We Share Custody of a Poltergeist

How it begins

The sofa was on the ceiling again.

Mara stood beneath it with the custody schedule in her hand.

"It's your Thursday," she told Jonah.

"It started at midnight. That was technically your Wednesday."

A cushion dropped between them.

Neither moved.

From somewhere inside the wall came a long, disappointed sigh.

They had discovered the poltergeist eleven months before the divorce, when a kitchen drawer began throwing spoons at their arguments. At the time, they had thought the house wanted better hinges.

Now Mara suspected it had wanted them to finish a sentence.

Jonah set his toolbox on the floor.

"Has it eaten?"

"It doesn't eat."

"You know what I mean."

Mara nodded toward the mantelpiece. She had left a fresh paint sample, a brass door handle, and the architectural drawing the ghost liked to fold into birds.

The drawing was now a small, furious swan.

Jonah picked it up.

"We can't keep doing this," he said.

Mara looked at him.

"The sofa," he added quickly. "I mean the sofa."

Of course he did. He had always been excellent with objects. He could coax an original window back into its frame, restore a cracked banister, and spend six silent hours making a door close without a sound.

She had once mistaken that patience for the ability to discuss anything.

The cushion lifted from the floor and settled against his ankle.

He sat down beside it.

Mara watched him place the paper swan between his knees.

"All right," he told the wall. "What happened?"

A strip of wallpaper peeled away above the fireplace.

Beneath it, in handwriting both of them recognized, were the words they had painted there on their first day.

OUR FOREVER HOME.

Mara folded the schedule.

The schedule had boxes for tools, keys, and emergencies. Neither of them had thought to add promises.

For once, neither of them tried to make a joke.