“He was just sitting there,” Mom goes on, “looking out the window, waiting for his stop. He asked if I would hit the button, and I did, and he got up and walked away, and I called after him that I hoped he had a nice day. And my father looked at me and said, ‘Who are you talking to?’ ”

Mom breaks into a smile. “The boy wasn’t there, of course. Not anymore. And I’ve never seen a ghost like that since—but it was such a thrilling thing. Like a corner of my world had pulled away, revealing a whole new place.”

I bite my lip, wishing that someday I could show her that other place, take her with me through the Veil.

“Is that why you write books?” asks Lara.

Mom sips her drink and hums a little, thinking. “You know, maybe it is. Stories have a way of making the world feel bigger, too.”

Lara nods and looks down at her plate. “I met my first ghost in St. Mary’s.”

Dad frowns a little. “That’s a hospital, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says briskly, “I was quite sick once. Scarlet fever.”

Mom brings her hand to her mouth. “Your parents must have been so worried.”

Lara looks up, blinking quickly. “Oh, yes, they were.” She looks down again. “I got better, obviously, but they kept me there a while, on the ward, and one night, I couldn’t sleep. Someone was singing. Quite loudly, in the hall. But no one else seemed to hear, or notice.” She stares off into space, a faraway look in her eyes. “So I got up, and went to find them.”

“And tell them off,” says Jacob, teasing.

Lara’s gaze cuts toward him, but she doesn’t stop talking. “There was this curtain in front of the door, and when I pushed it aside, the voice was so much clearer. So I followed it. And I found her, around the corner, at the end of the hall, looking out the window and singing. She was holding a baby, and the moonlight was streaming through, one of those bright spotlight moons, and I could see straight through both of them.”

I shiver a little.

But Lara only straightens, and smiles, and says, quite briskly, “Of course, afterward, I knew, it must have been a fever dream. I was still quite sick, after all. But I never forgot that woman, or the singing, or the child in her arms.”

The table is quiet for a long moment.

In the end, it’s Jacob, of course, who breaks the silence.

“You know, I thought the creepiest thing in the world was children singing, but I take it back. It might be that.”

Lara and I both laugh, and Mom and Dad look at us as if we’ve lost our minds.