“Yes, ma’am.”

Bridget accepted a sympathetic nod from her colleague, and trudged back inside. Kristof and I followed, through the kitchen and into a room with a sofa, several chairs, and a fireplace. The man of the house—Andrew—adjusted his jacket and headed toward what I assumed was the front foyer. With a curt nod to his wife, and another to a round-faced, dark-haired woman on the sofa, he strode out the door, evidently unaffected by the bad stew.

I followed Bridget into a more formal version of the room we’d just left. The parlor. Until I’d moved into my Savannah house, I’d thought parlors were places that sold ice cream. Wiser spirit that I was, I now recognized a real parlor when I saw one.

Bridget picked up her discarded rag and resumed cleaning the front windows.

“What the heck am I supposed to be doing here?” I asked Kristof. “These people can’t hear me, can’t talk to me. What am I supposed to see, and why?”

I walked back into the other sitting area, where the two women were. The younger woman—the daughter?—continued to do needlepoint on the sofa, while the older woman, Abby, shook out a tablecloth from the side table.

The younger woman was definitely old enough to be married, especially in this time period, but I couldn’t see a ring on her finger. As she worked, she kept her head bowed, and her shoulders pulled in—the natural posture of a woman who’s accustomed to hiding from the world. Her light-blue dress had been washed too often, and she looked bleached out against the dark sofa. Yet, despite this outward timidity, she poked the needle through the fabric with quick, confident jabs.

Abby had moved on to dusting the mantel clock. Both women worked without an exchanged word or glance, as if each was in the room alone. After a few minutes, Abby walked into the front foyer. Her shoes clacked up a flight of steps. The younger woman lifted her head, tilting it to follow the sound of Abby’s shoes across the upstairs floor. As she tracked Abby’s path, her eyes flicked past mine and I blinked. In that gaze I saw something as coolly confident as her strokes with the needle. She waited until Abby’s footsteps stopped, then resumed her work.

“Okay, this is going nowhere,” I said. “Maybe I was supposed to follow Andrew.”

The young woman’s eyes flicked up, gaze meeting mine for a split second. Then it dropped back to her needlework.

“Hey,” I said. “Did you see—”