“Toronto is in Canada, a foreign country with a different kind of government. For some reason, the Queen of England is also the Queen of Canada,” Em began. Not a word about social democracy, so far.

“But where is it?” Matthew asked; he didn’t care about the kind of government, or the queen.

“If you drive to an airport and go in an airplane, it only takes as long to get to Toronto as it takes to drive to Vermont from New York. My mystery house isn’t far away,” Em said.

“Why is it a mystery house—what’s the mystery?” Matthew asked. Now maybe we would get somewhere, I thought.

It would take a while for Matthew to imagine the house Em had in mind. It would take me a while, too, whereas Em was the kind of fiction writer who was good at foreshadowing—she always knew where she was going; she saw the path ahead of herself. Em’s house in Toronto was no mystery to her.

“Imagine an empty house, no furniture. The rooms don’t know what they are—no one has told the rooms what they’re for,” Em said. “Imagine you’re a room, but you don’t know if you’re supposed to be a bedroom or a living room or a dining room,” Em went on, creating sympathy for the rooms.

“The poor rooms!” Matthew cried, a compassionate child.

“Well, the bathrooms know they’re bathrooms—what toilets are for is no mystery—and a kitchen knows what it’s for,” Em said. “But this house has two kitchens—one is upstairs—so the kitchens are kind of confused, too,” Em told us.

“Why is there a kitchen upstairs?” Matthew asked her.

“There used to be two families living in the house,” Em explained, “but the family living downstairs never saw the family who lived upstairs. The family living downstairs only heard the upstairs family—when someone was walking around, or when someone went up or down the back stairs,” Em told us.

This wasn’t the best story to tell a six-year-old, Grace said. Matthew had nightmares about an unseen family living above him. Matthew swore he could hear them, although there was no one walking around above the five upstairs bedrooms in the East Dorset house—and there was no upstairs in Molly’s Manchester house, where Matthew occasionally had the same nightmare.