“I just went to see Joseph!” Shelly insists. “I like him.”

Grandma pulls out her chair and takes a seat. The kitchen table always feels empty now. “I’m sure Joseph likes you, too, but Shelly, the graveyard is a long way away. You need to tell me where you’re going. You have to ask if you’re going that far on your own.”

Shelly looks away. She doesn’t like lying and she doesn’t like going behind Grandma’s back, but she’s on a mission. “Sorry,” she says. “I’ll ask next time.”

“Maybe next time we can go together,” Grandma offers. “I’m sure Joseph enjoyed your visit. He likes company. Do you want to hear about the job I did today?”

Shelly doesn’t, but she nods because maybe it’ll distract Grandma until the ghost fades from Shelly’s skin, and Grandma tells her about the old house that needed to be cleared of all sorts of small ghosts, rats and mice and spiders.

“The family was very grateful,” she says. “They tried to tip, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept that. I didn’t tell them what was haunting them. They didn’t seem like spider people.” Grandma laughs. “Their dog kept barking at the rats. They were certain it was the ghost of some kind of axe murderer come to get them in their sleep.”

Normally Shelly would laugh, too, but she hasn’t felt as much like laughing lately. Especially since Grandma’s even keeping her away from normal jobs now, things she wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing Shelly along to before her mom died. It’s not like there are that many axe murderers out there, but everyone always thinks that’s what they’re being haunted by—axe murderers or their victims. Nobody wants to admit that death is something that eventually happens to everyone. Shelly understands that better now than she did before. The idea that her mom could be trapped somewhere else, with people who think she’s scary, who misunderstand her the way everyone always misunderstands ghosts, hurts so much she can hardly swallow the rest of her fish.

• • •

The cat was unintentional, but Shelly goes looking for the dog. Estelle needs something to do during the day—some company—and the dog can be a friend for the cat, too. Shelly takes a winding route home from school each day, scanning the sidewalks and the streets, and on the fourth day she finds it.