“I took a speech class at Yale, trained myself out of it.”

“Wow,” she says. “Traitor.”

THE NEWCOMBE MANSION is guarded by tall iron gates that someone painted blue. The gates open as they approach.

“Naturally,” Gary says.

Geoffrey waits for them in the front entrance. He is a small, Southern man wearing a light peach suit. He looks especially small next to the big house. The entrance is so formal, with giant gargoyles up on the roof, and when Phoebe says hello, she half expects Geoffrey to bow or curtsy. But he shakes her hand like any old American.

He welcomes her into the house and starts by telling her that this is a position exclusively for caretaking the interior.

“We have people for the grounds,” he says. “But our main interior caretaker of ten years just unexpectedly resigned.”

He asks what experience she has caretaking nineteenth-century mansions, and she tells him she has no experience, though researched many for her dissertation. She doesn’t harp on the fact that most of them were fictional estates, often discussed primarily as metaphors for colonialism.

“In my line of work, I research historical buildings a lot,” she says. “I have a chapter in my dissertation about Victorian domestic interiors. I study the way nineteenth-century novels portray domestic space as primarily female and the natural world as primarily male.”

She tells him about the years she spent in the basement archives, and it feels good to talk about her research again. All those hours in grad school she spent cataloging the effects of each room on the characters in Jane Eyre—she would sit in the library and look up and before she knew it, it would be dark. She loved those early days, when she didn’t know exactly what she was writing yet, when she was just on the cusp of figuring it out.

“Excellent,” Geoffrey says. “Because this is a job about research. Let’s say this fabric wallpaper from 1845 starts to tear. What do you do?”

“I don’t know,” Phoebe admits. “But I would research it until I found out.”

Geoffrey laughs.

“Somehow, I believe you,” he says. “Shall we?”

They turn to the door and Phoebe sees a face carved into the wood. “Is that Dante?”

“I’m really glad you know that,” Geoffrey says.

HE TAKES THEM through the grand courtyard. He tells them about the owner, how he built this house for his daughter, Elizabeth.

“You can see Elizabeth’s collection of Parisian art in the dining room,” Geoffrey says. “She ended up marrying a French banker, who is featured here in this painting. But they didn’t get along, and Elizabeth spent much of her time traveling the world, collecting the art and the vases you’ll see everywhere in this house.”

Then he gets a phone call.

“I need to take this,” Geoffrey says. “Why don’t you go through and look at the place on your own, let me know what you think?”

THEY WANDER THROUGH the house. Every doorway is framed with elaborate woodwork. Muses painted gold in each corner. The face of Cicero carved above the bathroom. And a tub made of marble so thick, it looks like a coffin. Phoebe runs her finger along the frame of the bathroom mirror.

“I think this is platinum leaf,” she says.

“Platinum leaf?” Gary asks. “I didn’t even know that existed.”

They head into the bedroom, where Elizabeth’s art collection continues.

“Do you think a woman who collects art like this is the happiest woman?” Phoebe asks. “Or the least happy?”

“The question presumes that we can be happy,” Gary says.

“Can we not?”

“I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach. Like we’ll just be able to live there, forever. But that’s not my experience with happiness. For me, it comes and goes. It shows up and then disappears like a bubble.”

“When was the last time you were really happy?” Phoebe asks Gary.

“The honest answer?” he says. “Right now.”

She wants to ask why this is. Is it because he’s getting married tomorrow? Or because of how it feels to be standing here in this mansion together? Phoebe feels strikingly happy, like this kind of connection between two people can fix everything. For just a moment, she fantasizes about them living here, together, roaming the halls, talking about Parisian paintings at breakfast.

“I think the collector’s impulse is both beautiful and repugnant,” she says.

To collect is to care more than most. But it is also to hoard. To take things out of the world and make them only yours.

“Art collections were basically like travel souvenirs for these people,” Phoebe says. “Going to Paris and bringing back seven wall paintings.”

They stare at Elizabeth’s bed.

“Is this where you’d sleep?” he asks.

“I think this is where Elizabeth’s ghost sleeps.”

He laughs, and they look at the portrait of Elizabeth above the bed. She feels drawn to this woman. Maybe because she, too, lived alone in her own way, lived alone inside her marriage.

“I think you’re right,” Gary says, then he turns to her. “Can I see your phone, please?”

She hands it to him. She knows what he’s going to do before he even does it.

“When you’re living here, I want you to call me when you actually do see a ghost,” Gary says, tapping in his number.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he says. “You’re right. I’m famously ineffective against ghosts. Just ask Juice.”

She laughs.

“But promise you’ll call anyway?” he asks.

“I promise.”

She looks down at the old wood floor, puts the phone in her pocket. It feels like she keeps something special in there now. The future, where she lives in this beautiful house and can call Gary when she needs to.

They walk into the next room.

“What do you think Geoffrey meant when he said, ‘I believe you,’ like that? Was that an insult?”

“I think, coming from Geoffrey, it’s the highest praise of all.”