When he opened the door to the darkened house, the inside air felt clean for its coolness. He went up the stairs, creaky and steep, and into the back room. He kept his clothes there, sacrificing the only closet in the master suite to Lily. He pretended he was being magnanimous, but the truth was, Silas liked having his own space. He pulled off his dirt-streaked T-shirt and jeans and tossed them in his suitcase with his other laundry. The early-evening sun was at its warmest and butter smooth, melting against the paned windows. He looked over the lawn again and caught the girls as they stumbled out of the water onto the patch of sand his father insisted on calling a beach. He smiled, thinking of Sean’s blush. A girlfriend was exactly what Sean needed. Ruth might be a little out of his league, if Silas was being honest. But liking her was a start.

Silas pushed through his shirts on their hangers, wanting a button-down for dinner, even though it would be only the five of them. The sound of the girls’ laughter floated around him like wind chimes. He loved hearing Mickey so happy.

Silas never felt awkward with Mickey. True, she was barely fourteen and therefore only just beginning, but Silas wasn’t worried. He understood Mickey in a way Lily never had, in a way neither of them had ever understood Sean. Silas and Mickey were cut from the same cloth. Mickey was a naturally happy, bright little girl. But Silas could see the other part of her, the part he recognized only because he had spent so long looking for a name for it in himself. The moments when the happiness he trusted as normalcy would drain right out of him, leaving neither sadness nor anger in its absence, just nothing at all. In these moments, he honestly believed that he could stop whatever he was doing, turn on his heels, and walk straight out of his life without looking back. That he wasn’t even human, that none of it had ever been real or his or anything at all. Leaving it all behind would be as easy as walking out of a movie theater, as putting down a novel without a hook.

“Can I use this shower instead of the one inside?”

Ruth’s voice was directly below his open window, rich despite its youth and loud enough that he could’ve been right next to her. Silas sidestepped out of view on instinct, his chest bare.

“If you like spiders,” Mickey answered.