“Maybe we should go on to the next house,” said Natasha nervously as a large man with a mop of untidy white hair, wearing a dirty white undershirt and ripped pants, banged open the front screen door and glared down at them.

“WHAT!” he roared. “Who are you?”

“Our great-aunt lives next door,” said Fiona.

“Not anymore she doesn’t,” said the man. “She buried herself two days ago.”

At this Fiona’s stomach dropped. This worst possibility had not occurred to her even though she had spent much of the night imagining so many.

“You can’t bury yourself,” argued Marlin rudely. She was the only one of them who got bristly and wanted to fight when confronted. “How can you?”

“My mother said she was hiding in the woods,” said Natasha.

“She wasn’t hiding in the woods, she just wasn’t putting herself forward for gossip,” said the man. “She didn’t talk to folks. I lived beside her for twelve years and we hardly spoke. She doesn’t—didn’t like people.”

“What do you mean she buried herself?” asked Fiona more politely.

“Just that. Oh, not physically, if that’s what you mean. Her corpse didn’t pick up a shovel or hoist the coffin into the hole before jumping into it.”

The girls flinched at such bare description.

“She had it organized, I mean. She didn’t have anyone doing it for her. Apparently, she trusted no one. She purchased her plot in the St. Mary’s By the Sea cemetery—the stone was up five years before she was dead. Some folks said that was going too far. Morbid. That it would give them a chill to pass by their waiting gravestone every day on the way to town. But your great-aunt was never one to shirk from reality. She knew folks our age can go just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And she did. She dropped dead in the hardware store. Massive heart attack. Only sixty years old. But she was all prepared. She left no mess. She had an undertaker lined up, her will made, her affairs in order. She knew not too many folks would come to her funeral so—wait a second—is that what you’re here for? No, you’re not here for the funeral. I bet you didn’t even know she was dead. You’re the four she was expecting.”

“I thought you said you never talked to her,” said Marlin.

“Marlin…” said Fiona warningly.

“Well, you’re too late,” said the man as if Marlin hadn’t spoken. “As I said, she’s dead. She left me some of her old fishing gear and you all the house and everything else. She changed her will two weeks ago. If you hadn’t shown up I would have gotten it all. Not that I give a fig. Hiram Pennypacker, her lame excuse for a lawyer, called yesterday to let me know. I don’t think he knew about the four of you still coming here until I told him. He was trying to figure out how to find you to let you know of your inheritance. I’ll be coming over to get the fishing gear out of your shed one of these days.”