Grace’s ginger cat is hiding under the kitchen table, ears flattened. The house gives a noncorporeal stroke down the cat’s spine. Grace had been right when she said this place needed a pet. The padding of a cat’s paws on kitchen tile, the thump of a dog’s tail against a banister: that’s another of those things, like the smell of a good meal in the oven, that really makes a house. Makes it more than just a set of foundations and walls. The house whispers a suggestion to the cat,
