“Where do they go?” Shelly asks, once he’s faded fully from view. Shelly has a lot of experience with animals and not a lot with people—definitely not with the ghosts of people Grandma pulled up from somewhere other than a graveyard. Seeing the river ghost leave, not knowing what’s next for him or who he was when he was alive, is unsettling. Shelly’s only seen human ghosts leave from graveyards before. What happens to ghosts when they move on isn’t the interesting part of ghosts to her, but now she can’t help wondering. The river ghost didn’t know where he was. How could he know where to go from here? “Where do we send them?”

Grandma picks up the mug and refills it with milk. She sticks it in the microwave to heat it up for herself. “I think they’re going where they need to be.”

Shelly frowns. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t know everything about ghosts,” Grandma says, amused. “We’ll find out what comes next one day, but that day’s far off in the future. There’s no point worrying about it now.”

Shelly looks at the empty chair and suppresses a shiver. Ghosts aren’t scary. Ghosts, she knows. The future is another thing entirely.

• • •

Mom comes home from work tired, her hair pulled up in a high, tight bun. The water from the ghost is gone, but there’s dirt smudged on the floor beneath his chair. Mom takes one look at the dirty linoleum and her exhaustion turns into annoyance.

“Did you bring a ghost home?” she asks Grandma, like Shelly isn’t in the kitchen with them helping Grandma make spaghetti for dinner.

“We fed him some milk and sent him on his way,” Shelly says. “He wasn’t scary. Just confused.”

“He moved on peacefully,” Grandma agrees. “He just needed some kindness before he left.”

“You can’t bring the dead home with you,” Mom says. “Isn’t that what you taught me? Don’t let them linger.”

“You’re misconstruing my lessons.” Grandma turns away from the onion she’s cutting to tear a sheet off the roll of paper towels sitting on the counter. “Shelly, here. Help your mother with the floor.”

Shelly doesn’t take the sheet. She doesn’t want to be sucked into their argument. If she does, it’ll just lead to Mom lecturing her about ghosts again—about how she’s going to have bad dreams or how everyone at school is going to think she’s weird if she keeps playing with ghosts all the time.

“It’s not about the floor,” Mom says. “You know it’s not about the floor.”

“Sometimes people need help. Alive or dead. How do you say no if you can provide it for them?”