“I came here on Eddie Thorne’s steamer. From Jane Street to the Manhattan Bridge—a one-hour cruise.”

“No, dearest. The milk truck.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you don’t remember . . . good. That’s good. Then you’ll have forgotten the pain. Utter madness—took the turn onto Waverly far too quickly and jumped the curb. Skidded fifteen feet down the sidewalk before it stopped. It landed on you. Cracked your spine in three places, the coroner told me. He said you wouldn’t have felt anything, but I’ve told that lie to too many fathers to fall for it myself. If you really don’t remember . . . sweet god, Gilda. You’ve grown so beautiful.”

He hugged me from clear across the table—just reached over and plucked me out of my seat and wrapped me into his arms. All the old smells were there—pipe smoke and hair cream and talcum powder and sweat—but his grip was not as tight as it had been. Through the patchwork bathrobe, which should have been eased into retirement around 1900, his arms were thin.

“When was it I died?” I asked.

“1914. But here you are. A woman. Does that mean—have you come to stay?”

“Do people vanish on the Westside?”

“People vanish on the Westside, the same as they do anywhere else.”

“By the thousand?”

“What does it matter?”

“Has the Westside been hollowed out? Have the good people of the city barricaded themselves along the stem, to guzzle champagne while the Westside chokes on vice and bad liquor and fear? Has half of New York died?”

“No,” he laughed, that same barking laugh I used to mock as a child. “It’s just a city out there, full of ordinary people, who drink their fair share of bootleg liquor but otherwise keep to themselves. The city thrives. Why do you look so panicked, dear?”

“I have not come home. I was never dead. I came here on a ship . . . from my city to here . . . and it is wrong.”

“We’re together again, Gilda my Gilda. What could be wrong?”

From above I heard a shuffling, one of those night noises that make up the backdrop of life in a particular house, the sort your ear is trained to ignore. My father—or rather, Virgil, since this man was certainly not my father—did not even look up, but I flinched at the sound. I had not heard it in decades, and it sent a shock of terror coursing down my spine.

“We have to go,” I said.

“It’s all right. You know Mary—once she’s up, she’s up. When she sees you, Gilda, she’ll do backflips.”

“She won’t see me. She can’t.”

“Whatever’s the matter, the three of us can sort it out.”

“We must flee, Virgil, with all available speed. Dress quietly, and . . . do they have guns in this city?”

“We have our share.”

“Bring yours.”