytelling as with the contents. As early as middle school, she began to write them down.

Her first poem - it was a haiku - went like this:

My Grandpa is an
Angel from Heaven who came back
To take care of Us -

Her English teacher called it highly creative and gave her full marks, even though the second line had too many syllables.

Around this time, Josie also began asking about Heaven in more detail - probably looking for more material to write about. She wanted to make sure she got it right. "Did you ever see a demon from Hell?" she asked Grandpa. She had a little notebook with her, a number two pencil jammed in its spiral binding.

"You know what, Josie, I don't think I ever did," Grandpa said thoughtfully.

"But if you never saw one, how could you fight them?" she said, frustrated by what was looking to be a complete lack of a story.

"Well, we never really did have to fight them."

"Oh." She looked disappointed. "I thought all angels were supposed to fight demons."

"Hmm, not really. I don't think Heaven was ever really about the fight between good or evil. You can write that down," he said, evidently amused by Josie's crestfallen expression.

"So you weren't allowed to fight in Heaven?"

"Something like that. No - wait," he said, frowning, and I looked up. Never had he second guessed himself before. It was part of what kept his stories so convincing. "I remember," he continued slowly, as if pulling the memory from somewhere deep inside, "there was this pair of brothers. When they'd been alive, the two had been some of the greatest boxers in American history."

"Oh, goodie," Josie said, pulling out her pencil and writing with an air of great self-importance.

"Buddy and Max, the two were called. The older of the two, Max, had died almost 30 years before Buddy, but it seemed like only a second before they were reunited. Time passes differently up there.

"My, those two certainly loved to box! It was more than a job or a show to them - it made them feel alive again. Sometimes they'd attract an audience, but they didn't mind. I watched a couple fights, myself," he said with a little chuckle.

"Well, one day they were boxing as usual, and a good crowd had gathered around them. It was the eleventh round, two minutes in. Both men were going at each other hard, with no signs of letting up. Then, wham! Max knocked Buddy under the chin, and he flew backwards, landing on someone in the crowd.

"We heard a yell, and when Buddy got back up again, we could see the poor bystander underneath holding his arm in intense pain. Then, as we watched, the arm straightened itself out, and the man moved it back and forth, clearly surprised to find it completely unhurt.

"That's when everyone heard a huge, rumbling voice boom over the crowd. It simply said," and Grandpa's eyes wrinkled in the corners with mirthful anticipation, "THAT'S ENOUGH, BOYS."

Josie applauded, and Grandpa got up from his recliner just long enough to take a bow. "You see," he said eagerly, "It wasn't a problem that they were fighting until someone else got hurt - "

"Josie, time for homework," Mom called from the kitchen.

"Coming," Josie yelled back. Swiftly, she kissed Grandpa on his crinkly forehead and flew upstairs, her precious notebook held to her chest.

"Robert," Mom said as she came into the room, "I need you to - young man, where are you going?"

"Out," I said, walking through the front door before she could get another word in.

I went to my girlfriend's house. I caught Lucy's eye through the living room window from behind her parents' backs, and watched with satisfaction as she made some excuse to leave.

"What's up?" she said when she opened the door, a little breathless.

"I just needed to get out of the house." She waited for me to elaborate. "My Grandpa was telling his stories again."

"Oh, Rob."

"He's crazy. Boxing in Heaven? Seriously? And broken arms," I said angrily. "Who gets broken bones in Heaven?"

"Oh, Rob," she said again, taking my hand.

Looking back, I realize I came across a lot more angsty than I was really feeling. Of course, this only served to endear her to me further. We were young, and that sort of thing was cool.

As I grew older, even I couldn't hold onto such hormone-driven anger. It got easier when I went off to college. UCLA was close enough that I could visit whenever I wanted, but other than holidays and summers I mostly stayed on campus. I could think kinder thoughts when I wasn't home. Grandpa was just trying to help, in his own way.

Josie certainly continued to love him for it. In high school she grew up into a passionate artiste who enrolled in creative writing workshops, acted in all the school plays, and insisted on being called Josephine. I don't know where she got it from - Mom certainly was as bewildered as I was - but Grandpa embraced it full force. The two had a whole secret language that Mom and I could never crack.

"Grandpa," Josie teased, "you're giving the kids strange ideas again."

"Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes," he intoned, stroking his scruffy beard with affected wiseness.

"There are some ideas so wrong, that only a very intelligent person could believe in them," she returned.

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

"Amen," she conceded, laughing.

Her questions became cheekier, too. "Is there sex in Heaven?" she asked bluntly, during the first summer I came home.

"Josie - Josephine!" Mom chided, flabbergasted.

"What? It's a very important question." Josie fingered the wavy curls in her hair, nails painted so bright that they could only be matched by her eyeshadow. I always wondered how girls learned to do all that stuff. She certainly didn't learn it from Mom. "I'm waiting, Grandpa," she said primly.

Grandpa opened his mouth to reply, but catching Mom's venomous glare, he coughed nervously instead. "Maybe when you're a little older, young lady."

Josie, unfazed, flipped her notebook to her next question. "What religion is your Heaven based on? I mean, it seems to be some kind of Christianity for sure. Catholic? Protestant? Eastern Orthodox?"

"One, what makes you so sure it's Christian, and two," he said, eyes gleaming mischievously as he put a finger to his lips, "no spoilers."

Josie chucked her notebook at his head, and he laughed with childish glee.

Later, when I picked Josie up from theater camp, I saw her telling her friends something that made them laugh. I couldn't hear them, but I could see the expression on their faces: amusement, for sure, but also condescension, and a flickering suggestion of fear. In the car, I asked her lightly, "What were you guys talking about?" But I thought I could guess.

"Just one of Grandpa's stories," she said, knowing full well what my reaction would be.

"Josie, why - "

"It's Josephine." She flipped her hair thoughtlessly in that maddening way that teenage girls use, to show just how little they care about what you're going to say next.

"Josie," I said firmly, and she rolled her eyes. "I told you already, you shouldn't talk about this stuff with other people. It's not...smart."

"What, because it's not real?"

"Because I'm afraid you think it is," I said gently.

She harrumphed, slouching in her seat rebelliously. "They're just stories. What's wrong with telling people stories? Stories are meant to be told."

My grip on the steering wheel tightened, and I remembered the horrible car ride home from the funeral, so many years ago. "They're Grandpa's stories," I said, trying to appeal to her from another angle. "They belong to him."

Josie turned to me with a stubborn expression I knew all too well, round eyes dark with smudgy eyeliner and glittery shadow. "You can't own living things in Heaven," she said.

Josie barely spoke to me for the next three years, though that might have been my own fault. I threw myself into college work, even staying over for the summers. Mom protested, but I put my foot down. "It's part of being premed, Mom. You don't know what it's like," I said exasperatedly. "I've got to get as much research and clinical experience as I can. If I don't, there's no way I can compete when it comes to applying to med school."

"I still don't understand why you can't come home for just a month," she said, sounding even more hesitant through the distortion of the speaker phone. "We miss you."

"I can visit for a week," I promised. I kept my word, but spent most of the week in my room sleeping. I came out only to eat.

On June 10th, 2015, I graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's Degree of the Sciences in Molecular Biology, with honors. The sun was hot and dry, as expected. The black square of my graduation cap didn't provide much shade, and I was glad to throw it in the air at the ceremony's end. Carefully, though. I made sure to toss it straight and low, so I could catch it as it fell.

Josie and Mom waited for me outside of the stadium. Mom had wanted to take photos on the field, but I told her it would be too crowded. After I picked up my diploma, we celebrated over a huge dinner with my friends and their family. My roommate started flirting with Josie, and I had to take him aside to tell him that he wasn't her type.

It was only on the next day, when we'd finished packing everything into the minivan, that they dropped the bomb on me.

"You should probably know," Mom said haltingly - every time she talked to me nowadays, it was like she was tiptoeing past a beehive - "that Grandpa hasn't been feeling too well lately."

"Oh, really?" I said distractedly, as I tried to decide if the desk lamp would fit better in the trunk or in the back seat.

"He had a heart attack."

I turned around sharply. "What? When?"

"About a month ago."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" I was half-way to shouting. Mom looked positively terrified.

Josie spoke up. "You were working on your thesis. We didn't want to bother you." Beneath her hostile glare, I could read what she really meant: You didn't want us to bother you.

"It wasn't your call," I snapped. Her eyes were narrowed and hard. Mine were just angry.

Mom put her hands around my shoulders, and I shrugged them off. "We can talk about this later, okay?" she coaxed. "Let's just get home first."

I didn't argue, but no one talked for the entire car ride home. When we finally pulled into the garage and unlocked the door, Josie immediately ran upstairs. Mom sighed. "She spends all her time with him now," she explained. "I'd better go up and make sure she doesn't overexert him." So I was left alone to do the unpacking.

I deliberately took my time, stacking all the boxes neatly in the corner of what used to be my bedroom. Mom had tidied it up in anticipation for my return home. Everything looked exactly as I remembered it, or at least a better, cleaner version. It felt weird, but right.

I felt the sudden urge to jump on my perfectly made bed, and pretend that the rest of the day would just go away. But as tempting as it was, I couldn't stay in the secure comfort of nostalgia forever. Reluctantly, I went to find my family.

When I entered Grandpa’s bedroom, I could immediately tell something was wrong. Grandpa was sitting against the headboard, a plethora of pillows propping him up. He looked tired, but alert. Josie was standing next to him, leaning forward aggressively. In contrast, Mom was practically on the other side of the room, arms folded protectively around her brittle frame. I came in just as Josie was shouting, " - but you never believed him! Your own dad, and you think he's a liar!"

Then she saw me, and her hostility flamed to new heights. "You're even worse," she spat, jabbing her finger at me. It hurt, even through twelve feet of air. "You stopped believing."

"I... I think I left something in the oven," Mom said faintly, brushing past me. It was the worst excuse I had ever heard.

I whirled on Josie furiously. "You - "

"No, you - "

Grandpa stopped her with a hand on her elbow. He looked at me. "Go to her for me," he said wearily.

I found her in the kitchen. The oven was powerless and cold. She stood by the sink, absentmindedly sorting dinnerware into the dishwasher.

I realized, with an odd twinge in my chest, that she was getting old. Fine lines sprawled across her face, a collection of too many crow's feet and too few laugh lines. Somewhere in the time that Grandpa had progressed to elderly, Mom had become middle-aged.

"Josie has no right," I said heatedly, and she looked up at me, startled. "Grandpa - "

"No, Robert." She shut the dishwasher and dried her hands, taking a seat at the dining table. She patted the chair next to her. "Let me tell you a story," she said.

I hesitated, but she looked so hopeful that I couldn't refuse. I joined her, waiting for her to begin.

"A couple days before they found your dad's body, your grandfather wanted to talk to me. He said that he had a message from your dad."

My face tightened reflexively. I could already see where this was going.

"I kind of broke down," she admitted. "I thought he meant that they talked on the phone or something, that somehow your dad was safe." Her eyes closed briefly, then flickered open, once again composed. "He told me that - he told me that your dad didn't want me to worry about him, and that he wanted to let me know that he loves me, and the children too."

It was that last part that really got to me. "Why would he do that to you?" I said, feeling the old anger coming back. "I always knew Grandpa was crazy, but to be downright cruel - "

She flinched at the harshness of my words. "I don't think he meant to hurt me. He didn't want to tell me at all. He said that your dad made him promise." Tentatively, she put her hand over mine. It felt so much softer than I'd remembered, like a favorite shirt worn down after many long years. "I could imagine your dad doing something like that," she said quietly. "He was never that good at knowing how much kindness can hurt people."

I was tempted to jerk my hand back but I was afraid that if I did, she might shatter. "So, what are you saying?" I said, raw with bitterness. "You believe him? That everything he says, about Heaven and angels and Dad, is true?"

Her hand gripped mine with more force, and beneath the velvet softness of her skin, I could feel the delicate strength in her aging bones. A wave of reassurance inexplicably washed over me. "All I'm saying is, it's not a lie."

We went back upstairs. Grandpa was dozing, Josie half-asleep in a chair beside his bed. As we appeared in the doorway, Josie sprang up defensively, chin jutting forward as if she could somehow create a forcefield around Grandpa with a death glare alone. "Josie, back off," I warned. When she didn't move, I added, "You can't own living things in Heaven." She relented then, though grudgingly.

"The gardens...are for everyone," Grandpa said faintly, stirring slightly. Mom was by his bedside in a heartbeat.

"Hey Daddy," she said, and suddenly I felt such an overwhelming longing for my own dad, I could hardly breathe.

"Hey there, Sophie honey," Grandpa said. He looked up at my sister, scowling over him. "Josephine has something to say to you, don't you sweetheart?"

Josie fidgeted, but finally she mumbled, "I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean what I said."

"Good girl. Now let me talk to your brother."

I moved forward, stumbling on the carpet. "Hi, Grandpa. I'm here."

"It's been a while," he said matter-of-factly, eyes twinkling.

"Sorry, Grandpa."

"Don't make your Mom worry so much. And Josephine here, she acts tough, but she misses you." Josie turned pink and gave a little "humph", but didn't interrupt.

"And you, you're what now, twenty?"

"Twenty-two. Josie's almost nineteen," I added, then immediately regretted it. He wasn't senile.

But he didn't seem offended. "You're going off to medical school, I hear."

"Yeah, I got into the M.D. program at Stanford. I start in September."

"And Josephine's up at NYU nowadays on a scholarship," he sighed, face crinkling into a proud grin. "Must be in the genes."

"Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude," quoted Josie.

"That's my girl," Grandpa laughed, and my heart swelled at the sound. But after a while, the laughter turned to an awful wheezing sound, and he had to stop.

"Don't push yourself, Grandpa." I rearranged the pillows beneath his head, not sure what else I could do.

"I think I've overstayed my vacation," he said, still smiling peacefully.

"Not yet," Josie said fiercely.

"Not yet," he agreed. “But soon.” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “Your Grandma begged me not to go…”

Josie looked like she wanted to argue again, but Mom spoke before she could. "Tell Mom that I say hello - and Mark, tell him that I love him." It took me a moment to place Dad's name. It had been so long since anyone had said it.

"Don't you worry, Sophie," Grandpa said, opening his eyes again. They looked so bright. "For him, it'll seem like you joined him in a blink of an eye. Time...passes differently up there..."

Though Josie's tears were falling freely, her voice was low and steady. "You'll have wings, but only when you need them."

"And - " I tried to speak just as calmly, but my throat felt too raw. "And you can be whoever you want to be."

Our eyes locked. Between shallow breaths, he spoke slowly and deliberately. "And it was never about...the fight between...right or wrong."

I took his hand and squeezed it tight, to let him know I understood.

He didn't die that day, or the next. When he finally let go, I had just moved into my new apartment in Palo Alto. Mom called me the next morning to the deliver the news, and for some reason I wasn't surprised at all. "Could you call Josephine for me?" she asked, and I could tell she was going to cry again. "I think it's better if she hears from you."

After she hung up, I dialed Josie's cell. It was around lunchtime in New York, and she picked up after the first ring. "Josie," I started, and she knew immediately what I needed to say.

Josie and I both took a week off for the funeral, and to make sure Mom was all right living alone. I have never seen Josie and Mom hug each other so many times. Part of me could only shake my head at the ridiculous sentimentality of girls, but another part of me wished I could join in, too.

"I just can't believe he's finally gone," Mom kept saying.

"He was almost eighty years old," I reminded her. We were in the kitchen, her sanctuary and domain, figuring out how to fit all of the food from neighbors and friends into our single refrigerator.

"Well, yeah, but..." She shrugged. "I always thought he might even outlast me. He's been through so much, but it never slowed him down. You know he had a heart attack before, right?"

This was news to me. "I don't remember that."

"I guess you wouldn't. You were probably only three or four at the time. Josie was only a couple of months old, I think." She smiled at the memory. "The doctors say that he was actually clinically dead for a couple minutes, but he pulled through stronger than ever."

"He...died?" I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

"Only for about two minutes, they said." The doorbell rang, and she sighed. "That's either more flowers or potato salad. I'll get it."

When she came back with a pan of baked macaroni, we let our conversation drift to other things. But I kept remembering Grandpa's voice in my head, gravelly and warm: Time passes differently up there...

I found Josie in her room, swathed in her fluffy purple comforter despite the autumn heat. She was lying on her stomach, a huge book propped up on the pillow in front of her.

"Hey Josie," I said, sitting on the corner of the bed.

"Sup, Bobby.” She didn’t bother to turn her head.

"Don't call me that. No one calls me that. It's weird."

"Then don't call me Josie," she said. I could see the tiniest of smiles in the corner of her mouth.

"Sure thing, Josie."

She snorted, but let it go. "You remember that tiny airport Grandpa took us to one time, in Santa Barbara?" she said conversationally. "I was thinking of taking up pilot lessons." She flipped a page, then flipped it back. "If I work hard, I can get a license in less than a year."

"Mom would freak," I reminded her, thinking about how paranoid she'd been when Josie and I started driving.

Josie shifted deeper in her blanket cocoon, and her words came out muffled. "They say a small plane can reach altitudes of 10,000 feet."

I regarded the back of her head for a long while. "I'll talk to Mom."

"Thanks."

"What's that you're reading?" I asked, resting my chin on her shoulder.

"Emily Dickinson," she said, leaning her head on mine. Her hair obscured most of my view, but I could make out one stanza:

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me—

"Huh. Kind of morbid, isn't she?"

"Well, she was one of my favorites as a teen," she admitted, finally turning to look at me.

I raised an eyebrow. "You know you’re still technically a teenager, right?"

"Oh," she said, genuinely surprised. "Yeah. I forgot, I guess."