One night, when Matthew and Em and I were at Molly’s, Matthew slept with me on the futon in the TV room. I knew he liked sleeping with Molly, in her bed, better. I thought Matthew might be worrying about the upstairs family, but it turned out he just wanted to tell me what was up with my mom and the snowshoer. “Those two don’t hang out at the house anymore—I only see them at Molly’s,” Matthew told me. “They must know the house is for sale, and that you’re not there anymore,” Matthew said.

“I see,” I said, wishing I could see them.

“They’re not getting any older—all those two do is goof around,” Matthew assured me.

Matthew must have talked to Molly and Em about seeing them, because both Em and the old patroller spoke to me. “Where they are isn’t a place, Kid,” Molly had already told me, touching her heart. Now Molly made it more clear; those two must be hanging out at her house because they could see all of us there. It was Matthew and Molly and Em and me that mattered to those two—not where we were, the old patroller said.

I just wished I could see my mom and the snowshoer, I admitted to Em. “You know those two—they’ll figure something out,” Em told me. “Those two know how to make a plan and stick to it.”

There was more evidence of stick-to-itiveness in the snowshoer’s notebooks, not that we needed more evidence; Em and I stopped reading for the night when we came across Elliot’s entry about the Rock Garden. “I can carry Ray out of the Rock Garden, if she can’t make it,” the snowshoer had written.

Near the top of Upper Twister was what Molly also called the Rock Garden, where the old patroller and I had noticed how the climbers’ tracks changed. My mother must have had some trouble on the second steep part of Twister. Molly and I had seen only the snowshoer’s tracks the rest of the way. Elliot Barlow had carried Little Ray piggyback to the top.

“Those two are always piggybacking each other everywhere,” Matthew had said of their younger ghosts.

“That’s just what those two do—they love each other,” was all I could say to Matthew about their piggybacking.

I had almost everything I wanted, I was thinking. I had Matthew’s love, and Em was seriously trying to live with me. I just wished I could see those two—I missed them, and their fooling around.

51. “O CANADA”