Hearts in the Hard Ground

After her mother's death, Fiona buys a house meant to hold fewer painful memories, a fresh start. Instead she finds a dark stain in the master bedroom floorboards and, downstairs, a rotting seagull pulled from the flue by her handyman: the first signs that the house came with company. As Fiona learns to live alongside the quiet, sorrowful ghosts already there, she starts to find her own way through loss. G. V. Anderson's short story is a gentle, melancholic ghost story more interested in grief and companionship than scares.