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from a different angle, a different moment. “Okay, Dad. Hey, I gotta get moving.”
    He pulled back and looked at me, his eyes roaming across my face. I wondered what version of me he was seeing—his daughter or a stranger. “Nic, listen,” he said. I heard the ticking of the clock. Tick-tock, Nic.
    He drummed his fingers on the table between us, twice as fast as the clock. There was a crash from the other side of the room, and I twisted in my chair to see a man picking up a tray of dishes he must’ve dropped while clearing tables. I turned back to Dad, who was focused on his plate, twirling his pasta, as if the last few minutes hadn’t existed.
    â€œYou really should try the pasta,” he said. He grinned, warm and distant.
    I stood, stacked the edges of the paper against the table, matched his warm, distant smile. “It was really good to see you, Dad,” I said. I walked around the table, hugged him tight, felt him hesitate before bringing his hand up to my arm and squeezing me back.
    â€œDon’t let your brother sell the house,” he said, the conversation in a loop, beginning anew.
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    THE PORCH LIGHT WAS on and the sky almost dark, and I had a message from Daniel when I parked the car in the gravel driveway.He’d be back in the morning, and I should call if I needed anything, if I changed my mind and wanted to stay with him and Laura.
    Sitting in my car, watching the lantern move with the wind, the light casting shadows across the front of the house, I thought about it. Thought about driving straight across town and pulling out the blow-up mattress in the unused nursery. Because I could see us, the shadows of us, a decade ago, telling ghost stories on that porch with the dancing light.
    Corinne and Bailey rapt with attention as Daniel told them how there was a monster in the woods—that it wasn’t a thing they could see but a thing they could feel. That it took people over, made them do things. I could hear that version of me in my own head, saying he was full of shit. And Corinne tilting her head at Daniel and leaning back against the porch railing, sticking out her chest, placing her foot against a slat of wood, bending one of her long legs, and saying, What would it make you do ? Always pushing us. Always pushing.
    I hated that the ghosts of us lived here, always. But Laura was almost due, and there wasn’t a place for me there, and even though Daniel had offered, it was implied that I would say no. I had a house here, a room here, space here. I wasn’t his responsibility anymore.
    I pushed the front door open and heard another door catch at the other end of the house, as if I had disturbed the balance of it.
    â€œHello?” I called, frozen in place. “Daniel?”
    Nothing but the evening wind shaking the panes of glass in a familiar rattle. A breeze, thank God.
    I flipped the wall light switches as I walked toward the kitchen at the back of the house, half of them working, half not.
    Daniel wasn’t here. Nobody was here.
    I turned the deadbolt, but the wood around it was rotted and splintered, the bolt cutting through the frame whether it was locked or not. Everything looked as I’d left it: a box on the table, a used glass in the sink, everything coated in a fine layer of dust.
    The ring. I took the steps two at a time and went straight for the nightstand, my fingers trembling as I reached inside the ceramic bowl, frantic heartbeats until my finger brushed metal.
    The ring was there. It was fine. I slid it back on my finger and ran my shaking hand through my hair. Everything’s fine. Breathe.
    The bed was still bare, but the sheets were folded and stacked on top, the way Daniel used to leave them when he started taking over for the things Mom couldn’t do. I moved the shoe boxes back to the closet and the rug back under the legs of the bed. I centered the jewelry box under the mirror, a dust-free square where it had sat