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“He’s round,” Sally said, with enormous approval—because insanity seemed to run in this family.

“Don’t get your grabby hands on me,” the ghost warned.

Sally’s head tilted. “He made a sound.”

The taller child had not moved. He was staring up at Nate. “Dad said you wouldn’t come,” he reported.

“Okay, okay” Jonah said, steering both children backward by the shoulders. “Inside. Everyone inside. Everything’s getting cold.”

They went in.

The hall was warm and bright and smelled overwhelmingly of food. Meat and onions and something buttery underneath. Coats crowded the hooks by the door and framed photographs went up the wall along the stairs.

Voices came from everywhere at once.

A woman appeared in a doorway down the hall holding a casserole. She saw Nate and said, “Well,” and withdrew.

“Aunt Claire,” Nate said, but his aunt had already turned into another room.

Meanwhile Sally was asking questions about the ghost and her older brother warned her to be careful. The ghost approved of that.

Maybe all hope was not yet lost for the gap-toothed child.

But he couldn’t say that.

He couldn’t say anything, bombarded with so many impressions.

“You with me?” Nate asked quietly, under the noise.

“Obviously,” the ghost said.

And then a woman emerged out of the living room.

She was small and silver-haired and wearing an apron with flour on it. Her eyes went to Nate first, scanning him from top to bottom, and then they came to the seal.

“Hello, Nate,” she said. “Hello, spirit.”

Nate’s mom crossed the hall, and before the ghost could prepare himself, she had taken him out of Nate’s arm and into both of hers, holding him up to the light. Her gaze moved over him — the stitched face, the flippers, the new white seam, which she found immediately. Her thumb touched the mended felt so gently it was barely a touch at all.

And then she introduced herself.

“I’m Miriam,” she said. “Welcome to my home. And what shall I call you?”

The ghost didn’t know what to say. He had an answer. He almost had an answer. It sat where it always sat, just past the edge of everything, the first letter nearly forming⁠—

Nothing.

“He goes by Leo,” Nate said, from somewhere behind.

“I can introduce myself,” the ghost snapped. He gathered what was left of his dignity, looked the woman in the eye, and said, “Leo.”

He hadn’t planned to say that.

But now he couldn’t take it back without embarrassing himself further.

“Leo,” Miriam said. “Come sit down. You’ve had a day, I hear.”

She carried him toward the noise.