had donned a rumpled old shirt. There was something lovely and intimate when he looked like this.
Noemí was struck with the desire to lean forward and kiss him, a feeling like wishing to light a match, a burning, bright, and eager feeling. Yet she hesitated. It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.
She didn’t want to make a further mess of things. She didn’t want to play with him.
“You haven’t come to compliment my drawings,” he said, as if he could sense her hesitation.
She hadn’t. Not at all. Noemí cleared her throat and shook her head. “Have you ever thought your home might be haunted?”
Francis gave her a weak smile. “That’s an odd thing to say.”
“I’m sure it is. But I have a good reason for asking. So, have you?”
There was silence. He slowly slid his hands into his pockets and looked down at the rug under their feet. He frowned.
“I won’t laugh at you if you tell me you’ve observed ghosts,” Noemí added.
“There’re no such thing as ghosts.”
“But what if there were? Have you ever wondered about that? I don’t mean ghosts under bedsheets, dragging chains behind them. I read a book about Tibet once. It was written by this woman called Alexandra David-Neel, who said people there were able to create ghosts. They willed them into existence. What did she call them? Tulpa.”
“That sounds like a tall tale.”
“Of course. But there is this professor at Duke University, J. B. Rhine, who is studying parapsychology. Things like telepathy as a kind of extrasensory perception.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” he asked, a terrible caution lacing his words.
“I’m saying maybe my cousin is perfectly sane. Maybe there is a haunting in this house, but it can be explained logically. I don’t know quite how yet, maybe it’s got nothing to do with parapsychology, but take that old saying: mad as a hatter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“People said hatters were prone to going crazy, but it was the materials they worked with. They inhaled mercury vapors when they made felt hats. You still have to be careful with that stuff nowadays. You can mix mercury into paints to control mildew, but under the right conditions the compounds give off sufficient mercury vapor to make people sick. You could have everyone in a room going mad and it’s the paint job.”
Francis stood up suddenly and gripped her hands. “Don’t speak another word,” Francis told her, his voice low. He spoke in Spanish. They’d stuck to English since she’d arrived at the house; she didn’t recall him using one word of Spanish at High Place. She couldn’t remember him touching her either. If he had, it hadn’t been deliberate. But his hands were steady on her wrists now.
“Do you think I’m mad like those hatters?” she asked, also in Spanish.
“Dear God, no. I think you’re sane and clever. Much too clever, perhaps. Why won’t you listen to me? Really listen. Leave today. Leave right this instant. This is no place for you.”
“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
He stared at her, his hands still gripping her own. “Noemí, just because there are no ghosts it doesn’t mean you can’t be haunted. Nor that you shouldn’t fear the haunting. You are too fearless. My father was the same way, and he paid dearly for it.”
“He fell down a ravine,” she said. “Or was there more to it?”
“Who told you?”
“I asked a question first.”
A cold pinprick of dread touched her heart. He shifted away from her, uneasily, and it was her turn to grip his hands. To hold him in place.
“Will you speak to me?” she insisted. “Was there more to it?”
“He was a drunk and he broke his neck, and he did fall down a ravine. Must we discuss this now?”
“Yes. Because it seems you’ll discuss nothing with me at any time.”
“That is not true. I’ve told you plenty. If you’d really listen,” he said, his hands extricating themselves from hers and resting on her shoulders in a solemn motion.
“I’m listening.”
He made a sound of protest, it was half a sigh, and she thought he might begin to talk to her, but then a loud moan echoed down the hall, and then another. Francis stepped away from her.
The acoustics in this place, they were odd. It made her wonder why sound traveled so well.
“It’s Uncle Howard. He’s in pain again,” Francis said, grimacing, so that it almost looked like he was