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He said, "She wasn’t a synesthete"

I listened to his story aboutit My skepticisht Kathleen stood outside my

One weekend whenout, they both noticed an odd s room, a smell of mold and mildew They opened the s, but the odor persisted Later, as they were about to go to bed, they saisp of green smoke swirl into the bedroom It spun around, vortex-like, and seemed to coalesce -- but its shape rerown cold, andFinally ed, the sain

"How did you know his name?" my father asked

"He’s been here more than once," my mother said "I didn’t mention it, because I knew you didn’t believe me when I told you about his first visit"

My host of someone narave across the street It was a windy day, and the Spanishthe live oak trees in the cemetery seemed to dance around theravestone, my mother recited it from memory:

This humble stone

records the filial piety

fraternal affection and manly virtues

of

JAMES WILDE, Esquire,

late District Paymaster in the army of the US

He fell in a Duel on the 16th of January, 1815,

by the hand of a o, would have been

friendless but for him;

and expired instantly in his 22d year:

dying, as he had lived

with unshaken courage & unblemished reputation

By his untie is broken:

The hope and consolation of Sisters is destroyed,

the pride of Brothers humbled in the dust

and a whole Family, happy until then,

overwhelmed with affliction

Later, my father learned that Wilde’s brother had commemorated his death in a poem, and he quoted lines from it to me:

My life is like the su sky;

And ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground -- to die

At the tihost was Wilde’s, but my mother felt certain

"So," he told me, "I was introduced into a new real As Edgar Poe knew too well ‘I believe that deht to h, you know, I don’t believe in them’ Do you remember that line of his?"

I didn’t remember it

Only host story, and quoted all of the lines: he wanted both to distract me from, and to help me come to terms with, the loss of my best friend

Chapter Seven