He stood in the doorway. I wanted to explain to him why I hadn’t invited him before this. I wanted him to know what it was like for me—needing to protect Lucas, watching out for him. “I’m not sure you understand what it’s been like since our parents died. We only have each other. There’s no one else. We’re it.”

Cole nodded. He looked kind, almost sorry for me. “I’m not sure you understand,” he said, “how much things have changed. Now he has me.”

The words chilled me, a strange mix of relief and fear.

“Goodnight,” he said.

Goodnight brother. Goodnight ghosts. Goodnight shaky old wonderful house. I climbed into my own bed. Goodnight memories. Goodnight moon. Goodnight stranger in our ghost room.

Chapter 9

9

I heard a small sound coming from the hallway, a weak little cry. It was the dark, quiet hour before dawn. I got out of bed, and stood at the top of the stairs. There were all the usual nighttime sounds, the whine of the refrigerator, the sound of wind outside.

Once I’d heard my mother crying in the night. I was six, maybe seven. I’d walked down the hallway and stood listening. She came out of the bedroom and shrieked when she stumbled over me.

“What are you doing up?” she said.

“Are you crying?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I had a dream, that’s all. I dreamed he came back, and I was happy.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because I woke up.”

It was like that. We all missed him. It was so easy to miss him. Baby B was everything we wanted that was just out of reach. This was true even today, Lucas and I all grown up.

The night was chilly, the house quiet, and whatever I’d heard was apparently from a dream.

But then I noticed—or felt—something that didn’t belong. Light, or movement, a disturbance in the equilibrium. My mother’s bedroom door, ajar.

I crept to her door, stood on the threshold, listened for my mother, or Colin, listened to hear which ghost it was. I flipped the light switch on. No ghost, of course. It was Cole, shading his eyes from the sudden flood of light. He raised himself up from the bed where he’d been lying. The bed wasn’t made, just covered with an old quilt. He lay on top of it.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked. “Were you sleeping here?” My mother’s bed! Her quilt. Her room was a space we hardly ever entered, following an unspoken decision to leave it alone, pristine. I felt a wave of anger and moved as if to pull him off the bed.

He swung his legs over to sit up. Rubbed his face, disoriented. “I sleepwalk,” he said.

“Your room is across the hall,” I said.