Chapter 38

"My sister has a dog with a distinctive lip curl...a lip curl that we thought looked considerably like the same lip curl our deceased grandmother had.

"One day, we were hanging out in my sister's apartment, and the dog was curled up in her basket in front of us. I noticed the lip curl again and jokingly asked if my sister thought our grandmother might have been reincarnated into her pet. We both laughed, but then the dog suddenly looked up.

"And the look on her face was...downright weird. She was kind of tilting her head back and peering at us. Even my sister, who lives with her, said she'd never made that face before. But, we just laughed it off and my sister asked in a very not-serious voice, 'Can you give us a sign that you're really our grandmother?'

"The dog looked out the window at the bush outside and my sister said, 'Imagine if a robin landed on that bush right now!' (Robins were our grandmother's favorite bird — she absolutely loved them and had everything from ceramic robin teacups to robin-patterned napkins and back again.)

"After that, we pretty much forgot about it until my sister came home from work one day to find a nest of baby robins in the bush right outside her window. The exact same bush her dog had looked straight at that day. A bush that would be somewhat strange for a robin to choose for nesting, as robins are solitary creatures and this particular bush is right next to a bustling apartment complex.

"It might all just be an amusing coincidence, but, to be honest, I've never been a big believer in coincidences — amusing or not."