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held up a finger—“her spirit is still here on Southeast Farallon.”
    “This is starting to sound like a campfire story,” I said dubiously.
    Mick ignored me. “The ghost has been seen lots of times. She wanders around the cabin at night, wearing a white dress. People have heard her footsteps. She makes the place feel cold on warm evenings.” His gestures grew more animated, and I took a hasty step back. “The ghost moves stuff around in empty rooms. She’ll knock a plate off a table or tilt a picture on the wall. She whispers in people’s ears when they’re sleeping.” He took a deep breath and concluded triumphantly, “I’ve seen her myself.”
    “No way,” I said.
    Mick paused, and I watched him, my eyebrows knotted.
    “One night,” he said, “I was walking toward the cabin. This was last spring, maybe.” He paused again. “It had been a long day. One of the seal pups had died, and the mother was mourning. I couldn’t seem to let go of it. My brain was overloaded. I didn’t feel like myself. Then I looked up, and I saw somebody in your room.”
    “ My room?”
    “The ghost likes your room,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin. “Didn’t I mention that? A thin person, very pale. Just standing at the window and staring out. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But when I got to the cabin, nobody was home. Nobody had been there all afternoon.”
    In spite of myself, I felt a chill track down my spine.
    I am aware that throughout history, photography has had a strong connection to the dead. Or perhaps the undead. Ghosts areoften said to turn up on film—invisible in the moment to the human eye, appearing only afterward in the darkroom. I have seen some of these images myself. Floaty, pale shapes. Figures that cannot be explained by aperture or exposure. Blurred silhouettes at the back of an empty room.
    “I believe you,” I said. “I believe in ghosts.”
    Mick threw me a glance I couldn’t interpret. I lifted my camera and pointed it down the hill at the cabin. I took a picture.

5
    T O MY SURPRISE , it has already happened. In fact, it happened this morning: I woke at dawn, and the islands felt familiar to me.
    I have had this experience on my travels before, but it never palls. In the desert it took me a while to adjust to the bone-dry air. In the tropics it took me some time to grow accustomed to the overpowering odor of the trees, the blinding showers of hot rain. I once lived in a cave, snapping photos of bats for a week. Even then I did finally adapt to the odor of guano, the plink of water, the way the darkness seemed to crawl toward me along the walls. The process of habituation is always the same. What was alien becomes familiar—what was strange becomes ordinary—the glimmering viscera of the world are pulled inside out.
    Yet it has rarely happened as rapidly as it has here. I opened my eyes this morning and was glad to be where I am.
    Then, however, I heard grunting and moaning from downstairs. At once, I threw on my jeans and dashed into the hallway. Lucy and Andrew live directly beneath me. They are the cabin’s resident couple.
    I know this will intrigue you. You always used to begin your perusal of the New York Times with the marriage announcements. I remember it well. You believed that you could predict with greataccuracy whether each pair of newlyweds would go the distance. You included an immense variety of factors in your analysis. Whether either of them had been married before. Whether either was significantly older, better-looking, or richer than the other. Whether their body language signaled ease or awkwardness in the snapshot. I was a logic-minded child, and I did point out that you had no way to verify your guesses. You could speculate all you wanted, but we would never know for sure. Still, your faith in your prognostications remained unshaken.
    I will therefore share what I have gleaned about the lovebirds of the Farallon Islands, and you can decide for