He favored them with a sarcastic glare. "Well, if you two hens are gonna cluck all night, I guess I'll go to check out my old room."

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing up there with the door locked," Norma said. He left to the sound of their laughter.

As he ascended the stairs, a creak came from above. He froze, momentarily anxious. Mom's in the bath, Smartypants, he reminded himself. Nadine's paranoia had him jumping at shadows. In his own house, this time.

The bathroom door was open a crack. Water sloshed from within, a thin trickle of steam escaping through the doorway. He ignored the urge to check on Ruby and continued to his old bedroom.

Cardboard boxes had been stacked around his small single bed, which stood in the alcove between two sloped walls surrounding the single window. He raised the flap on one of the boxes and peered inside at a jumble of dusty framed photographs, trophies, old newspapers and other things he didn't recognize or recall. All he knew was that they didn't belong to him. Maybe they belonged to Norma's family or his mother.

The walls were bare, flocked wallpaper like the rest of the house. He'd been too young for posters and Ruby probably wouldn't have allowed them anyhow. He hadn't started putting things on his wall until he was a little older, maybe nine or ten, when he'd cut out photos from magazines.

He closed the door. It opened again easily, didn't jam or lock on its own. The keyhole was still scratched on the outside where Norma had tried to jimmy it during the fire.

He remembered pulling on the handle in terror, the smell of smoke already heavy in the air. Norma carrying him down the stairs in her arms. The heat of the fire like a bad sunburn as they rushed to the front door.

He looked at the scar on his hand. The door handle was glass and he remembered it had been cool, like it was now, so it couldn't have burned him. The memory of having burned it on a woodstove wasn't possible either, according to Norma. But he already had the injury by the time they moved to Stratford.

Something had to have caused it. He supposed it didn't matter. It was just weird that he couldn't remember.

Could that be the hidden trauma Sheila hypothesized? The one that made it difficult to share his life with someone else? The one that made him impossible to love?

He sat on the foot of the old bed. It was small but better than the sofa. Sheila would get the guest bedroom, which had a double bed, since she was technically the only guest.

He lay back on the small pillow. Shadows of the tree outside played on the stucco ceiling. He tried to imagine having slept in this bed when he was little but it felt foreign. Like someone else's life.

"Norma?"

Ruby's voice was so weak he barely heard her. She called again a moment later, not much louder. Worry in her voice. He pushed up from the bed and stepped out into the hall.