ALT October 15, 2026 THIS IS NOT A GHOST STORY Alina Kalontarov Around the kitchen table, the children play pretend. Let’s pretend to be ancestors, the youngest suggests. You can’t be an ancestor, the oldest replies, because then you’d be dead. The mother silently wiping the counter pretends to be there, ghosts bleating like lambs in her head. The children abandon the old game. The past goes on pretending to be gone. The ancestors play dead.