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guy had a baby and decided to raise it in Vermont with the help of a Phish-loving nanny. Someone who dressed so badly wasn’t even worth a telling-off. Clearly, he was so socially hopeless (hello,
Star Wars
T-shirt) that anything involving manners or basic human interaction was just beyond him. So I said, with all the dignity I could muster, streaked with soot and bedaubed with apple mush: “You, sir, are a buttface. Thanks for nothing.”
    I spun on my heel and marched back into the house.
    â€œWait!” he called after me. “Hey, Hello Kitty! Come back!”
    I latched the door shut. Buttface? Yikes. Not my finest comeback. But whatever, he wasn’t worth anything better. I mean, eeuw, the way he was snottily prompting
me
to say thank you? Like
I
needed the manners lecture? After he just left me there to laugh at?! And what was with those stupid glasses, anyway? What, were they supposed to be ironic or something? I stomped back into the kitchen.
    â€œAll cleaned up?” Ruth asked. I nodded. “Good.” I swept the hearth into a neat pile of ashes, and we went into the parlor.
    â€œThis is where you and the girls will do the crafts. It said on your résumé you have knitting and needlepoint experience?”
    I nodded. I am a girl of odd and diverse talents with little to no practical value.
    â€œThen you know what to do. We should have everything you need.”
    And they did. I could have run an underground craft supply store out of that parlor, doing a roaring trade in black-market yarns and embroidery floss. As Ruth opened cabinets, showing me where they kept knitting needles, embroidery hoops, and even a flower press, she made nonbusiness conversation for the first time. I suspect she was inspired because there was no longer any danger of either of us being scalded by a vat of hot, bubbling lard, which, incidentally, crackles and pops, like Rice Krispies but gross.
    â€œSo,” Ruth asked mischievously, “have you seen the ghost yet?”
    â€œNo, I only got here yesterday.” I arranged balls of yarn in a big wicker basket by the window. “What ghost?”
    â€œYou haven’t heard about it?”
    â€œUm, sort of.” I didn’t think a half-overheard yelling match between the internship coordinator and some guy named Roger really counted as hearing about it.
    â€œAhh.” She nodded. “You see the schooner closest to us out there in the harbor? The little one? She’s called the
Lettie Mae Howell.
”
    â€œYep.” I peered out the window, smushing my nose against the thick pane. It left a soot print. I quickly wiped it off with a clean patch on my elbow.
    â€œThere have now been four separate sightings of a man in early American clothing, a silent sailor, a ghostly figure all in white.”
    â€œSpooky.”
    â€œHe appears only after dark, then vanishes. The
Lettie Mae
was originally named something else—the
Sachem
or something like that. She was shipwrecked off the coast of Cape Cod in 1804, and nearly the entire crew drowned. This ghost sailor is supposed to be one of them. Anyway, some dunderheaded merchant rebuilt the ship and renamed her after his wife. And anybody with half a brain knows renaming a ship is bad luck. Which is why this feller is back from the grave. Or so they say,” she harrumphed. “Sounds like a lot of nonsense to me. Probably kids messing around.”
    â€œProbably,” I agreed. Silently, though, I reasoned it was probably a creepy old lighthouse keeper in a glow-in-the-dark ghost mask. I’d watched a lot of
Scooby-Doo
as a kid. I knew how it worked. Actually . . . with gangly Neil’s lighthouse-keeping expertise, Suze’s Velma-librarian smarts, and my flair for accessories, we meddling kids were more than halfway toward forming a Scooby gang.
    â€œI think you’re ready for Monday.” I realized Ruth was talking to me as I was wondering what I’d