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myself.”
    “Perhaps someday you shall,” Mom told him, smiling coyly. “She’s benign, and so far has taken a liking to us. In fact….”
    Here’s where I tuned out, and not for disrespect. In truth, I would’ve liked to hear what my mother had to add to this. But I suddenly recalled trying to take a nap one afternoon in the ladies’ parlor during our first week in the house. I remembered now that I couldn’t do it. Every time I closed my eyes, I sensed someone hovering over me. But when I opened my eyes, no one was there.
    “She spoke to me once,” said Alisia, and from Mom’s slightly raised eyebrow, I realized this was an aspect of the spirit’s behavior that she hadn’t shared in. “I came in after pulling weeds one afternoon, and she told me the garden below the parlor window looked very nice. I thought you had said it, Mom, or maybe even Grandma. But you both were at a luncheon that day, and hadn’t returned.”
    I felt another pinprick to the heart. What else is Alisia not telling me about this place?
    “Well, Reverend Thompson says the only ghost that we need to worry about is the Holy Ghost,” said Sadee, followed by a hearty ‘amen!’ from Dan, her eighty-year-old husband.
    Squish! There went the air out of that balloon. Nothing like a religious shield to protect against the supernatural unknown; and like pouring a bottle of Roundup on a tender rose, the fun-filled conversation at the dining table quickly waned.
    But the night’s good time was far from over. Once everyone adjourned to the back porch for tea and strawberry short cake, new jokes and the jovial mood returned. Soon, Julian and Dad were talking stocks and everyone else discussed the neighborhood’s storied history that seemed to center mostly on our house and the school at the edge of our property—two places that once shared the earliest land grant in Denmark’s near two-hundred year lifespan.
    I’m not sure if anyone even noticed me slipping away, back into the house. I stepped into the foyer and listened. Except for the occasional spurts of activity from the HVAC system, all was quiet. Not even the normal ‘house settling’ pops that seemed to erupt from just after dusk until an hour before dawn resounded. No sign of our invisible resident…. No rustling of a Victorian gown moving across the floor, as Alisia described one encounter. Not even when I carefully peered into the ladies’ parlor—the only room in the entire house that still had the original plaster walls and ceiling—did I detect the ghost’s presence.
    Just an empty house. One that carried a curious warmth, or friendly feeling—which believe it or not, often means a place is haunted just as much as if it carried a creepy air. If there were ghosts residing with us in ‘Two Magnolias’, they were the good kind. Or, they at least liked us. Those were mostly Grandma’s words from when we lived in a haunted bungalow, our second residence in Wheaton.
    Though I preferred the latter opinion, either one would work for me.
    I nodded and smiled at the quiet emptiness, and then rejoined the dinner party. My heart felt lifted by the thought I now had something new to focus on, a revived interest in those who had lived and died in this grand old place, and wondering how our chapter in the house’s legacy would play out.

Hopefully, whenever the ending came, it would be a happy one.
 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
    The following Tuesday afternoon marked our twenty-eighth day in Denmark. It arrived with the confirmation that Alisia and I had successfully mapped out the entire town. A feat we never accomplished in Chicago, I might add. Maybe we hadn’t seen every square inch of Denmark, but we certainly came damned close. Outside of our unconventional neighborhood, much of the place seemed unremarkable.
    A typical small town, but with quirks here and there that set it apart from anywhere else. Quirks like old, sandwich-board wearing, white racists.