Besides, what was this? A time tunnel? A vision? A joke? His gut told him that these were his real parents and they were calling to him, but his mind could not quite buy it. He thought it was probably a trick of the House. They weren’t seriously altered, the way Laurie and Stormy said their mothers had been in the House on the Other Side, and they didn’t have the insubstantial forms of ghosts. They looked exactly the way they had thirty years ago, and that made Daniel suspicious.

His mother held out her arms. “Danny.”

He closed the door on them.

He had the sense that he was doing something wrong, that he should be in there, talking to them, that taking this tack would not lead him where he wanted to go, but he had nothing he really wanted to say to his parents—if those figures were his parents—and he ignored that section of his mind and the nagging doubt lapsed into silence.

He moved on to the next door. Behind it was a small anteroom and yet another door. He walked in, opened the second door—

and was home, in Pennsylvania, in Tyler, in his kitchen. Tony was sitting at the dinner table doing his homework and Margot was stirring a pot on the stove. He could smell the delicious aroma of beef stew, could feel the warmth from the stove. Outside it was raining, and the windows were fogged with condensation.

There was no doubt here, no suspicion in his mind. This seemed completely real to him, on all levels, and he tried to rush over to Margot and hug her, but was stopped by what felt like a Plexiglas wall. He moved toward Tony, was stopped again.

He began pounding on the invisible barrier. “Margot!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. He started jumping up and down, waving his arms wildly. “Margot! Tony!”

They couldn’t see him or hear him.

Maybe he was a ghost.

Maybe they were the ghosts.

The thought sent a chill through his heart.

No. Most likely, the House had not transported him back home but was simply allowing him to see, to smell, to hear, to experience what was happening there.

But why?

He folded his arms, stood in place, watched, listened.

Tony looked up from his homework. “When’s Dad coming back?” he asked.

He saw the look of worried concern that crossed Margot’s face, and his heart ached for her. “I don’t know,” she said.

“He didn’t… leave us, did he?”

Margot turned around. “What made you think that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Of course not. I told you, your father’s visiting his old house in Maine for a few days.”

“How come he didn’t take us?”

“Because I have to work and you have school.”

“How come he doesn’t call?”

“I don’t know,” Margot admitted.

“Maybe something happened to him.”