“I guess so.” I glanced around the room, which had appliances even older and stickier-looking than ours and a faded tile floor. Perhaps when you are less than three feet tall, you stare at the floor a lot: The checkerboard pattern was familiar to me.

“What do you see?” Aunt Iris asked.

“Excuse me?”

“What do you see?” she demanded, sounding almost fearful.

It took me a moment to catch on. If a porch post looked like Uncle Will’s ghost to her. . “Nothing but a kitchen,” I replied. “A stove, sink, cupboards. Aunt Iris, what day did Uncle Will die?”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t know.”

Apparently, it was one of those things she chose not to remember.

She dropped down in a chair, her sandaled feet spread wide apart and loose dress gaping between her knees. “I’m exhausted. Stupid deputy. It’s indecent to keep a man half skin and half ashes.”

I sat down with her at the kitchen table.

“Fix yourself something to drink,” she said. “I don’t have Mr. Pepper.”

“You mean Dr Pepper?”

“For the love of God!” she exploded. “People expect everything from a psychic! ‘Doctor,’ ‘mister,’ I was close enough. I didn’t call it ‘Mrs. Salt,’ did I?”

“No. No, you didn’t. Water is perfect,” I said, though in fact I had been longing for a Dr Pepper and found it creepy that she knew.

I rose and filled a glass from the tap, then walked over to the freezer for ice cubes. Opening the door, I jumped back.

A large, speckled fish — scales, fins, head, and tailtumbled out, landing at my feet. I stared down at it, then up at the compartment, which was filled with fish.

“Put it back, put it back!” Aunt Iris cried.

I quickly stuffed the fish in with the others and decided I could do without the ice cubes.

“So Uncle Will is — was — still fishing a lot,” I observed.