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the uneasy feeling had grown until it was all she could do not to shout, sometimes, with the dreadful anxiety it produced in her.
    And that, Bella knew, was ridiculous. First because ghosts couldn’t hurt you, and even more important, because as everyone knew, there was no such thing as them.
    Thinking this, she turned with the bottle of Windex to the mirror over the bedroom dresser and gasped with shock at the face hovering in it, just behind her. But in the next instant, she let her breath out; it was only the dust rag hung on the bedpost, its shape curved by shadows and her imagination into a pair of eyes, a twisted nose, and a soft, drooping grin.
    Angrily she swiped dust from the mirror, wiped off all the baseboards, brushed fluff from the corners. The closet door stood open acrack; yanking it the rest of the way, she forced herself to look inside.…
    Nothing. Well, of course there isn’t , she told herself as she damp-mopped the hardwood floor. The window shade slipped from her fingers and flew upward with a bang; her hand went to her throat. But she composed herself, and began wiping the top edge of the old window sash, then opening it an inch to air the room. Which could use freshening , she thought, because it smells like …
    Cologne. She recognized it at once: the expensive, dryly witch-hazel-scented stuff that Dr. Tiptree had always used before he started smelling like pain medicine.
    And later, like pain. Bella stepped back from the window, caught in a moment of memory so clear it was like diving into a pool. He’d walked into this room and stood for a second, looking at the bed. Knowing, she supposed now, that he would die in it.
    But not how soon. Awful, that final illness of his, seeking whom it might devour. At the time, though, she’d merely come up with some fresh towels, and when he saw her in the doorway, he’d thanked her.
    For, he’d said, making it all so pleasant. He’d smiled at the flowers she’d put into a bowl on the dresser; peonies, she recalled.
    “Jake always says what a genius you are,” he’d told her as he sat down on the bed.
    Testing it, she supposed: Good to lie in? To die in? “I see now that Jake was right,” he’d said, and even then she’d thought his eyes looked a little sunken in, his lips a little blue. Maybe that had been the light, because the windows in here faced north.
    Or maybe not, because he’d leaned down to unlace his shoes—it was then that she’d smelled cologne, the clean astringency of a prosperous, well-barbered man—and as far as she could recall, she’d never seen him wear them ever again.
    Bella had other memories of him in this room, but none she wanted to recall. He’d died three weeks later. Lips pursed, she bent to gather up the bedspread and linens into her arms. Then, turning withthem, she glanced once more into the mirror on the dresser, and her arms tightened reflexively around the bundle she held.
    Bella . That voice, that cologne whiff, that face …
    Not a dust cloth this time, or anything else she could blame it on, either. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tightened her fists, shook her head in mute rejection and denial, mingled with bone-deep fright. Please. Go away , she thought.
    Just go away, and—
    And when she opened her eyes again, he had.

CHAPTER 3

    “H urry,” said the young man anxiously pacing the launching ramp at the boatyard, a mile outside Eastport on Deep Cove Road.
    The young man’s name was Richard Stedman, and at his panicky phone call a couple of hours earlier Sam Tiptree had gotten there as fast as he could, unfazed by the crack-of-dawn summons or the short notice. Both were part of the job; after working on and off at the boatyard for nearly a dozen years, he’d long since become the go-to guy for all kinds of problems among boat owners.
    Not that Sam himself was impressed by that fact; boats always hadsome new challenge to throw at you, and past successes were no protection from future failure where