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The other boy dashes up to my side. “Are there ghosts here?”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” I say firmly.
“They totally are. I saw one upstairs,” he replies.
Liliana shushes him. “Sorry. My brothers… they don’t get it.”
I don’t reply. She smiles. It’s encouraging. Maybe she’s my ace in the hole. What father isn’t a softy when it comes to his daughter?
Rory and I sit next to each other at the dinner table. When I’m not eating (pushing food around my plate), I’m rubbing my clammy hands on my knees. I’ve already showed a bit of my expertise, sure, but the tour is going to be a whole other thing. I’m going to have to prove not only what’s interesting about the house but why it being interesting matters.
From time to time, I feel Rory’s eyes on me. I ignore it at first, until I finally let them catch in mine.
His forehead wrinkles right at the center, so subtly I’m not sure anyone else notices. As if to ask if I’m all right without asking aloud.
I appreciate it more than he knows. Long gone are the days that my unreadable expressions resulted in people being concerned for me. Most people just accept I’m apathetic. Unfeeling. Not Rory, though.
“Whew, that pie, Donna!” Rory says after polishing off the last bit of his apple pie and relaxing into his chair. “I won’t dare ask for the recipe, I’m sure it’s a secret.”
“It’s from Crescent Moon Bakery,” I say without thinking.
Donna shoots her attention to me. “How did you know that?”
Was she really going to try and pawn it off as if she had made it? I’m pretty positive the whole thing was catered or they have a chef stowed away in the maid’s quarters. “I’ve been eating the pies from that bakery since I was a kid. You just become accustomed to it.”
No one speaks.
“Francine Quintera—she runs the bakery—her spice blend…”
Donna’s expression is turning colder by the second.
“It’s just specific. That’s all.”
Liliana giggles.
What have I done?
“Then let me say that you, Donna, have great taste,” Rory amends.
Donna’s expression immediately lightens again. “Why, thank you! I think so too.”
I wipe my mouth and drop the napkin on the table. “If you’ll excuse me, for a moment.”
“When you return, Dr. Chaplin, we can begin with the tour, hm?” Fred asks after me.
“Yes, that’s—yes,” I answer hurriedly before disappearing out of the dining room and rushing down the hallway to the bathroom.
I lean over the sink, holding onto the cold porcelain, and breathe. If they were in here with me, I could remark on the pull chain toilet that was installed as soon as indoor plumbing became more accessible in the late nineteenth century. Or the clawfoot bathtub which was unusually placed in the downstairs bathroom so that the first Mrs. Wilhelm could spy on the gardeners as she bathed.
But for the first time in my long career, I’m faced with a question I’ve never paid much mind to:
Why should they care?
There’s a rapping on the door. “Chaplin?”
It’s Rory. In a voice meant for me. Not part of his act.
I pull the door open just a bit. “Hi.”
