I remember both vividly; the night I saw the ghost of Annette and the night I heard about her death. They happened in that same order. One of them was on a December night, exactly a week before Christmas. The comfort of the heat from the fireplace on one side of my body and the cold, seeping in from the outside, on the other didn’t make me feel better. I stood up slowly from the chair.  The room seemed to be shrinking and I wanted to get out. And I did just that. It was getting dark and cold on the outside. The fog had started to cover the village of St. Louis. “Don’t forget your jacket, Joe. It’s freezing outside.” I heard the voice of Margaret, our housemaid since I was a toddler, as I was about to step out. As I turned around I saw her coming with…