“Our choices seem to be: walk away and probably permanently destroy our credit; sell at a loss and keep paying the rest of the loan for a house we don’t have, or try to find new renters and wait it out until things turn around.”

“So we wait it out,” Jen said.

He nodded wearily.

She hadn’t been by the house since they’d moved out, and it was not exactly on her way to work, but she couldn’t get the image of all of those neighborhood For Sale signs out of her mind, and she decided to drive by on her way to the optometrist’s office.

Three of the houses were for sale, it turned out, but what shocked her was the condition of some of the others. In the few weeks since she’d been here, what had been a nice street lined with modest but well-maintained homes had deteriorated into a slum. In that short amount of time, somehow, weeds had overgrown yards, broken cars and motorcycles had proliferated, and there was even a house with a boarded-up front window. The entire tenor of the neighborhood had changed, and she realized that, irrespective of the town’s foreclosure rate, they were going to have to lower the rent if they hoped to lure any new tenants.

Their house was one of the nicer ones on the block, but she still shivered as she passed by. Although their renters had paid through the end of the month, and she and Lane had assumed they would stay until then, it appeared that the family had already moved out.

Which meant that whatever was in The Room was all alone.

There was no one around to hear it tapping on the walls.

Jen accelerated, grateful when she finally passed the end of the block. Slowing the car, she became aware that she’d been gripping the steering wheel far too tightly. Relaxing a little, she glanced in her rearview mirror to see an overweight man run across the street from one yard to another wearing only his underwear.

Had he run into their yard?

The placement seemed about right, but Jen wasn’t about to backtrack and find out. She wasn’t going anywhere near that neighborhood again without Lane by her side, and she sped up until she reached the highway and was able to merge with the light morning work traffic.