Starter House(111)

“The old man sent me.”

She pulled him into the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?”

At once, she knew it was absurd to offer coffee to this man, and he said, “Pop?”

“I don’t think so.” Lacey checked the refrigerator. Eric drank Pepsi, but Ella Dane had a habit of draining Pepsi bottles and refilling them with her own concoction of dandelion root and powdered carob. “There’s orange juice, guava juice, some kind of sugarcane thing that my mom likes, and milk.”

“Milk.”

She gave him a glass of milk. She’d been so eager to get him into the house, and now here he was, and what could she do with him? She’d expected some sign—doors slamming, water running, noises, voices—but the house sat quiet in the October sun. Every gust of wind was followed by a light pattering as a wave of leaves jittered across the roof. Occasionally a car drove by, and the more distant sound of Austell Road was a constant faraway surf. Where was Drew?

Lacey cleared her throat. She took the empty glass from Lex’s hand and rinsed it in the sink. “So,” she said. Now she had him here, she wasn’t sure why she’d wanted him. It had felt important. Now she felt nothing. “It’s a long time since you were here.”

“I was never here.”

“I guess not.” Lacey looked around the kitchen. What was the same as 1972? Nothing but the walls, the size and location of the windows—only the bones of the room, and those were identical to Harry’s kitchen next door. “How about if I show you around?” she said, as if he were any ordinary guest.

“I don’t care.”

She led him across to the future dining room, where she’d been sleeping for the past three months. “I’m going to move upstairs when the baby comes,” she said. “We’ll get a real table in here.” The air in the room was thick, not precisely foul, but heavy with animal presence. She needed to change the sheets. Bibbits had slept beside her for weeks. “This was your dining room, right?”

Lex shrugged.

She hurried him past that spot at the foot of the stairs—did he remember lying there, brothers dying beside him, sister already dead? She hoped not. Maybe the bullet had torn the memory from him. “This is the living room.” Stupid. He knew that.

He didn’t answer, and she talked into the increasingly dangerous silence. “So this is where Harry teaches lessons in his house; that’s the most beautiful room, with that gorgeous picture. . . .” Dora Rakoczy, by Andy Halliday. Harry said she looked like Dora. Maybe Lex thought so, too. What about Drew? Did he think she looked like Dora and would it matter to him?

“Would you like to see upstairs?” she asked.

“Can I leave now?”

“Don’t you want to see your old bedroom?”

“I’m not supposed to be here. Can I leave now? Please?”

“Do you remember the Honeywicks? A family called Honeywick?”

“I don’t remember anything. Something bad happened to them.”

“What about the Craddocks?”

“Can I leave?”

“What about—” What was CarolAnna Grey’s maiden name? She’d forgotten, if she’d ever known it. “A little girl called CarolAnna, do you remember her?”

“A bad thing almost happened. Can I go?”

“What about the Hallidays?”

“I don’t remember anything at all.”

These answers. How could he know these things? She stopped looking for Drew and instead stared straight at Lex. His face was tired and anxious, old, so old. His eyes were those of the girl on Harry’s wall—Dora’s eyes, no, Drew’s eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Here she was watching and waiting for Drew, and he was right in front of her all the time. Recognition poured over her skin, combing every hair upright.

“I know you,” she whispered.

“I don’t remember.” He sank before her, slowly to his knees, and crossed his arms over his face, shaking his head, a child’s gesture, a child’s misery. “Please,” he said. “Please can I go. Oh please.”

“But I know you. It’s you.” She touched his shoulders, then pulled him in, pulled his head against her belly, cradled the back of his head in her hands. His breath was hot between her breasts, and he clutched the sides of her dress, pulling it tight over her shoulders. “Don’t be scared,” she said into his thin, light hair. Poor thing, poor thing. He hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

And it was almost there, the truth, the answer, gathering around them. Lacey sensed its geometry, the turning of a kaleidoscope, lines and angles clicking into place. “I know you,” she said. “I know who you are.”