Occasionally, my mother woke to Inga’s short cries or to the sound of her restless feet padding down the hallway and would get up to lead her back to her room and sit by her bed, soothing her or singing to her until she fell asleep. She would always step quietly into my room afterward and put her hand on my forehead. I would pretend to be asleep, but my mother knew I wasn’t. She would say, “Everything is fine now. Sleep.” Inga and I didn’t talk about the visitations except when they were happening, and it never occurred to me that my sister was either sick or crazy. Over time, doubt infected Inga, and she came to recognize that her nervous system had probably played a role in calling the spirits, but the experiences are a part of who she is and their influence can’t be ignored. In another era, I might have been the brother of a saint or a witch.

A COUPLE OF days after I saw Miranda through the window, I noticed a paper clip with a rubber band attached to it lying just inside the inner door that separated my part of the house from the rental apartment. I thought little of it until a Q-tip bound with red thread was slipped under the door the next night, followed by a piece of green construction paper on the third, which had been inscribed with three large teetering letters: a W, an R, and an E. After that cryptic message, it seemed clear that these offerings had been made by Eglantine. On the fourth night, as I sat with my notebooks open before me, I heard scratching from the hallway. I walked toward the sound and saw that a key tied with a piece of yarn was being pushed under the door.

“A key,” I said. “What a surprise. I wonder where these presents are coming from?”

From the other side of the door, I could hear the child breathing loudly, then Miranda’s voice. “Eggy, what are you doing up there? It’s your bedtime.”

THAT SATURDAY, I saw mother and daughter on Seventh Avenue, walking hand in hand down the street as I was leaving the hardware store with the nails I needed for the bookshelf I was building. I quickened my step and called out to them.

Miranda nodded at me. Then she smiled. The smile made me absurdly happy.

Eggy stared up at me. “Mommy says you’re a worry doctor.”

“Yes,” I said. “I went to school to become a doctor, and I help people with their worries and other problems.”

“I have worries,” she said.

“Eggy,” Miranda said. “Everybody has worries.”

This wasn’t what Eggy wanted to hear. She looked at her mother and frowned, “I’m telling Dr. Erik.”

She remembered that I had asked her mother to call me Erik. “You know, Eggy,” I said, “you’re welcome to knock on the door and come in and visit me. I like presents, but I like to talk, too.”