“I’d like that,” João said.

A carriage and driver were waiting to take Hildy to the train station. She waved good-bye and started toward the carriage.

“Wait!” João cried. “Don’t go!”

Hildy stopped and turned to look at him. “Why?”

“Because I’ve fallen in love with you,” João said.

The instant he said it, Hildy realized she loved him, too. And she ran back up the steps, and they threw their arms around each other.

At that, even the ghost that hung from the third-floor railing smiled.

Hildy and João got married, and Hildy moved into João’s house. The few ghosts that remained were friendly to her, though she didn’t need ghost friends anymore because now she had João. Before long they had a daughter and a son, too, and Hildy’s life was fuller than she’d ever dreamed it could be. And as if that weren’t enough, one fine midnight there was a knock on the front door, and who should Hildy find floating there on the porch but the ghosts of her sister and her parents.

“You came back!” Hildy cried, overjoyed.

“We came back a long time ago,” her sister said, “but you’d moved away! It took forever to find you.”

“No matter,” Hildy’s mother said. “We’re together now!”

Then Hildy’s two children came out onto the porch with João, wiping sleep from their eyes.

“Pai,” said Hildy’s little daughter to João, “why is Mamãe talking to the air?”

“She isn’t,” João said, and smiled at his wife. “Honey, is this who I think it is?”

Hildy hugged her husband with one arm and her sister with the other, and then, her heart so full she thought it might burst, she introduced her dead family to her living family.

And they lived happily ever after.

Cocobolo

As a boy, Zheng worshipped his father. This was during the reign of Kublai Khan in ancient China, long before Europe ruled the seas, and his father, Liu Zhi, was a famous ocean explorer. People said there was seawater in his blood. By the time he was forty, he’d achieved more than any mariner before him: he had mapped the whole eastern coast of Africa, made contact with unknown tribes in the heart of New Guinea and Borneo, and staked claim to extensive new territories for the empire. Along the way he had fought pirates and brigands, quelled a mutiny, and twice survived being shipwrecked. A great iron statue of him stood at Tianjin’s harbor, gazing longingly at the sea. The statue was all Zheng had of his father, because the man himself disappeared when Zheng was just ten.

Liu Zhi’s final expedition had been to discover the island of Cocobolo, long thought legendary, where it was said rubies grew on trees and liquid gold pooled in vast lakes. Before leaving, he told Zheng: “If I should never return, promise you’ll come looking for me one day. Don’t let grass grow under your feet!”