I don’t think ax murderers wear florals. (I mean, possibly Norman Bates from Psycho?)

The human is hunched over itself as if organizing something, and its words seem to pick themselves out in twos and threes up the staircase.

“Oh well . . . now that’s done . . . there it is . . . oh my head!”

There is a hat involved, a funny little orange thing with a chiffon flower, crumpled in a very purposeful way.

I should probably announce myself, say hello, or do whatever it is polite people are meant to do in this situation. But in moments of discomfort, my default mode is “overwhelming paralysis.”

I stand there, at the top of the staircase, hoping the floral mystery figure somehow detects my presence. Maybe if I clear my throat . . . ? Or I could drop something? I could drop something down below. On her head. Wait. Why did I think that?

“Hellooooo?”

It’s an English voice.

A Harry Potter voice.

It’s exactly the right voice to go with all those patterns and that rumpled hat. It’s the only kind of accent you can get away with while walking around the world as if you just fell out of a laundry basket.

“Is anyone there? Halllloooo?”

“Um. I’m here, I guess. At least, I think I am.”

The hat turns upward and beneath it there she is. A not-quite-so-elderly woman with a face the color of oatmeal and defiant red lipstick.

“Oh, indeed!” She sizes me up. “Well, whatever are you doing staring down at me like an owl atop its keep? Come down here, this minute!”

Geez. I guess she thinks she owns the place.

But the professor is the owner, right? Along with his mysterious wife?

As I descend the stairs, she sizes me up in the unsubtle way that only a woman raised with a very high opinion of herself ever would.

“My heavens. Aren’t you a slip of a girl? It’s as if you hardly exist!”

“That could be,” I reflect.

This puzzles her and she squints at me, suspicious. “Are you, indeed, the summer help? Why, you can’t even be twenty years old.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, how old are you, then?”

“I graduated high school last week.”

“So, eighteen?”

“Seventeen, actually.”

“Seventeen?” she tuts. “Graduated high school at seventeen . . . ? Well, aren’t you a clever one?”

“Not really, I just didn’t have anything else to do.”

She warms to this, somehow.

“Ah!” She takes a moment to contemplate me. “I see.”

As if by habit, she adjourns to the living room, taking a seat in a chinoiserie wingback chair. Blue and coral, with sparrows taking assorted positions on various branches.

“And your parents? How do they feel about this child labor?”

“There’s really just my grandma, actually. She’s fine with it. I think she’s probably relieved.”

She flattens the front of her skirt with her palms, crossing her legs at the ankles.

“And where are you from, then? Wait! Let me guess. A small but indistinct town somewhere out west but not too far out west. Illinois? Ohio? Iowa? Am I getting close?”