Miriam scowls.

Honey tugs my arm again, and I let her pull me out the door and across the hall to the dining room. She shuts the French doors and then leans against them. “Milla,” she says, her eyes sparkling.

“What?” I say excitedly.

“Hang on,” Honey says. She whirls around, lifting the tablecloth and its plastic covering. Honey’s younger brother, Aaron, six and blond-haired like Honey and Dan-Dan, is sitting cross-legged under the table, ripping playing cards in half one by one.

“Hi, Aaron,” I say.

“Hi, Aaron,” he says, which is his way of saying hi back to me. Then he screeches and throws two halves of a king of hearts in front of him.

Honey lifts a finger to tell me “one minute” and disappears under the table.

I look around at the dining room: A nine-branched candelabra sits stately on the sideboard, burning bright with the Shabbat candles. Over a shiny plastic tablecloth, the table glitters with delicate white dishes, with tiny midnight-blue-and-gold flowers around the edges, that the Wines only use on Shabbat and festivals. My mother looks like she’s smelled old milk whenever she sees plastic in someone’s dining room. But if Mrs. Wine didn’t have it, she would probably have to buy a new tablecloth every week. At the Wines’, somebody is always spilling something.

Glancing at the wallpaper above the sideboard, I can see it is peeling at the edges, and I smile fondly at the grandfather clock in the corner, which has read a quarter to three since as long as I’ve known how to tell time. I do think that the Wines are very on top of their home though, which is different than their house. There aren’t many rules at the Wines’, but the ones they do have—like no gossiping—pretty much never get broken. And as always, at the foot of the table, on Mrs. Wine’s sparkling china plate, there are seven white folded pieces of paper. I let my eyes linger on them while listening to Honey’s soothing tones coming from under the table.

After another minute, she lifts up the tablecloth and crawls out. I see Aaron now calmly making piles out of the card halves.

“Okay, so—” Honey says to me.

“Good Shabbos! Good Shabbos!” Mr. Wine and Honey’s older brothers call from the front door.

“Ugh!” Honey groans, flopping down from her knees onto the thick carpet.

“Just tell me!” I say. “Quickly, before they come in here.”

“No, I want to do it privately—” she says.

“I. SEE. DEAD. PEOPLE,” Josh says, throwing open the French doors to the dining room. He stalks toward me, his arms out like a zombie. Josh is the oldest of the Wines, mischievous and popular. He shaves, has his driver’s license, and goes to the big kosher deli with friends on Saturday nights. He likes to make fun of me for my look of shock when I found out Mrs. Wine is a chevra kadisha volunteer. She helps prepare dead bodies for burial.