Instead he had said, “Is that Ferris Wilkey I see before me?”

  “Yes, sir,” she told him. “It’s me.”

  “Well, now,” said Big Billy. “Ferris Wilkey, are you the kind of child who likes pie?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ferris.

  “Do you like your pie à la mode?”

  “I don’t know that that means,” she told him.

  “It means a piece of pie with some ice cream melting on top of it!” Big Billy shouted. “Do you want that?”

  “Yes, sir, I do!” Ferris had shouted back.

  Big Billy Jackson appeared now out of the smoky magician’s air, wearing his dirty apron and smiling.

  He stood and looked at Ferris sitting next to Billy on the piano bench.

  “What happened to your hair, Ferris Wilkey?” he said.

  “It’s a long story,” she told him.

  “Well, all right, then. Do you think you could eat you some pie à la mode while you tell it to me?”

  “Yes, sir,” she told him. “I could.”

  When Ferris got home, it was almost suppertime. Pinky was in her bedroom. The police report was nailed to her door. The many pages of it rustled in the breeze blowing in through the open window at the end of the hall.

  Unfathomable.

  Incapable of being understood.

  Ferris stood in front of Pinky’s closed door and thought about Billy Jackson saying that she could ask Pinky what she was thinking. But if she did that, Pinky would probably laugh in her face and tell her that her hair looked funny. What was the point?

  So instead Ferris walked on down the hallway, which was like walking down a tunnel of roses because the walls were covered in wallpaper that was all red roses and thorny branches. Some of the roses had faded to a ghostly pink from the sun beating in on them for years and years.

  In Charisse’s room, Charisse was sitting at her desk with a sweater over her shoulders, even though it was hot out.

  She was writing something.

  The sweet, hopeful smell of Florida water filled the room. It made Ferris’s heart hurt.

  “Pinky got locked up in a jail cell,” said Ferris.

  “So I have been informed, darling,” said Charisse.

  “What are you writing?”

  “Instructions.”

  “Instructions for what?” said Ferris. “Where’s Boomer?”

  “He left,” said Charisse. “Right before the ghost appeared, he slunk away, as is his wont. Something extraordinary has happened, darling.”

  “Yes,” said Ferris. “Pinky tried to rob a bank.”

  Charisse waved her hand through the air. “No, no, not that,” she said. “The ghost spoke, darling. The ghost spoke to me.”

  Ferris shivered. “She talked to you?”

  “She did. I know what she wants.”

  “What?” said Ferris. “What does she want?”

  Boomer appeared at the threshold of Charisse’s room. He barked once, looking right at Ferris, and then he came into the room sideways, wagging his tail in an embarrassed way.

  “I’ll tell you after supper,” said Charisse. “It really was the most extraordinary conversation.”

  That night, both Pinky and Ted were missing from the supper table. Billy Jackson didn’t show up, either.

  It was just Charisse and Ferris and Boomer and Ferris’s mother and father.

  “Pinky is under house arrest,” said her mother. “I’m devising a program for her rehabilitation.”

  “Miscreants of all sorts abound in this house,” said Ferris’s father. “I think we might need to contact an exterminator to deal with the raccoon problem.”

  “But wouldn’t an exterminator kill them?” said Ferris.

  “Speaking of the dead,” said Charisse. “I have had an extremely straightforward communication from the beyond.”

  “Beyond what?” said Ferris’s mother.

  Charisse looked up at the chandelier. She was smiling.

  Ferris’s father looked up at the chandelier, too.

  “It’s going to be glorious,” said Charisse.

  “What is?” said Ferris’s mother.

  Ferris bent her head back and looked up at the old chandelier.

  “What are you people looking at?” said Ferris’s mother.

  “I’m not certain,” said Ferris’s father.

  Charisse, without lowering her head, reached over and put her hand on top of Ferris’s hand.

  After supper, Ferris and Boomer followed Charisse up to her room.

  Ferris sat down in the window seat. Charisse sat on the edge of the bed, and Boomer threw himself down at her feet.

  “You have to tell me,” said Ferris.

  “It has to do with the chandelier,” said Charisse.

  “What about it?”

  “The ghost wants it lit. It has never been lit, you see. Not once. Her husband went off to war before the chandelier was even hung. And then he did not come back.”

  “He died?”

  “Yes,” said Charisse. “He died without ever seeing it. The chandelier was a gift for his wife. He had it special ordered from Paris. And when he did not return from the war, she—the ghost, his wife—refused to let anyone ever light the chandelier. She was just too brokenhearted. She would not let candles anywhere near it. And she regrets it now. She is consumed with regret.”

  “Why?” said Ferris.

  “Because she can’t find him, darling. She is searching for him and can’t find him. She believes that if the chandelier is lit, he will be able to find his way to her.”

  Ferris looked down at her arms. The hair on them was standing up.

  Boomer was panting. He looked nervous. He couldn’t possibly have understood what Charisse had just said; Ferris barely understood it. But still, Boomer seemed deeply unnerved.

  “Darling,” said Charisse. “I need you to help me.”

  “What should I do?” said Ferris.

  “I counted at supper,” said Charisse. “We need forty candles.”

  “Forty,” repeated Ferris.

  “And a ladder,” said Charisse.

  “And a ladder,” said Ferris.

  “Yes,” said Charisse. “We’re going to light the chandelier, darling. We’re going to help someone find their way home.”

  Ferris played gin rummy with Charisse, and then she read aloud to her from the Bible (“for you are dust, and to dust you will return”) and Whitman (“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”), and Charisse clapped her hands and said, “Dust and dirt, darling! There’s a theme!” Ferris thought it was a pretty depressing theme.

  Afterward, she went down to the steakhouse and climbed the rusty ladder to the roof.

  Billy Jackson was waiting for her.

  “You know who came in tonight?” he said as soon as she stepped onto the roof.

  “No,” said Ferris.

  “Mrs. Mielk,” said Billy Jackson.

  “Really?” said Ferris.

  “Yeah,” said Billy Jackson. “Really.” He had his arms wrapped around his knees, and he was looking up at the sky. “She was by herself, and she ordered a hamburger and ate it with a knife and fork instead of picking it up with her hands, and for dessert Pop brought her a piece of peach pie à la mode.

  “He said, ‘This here is on the house in honor of all the words you have given to my son and his friend Ferris Wilkey.’ Because I had told Pop about how you and me felt about those Mielk words—that it was terrible to memorize them, but good to have them, and how, in the end, we felt grateful to her. I had told that to Pop.”

  Billy Jackson lowered his head and looked at Ferris. “So Pop thanked her, and then he put the pie down on the table in front of her, and Mrs. Mielk started to cry.”

  “Mrs. Mielk cried?”

  “Yeah,” said Billy. “I was in the kitchen with Pearl, and Pop came in there and he said to me, ‘Son, go out into the dining room and set with your teacher while she eats her pie. She’s crying.’ ”

  “And you went?”

  “Well,” said Billy. “Pop asked me to.”

  “Did she eat the pie?”

  “She did.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  Billy Jackson shook his head. “No,” he said. His glasses caught the light of the steakhouse sign and flashed bright in the darkness. “She just kept crying and ate her pie.”

  “And she was all by herself ?”

  “Yeah,” said Billy Jackson.

  “That’s weird,” said Ferris. She sat down on the roof. The tar paper was warm beneath her. From down below, she could hear Boomer panting hopefully. Pearl was slamming things around in the kitchen, and from what seemed like a really long way away came the sound of Bob Munson playing the piano—the theme from Dr. Zhivago.

  Ferris thought about Mrs. Mielk sitting by herself, eating peach pie à la mode and crying. It was disturbing. There must be a word to describe a story like that, but what would it be?

  Haunting.

  That was probably the best word.

  Haunting meant evocative, unforgettable.

  The image of Billy Jackson’s mother holding on to her hat and smiling and happy was haunting, too. Ferris thought about how when the steakhouse was empty, when no one else was there, Billy’s mother was still there, like a ghost, standing in the tall grass, smiling.

  “Do you ever think about your mother?” Ferris said to Billy Jackson.

  And then she was ashamed that she had never thought to ask him the question before.

  Billy said, “It’s not that I think about her. It’s more like she’s always with me.” He was quiet. Ferris waited. Even when they weren’t talking about something big and important, Billy Jackson took a long time between sentences.

  “Big thinker, slow talker” was how Uncle Ted described him.

  Ferris had learned to wait.

  “You know how you swear you can remember seeing Charisse’s face when you were born?” said Billy.

  Ferris nodded.

  “And everyone tells you how that’s not possible? That there is no way you can remember?”

  “Yes,” said Ferris.

  “Well, I can remember my mother. I remember her singing to me.”

  “But from when?” said Ferris.

  “From before I was even born,” said Billy. “I can feel her hand on me, resting on me, and I can hear her singing. I don’t ever tell Pop about it because I think it would make him too sad. I don’t know.”

  There was another long silence.

  Ferris waited.

  “Anyway,” said Billy Jackson. “I think that’s where the music comes from. From her singing to me. And that’s why I don’t feel lonely for her. Because she’s here all the time. In the music.”

  Ferris nodded. She wanted to say something that let Billy know she understood.

  “Every story is a love story,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Billy. “That.”

  Below them, Boomer barked a joyful bark, and Pearl said, “You big old mess of a dog. You think you’re getting a bone?”

  “The ghost talked to Charisse,” said Ferris.

  Billy Jackson nodded. “Everyone talks to Charisse.”

  “She wants the chandelier lit. I mean, the ghost wants the chandelier lit. And Charisse wants it, too.”

  “Why?” said Billy.

  “So that her husband can find his way back home. We need forty candles and a ladder.”

  The screen door creaked open, and Pearl said to Boomer, “Here it is, you big old mess. Here’s your bone. I don’t know why you think you deserve all this love.”

  The screen door banged shut.

  Billy Jackson smiled. “Forty candles and a ladder. That sounds like something we can do.”

  Ferris felt her heart contract with gratitude.

  She loved Billy Jackson.

  She loved Boomer.

  She loved Pearl.

  She loved the sound of the screen door opening and closing.

  She loved the roof of the steakhouse and the stars shining over her head, over all their heads.

  “Every story is a love story,” whispered Ferris. “Every good story is a love story.”

  Pinky was in the paper the next day.

  According to the article, a “young child in a black cloak” had gone unaccompanied into the Buford Milford Savings and Loan and approached the desk of Irene Milford.

  “I thought the child was a trick-or-treater,” Mrs. Milford was quoted as saying. “I guess I lost track of my seasons. In any case, she resembled a vampire of some sort. And so I started looking for some candy.”

  Apparently, Mrs. Milford had dug around in the top drawer of her desk until she located a piece of butterscotch.

  “But, alas,” the article ended, “the offer of a single butterscotch candy enraged the child, and it was at this point that she started screaming about how she was attempting to rob the bank. Eventually, it became necessary to call the police.”

  Ferris’s father read the words aloud in a tone of awe.

  They were in the kitchen—Ferris, her mother, her father, Boomer.

  It was morning, and sunlight was shining on the glossy leaves of the magnolia tree, and Ferris was drinking coffee again.

  “My goodness,” said Ferris’s father when he finished reading. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “I suppose it’s nice to have such a full accounting of what happened, what with Pinky herself being unwilling to disclose any details.”

  Ferris’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her hands in her lap. She was staring straight ahead. “I really don’t know what to do with her,” she said.

  “Ted was a bit of a wild child,” said Ferris’s father.

  “Yes,” said her mother, still staring straight ahead, “and where is he now?”

  “In the basement.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can I have the newspaper?” said Ferris. “I want to read it to Charisse.”

  “I doubt it will help her heart any,” said Ferris’s mother.

  Ferris stood up and took the paper from her father’s outstretched hand.

  Boomer stood up, too. He wagged his tail. He looked in the direction of the pantry, and then he looked at the door to the basement, and then he looked back at the pantry again. Clearly, Boomer was hoping that Ferris would get some peanuts and take them down to Uncle Ted.

  Which was a good idea.

  She and Billy Jackson were going to need help lighting the chandelier.

  They needed an adult, a quixotic adult.

  Quixotic meant exceedingly unrealistic and foolish, like someone who would quit their job to paint the history of the world.

  In other words, someone like Uncle Ted.

  “Actually,” said Ferris, “I think I’ll go show Uncle Ted the article first.”

  She went to the pantry and got out the jar of peanuts. Boomer wagged his tail faster.

  “If Ted wants peanuts,” said her mother, “why doesn’t he come up here and get them himself ?”

  “The way I look at it,” said her father, “is that we should eat everything we can before the raccoons take over the house and beat us to the punch.”

  “The raccoons have already taken over the house,” said her mother. “Metaphorically speaking.”

  Ferris went down the basement steps carefully, the newspaper under one arm, the jar of peanuts in both hands, and Boomer close at her heels.

  “Uncle Ted?” she called.

  Ted, unshaven and still in his bathrobe, appeared at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at her.

  “I brought you some peanuts,” said Ferris. “I still feel bad for telling Aunt Shirley about the foot.”

  “Ah,” said Ted. “The peanuts of repentance. Thank you, honey.” He took the jar from her and unscrewed the lid and poured a stream of peanuts into his mouth.

  Boomer barked. Ted tossed him a peanut.

  “Are you growing a beard?” said Ferris.

  “I am,” said Ted. “It gives me a certain painterly gravitas, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. What’s gravitas?”

  “It means dignity, honey. Something I am in dire need of right now.”

  Ferris thought the beard made Ted look less like a dignified painter and more like a prophet lost in the desert.

  “Come on over here,” said Ted, “and I will show you how I have progressed. I am painting the second foot.”

  Ferris walked over to the canvas and stood beside Uncle Ted.

  The second foot was at a good distance from the first, but it was similar-looking—lumpy, disembodied.

  “That’s good,” said Ferris. She thought for a while about what to say next. “Do you know, um, who the feet belong to?”

  Uncle Ted stared at the canvas. “Not yet,” he said. “I’m sure it will come to me.”

  Ferris handed him the newspaper. She said, “There’s an article in there about Pinky. It doesn’t use her name, but it’s definitely her. I thought you might want to read it.”

  Ted put down the peanut jar. He took the paper and snapped it open and held it out and away from him. He read with a serious look on his face until he got to the butterscotch.

  “ ‘But, alas,’ ” Uncle Ted read aloud, “ ‘the offer of a single butterscotch candy enraged the child.’ ”

  He started to laugh. He laughed so hard that he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees.

  Uncle Ted in his bathrobe with his hair sticking straight up and peanut crumbs on his face and tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks and into his prophet beard was an unsettling sight.

  Boomer barked at him in a scolding way.

  Ted stood up. “Wheeeeee,” he said. He wiped at his eyes. “Thank you, honey. I don’t know when a newspaper has cheered me up more.” He handed the paper back to Ferris. “And I do need to laugh. Yes, I surely do. For my poor heart is broken.”

  “Because of Shirley?” said Ferris.

  “Yes, honey. Because of Shirley. I find that I cannot live without her. She’s necessary to me.”

 

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