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“My job was to take care of the baby penguins,” she adds.

I clear my throat. “Are—are you sure that didn’t actually happen?”

“Can’t be certain.” Her cheeks lift slightly. “What about you?”

“Also bird-related. I was trying to sell a timeshare to this flamingo, but every time I started making progress my dentist would ride in on a bicycle and I’d have to start over from the beginning.”

“So did he buy it?”

“Nope.”

“You must have been a shitty salesman,” she says.

“Oh yeah, and how many baby penguins died on your watch?” I ask defensively.

“All of them, why?”

I bark out a laugh.

She shrugs. “We had to eat something to stay alive!”

“How do baby penguins taste?”

“Dude. So fucking tender.”

“Great. Now I’m hungry,” I groan.

She laughs. “There’s some leftover pizza in the fridge. It’s yours if you want it.”

I stand up and head toward the kitchen. I use my phone to light the interior of the refrigerator, quickly snatching the pizza box, wanting to preserve the temperature as much as possible. Back in her bedroom, I get comfy in my seat with the square cardboard in my lap. I flip it open and squint at the pizza. Tilting the box toward the candles in the fireplace, I get a better view of the toppings.

“Duchess,” I say, disappointed. “No.”

“What?”

“Pineapple and green olives? Really? These toppings are an abomination of God. I don’t know why you’re afraid of ghosts when you have the palate of a serial killer.”

She chuckles. “I like it.”

I stare at the remaining slices. “This is abhorrent.”

“Oh, shut up. Okay, if you could have dinner with any person, alive or dead, who would it be and what would you eat?”

“Hmm . . . Edie Beale. Succulent baby penguin, medium rare.”

She barks out a laugh. “I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay . . . Probably my mom when she was younger.”

“Why?” she asks, her voice softer.

I shrug. I want to know who she was before she was destroyed. “I just want to meet her. Find out what she was like. Where she lived, what books she read, if she had any hobbies. Did she like art as much as me? That kind of stuff. And we would eat peanut butter sandwiches.”

Because that’s the last meal I remember having with her and she smiled. I don’t want to turn sappy, so I flip the question to her. “Your turn, who would you choose?”

“Maybe the ghosts haunting this apartment.”

I cock my head to the side. “Hey, I gave you a serious answer.”