We almost never talk about Wolf (which is what we’ve decided to name him, since he never had a name). Those times when he comes up, a heavy helplessness settles over her. It’s like the memory is too painful to fully hold in her mind. She starts to drift away, and I have to pull her back with talk of other things. I think, more than anything, it’s that she doesn’t know what to do to make it better. The few times she’s tried her arrows, they’ve done nothing at all. Her witch hunting days, her longing for the thing that waited in the water for her, are over—that much is easy to see. Some things can’t be fixed. And to be honest, I’m often relieved. I just want her safe.

It turns out insurance is a boring but useful thing. While we are squeezed in with the overcrowded but always cheerful Bartleys, our house is slowly rebuilt. When it’s finally finished, we move back in, and the ghosts trickle back. Mom can see them now, and she and Soggy catch up on old, new, and mutual friends. He cries on her shoulder about Crafty Agatha. She has a knack for comforting ghosts. She tries to make the afterlife brighter for him and the others with jokes and compliments and music on the record player, and soon our house is full of all the neighborhood spirits (they’re ghosts, so of course word travels fast)—dancing in the parlor, laughing in the kitchen, swirling up and down the stairs.

Germ likes to join us sometimes, but not as much as she used to. Sometimes she’s at Bibi’s house, or sometimes at D’quan’s. Sometimes I am too. I’m not trying to hold on to her when I go with her. I’m just trying to see if maybe people change, even me. I’m trying to take down my walls. And the more I do, the easier it becomes. I’m even beginning to think—though I don’t like to admit it to myself—that Bibi seems actually kind of okay as a person. Maybe she’s even nice, I don’t know.

Things with Germ and me may never be exactly what they used to be, and sometimes I worry about that. But I also try to trust that the changes are good, too. After all, I can’t get back what’s already gone.