“A kid who strips, Molly—a kid who shows off her tushy and her titties!” my mom said. I didn’t want to think about Emmanuelle’s tushy or her titties, but of course I could imagine them. I was thinking I had no more relatives in the town of Exeter—none living, counting Granddaddy’s ghost. I couldn’t imagine my grandmother as a ghost. If Nana had wanted to see more of the diaper man, she wouldn’t have hired Dottie. I thought being a ghost would have struck Mildred Brewster as undignified; the suddenness of all the appearing and the disappearing was beneath her, like bad manners.

I’d hung up the phone—I was at loose ends in the kitchen. I wished I knew where in Moby-Dick my grandmother was when she died. It didn’t matter where Emmanuelle had stopped reading to her; Emmanuelle was way behind, just plodding ahead. But what had Nana been reading to herself, at the end? The rice was still steaming; the stove timer said the rice had two minutes to go. The stir-fry needed stirring. “Leave my wok alone, Kid,” Molly said. She’d come out of the TV room, with my mother clinging to her—the way I’d seen Em cling to Nora.

“I was wondering when we were going to eat,” I said. In truth, it was Emmanuelle I was wondering about: the kind of complications I might encounter, trying to track her down—just to ask her if she knew which part of the Pequod’s voyage had been the final part for Mildred Brewster. Had there been a bookmark or a dog-eared page?

“You know, sweetie, there’s another thing about that kid, Emmanuelle—I was doing some single-leg lunges with her, and some wall sits, and some squats,” my mom said.

“Don’t, Ray,” Molly said. The flame under the wok made a popping sound—simultaneously with my mother saying squats.

“Emmanuelle is a fairly athletic kid, sweetie—she’s got pretty good balance, she nailed the squats,” my mom said.

Maybe the “Sunset” chapter—Nana loved that one, I was thinking. “(The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.)” I didn’t want to imagine Emmanuelle nailing the squats, anything but her squatting. “I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail,” Ahab is musing to himself.

“You don’t know Emmanuelle is the green-dumper, Ray—I don’t think she’s got anything against those golfers,” Molly said.