The little girl clears her throat, still staring at me with an expression that looks odd on such a young face. I feel uncomfortable. I can’t speak for the me that isn’t me (yet), but I feel uncomfortable.

And I’m right to.

“You’re dead,” she blurts out.

My mouth is open and no sound comes out. Most of the fuzziness swirls back together, like a candle being blown back into existence.

I never got to learn their names. I don’t know if talking healed them or whether their lives did unbreak history a little. I need to believe it was worth it. I need to believe that what little I could do was helpful.

But it’s over now. And it’s bittersweet. I wonder how I died. I was pretty young, wasn’t I?

“No, that’s not true,” she says, as though I’d said my thoughts aloud. Which I might have.

I’m not sure which statement she’s responding to, though.

“You have a choice,” she says. “Just like the one I j-just got. You don't have to do it. But if you have the strength to give them hope, I think you should."

I want to tell my younger self that she doesn't understand the world yet. That she hasn't seen what I've seen. That she is wrong about people. That they don't deserve the sacrifice.

But I'd be lying if I told her all that.

So I slosh out of the water and sit under the tree, which weaves its long green branches together into a solid curtain of light. The green has been frozen into a crystalline web of whispering, silvery whiteness and I know that what's happening is beautiful and tragic and the story I'd always sought but never fully understood.

When Grandma and Grandpa are gone, nobody in our family buys their property. (Apparently, they always felt that there was something a little strange about the farm.) I stick around though. Hard not to.

The new, young family that lives in the house is sweet. They make the place a home. I really like them, but I don't make my presence known. I don’t think they’d respond well to knowing their house is haunted.

I don't talk to them, no. But I do what little I can.

Nobody's ever really sure who keeps opening the windows and putting wildflowers on the table, or why the house is warm in the winter and cool in the summer the year they can't afford to fix the heater. When John can't find his glasses, he finds them on the coffee table, along with his book and a neatly folded blanket.

When Meg gets a phone call and digs her face into her hands, she looks up and her husband is there with a hug—apparently, something clattered to the ground in the kitchen. And when Jacob comes home from school and cries under his pillow, I sit with him and bring the dog with me.

And the family grows up. And I'm sad. But then a new family comes. And another. And another.

And I realize that I'm still traveling, but it's not to the past this time.

It's slow moving progress, but at least I'm moving forward.