"Oh, certainly. Should I mail it to you?"

"I'd rather come pick it up, if that's OK."

"Oh, fine! Today? When would you like to come?" She sounded as if she were inviting me for tea.

I glanced at my watch. It was just about one o'clock. I doubted I'd hear from Stanford-Davis before four. "I could be there by two, if that's all right."

"That will be just fine." She gave me her address and directions. I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat. I snatched up my stuff and locked up, then went out for food and lots more coffee.

The amount of coffee may have been a mistake because, while it helped perk me up, I was nearly cross-eyed with the need to find a restroom by the time I got to the Ingstrom house in north Ballard.

It was a pleasant Victorian, the kind in which families raised generations. Mrs. Ingstrom answered the door herself at my knock. She asked me in and I requested the use of her bathroom.

"Oh, the one down here is a mess. Go to the top of the stairs and turn right. It's at the end of the hall. Watch out for all the boxes and don't mind the cat, he likes to sleep on the heat register there," she explained.

I shot up the stairs past a row of packing boxes and into the large bathroom, where I was greeted by the beady glare of a single yellow eye.

" 'Scuse me," I said to the three-foot mound of white fur. It huffed and tucked away its eye for a few more winks of catnap.

The bathroom was clean and depersonalized. Only a small bottle of aspirin and a cardboard box of adhesive bandages still sat in the open medicine cabinet. Rust marks on the metal shelves showed where other things had been not long ago. The room was silent on the matter of the lives which had passed through it.

I was leaving when the cat rose like a thunderhead and stretched with a head-splitting pink yawn. I looked back toward it as, with no apparent acceleration, the cat sailed out of the room past me, waving its plume of a tail. A cat-shaped shadow, fluttering Grey, remained lurking on the heat register. I shook myself and went back down-stairs.

Mrs. Ingstrom was in the kitchen at the rear, making coffee in an old drip Melitta. She glanced at me as she picked up the pot and a couple of thick-sided white mugs and started out of the kitchen. "We'll have our coffee in the front room. I've got all the other things out there. Everything else is packed or tagged for the auction this weekend."

I regretted the lunchtime coffee more than ever. I'd be vibrating by the time I got back to the office, at this rate of consumption.

I followed her out to the living room—"the parlor" when the house was new, I supposed. She waved me to a seat in front of the unlit fire-place. All the knickknacks and personal bits were either gone or sported prominent lot tags. Most of the furniture had been shoved to one side.

She started pouring coffee. "Help yourself to the shortbread."

I picked up a small piece and I could smell the butter at arm's length. I could gain weight just breathing near it. I nibbled.

Mrs. Ingstrom put a mug of coffee down in front of me and pushed forward a sugar bowl and matching creamer. She gave me a small, strained smile. "It's a good thing I hadn't packed up the sugar, yet."

Sneaking up on the scalding coffee, I asked her about the organ.

"I was surprised at how easy it was to find," she said. "Chet had quite a few papers on his desk and I had to sort through them first. I thank God he was such an organized record keeper. But I just… If I had to go through every piece of paper, I'd never make it. It's been awful, just… awful," she quavered, and then began to cry. "Oh, why? Why, why?" She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

I froze and sat there a moment. Self-conscious, I scootched along the sofa next to her and put my arm around her shoulders.

I patted her arm and murmured automatically, "Please don't cry. It's all right."

She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the hem of her skirt and hiccupped, "No, it's not."

I handed her a napkin from among the coffee things. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes again, talking while she covered her discomfort with pats of the napkin.

"It's just terrible, is what it is. The company always seemed to be doing so well, and we're not extravagant people. We never lived above our income. Chet was always frugal. It ran in the family, I suppose. And then so many things went wrong all at once and, somehow, the company just couldn't stay afloat. All the bills and the creditors and the contractors with their lawyers and lawsuits, and then the tax men. It was a nightmare. It's still a nightmare—it's worse! If Chet had just died, then the company would have been sold all as a piece, but instead, this horrible bankruptcy was already tearing the company into shreds. And then this! Well, all I can say is thank God Chet had a will or we'd be in a dreadful mess…" She sniffled again and shook her head.

She mumbled past the napkin, "I'm afraid I'm making a spectacle, of myself. I'm just overwhelmed… At suppertime I keep expecting to hear them coming up the back stairs and into the kitchen, stealing a taste out of the pots, their clothes smelling like bilge water and diesel oil, laughing and teasing me for complaining about them. And do you know what's worst?" she asked, turning toward me.

Her eyes seemed to look into someplace I'd been too recently. I was startled and stammered, "No, what?"

"I'm afraid they will! It's not that I don't believe they're gone—I can never, for a moment, forget—it's that the house can't seem to forget them… like the shape of them is worn into it, the same way walking up and down wears away the front step."

She leaned forward, glancing about as if she thought someone watched us, and whispered, "I'm almost glad I'll be selling the house. What would I need it for, except to plague me with these awful ideas?"

She sat back. "There. Now you think I'm a crazy old woman."

I remembered the shape of the cat upstairs, and shook my head. "No, I don't. Is it safe to guess that Tommy and your husband were both born in this house?"

She nodded and sniffed.

"I'd probably leave, too, if I were you. It's hard to live with ghosts."

She sighed. Her shoulders loosened. "Thank you. I'm glad someone understands. I'm afraid to tell my friends and family. I'm afraid they'll think I'm trying to make Chet and Tommy disappear. They all think it's the bills that are making me sell, or the sheer size of the place.

"Let them believe what they want. It doesn't hurt you," I suggested.

Mrs. Ingstrom nodded, then straightened her skirt and sniffed one last time, seeming to shift a weight off her shoulders. "Well, now you've put up with me acting like a watering pot, let's see what I can do for you."

She picked up a manila file folder that had been lying on the table and handed it to me. "The bill of sale is in here and a copy of the original bill of lading for the lien that was attached to it. I thought you might want that, too. I don't need it, since it's so old and long gone that not even the tax men are interested in it."

I flipped open the folder and scanned the papers within, then smiled at her. "Thank you for all your help, Mrs. Ingstrom. I'm sorry about what you're going through and I appreciate your digging into your husband's records for me at a time like this."

"It was pleasant to be doing something that wasn't for an estate lawyer or a bankruptcy lawyer or a tax accountant, for a change. I hope it helps you."

"I'm sure it will," I said, rising. "Thanks again and thanks for the coffee, also."

She rose to escort me to the door. "It's the least I could do. And it was so nice to see you again." She saw me out, acting the part of hostess on autopilot.

Once back in the Rover, I sat in the driver's seat and fiddled with the seat belt, tired. From the corner of my eye, the Grey flickered, giving the house a writhing patchiness—its own personal fogbank. The cat, who now sat on the porch, was solid as a stone and staring at me with malevolent yellow eyes. Mrs. Ingstrom waved to me. I waved back and drove away.