Wunder looked across the cemetery toward the woods. The tallest tower of the DoorWay House was visible over the tops of the gold-tipped trees. But with the sun in his eyes, he couldn’t make out the spirals. The wood seemed black.

“What about her?”

“Come on, Wundie! Think about it!” Faye leaped to her feet. “This graveyard is practically in her backyard. She can’t be some random woman who just happened to move into the DoorWay House right now. She must have something to do with it! What if she has everything to do with it? What if she can talk to the dead? What if she can raise the dead? Or what if—” Faye stopped pacing and leaned over him. Her cloak blocked the sun. “What if the witch is your sister?”

“That’s ridiculous!” Wunder cried, his voice loud, louder than the thoughts that were now spinning through his head. “And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t make any sense. My sister was a baby, remember? Not an old woman.”

“It’s a miracle, Wundie,” Faye said. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

“It’s a coincidence,” Wunder replied angrily. “That’s what miracles are! Coincidences. Or lies.”

“You know you don’t believe that, Wundie,” Faye said.

“I do!” Wunder stood up. “Because it’s the truth! Did you know—did you know that Thomas Jefferson made his own Bible? He cut out every single miracle, chopped them right out with scissors because he knew they were lies. And did you know that there’s this principle—the law of truly large numbers—that says that with a big enough sample size, anything is possible? The things that seem like miracles are actually random events.”

“I know about those things,” Faye answered him, “because you talked about them at the Unexplainable and Inexplicable Phenomenon Society meeting. And then you told us that there are all kinds of miracles and all kinds of ways to believe.”

“Well, I don’t think that anymore!” Wunder paced the hill. He no longer felt small or cold or dizzy. He just felt angry. “And I’m going to find out who put up the stone somehow, and it’s going to be an ordinary person. And I’m going to tell them that they should take it down because even though it was a coincidence—even though they have the same name or they were trying to be sympathetic or whatever—it’s upsetting people. And that’s that.”

Faye shook her head at him. “Rationality does not suit you, Wundie. But have it your way. We’ll look up who ordered it.”

“Look them up? Where?”

“Probably the town hall,” Faye said. “This cemetery is owned by Branch Hill. My mom had to file all kinds of forms with them when my grandfather died.”

“Fine!” Wunder started down the hill. “I’ll go there now.”

“It’ll be closed soon. Tomorrow, Wundie. We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll go tomorrow afternoon,” Wunder said.

“That’s what I said, Wundie,” Faye said. “We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.”

Chapter 13

Wunder told himself that all he was going to learn at the town hall was the name of the perfectly ordinary person who had put up the memorial stone. He told himself that it didn’t have anything to do with ghosts or reincarnations or witches.