“I’m sorry, Mrs. Webster, I truly am, but even if I went back to the site, my crew wouldn’t, not if their own mothers’ lives depended on it.”

And that, it seemed, was that. “Is there anything I can do?”

Miller shook his head regretfully. “Ma’am, unless you’re able to get rid of the ghost somehow, there isn’t a man in the county who’ll so much as set foot there.”

An idea began to stir in Alva’s mind, sticking tentative green shoots up through the soil.

“What if I could? Get rid of it, I mean?”

Miller looked at her doubtfully. “Like an exorcism or something?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking an exorcism certainly couldn’t do any harm and perhaps simply knowing a priest had blessed the house—or whatever it was priests did; Alva hadn’t set foot in a church in years—would reassure the men and make them less likely to imagine horrors around every corner.

Miller shifted his weight from one foot to another. “It’s not that I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” he said, speaking cautiously. “I go to church every Sunday, like the next man. It’s this ghost … well, I don’t think a little splash of holy water is going to scare it.”

“I see,” Alva said. What would convince him, if not a priest? A bishop, perhaps? “Well, if I could find a way, do you think the men would come back?”

There was a pause while the man thought, pursing his lips like he was trying to force his mouth to say something it didn’t want to say.

“The men, they’re real scared, see,” he began. “Not me, I’d go back. But the men, well, I’m not sure they would—”

A large redheaded woman loomed into view behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. “Howard Miller,” she said, “are you a man or a mouse? This lady is here offering you work and you stand here quivering like a virgin on her wedding night. I’m Mrs. Miller,” she said to Alva. “Pardon my intrusion, but I couldn’t help but overhear.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Alva said, and meant it.

“Now Penny,” Miller began, his face turning a sweaty shade of red.

“Don’t you ‘now Penny’ me, you coward. You let a little ghost story scare you off the best job you’ve gotten in years, and she’s here to kindly accommodate you, and all you can say is no? I don’t think so, my good man; I don’t think so at all.” She turned to Alva. “If you’re still willing to have him, and willing to find something to placate these idiot men, you can rest assured he’ll be there the first day back, even if I have to hog-tie him to get him there.”