"...And this is the dining room. It's the most haunted part of the house."

"It's not haunted." My uncle looked up and frowned at me as I adjusted the dummy in my lap. "Why are you talking to it?" I started to open my mouth when my cousin spoke.

"He's our guest, Papa," Carlotta said, turning to face me from the thin book she was reading. Her smile was thin and red and perfect the way I could never get it. "It's only right to give him a tour of the house. Don't you remember when we did the same for Emmy?" I smiled a little. Carlotta was older than me by a lot - I was never sure if it was five or six years - but she still went along with things. "So Emmy," she said, "have you told him what kind of ghost we have?"

"There's no ghost," Uncle Drew said again, but Carlotta looked at him and frowned her sharp frown before smiling at me again. He shrugged and looked at his phone again, and I turned to the doll in my lap.

"I want to hear!" It was kind of dumb to give him his own voice, but it was fun, too, and Carlotta laughed a bit at it. I couldn't get my voice quite deep yet, but I was practicing. I switched back to my regular voice. "Should I tell him or should you?"

"You tell him the outline," Carlotta said, "I'll give examples." I nodded and looked back to my doll, and his head nodded along. We were all sitting around the table waiting for Aunt Jane to come home, since Carlotta had a violin rehearsal and her mom had the good car.

"So the ghost haunting this house wasn't here before," I started, "or if it was, it was quiet before. But after they - Carlotta and her parents I mean - moved in, things started happening all the time."

"Not right when we moved in," Carlotta added, "It was right after I came home from college."

"Stuff started falling off shelves," I said, pushing the doll's eyebrows up so he'd look interested, "And then shelves would fall apart. Nobody was sure what would happen next, because it usually came out of nowhere."

"Because the house is old and needs renovating," Uncle Drew said, "It's probably water damage. There was a storm here a few years, you know, a terrible one. The whole house must have flooded."

"That doesn't explain the vases falling off the shelf, Papa." Carlotta looked back to the shelf we meant - right over the sink, holding some new white and blue vases - and looked back to him. She was still holding her book up, and looked almost like an old painting with her black hair rolled to her neck and her pearl necklace. "They just toppled over."

"Poor polish work." I knew Uncle Drew believed in ghosts - he always had, my dad had said when he told me stories about the family. Uncle Drew was afraid of ghosts and shadows and bad report cards and germs, and he pretended not to be so it'd scare them off. It wasn't working.

"The ghost comes and goes," I said, "but it really doesn't like some things."

"Mostly when they bring their friends' sons over," Carlotta said, "Or talk about me getting married. I think the ghost is jealous." Uncle Drew's phone buzzed, and he looked at it.

"It doesn't matter what the ghost thinks," Uncle Drew said, standing up, "because there isn't one. And if there is, it can live with us planning for the future if it could for everyone mother's here. Are you ready to go?"

"I am." Carlotta looked at me. "Emmy, are you alright keeping by yourself if Mom has to work for a couple hours?" I nodded.

"I've got Slappy with me," I said, and she smiled.

"Well, Slappy, I expect you to take good care of her, alright? If you don't, I'll ask the ghost to haunt you." She stood up and put her book down.

The crash happened so fast - I saw white falling and then the sound shattered across the floor - that I didn't have time to do anything but scream. Carlotta jumped back, eyes wide, and Uncle Drew ran around the table to see as she wrung her hands.

One of the vases had fallen and broken into a million pieces on the floor. I stared, looked up at the shelf, and then looked at Slappy.

"Ghost?" I mouthed, and he nodded his head before we both turned back to face the mess all over the floor.

Made a tiny revision to the opening to make things a bit clearer. Hope it helps!