“There’s just not enough space over here,” Irene/Aileen says. “The hutch is at least a foot and a half deep. There wouldn’t be any room to push your chair out from the table.”

“I don’t know,” her husband says, whose name Katriina remembers because it is actually Shawn, even though he is small and wiry and bald, nothing like a Shawn should be. “I mean, once you had it in here, you’d see it’s not as big as you think it is.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Irene/Aileen says. It is a joke without mirth. In the midst of this, Katriina realizes they can’t hear the wailing, which has pitched up an octave, into a range that feels like it is burning holes through both her eardrums.

“Let me show you the kitchen,” she says, a little too loudly. Irene/Aileen and Shawn both give her a strange look but follow her out of the possibly-too-small dining room, their hands linked together in solidarity. The wail is now a scream, and as Katriina explains that the cupboards are brand new, only two years old, she can barely hear her own voice. All she can think is, How can they not hear this?, immediately followed by Maybe I’m having a stroke. She blinks, testing her vision. Her tongue feels normal. She can clench and unclench her left fist. She has no idea if these things are actual stroke warnings or not, but for a moment it takes her mind off the noise. She smiles brightly, opens cupboard doors, talks about the school in the neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter; she knows they are not going to buy the house. They could sense the tragedy as soon as they walked in, the heavy, burdened feeling in the walls, the heartache in the floors.

“The longer a house stands empty, the lonelier it gets,” Katriina’s boss, Paula, is fond of saying. Paula, who once suggested stashing crystals around the Paulsson place in order to “heal its spirit.” Katriina took the crystals, worried that if she didn’t, Paula would suggest something even more drastic, like a séance or an exorcism. But she left them in her car – at the very least, she might not have to worry about that slow leak in her right front tire. Paula was right about one thing – the longer a house was up for sale, the harder it was to sell, regardless of the market or the location or the upgrades or anything. It was as though the house lost confidence the more it was rejected, which led to even more rejection. Or not the house, Katriina supposes. The person trying to sell the house.