Kant waited. He was silent, his expression inscrutable.

Margot dabbed her tongue across her dry lips. Her fingers were numb, but the nerve endings still prickled when she clenched her hands into fists. She drew a breath, bracing herself, as though she were preparing to plunge into an ocean, and leaned forward to step inside her home.

3

A clock ticked somewhere deeper in the house, meting out small slices of time that couldn’t quite match her heartbeat. A hall speared ahead, with open archways and closed doors on both sides. Limited light streaked through windows that had gathered years’ worth of residue.

A floorboard creaked as Kant shifted past her. He ran his fingers over a set of switches just inside the door and the lights flashed on in bursts, starting above her and shooting down the house’s length.

The gold glow wasn’t as strong as she would have wanted. It should have been enough to chase the shadows away, but instead it barely made them retreat; they clustered in corners, around furniture, along the walls.

“Kitchen’s this way,” Kant said, shifting toward the open archway to their left.

Margot didn’t immediately follow. Her eyes tried to drink in the house’s details, but even with the lights, they seemed to merge in unnatural ways. There was too much to take in at once, too many lines and curves and corners. A flash of a paisley-patterned armchair to the right. A sitting room? Wood-paneled walls here; painted walls farther along. Old floorboards ran through the house. They were all worn down; only the varnish closest to the edges had survived.

The sound of running water broke Margot’s hesitation. She moved forward, tiny flecks of dust spiraling around her as she stepped into the archway.

The kitchen was dated, its cabinets and appliances all harking back to an older world and chipping around the edges, but it still struck Margot as very much alive. The clutter felt suspended in some kind of shrine-like state. The wrinkled towels hung over the oven handle, the kaleidoscope of magnets scattered across the fridge, the half-empty jars of pecans and dried apricots pressed against the splashboard—they all told tiny pieces of a narrative that Margot badly wanted to hear.

Kant had shed his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. He stood at the sink, refilling the kettle. The window wasn’t large, but it did its part in highlighting the wrinkles across his face. His gaze didn’t waver as he watched the water flow.

Margot stopped just short of entering the room. Her legs felt strangely unsteady. “You knew my parents, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” It came out as a short syllable—yah—closer to a grunt than conversation. He looked at her over his shoulder, and his eyes softened a fraction. “You’ll want to know about them. But I need something to drink first.”

“Right. Sure.”