Page 20 of Paper Ghosts

Mim nodded once, then turned and walked down the hallway beside the staircase. She opened a door to a burst of sunlight, and she stepped into what was obviously the glass sunroom. The door closed and darkness melted back.

Tug picked up their bags and told Bailey to follow him up the staircase. She trailed behind him, holding on to the carved banister that curved like a cat’s tail around the floors. After showing her his bedroom, he led her down the hall to her room, which had a curtain of string beads hanging in the doorway. She parted them, and the wooden beads made a clackity sound as they fell back into place.

There were only three things in the room: a bed, a dresser, and a half-moon-shaped wicker hanging swing chair in the corner.

Wait. She had a swing in her room? She ran and hopped into the wicker chair and it twisted back and forth with a squeak from its spring. Her sudden happiness seemed to spark a sleepy curiosity in the house, and she felt something lonely walk in to watch her with her father. She stopped swinging immediately and her eyes searched the corners of the room, trying to find it.

“Do you like it?” Tug asked.

She turned back to him and smiled. “I love it.”

“This was your grandmother’s room when she was a girl. Come on,” Tug said. “I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

For the next half hour, the presence in the house followed them as Tug made sure Bailey knew every nook and cranny, most of it off-limits due to what he called the Wester Rules, which were as follows:

No one but family was ever allowed in the house, so Bailey couldn’t have anyone over to play.

She wasn’t to pound on the grand piano in the living room. In fact, there was to be no music in the house at all, unless she had her headphones on.

She couldn’t go down the hallway by the staircase on the first floor. That was Mim’s domain, where the sunroom was on one side, and Mim’s bedroom and the double-locked basement door were on the other.

And she was never to go near the creek.

At least that last one made sense when Tug took her to the backyard, through the French doors in the dining room. They walked across the lawn where a single ginkgo tree was leaning over a precipice you couldn’t see until you were right on it. Far below was the churning water of a creek that ran through town.

“When I was a boy,” Tug said, “I believed this was the ocean and people on the other side were in Europe and spoke another language.”

“I bet if this tree fell, it would make a bridge and we could walk to it,” Bailey said. She put her hands against the tree trunk and began to push, grunting with effort.

“I used to think that, too. But that tree will probably be here forever.”

She stopped pushing. “What did you do for fun here, Daddy?”

“In there”—he used his head to indicate the house, as if it might be listening—“not much. But you’ll have fun in school. Then you’ll graduate and a whole world of fun will be waiting for you. You’ll leave and never look back.” He knelt beside her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to be a better father, I promise. It was always easier to be who I should be here.” Should. She knew that word was important, but she didn’t know why. “Let’s walk downtown. That’ll be fun, huh? I saw the frozen tea shop is still there.”

“What’s that?”

“They sell ice cream made with tea. You’ll love it.”

Bailey squealed. Already hyped up on sugar from her jelly beans, she ran in place like a cartoon character until he took her hand and led her back into the house. The lonely presence was waiting for them, just inside, and followed them to the front door.

Bailey pointed to the floor vent. “Why is there an umbrella in there?”

“I don’t know. It’s always been there. That’s another rule: She doesn’t want it moved. And don’t ask her why, she won’t tell you.” He opened the door. “It’s simpler to just go along with your grandmother on some things.”

That detail, too, was important. The Wester Rules weren’t actually his rules. They were Mim’s. And they weren’t made up on the spot, either.

They’d been around for a long time.

CHAPTER NINE

Tasha Keller’s last name was unfortunate. It rhymed with Smeller, which was an easy nickname to stick to a girl who, when she got excited or happy or scared, would ask anyone near her, Can you smell that?, as if she thought emotions had a scent.

They did, in fact, have a scent, each distinct. Confusion smelled like hot pavement after a July storm. Surprise, tart cherries. But the Westers were the only ones in Hen Town allowed to be weird, and by the time Tasha caught on to this and stopped telling people, it was too late.

Smeller had stuck.

“Is that Tug Wester? It is!” Tasha Keller’s mother braked hard.