Mrs. Erickson sighed. “Please accept my apologies on their behalf,” she told Kaylin.

“Nope. If Jamal is behaving badly, it’s up to him to apologize and fix his own behavior. He’s not a baby. He’s closer to my age than yours.”

Jamal’s eyes narrowed. “It’s my chair.”

“Would you rather that Mrs. Erickson give up hers and eat standing up instead?”

“No!”

“Then let me finish eating and I’ll give you back your chair.” She wanted to add a few Leontine words to the mix, but wasn’t certain Mrs. Erickson wouldn’t understand them.

Another child joined Jamal, and then, shortly after, a third. These were Mrs. Erickson’s ghosts—and Kaylin could see them all. The marks on her arms were glowing faintly. She was both annoyed by Jamal’s demand, but also sympathetic. She did finish eating quickly—but she always ate quickly. It was a reflex from childhood and she had to work hard to eat as slowly as most of her friends did.

She did leave the chair as soon as she’d finished, with apologies to Mrs. Erickson.

Mrs. Erickson didn’t seem unduly upset. Kaylin wondered if the old woman had had children with her husband, but didn’t ask. If she had, those children were not among these ghosts, and these ghosts had come with the house; they weren’t haunting Mrs. Erickson for any reason other than isolation. Hers and theirs.

Kaylin then stood to the side of Jamal’s chair, and Jamal immediately pounced on it and sat, hard. He wasn’t actually sitting on the chair, but he was pretty good at mimicking it. He watched Mrs. Erickson eat, content. Mrs. Erickson might be lonely, as most of the Hawks assumed she was, but she wasn’t alone.

After dinner, Kaylin helped wash up, taking a bucket of water from the rain barrel and heating it while Jamal and his friends spoke with Mrs. Erickson. She told them about Amaldi and Darreno, and about Kaylin, Severn, and her visit to the Hawks today.

“I always tell them about my day,” Mrs. Erickson said, over her shoulder. “I’d take them all with me if I could, but they’ve never been able to leave. We tried for years,” she added, voice softer. “So I leave, and I try to come back with stories.”

Stories. Stories made up of her activities—her mundane activities—for the day. Kaylin revised all of her assumptions about Mrs. Erickson. She had assumed that the old woman came to the Halls of Law because she was isolated and lonely. That wasn’t the right story, or the whole story.