Grandma starts humming as she rubs Shelly’s back, singing the traveling song from the funeral under her breath, and Shelly falls asleep there, in Grandma’s lap, and for the moment things feel just a little bit better.

10

Shelly sleeps in her mother’s room instead of her own. Days pass. Grandma doesn’t make her go to school, but sometimes they go next door and Shelly gets to play with Mrs. Potts’s cats, and sometimes Grandma comes and sleeps in Mom’s room with her. The bed feels big and empty, even with Grandma there.

Any day now her mother’s going to walk through the door and apologize for being gone for so long, the way she did when she had to pull long shifts at work. Shelly will tell her it’s okay. That it doesn’t matter if it took a long time, it’s just nice to have her home.

Only she doesn’t come. They get visits from neighbors and Grandma’s clients, and every time someone comes by and it’s not her mom, Shelly feels a wrenching in her chest like she’s losing her all over again.

Two weeks after the funeral, the visitor is a friend of a friend of Grandma’s named Anna. She sits in their kitchen looking nervous and playing with her gold necklace. “I know it’s a bad time,” she says. “But I think my house is haunted.”

Shelly doesn’t feel much like dealing with a stranger’s ghost right now. The more days that pass without the appearance of her mother’s ghost, the more Shelly thinks maybe home isn’t where her mom thought to appear. But just in case, she doesn’t want to be somewhere else when her mom gets here. She lies in bed at night and thinks tomorrow and then maybe next week. Sometimes she closes her eyes and tries to will her mother’s ghost into the house, tries to summon it with just the power of wanting.

It’s not fair. Her mom should have come back right away. All these other people have ghosts they don’t want, and the one time a ghost would make everything better, Shelly’s mom is nowhere to be seen.

She’s coming. Shelly knows she’s coming, deep down in her bones, but Grandma hasn’t ever said anything about ghosts taking so long to show up.

“Shelly, would you make our guest some tea?” Grandma says. Normally she likes meeting new clients, but she sounds tired, like maybe she needs the tea to get through the consultation. She turns to Anna. “We’ll have to take a look.”

Shelly turns on the electric kettle and gets out mugs for all three of them.

“Thank you,” says Anna. “I can pay you. I don’t mind. I just want to be sure it’s out of my house.”