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Annie bounced into his house, Yulia right behind her. Settled down for a dinner of fish and root vegetables with Hollis and Mrs. Brown.

Yulia sat across from them. Her eyes weren’t cold as flint anymore. She separated out all the pieces of chopped beets to the corner of her plate, then reached over the table and dumped them onto Hollis’s. Mrs. Brown didn’t even flinch at it.

Okay.

Hollis smirked and began eating.

Bad table manners or more incomprehensible subtext?

Subtext. She wouldn’t have done that if she was still pissed.

Mrs. Brown left them and went up to her room. Annie washed dishes, while Hollis and Yulia cleaned the table and set out ingredients.

“We’re doing chocolate chip, iced sugar cookies, peppermint chocolate cookies, thumbprint jam cookies, oatmeal spice cookies, and gingerbread brownies,” Walt announced.

“Hollis is doing the first five, and I’m handling the last. We’re starting with sugar, so you gals can ice ’em if you want while you wait.”

“What are gingerbread brownies?” Annie asked.

“S’thing I learned from a kid in the eighties. They’re like gingerbread with the same texture as brownies. They’ve got spiced icing on the top, hard like sugar cookies do,” Walt explained, while Hollis washed their hands. “I’m not a whiz in the kitchen like your boy, but I do know a few things.”

Yulia pursed her lips together dubiously but didn’t say a word.

In the end, it took about four hours to finish them. Even with a baking sheet on all three levels of the oven.

Hollis put the last batch in and settled down at the dining table to help decorate.

“Walt, you have an accent,” Annie announced. “You didn’t have it when you were pretending to be Hollis, but you have it now. Is that what he sounds like inside, Hollis?”

“Yup. Drove me crazy trying to figure out where he was from. Time period and location. In the end he just told me.”

“Have...” Yulia seemed reluctant, but she powered through. “Have you traveled anywhere outside of the United States?”

Walt welled up with joy at being addressed directly, and Hollis suppressed a grin.

“Not on purpose. Got drafted once, and ended up in Indonesia before I was able to strike another deal and get back. I like the US. I’m not fond of the unfamiliar.”

Bolder, Yulia asked. “What does it feel like, being a ghost?”

You don’t have to answer that.

“It’s...” Walt put down the wax paper they were piping with and put his chin in their hands. “There’s a lot about it I don’t really care to dwell on. It’s frightening at times, lonesome. I get homesick from time to time. But every day I get a new sunrise. Things keep growing and changing, and it’s good seeing people doing better than we ever were. When things are going well and I get to talk to someone who likes me, that’s nice.”

“Oh,” Yulia said, frowning.

“What was the Great Depression like?” Annie asked, unaware of the shift in mood.

Walt laughed, dry as sand. “A lot like this, actually,” he said, gesturing to Hollis’s entire house. “And I don’t mean to offend.”

He picked the wax paper back up. “I was already dead when it happened. Didn’t even have ten years in. Everything was like this, but more manual, and shit didn’t work half the time. Desperation exists in isolation. If near everyone is desperate, you don’t call it that anymore. You don’t call it anything. During the worst of it, I had to eat grass. You’ve got to boil it first though. Learned that the hard way.”

Yulia tilted her head to the side.

“What do you look like? Are there pictures?”

Walt shrugged. “Might be. We didn’t have many, photography was expensive. But my ma got one taken of me when I started my first job. If what I did made the papers and it was a slow day, it might still be around.”

Yulia took out her phone. “When did it happen?”

Walt set his cookie on the rack to dry. “December of ’31. I doubt there would be any of those still kickin’ unless someone local is a pack rat. You don’t even have museums round here.”

Yulia shook her head. “Not a museum. The libraries keep old papers and file them. If they’re really old, you have to visit in person to see them though. You might not have done something big enough to make local papers, but your family’s murders absolutely would have made a splash. If you were at the core of it, we might just get lucky.”

You’re nervous. Why are you nervous?

It never occurred to me that you’d get to see my face. What if you don’t like it?

Walt, I would never—

“Do it out loud,” Annie said, scowling.

“What?” Yulia looked up from her phone.

She pointed at Hollis. “They’re talking to each other. It’s rude to do it in front of us, just do it out loud.”

Hollis drummed his fingers on the table and bit his lip.

“Walt’s... hmm. Walt’s nervous about me seeing what he looks like.”

“Why does that matter?” Yulia went back to researching.

“He thinks I won’t like it. Or won’t like him anymore when I see him specifically. He’s already described it though, and unless he was lying, I don’t see what the problem is. And even if he was lying, we look like me now, anyway.”

Hollis didn’t care, but Walt was making their face burn pink and hot.

“It’s creepy to put it that way.” Annie grimaced. “Why is he so embarrassed?”

“It’s been a hundred years,” Walt said, defensive. “I didn’t expect to be doing any of this. Much less looking at a picture of me all dressed up for work—”

“ Well ,” Yulia interrupted loudly. “We can solve this once and for all. There’s a library about fifty miles from here with an archive as far back as 1910. Later this week, we’re all off school for break. My daddy’s using my car for work so we’ll have to take the bus, but we can definitely just go there.”

Walt frowned.

“Do we have to?”

Yulia turned off her phone and put it on the table. “If I’m going to help you do what needs to be done, I want to see your face. Hollis and I have mended fences, but you and me? We’re strangers.”