“I have a story,” Sullivan said. “In the broad outlines it’s a bit like Aune’s story.”

“You could change things,” Portia said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ll just tell it the way I heard it,” Sullivan said. “Anyhow, it’s Kentucky, not Finland, and there aren’t any cows. That is, there were cows, because it’s another farm, but not in the story. It’s a story my grandfather told me.”

The gardeners were outside the windows again. They were ghosts, too, Gwenda thought. They would come and go, always doing the same things. Was this what it had been like to be rich, looked after by so many servants, all of them practically invisible, practically ghosts—just like Maureen, really—for all the notice you had to take of them?

Never mind, they were all ghosts now.

She and Sisi lay cushioned on the air, arms wrapped around each other’s waists so as not to go flying away. They floated just above the twitching silk ears of a greyhound. The sensation of heat from the fireplace furred one arm, one leg, burned pleasantly along one side of her face. If something happened, if a meteor were to crash through a bulkhead, if a fire broke out in the Long Gallery, if a seam ruptured and they all went flying into space, could she and Sisi keep hold of each other? She resolved she would. She would keep hold.

Sullivan had the most wonderful voice for telling stories. He was describing the part of Kentucky where his family still lived. They hunted the wild pigs that lived in the forest. Went to a church on Sundays. There was a tornado.

Rain beat at the windows of Halfmark House. You could smell the ozone beading on the glass. Trees thrashed and groaned.

After the tornado passed through, men came to Sullivan’s grandfather’s house. They were going to look for a girl who had gone missing. Sullivan’s grandfather, a young man at the time, went with them. The hunting trails were all gone. Parts of the forest had been flattened. Sullivan’s grandfather was with the group that found the girl. A tree had fallen across her body and cut her almost in two. She was crawling, dragging herself along the ground by her fingernails. There was nothing they could do for her and so she died while they watched.

“After that,” Sullivan said, “my grandfather only hunted in those woods a time or two. Then he never hunted there again. He said that he knew what it was to hear a ghost walk, but he’d never heard one crawl before.”

“Look!” Portia said. Outside the window something was crawling through the ruptured dirt. “Shut it off, Maureen! Shut it off! Shut it off!”

The gardeners again with their terrible shears.

“No more old-people ghost stories,” Portia said. “Okay?”