“So you take after them,” I said, the words leaping free of my lips before I gave them permission to, a nervous and ironic laugh underscoring the observation.

He turned to regard me, that skeletal mask free of any trace of humor. Pressing my lips together, I banished my almost-smile and forged forward.

“It must be painful to have their likenesses, their ghosts, so close.”

“They are everywhere,” he said with barely any voice at all, his gaze returning to the portraits. “Forever as present as they are absent.”

“We . . . don’t put up pictures of Mom,” I said. “I have them, of course. But . . . they’re hard to look at. Even after all this time. I can’t imagine what it must be like walking through a house filled with so many memories. But, then again, after today . . . I guess I can.”

“It’s always as if they are merely in the next room,” he said. “Or as though I have only just missed them.”

“Like they’ve been gone for years,” I said. “But at the same time, only just—”

“A day,” he finished.

Quiet pulsed, and my bravery grew. Again, I scanned my mind for some way to gently steer him in the direction I needed us to go. Before I could utter another word, though, he spoke.

“Charlie does not know about your mother.”

Charlie. My whole chest seized at his uttering of her name. Tears stung my eyes.

“She’s too young to understand,” I said. “We’re afraid she . . . We don’t want her to know the truth. It’s too much.”

“There will be pain either way,” he said.

Will be? With a thrill of hope, I ventured on.

“One day, when we’re both older, when she knows, I’m going to take her back to Syracuse. To see her. Mom, I mean. Even if Dad doesn’t want to go.”

“Oh?” he asked, and it wasn’t lost on me that he didn’t jump to forbid this.

“I sometimes wish we’d never left,” I went on. “Because even though she’s gone, even though it’s hard to look at pictures, it’s also hard being so far away. I can’t go see her. And sometimes—a lot of times, actually—it feels like I would be able to bear missing her a little more if I could just be close to her. I’m not sure if that makes sense—”

“It makes perfect sense,” he said, his voice a little less Zedok and more . . .

“Now Dad and Charlie are gone, too,” I said. “But also, just like you said . . . everywhere. Except I’ve been here days. You, though. You’ve been here for—”

He swiveled his head my way, those startling eyes stopping me yet again, warning me I might have gone too far, stepped too near to his edge . . .

Now, I told myself. Say it now.

“Erik. I want to—”

“No,” he said. “You mustn’t tell me why you’ve come. Allow me instead to guess.”