Chapter Twenty

Perhaps they think I look like her, but inside I’m not the least bit like the Blessed Mother, she thought to herself, walking back to the high school, swept suddenly again by the feeling of self-consciousness she had lost while serving the friars’ neighbors. But of course, nobody could really be like the Blessed Mother. All of us are sinful, or at least terribly inadequate—

“Nora!”

She halted, and looked at the door to the friary kitchen. Brother George hurried down the steps to her and handed her a piece of paper and the bottle. “I had one of my old colleagues look up the serial numbers on the pills. Here’s what it is.”

She read the unfamiliar ingredients, and looked up at him quizzically.

“Does your friend have heart problems?” the friar asked.

“No, not at all. He said he was lucky that way.”

“Well, then I’m not sure why he’d have a bottle of these pills. This is heart medication.”

“Heart medication.”

The friar nodded. “It would introduce a subtle toxicity into the patient’s system that over time could cause dizziness, confusion, even hallucinations. He’d be very sick. Not exactly what someone with a brain tumor would need.”

“Would it kill him?”

“It’s hard to say, but it might. It’s not a poison, but it could start heart problems that could kill him or put him into a coma if not used properly.” He paused. “Now, I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know if there might be some other problem he’s having that would require this medication. But I’m going to make an educated guess here. The bottle you gave me was a supply bottle. It may be that he obtained it without a prescription, and didn’t realize the effect it would have.”

“I see,” she said mechanically.

“But on the surface, I would say, he shouldn’t be taking this. Not without specific instructions from a very good doctor.” He looked at her. “This sounds like a bigger situation than a nineteen-year-old girl can handle.”

“It is,” she said.

“I hope you’ll consider getting some help,” Brother George said with concern.

She nodded and took a deep breath. “I will. Maybe Father Francis can help me…First I’ve got to get changed. Then I can think about it—Thanks very much, Brother George,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried on.

“You’re welcome,” Brother George turned to go back up the steps.

Her heart beating faster, she opened the door with the replacement key Father Bernard had given her. “Cappu! Shin!” she called, remembering her promise to Brother Leon to not go off alone. There were no answering barks.

She glanced around the courtyard, but the dogs were not in evidence. Perhaps they were tracking down a rat somewhere.

Well, I can at least go inside and get changed, she thought. Then I have to go and see what can be done…

As she opened the door to her room, pulling the bobby pins out of her veil, she heard a faint noise. A rat? She dropped the hood of the veil and looked into the shadows in the corridor beyond. A creeping sensation came over her. Someone was inside the building.

“Who’s there?” she called, in case it was one of the friars.

There was a footstep, and a figure came around the edge of the corner. She could see the green eyeshade.

Run. She turned, gathered her skirts, ready to run back towards the door.

“Blanche.”

She knew that voice. It was similar to Bonnie’s voice, but deeper, richer. Younger.

“That is your real name, isn’t it? Don’t go yet. I just want to talk to you.”

Go. She started towards the door again.

“Is there any harm in listening to me? Just stay by the door and listen. Did they really say you couldn’t even speak to me?”

Hand on the door, poised to run, she looked warily over her shoulder at the figure in black.

“That’s right,” the woman said, shuffling closer and halting about ten feet away. She wasn’t wearing her blue hat, and lank black hair hung around her wrinkled face, still covered with the green visor. “But now you call yourself Nora: the dark girl. That’s what you want to be, right? You don’t want to be a silly young thing needing to obey orders to be kept safe. You’ve grown, you’ve learned how to survive in the night.”

“What do you want?” the girl asked brusquely, feeling a chill on the back of her neck. I can still run if I need to, the girl told herself. I can still run.

For an answer, the old lady bent down, opened one of her bags, and pulled out an apple. She bit into it, and munched, looking at the girl meditatively.

“You’re not running away from me now, are you? That’s because you want to know. You don’t want to be a pawn of monks, or men. You want to be independent. You want to be free. A girl of the night, a lady of the dark. Just like me, Nora. Just like me.” She dabbed a hand into her bag again and held something out. An apple lay in her palm, round and red and shiny. “Would you like one? They’re fresh.”

The girl shook her head, no. I’m not that stupid.

The woman laughed. “So you’re a better girl than Eve?” she chuckled. “Smarter than that unlucky lady, are you? Or are you just afraid to know? Would you rather trust in some man, or in some patriarchal God who’s never been in your shoes?” She paused. “What’s that in your hand?”

The girl covered the bottle with her long sleeves and looked at the old woman guardedly.

“So you do know what’s going on, don’t you? It’s silly to have pretenses any longer. Don’t you want to know the other side of the story? Her story, instead of his story?”

“I’m sure you have some way of justifying yourself,” the girl said at last.

“I’ve been wondering why you’re doing this for him. Do you even know what you’re doing? Is it for the money? Or are you just in love with him?”

The girl faced the old woman stolidly. “I’m not in love with your husband.” She pushed her hand on the door to leave.

“I’m not talking about my husband.”

The girl froze, and looked around.

Seeing she had made an impact, the woman sucked in her breath. “You don’t know as much as you think you do, do you? It can be dangerous to meddle in matters that are too big for you.”

Suddenly the woman darted forward and pulled her away from the door, spinning her around. Now she was between the girl and the door. She made a grab for the bottle, but the girl held it away from her and screamed. They struggled as the woman yanked at the girl’s arm, but the girl wrapped the bottle tightly in both hands. Breathing hard, the woman pinched the nerves at the base of the girl’s neck. Black spots swelled up before the girl’s eyes.

The woman’s voice whispered mockingly in her ear. “Sleep, sleep, black night girl, snow white girl, and dream of your phony prince…”

II

“Has anyone seen the dogs?” Charley asked, pausing in the doorway of the refectory.

“I haven’t seen them,” Brother Herman said, and the other friars around the table shook their heads.

“I think they escaped again,” Charley groaned. “Shin’s the worst. He’ll sneak out when I’m not looking all the time.”

“Needs more discipline,” Brother Matt said.

“Well, I guess they’ll be back when they’re hungry.” Charley sat down at the table with resignation. “I’ve got to get busy building a pen before they get lost for good.”

“You’ll build it tomorrow,” Father Francis said, pointing at him to indicate that Charley was under obedience. “Remember—I am the Big Dog.”

Charley panted and inclined his head. The others chuckled.

Leon put down the plate of steamed cabbage leaves he was serving. “Aren’t the dogs with Nora in the high school?”

Brother George cocked his head. “I’m not sure, but I heard her calling them when she went back to her room.”

Leon reminded himself not to be too preoccupied with Nora, and focused his attention on meal prayer. But after the blessing was prayed, he got up. “Father Bernard, can I go check to see if the dogs are in the high school with Nora? She shouldn’t be there by herself.”

“You may,” Father Bernard said, handing him the key, while Matt raised his eyebrows slightly.

Leon paid no attention to him, but hurried out to the high school, crossing the courtyard in the dim light. The sun was almost down.

Anxious despite himself, he banged on the door. “Nora?” he called as he pushed the key into the door and turned it without waiting for an answer.

The door creaked open, and he flicked on the hallway light. Nora lay on the ground, and someone stood over her. The light glinted on a green eyeshade. Seeing Brother Leon, she turned and fled down the corridor.

In an instant, Leon was at Nora’s side. She was groggy, but aware.

“Are you okay? Can you get up?”

Nora glanced down at her empty hands. “She took the bottle.”

“What bottle?”

She stumbled to her feet. “That’s what she wanted, all this time.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “I have to—”

“—Go get help.” He could hear the intruder racing up the steps of the high school to the second floor. Plunging into the shadows, he followed her up.

Up and up the steps he ran, past the locked door to the first floor, the second floor, up to the third floor door, which he knew was unlocked. The echoes of his coming distorted sound, and when he reached the top of the steps, he couldn’t hear where the intruder had gone. He listened, his heart beating, praying for guidance. The doors at the far end of this floor were locked, so he guessed that Nora’s assailant was still on this floor.

Carefully he looked through the window of the door at the top of the steps into the shadowy hallway. Nothing moved.

He pushed the door open silently and stepped into the corridor. It was still lit with the late summer evening sun, peering through the glass doors of the classrooms. Along the sides of the hallway were the stacked-up desks, movable blackboards, chairs, and other furniture they had moved out of the classrooms. Any of these obstacles could provide a place to hide.

Step by step, he moved down the corridor through the stacks of furniture, scanning for movement, listening intently. Fortunately the classrooms were mostly open and bare. A quick look inside each told him they were empty.

At last he was coming towards the double doors at the far end of the corridor. He knew they were chained shut. As he moved closer, a dark figure suddenly rose up from the ground before the doors.

“Don’t make a sound or I’ll shoot you!”

It was Bonnie’s voice. She was standing in front of the doors in her battered black trench coat, brandishing a gun, a streak of sunset red hitting the muzzle. The green eyeshade still covered most of her face, but the hat was gone. No longer hunched down over her bags, she was taller than she usually seemed, taller than Leon himself. And clearly not an old woman.

Help would be coming soon, Leon knew. He raised his hands, grateful that she hadn’t fired first.

“Where’s the closest exit?” she demanded, tossing her head so that the long black and gray hair flew to one side, making it suddenly obvious that it was a wig.

Leon nodded his head back over his shoulder. “Behind me.”

“You’re going to walk me there without calling attention to yourself,” she directed, training the gun on him.

In answer, Leon leaned against the wall of the corridor. “First you tell me who you are, and what you want with Nora,” he suggested.

Bonnie snickered. “Can’t you figure it out for yourself?”

“I’m kinda dumb that way. You tell me.”

“Why, drugs of course,” the woman drew in her breath. “Didn’t you find her cache? She took off about a week ago with a stash, and didn’t pay the cartel. So they sent me to recover the goods.”

“So she’s a small-time drug dealer and you’re the woman above her on the totem pole?”

“That’s how you could put it.”

“Liar,” Leon said flatly. “Liar. This isn’t some drug cartel payback. This is character assassination. Maybe starting to go beyond just character.”

The woman snorted. “So she’s been working her charms on you too, huh? I can imagine what kind of story she told you. Are you going to start moving or do I have to get nasty? I’ve got hollow point bullets in this gun, and they’ll rip your insides to shreds if I shoot you. It’s a bad way to die.”

Brother Leon scrutinized her, standing his ground. Despite her threats, he was fairly certain that the lady wasn’t going to fire that gun, which would alert everyone to their position. “What’s with the eyeshade?” he said easily. “You’re a little too eccentric, even for a bag lady.”

Not bothering to answer his question, she brandished the gun once more and said, “Move!”

Brother Leon went on the offensive again. Keep her talking. “Funny, I know quite a few drug dealers, and I find your story hard to believe. If you want to get rid of her, why the disguise and the fooling around with choker necklaces and perfume? Why not just take her out? In fact, why don’t you just take me out instead of letting me talk your ear off?”

“I was just asking myself that,” the woman said.

“I’ll tell you why,” Leon said, pointing at her. “Because you’re not a drug dealer any more than Nora is. You’re some high-class uptown lady and you’re trying to ruin this girl’s reputation for some reason of your own. And you’re trying to do it carefully so that you don’t get any stain on your own name.” He spread his hands. “I’m right. Aren’t I?”

“If I were you, I would be worrying about the consequences your run-down monastery will be suffering for harboring a criminal.”

“First of all, we’re a friary, not a monastery,” Brother Leon said, folding his arms. “Second of all, who is Nora that she’s such a threat to you?”

“None of your business.”

“Oh, if my brothers are going to be getting in trouble with the police for sheltering her, I think it’s our business.”

“And she’s your particular concern, isn’t she? And you’re just another man who’s fallen in love with her.”

Brother Leon stared at her, taken aback by the change in gears, but seeing the trap. “Well, you’re wrong,” he said. “I haven’t.” He was glad he had been reading his own heart on this subject, and he knew, as he said it, that it was true.

“So blind, so blind!” Bonnie purred. “Don’t you know what beautiful women do?”

“Manipulate men, you mean?”

“But of course. That’s how the game is played. The great war game between the sexes.”

“It’s no war, and it’s no game,” Brother Leon said. He was watching her carefully, and listening. She couldn’t get out without getting past him. He wondered if he dared to tackle her with the gun, but he didn’t quite trust that he would be quick enough.

“Then perhaps you’ve met very few really lovely women. Perhaps that’s why you’re in a monastery in the first place,” the lady hissed.

“Friary,” Brother Leon automatically corrected her as he gauged himself. With a quick prayer, he seized a nearby desk and half-shoved, half-threw it toward Bonnie, ducking as he did so. As he had guessed, she didn’t fire the gun, just dodged. Then she got behind a stack of metal school desks jutting out from the wall and shoved them towards him with vehemence. The stack teetered.

Ho boy, Mother Mary…were his last thoughts as the metal pile came crashing down on him. He had just enough time to throw up his arms to shield his head from the onslaught. The noise of ten desks hitting the floor in three seconds was deafening.

III

“You want me to drop you off here?” Rose sounded puzzled as Bear pulled over to the side of the curb.

“Yes.” Bear turned off the car and tossed the keys to Rose. “Go and get Fish out of his lecture. Tell him it’s very important and to meet me back here.” He grabbed the suit jacket he had worn to Mass and got out of the car into the sweaty heat of the New York evening. Darkness was coming on fast.

“Okay,” Rose tried to sound cheerful as she slid into the driver’s seat and fumbled around for the seat adjustment. “Are you sure you can’t tell me what this is all about?”

“I probably can later on, but there is someone I need to speak to first,” Bear said. “Sorry I can’t be more specific.” He didn’t want to talk about this until he had actually done it.

“That’s okay,” Rose said. She slid the seat forward several inches until she could reach the pedals. “Boy, are you tall!” She pulled away, leaving him on the sidewalk to stare at the great house, alone.

This was where Blanche had been making her visits, and he had never known. Why hadn’t he persisted in asking her more about it? Did she know? How could she not know?

Somehow or other he made his way up the steps to the regal front door. But once there, he stood, looking from side to side, unsure as to whether or not he should go further.

Hardened with a new resolve, he rang the doorbell. He hadn’t been here for a long time—a year? Two years? No, he realized now it had been almost four years. That had been back when...He swallowed and stopped the memory by ringing the bell again.

No one was coming to the door. He glanced upwards and saw a light on in one of the upstairs rooms.

When another two minutes had gone by without an answer to the doorbell, he pulled out his key ring and carefully picked through it. He never threw away keys, but all the same, it had been so long ago that he might have gotten rid of this key, since he had been sure he would never come back here again. The situation had seemed so hopeless. He found the key.

Still, they might have changed the lock. Sliding it into the door, he turned it and heard a click. The outer door opened.

He stepped inside the long narrow entranceway that led to the internal door of the house—an oversized black door with a stained glass window, a golden coil snaking through huge red poppies. Through the clear glass surrounding the flowers, he could see the staircase and hallway beyond. There was no sign of life within. He walked down the short corridor to the door, wondering as he did whether he was tripping burglar alarms. He didn’t care.

Below the door window was a long brass plate that read THE FAIRSTONS.

For a moment, he paused, taken aback. Was this the right house? Then he figured it out: Fairston. His father must have amalgamated his name with that of his second wife’s, something Bear supposed was a trendy New York thing to do. Instead of Fairchild-Denniston, just Fairston.

No wonder Blanche hadn’t made the connection—nor had he or Fish. He knocked on this door, just in case. Once again, no answer.

He took out the matching door key and unlocked the door. “Hello?” he called cautiously.

Inside, the air conditioning made the house frigid after the warm oven outside, and he shivered and shrugged on the jacket. Only the overhead chandelier lit the cold darkness, three stained-glass lotus-shaped flowers dripping orange glass tendrils over his head. He looked around at the staircase, the door leading into the downstairs office, and then met his own eyes in a huge mirror to his left.

That hadn’t been there before. He stared at the vast mirror, festooned with stained-glass ornaments of dragonflies and red fire flowers. It was nearly ten feet high, and its shiny surface reflected mainly the shadows of the rest of the dim interior, the reflection of the lotus lamp blending into the mirror’s other adornments. His father’s second wife had always had a thing for stained glass, he remembered now, though she hadn’t cared for churches at all.

“Hello?” he called again, and paused, listening. There was only the faint murmur of the air conditioning. Quickly, he walked down the passageway to the kitchen. There was a light on over the stove, but the rest of the kitchen was dark. He could see that someone had had a meal recently—dirty dishes on a tray sat beside the sink. Fresh yellow bananas sat on the counter, and an apple peel was left on the kitchen table. He guessed the servants still came in every morning, to clean up. His dad never cleaned house, and Bear couldn’t imagine his second wife doing so.

He opened the door to the garage and peered inside. Two cars sat in the garage, with space for a third. The garage doors opening on the back alley were tightly shut. No sign of life.

Shutting the door, he paced down the hallway towards the light at the other end, past several doors into a little sitting room that opened into the dark living room. There was a reading light on, and a fashion magazine was overturned on a coffee table.

It was a small room, but with marble tables, angular statues, sculptured metal lamps, lots of hard metal surfaces, more impressive than comfortable. His mother had never lived here—this had been the home his father had purchased after their separation. Painful memories welled up too quickly.

He had to see his father, but he didn’t like this place. It was almost as if there was a peculiar smell in the place that made him queasy. Unfortunately, it was all too familiar—that unpleasant feeling in his stomach.

But your past has a hold on you. Blanche had told him in her last letter. Do you think that maybe you can’t find peace because, on some level, you won’t forgive? Though she might not have made her observations in a way that motivated him to change, she had been right about this.

“Hello?” he called once more, loudly, this time.

He listened hard, for the sound of the television, anything. There was silence, except for the usual vibrations of the City beyond the well-insulated walls that shielded the dwellings of the wealthy from the outside clamor. Now he became uneasy. Didn’t anyone hear him? Why wasn’t someone coming? Was there no one here, after all?

Finally, he stepped through an archway into the adjoining living room, and began prowling through the darkness, searching for light, for sound. He made his way to the windows and tried to look out, but couldn’t figure out the drapes. Giving up, he looked back at the lighted sitting room. All was stillness.

His eyes began to adjust to the darkness of the living room. The shelves on the walls had once held books, he remembered, but now he saw the outlines of various objects d’art, probably of the woman’s choosing. They had certainly remodeled this house since he had last been there. No surprise.

He moved toward a second wide archway. Before, this room adjoining the living room had been the music room. Cautiously he stepped inside the deeper darkness.

There had once been a piano here, and he had spent some of his lonely hours in this unbearable house here, working on piano lessons. Playing music had been a distraction with some satisfaction, an excuse to numb his outer senses to concentrate on those fascinating patterns of notes and bars. Bear put out a hand and touched smooth wood. The piano was still here. He caught a whiff of the smell of ivory and dusty innards, and lemon oil, and memories closed around him swiftly, inexorably. It made him want to run, but he stood his ground stolidly. He had hated it, hated the long corridors and stuffy interiors of this house, where everything was silence and secrecy and lies.

* * *

Trying to put his life together again, after prison. Sitting next to his brother on the couch in the living room behind him. His father, tight-lipped, standing before him, lecturing his sons about probation and accountability and curfews. “If you’re going to live in this house, I am going to expect high standards of behavior from both of you.” Arthur had listened, rather sarcastically thinking what a paragon of morality his father had suddenly become.

That had been his first day home from prison, also the day he discovered that the same blond woman he had caught with his father was now living with him. Although they were still not married, she had become a fixture in his life. She had begun to take possession of the house, rearranging things. Talking about plans for extensive renovations. Returning home blissfully from shopping with his father’s credit cards.

Arthur couldn’t figure out if it was moral for him and his brother to live with them. His father’s affair was about as interesting to him as one of the sordid soap operas the blond woman followed with professional interest, having once been an actress in television and off-Broadway plays. His father was fascinated with her. She wanted to start an investment firm, like the one his dad owned, but more “cutting edge.” She and his father discussed marketing strategies constantly. Arthur and his brother tried to tune it out as much as they could. They were preoccupied with far more visceral matters.

His last afternoon at the house, he had had a fever. His brother had been at a GED class, and his father was at work. Arthur had been playing the piano, but the melody he had been attempting to recreate had faltered into dull silence, and he was leaning on the piano lid, staring at nothing. His health hadn’t been great since his mother had died. The grief had become an ache that surfaced in bouts with the flu, and resulted in a sort of mental paralysis, where he would sit for long periods, doing nothing, half dozing, half aware.

His motionlessness must have made him invisible, because he had woken up to hear the blond woman in the next room, talking on the phone. He could see her long curving leg bouncing on her knee as she chattered, sitting on a cushioned chair. He buried his head in his arms to escape looking at her, though he could still hear her voice.

“Yes, it’s finally about to happen. I’m about to become a sinfully wealthy woman.”

The sluggishness of gloom was still infecting his mind, and he hadn’t quite understood.

“… Now that his wife’s really out of the picture, things are finally moving. Yes, it’s been almost a year. That annoying little woman. She kept hanging on forever, too. Fortunately for me there’s no cure for cancer.”

She laughed, apparently at someone else’s joking response. Her voice made his skin crawl.

“Yes, as soon as he makes the vows, I’m getting the company up and going. Yes, he’s promised to fund everything. I can’t wait.”

When the woman hung up the phone and rose from the chair, he didn’t want to move and let her know that he had heard. Anger surged through him, followed swiftly by a wave of hopelessness. Part of him cynically said if Dad wants to marry a fortune hunter, let him. But part of him grieved for the father he had once believed in and insisted that he not keep silent.

All this time, he was straining his ears, trying to figure out where the woman had gone. In the insulated silence of that house, it was difficult to know if she was still in the living room or if she had left.

At last, he had slowly lifted his head, to see her standing in the doorway watching him. A smile flitted around her red lips when she saw his expression.

“Go ahead and tell him. Your father’s never going to believe you,” she had taunted.

That night, his father had called Arthur into his home office and confronted him with the marijuana he had found in his son’s room. His face was taut. “I see I still can’t trust you.”

Arthur set his jaw, knowing that it was useless. After all, his father hadn’t believed him the first time. But he said it anyway. “It’s not mine.”

His father raised his eyebrows. He was turning red, which told Arthur that his father was dangerously angry, even though his tone was civil. “Just like the crack in your locker was not yours.”

“Yes.”

His father fumed. “Young man, tomorrow, I am checking you into rehab.”

I’m not going,” he said obstinately. “I’m not a user.”

“Oh really? Then how do you explain these joints?”

And just as before, his father hadn’t listened to his explanations. Now he started interrupting and talking back to his son, as though he were another teenager. “So why are you trying to blame all of this on Elaine, Arthur? Trying to spread the guilt around? You pretend to be so religious, and all I see is sneaking and lies.”

Something snapped inside Arthur, and he turned on his dad. “You only see what you want to see! You didn’t want to see how you were hurting Mom. You don’t want me on your conscience, so you pretend you don’t know me. You won’t see your sin, so you won’t see anything.”

“Shut up!” his father barked. “I’ve had enough of your dramatics!”

There was silence while his dad ran his hands through his silvered hair in frustration, and Arthur threw himself back down in his chair.

At last his father got up, walked over to him and looked him in the face, his eyes cold. “I will tell you this, son. You are not getting one single penny from me from this moment forth unless you go to rehab. You can’t stay in this house until you decide that you will. I am freezing all your bank accounts, I am taking away your checkbook, you are getting zip, nothing from me. Nada. You understand?”

He looked back at his dad. “You can’t take away the money I got from Mom,” he said, and regretted it as soon as he had said it.

“I most certainly can. I have control of those assets until you’re twenty-one.” His father walked away, then swung around and added, “And that goes for Ben too. You two might as well be the same person—he does everything you do.”

“That’s not fair! Ben has nothing to do with this!” Arthur exclaimed.

“A jury found you both guilty,” his father shot back.

“He’s just as innocent as I am.”

“Then you’ve just deprived him of his money as well,” his father said unreasonably. He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer, indicating that the conversation was closed.

Arthur rose, furious but unable to speak. After a long moment, he spoke, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Dad. What would I have to do to prove I’m telling the truth?”

His father hesitated, not looking at his son. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”

“Then it’s pointless for me to even try, isn’t it?” Arthur said bitterly. “I might as well go out and start doing drugs right now, for all the difference it would make to you.”

His father gritted his teeth and turned back to face him. “If you were to bring me back a legal document stating that the charges you were imprisoned for were found to be false, I would give you back your mother’s money and your share of my assets when I’m gone. Isn’t that fair?”

“It would be, if this were only about money, Dad,” he retorted. “But it’s not.” And he stormed out of the room to his bedroom and slammed the door.

…Only to find the blond woman there, smiling triumphantly.

“Get out of my room,” he had said evenly, not sure why he suddenly felt afraid.

She took a step forward, hands on her hips. “It’s not your room any more, is it?”

* * *

Standing again beside the piano, Bear realized, by comparison, that prison hadn’t been as repugnant to him, nor those dangerous years on the streets, as living in this house had been.

Now the interior was so structurally changed that it more resembled a nightmare about the house than the actual house he had once lived in. He took a step further into the darkness, and caught a glimpse of an orange glow. He turned, and saw the entranceway where he had come in, with the lotus chandelier.

Disoriented, he paused. How had he come back to this place? Mentally he traced his steps backward to the sitting room and down the corridors—but suddenly his attention was distracted. The front door was opening as a slender figure stepped inside.

His heart rushed upwards as though through dark waters towards the light. It was Blanche.