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“Is there a living in it?” she said.

“The way I live,” said Ben. “No wife, no kids—no bad habits. Won’t make as much as old man Kilraine spent on cigars.”

“Toward the end, all he had was his cigars,” she said.

“And his nurse,” said Ben.

“He’s dead, and you’re young and alive,” she said.

“Eeeeeeeeeeyup,” said Ben. “Guess I’m the big winner after all.”

He picked up her small bag of groceries, went outside, and saw the big car she’d come in.

“Rose let you take this big boat?” he said. “What does that leave her?”

“It’s embarrassing,” she said. “It’s too big. It makes me want to hide under the dashboard when I go through towns.”

Ben opened the front door for her, and she slid into the leather chauffeur’s seat. She seemed no bigger than a ten-year-old, dwarfed by the great steering wheel and instrument panel.

Ben set the groceries on the floor beside her, and he sniffed. “If ghosts had smells,” he said, “that’s what the ghost of Joel Kilraine would smell like—cigars.” He wasn’t about to say goodbye to her. He sat down beside her, as though resting and gathering his thoughts. “You ever hear how he made his money? Clear back in 1922, he figured out that—” His words trailed off as he saw that the spell was broken, that she was about to cry again.

“Miss,” said Ben helplessly, “you sure cry easy.”

“I cry all the time,” she said pipingly. “Everything makes me cry. I can’t help it.”

“About what?” said Ben. “What’s there to cry about?”

“About everything,” she said wretchedly. “I’m Rose,” she said, “and everything makes me want to cry.”

Ben’s world yawed, shimmered, and righted itself. “You?” he said softly. “Rose? Twelve million dollars? Cloth coat? Cornflakes? Oleo margarine? Look at your purse! The patent leather’s all chipping off.”

“That’s how I’ve always lived,” she said.

“You haven’t lived very long,” said Ben.

“I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” said Rose, “where she shrank and shrank and shrank until everything was too big for her.”

Ben chuckled emptily. “You’ll grow back,” he said.

She rubbed her eyes. “I think Mr. Kilraine must have done it as some kind of joke on the world—making somebody like me so rich.” She was trembling, white.

Ben took her arm firmly, to calm her.

She went limp gratefully. Her eyes glazed over. “Nobody to turn to, nobody to trust, nobody who understands,” she said in a singsong. “I’ve never been so lonely and tired and scared in all my life. Everybody yammering, yammering, yammering.” She closed her eyes and lay back like a rag doll.

“Would a drink help?” said Ben.

“I—I don’t know,” she said dully.

“Do you drink?” said Ben.

“Once,” she said.

“Do you want to try again, Rose?” said Ben.

“Maybe—maybe that would help,” she said. “Maybe. I dunno. I’m so sick of thinking, I’ll just do anything anybody tells me to do.”

Ben licked his lips. “I’ll go get my truck and a bottle my creditors don’t know about,” he said. “Then you follow me.”

Ben put away Rose’s groceries in the vast kitchen of the Kilraine cottage. The tidbits were lost in canyons of porcelain and steel.

He mixed two drinks from his bottle, and carried them into the entrance hall. Rose, her coat still on, lay on the spiral staircase, looking at her wedding-cake ceiling far above.

“I got the oil burner going,” said Ben. “It’ll be a while before we feel it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything again,” said Rose. “Nothing means anything anymore. There’s too much of everything.”

“Keep breathing,” said Ben. “That’s the big thing for now.”

Rose inhaled and exhaled rattlingly.

Some of what she felt began to creep into Ben’s bones, too. He had a spooky sense of a third person in the house—not the shade of Joel Kilraine, but the phantasm of twelve million dollars. Neither Rose nor Ben could speak without a polite, nervous nod to the Kilraine fortune. And the twelve million, a thousand dollars a day at three percent, took full advantage of their awe. It let nothing go by without comment—without giving the conversation a hard, rude wrench.

“Well, here we are,” said Ben, giving Rose her drink.