“Shelly, whether or not you catch ghosts, you’re still my granddaughter. You’re still your mother’s daughter. Part of the gift our family has is knowing when you can take care of ghosts and knowing when you can’t. I’m proud of you. Your mother would be proud of you, too.” Grandma leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Shelly’s head. “We took a lot off. What do you think?”

Shelly’s hair is gone, but all the feelings from before are still there. They just hurt a little less. She hasn’t seen what it looks like yet, but she knows the answer to Grandma’s question already.

She smiles up at her. “I like it.”

Epilogue

The day of the first snow of the season, Grandma and Shelly go to the thrift store and to Zhou’s. They buy a tape—The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead—and get an order of sweet and sour pork with a side of fries to go. Then they get on the bus and head to the cemetery. They’re moving to a smaller apartment soon, but for now it’s the same route and the same number of stops as it was the first time Grandma brought Shelly here, when she met Joseph.

Shelly’s okay with moving. Her mom never liked the orange wallpaper anyway. Things her mom did like—like the posters she put up in Shelly’s room—are coming with them to their new apartment.

Shelly’s gloves are so thick she can barely bend her fingers, and she’s all wrapped up in her winter coat, but the air outside is cold enough that having the bag of takeout on her lap is nice—kind of like having a hot water bottle made of fried food and foil containers. She’s still getting used to the way her new, shorter hair leaves her neck exposed to the wind.

“It’ll have to be a quick visit,” Grandma says, as the bus pulls up outside the graveyard. “It’s too cold to stay out here long. I don’t want you getting sick.”

Shelly smiles at Grandma and helps her off the bus. “That’s okay,” she says. “I just want to say hello.”

The cemetery is deserted—no ghosts or other people lingering—and Shelly and Grandma follow the winding paths to Joseph’s grave first.

It’s small and flat. It looks empty without Joseph there. Shelly dusts snow off the little metal plaque that marks his final resting place and sets the tape Grandma hands her down beside it.

“Grandma thinks you’d like this one,” she says. “She says my mom liked them, and you had the same taste in music. I bet it’s better than French tapes.” She reaches for Grandma’s hand. “I hope wherever you are now, you like it. I hope it’s nice after you waited so long to go.”