Hal sighed. “You know, after Mariette died, I thought I felt her presence around the house, too. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t talk about it to anybody, but I knew she was here. I felt it. I didn’t see her or anything, but it was always as if I’d just missed her. I’d walk into the living room, and it’d be like she’d just walked into the kitchen the second before. Or I’d go into the bedroom, and I knew she’d just gone into the bathroom. I can’t explain it, but you know how you can tell when a house is occupied, how it feels as if someone’s there even though they’re in another part of the house and you can’t see them? That’s what it was like. I never saw her, but I knew she was there.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Would you have believed me?”

Norton didn’t answer.

“I figured everyone’d think I was crazy, want to put me in a home or something. Old widowed man thinking he’s being haunted by his wife’s ghost?” He shook his head.

Norton was silent for a moment. He cleared his throat. “I haven’t just felt her, I’ve seen her.”

Hal raised his eyebrows.

“This isn’t just a ‘presence.’ It’s a full-body apparition, a naked apparition, and it appears all over the house, at different times of day, in different places and positions.”

“Naked, huh?” Hal chuckled. “Maybe you just need to get yourself a little poon.”

Norton frowned at him.

“I’m sorry,” Hal said quickly. “I’m sorry. I know it was insensitive and inappropriate. I didn’t mean to offend—”

Norton waved him away. “You know me better than that, Hal.”

“What is it, then?”

He hesitated. “She asked me to do something. Told me to do something.”

“You’ve seen her and heard her?”

Norton nodded.

“What’d she say?”

“Well, it was just one word—‘Return’—but I understood that she wanted me to go back to Oakdale, to my parents’ old house.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You believe this? You think it’s real?”

He hesitated only a second. “Yes.”

Hal thought for a moment. “Maybe you’d better go.”

Norton was already shaking his head. “I can’t go back there.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t.”

“When was the last time—”

“I haven’t seen it since I left.”

“How long ago was that?”

“When I went into the army. When I was eighteen.”

“I take it you don’t have fond memories of the place.”

“I’m not going back.”

Hal nodded.

They were silent for a moment.