My grandmother didn’t die suddenly, but I was far away, and very pregnant. I found it hard to let go. When my son was born I believed, privately, and without any system of belief, that she had been reincarnated in his form.

My son had curly hair and a head that, at least early on, drooped forward on its slender stalk.

In my dreams I changed my grandmother’s soiled pants.

They both loved me.

I’m not suggesting these things are evidence. There was no evidence for the belief, nothing that couldn’t be explained easily, gently, plausibly by my own psychological needs. Once, crossing the Chaussée de Waterloo after my grandmother’s death, but before my son’s birth, I passed a woman I was convinced was her spirit. She didn’t even look at me. It didn’t matter.

Now we’ve moved to a very old house. It was a farmhouse, and then a school, and then a private house again. It is porous, open to pests, and sometimes because of this and sometimes for other reasons, it creaks and rattles. The doors are blown by empty breezes. We moved here when our younger son, who is not my grandmother’s reincarnated soul, was less than one year old. He started talking soon after we moved in, which surprised us. One thing he liked to say when he and I were in his bedroom was that he saw people, sometimes behind me, always when there was no one there. At first I was, against my will, alarmed by this. It was nonsense, I told myself. I would not allow myself to imagine anything. But later, after I understood to what extent our house was infested with animals, I welcomed ghosts. I wanted to believe in them. I prefer ghosts to things, and to nothingness.