“Okay,” Trenton said. He almost preferred when Minna was a bitch, because then he didn’t have to remember how close they had once been. “Is that it?”

She turned her eyes to him. “I asked Danny—my friend, the cop, remember?—about that woman who died. Here.” She passed him a piece of paper, folded in half. “He e-mailed me the details. So if we see him again, be sure to thank him.”

Trenton unfolded the piece of paper. It was a short e-mail, subject: SANDRA WILKINSON. Trenton felt dizzy. Sandra. The ghost had said something about a Sandra, and a stolen letter.

That means he couldn’t have invented it. He couldn’t have made her up.

Sandra Wilkinson, aged 41, was found at home on the morning of March 14, 1993 by Joe Connelly, roofer. Single shot to the face, removed two of her teeth. There were no prints on the gun but her own, but the door was open and there were signs someone had been with her the night before. Inquest returned inconclusive verdict.

Then, after several spaces:

This is the kind of thing you wanted, right? Looking forward to seeing you. Danny.

“Happy now?” Minna asked.

His hands were shaking. He folded up the piece of paper and put it in his back pocket. He was surprised to feel that there was already something folded up there and then remembered, with a jolt, his suicide note. “What about the girl—the disappearance. Have they found her yet?”

Minna had already started to turn away.

“No. No, they haven’t found her,” Minna said. “She’s probably hacked up to pieces and buried in a well somewhere.”

“That’s disgusting,” Trenton said loudly.

Minna shrugged. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry. “You asked.”

Trenton closed the door and locked it. His heart was beating very fast. He was remembering, then, the time their new kitten had gone missing and they’d found it after a week, fur matted, frozen stiff with cold, at the bottom of the old well.

His closet door opened, and Katie crawled out.

“It smells like my grandma’s bathroom in there,” she said. She stood up, slapping the back of her jeans.

“You can go now,” Trenton said. He was tired, and he was sure she was making fun of him. I wouldn’t have stopped you wasn’t the same as I wanted to. Maybe she’d come all the way here just to make fun of him.

“Don’t be like that,” she said. She came close to him, and it seemed as if she might say something else. Instead, she reached out, snatched the piece of paper from his hand, and started to read. “Cool,” she said. “So someone was murdered in your house?”

“Maybe,” Trenton said, taking the paper back. “It was never proven.”

“The good crimes never are,” she said, as if she had some great knowledge of it. He’d liked her better last night, in the darkness on the porch, underneath a black tarp sky that made everything seem small. She had seemed more real to him then. “Hey, you know what we should do?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “A séance.”

“A what?” Trenton said, although he’d heard. He couldn’t help it; he thought how nice it was to hear her say we.

“You know, a séance. Ouija board and candles and all that. We’ll call up the ghost, make her tell us who did it.”

As she said the word ghost, Trenton thought he heard an echo voice in the walls, in the room and floor, a response too faint to make out. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said.

“It’s a great idea. Come on, let’s.” She took a step closer to him. Her eyes were the exact color of good weed—like something you could fall inside to get high. “Please. You and me. Tomorrow night?” She made her eyes big, and even though he knew it was the kind of trick girls did, it worked: he felt his body responding, felt a sudden ache through his fingers, like they wanted to touch her all on their own.

He took a step away from her. “I’m babysitting my niece tomorrow,” he said. He was glad for the excuse—and also a bit disappointed.

Katie shrugged. “Can she keep a secret?”

Trenton felt himself relenting. “As well as any six-year-old.” He added: “She goes to bed early.”

Katie smiled. “So we’ll be alone,” she said. She stared at him for a second, and her smile faltered. “Hey, Trenton?”

“What?”

“I really am sorry. About the party last night. It’s complicated, with me.” She touched her fingers to her lips and then brought them to his cheek.

Trenton jerked away instinctively. He hated people touching his face.

“See you tomorrow,” she said, and then she climbed out the way she had come, through the window.

ALICE

Next to the bookshelf in the Blue Room is a place in the wall gouged at various heights: three foot ten, four feet three, four foot four.

This is where Trenton marked his growth, year by year, picking and chiseling with the Swiss army knife Richard bought him for his fifth birthday—briefly confiscated by his mother, who thought he was too young, but then commandeered by Minna from Caroline’s underwear drawer and returned to Trenton, as a bribe, to keep him from telling when he caught her smoking from the bedroom window.

This is how we grow: not up, but out, like trees—swelling to encompass all these stories, the promises and lies and bribes and habits.

Even now—especially now—it is hard to say what is true.

One thing I do know: it was Thomas’s idea to run away.

I ran away once when I was a little girl. That was the year I got a suitcase for Christmas, after I’d begged my parents for a briefcase like the kind my father took with him to work. I loved my father’s briefcase, with its dark velvet interior and recessed compartments, and places for his pipe, his eyeglasses, and his papers. It was as clean, as ordered, as regular as my father himself.

My suitcase was small and powder blue, with brass latches and a fleecy soft interior and little pockets for putting in whatever I liked. It wasn’t my father’s briefcase, but I liked it even better, especially the small lock that kept it closed and the accompanying key, which I wore like a necklace. Inside, I kept my prized possessions: three silver barrettes; a snow globe my grandparents had brought me from New York City, featuring a tiny bridge and even the miniature figure of a girl standing on it who looked just like me; a small china doll named Amelia, missing one arm, which I’d rescued from the trash after my older sister got tired of her.