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Jonah: idk she just calls it The Potato Thing

Aunt Claire: The thing she brought last time or the thing she brought for Christmas?

Jonah: those were the same things

Mom: Nate?

Nate set the phone face down on the desk.

It kept vibrating. He should mute it.

He turned it over again.

Uncle Richard: I’ll be there. I’ll bring wine.

Jonah: please dont bring box wine again

Uncle Richard: Don’t be a wine snob.

Nate turned back to his laptop. The export was at sixty-two percent. On the preview screen, the bathroom’s herringbone tile glowed with exactly the right amount of warmth.

The video was from two properties ago. A bungalow that had contained the ghost of an older lady who was still searching for a cat who’d died years before her. Nate had barely had to push to get her to cross over. That was how this job was supposed to go.

Good content, good money, no complications.

He’d posted the demo video three days ago. While he waited for the export, he scrolled through the comments.

@reecescup: The way he peeled that wallpaper in one sheet. So satisfying.

@oldhouselove: Do you have a source for that vanity hardware? Been looking for something similar for months.

@dudes_and_cats: okay but those forearms at 4:32

Nate scrolled past that one.

Here were people who admired his work. None of this required him to think about Saturday or pot roast or Uncle Richard’s awful taste in wine.

Another comment caught his eye.

@punkfish: wait is this the Hargrove place on Elm?? my grandmother always said that house was haunted lol

Three people had replied asking what kind of haunting. And someone wrote, huh, the Cranford house was supposed to be haunted too wasn’t it?

Crap.

Nate closed the tab.

Were they on to him?

No, they weren’t. Most people didn’t believe in ghosts; Nate knew that better than anyone. He was okay. His business was okay.

Everyone thought he was normal. An ordinary dude who was good with a hammer.

Nate liked it that way.

Already he’d spent too many years of his life being the ghost whisperer, the family prodigy, the genius medium.

He scoffed.