I stare at his little beady eyes and yellow beak in the fading sunlight. He waddles side to side, waiting impatiently. He said he has to come in, and that his name is Frank, only … I haven’t heard that name in years. That was my father’s name.

Understandably, I stand aside and he enters. He looks around the entranceway and the living room like he knows the place, and knows it well. He eyes the couch in front of the television and nods slowly, then turns his head to me again.

“That pad thai you made for lunch smells amazing,” he says. Dare I imagine he’s smiling? That was my father’s favorite dish.

I thank the goose and he jumps on the couch, tucking his orange, webbed feet below his egg-white body.

“Stan,” he says, “I have to talk to you about the afterlife.”

I sit and listen to my father’s secrets.