“We spoke this morning. It went badly.” A wry laugh escapes me. I think it’s a laugh. “I made sure it went badly.” I’m wandering through the ground floor of the Manse as we talk. When I got here, the alarm guy was already waiting for me, and this is the first time I’ve been alone in the house since I found the skull.

The skull.

“Are you sure it’s over?” Carrie asks hesitantly.

“Yes. It’s been coming a long time. We worked because I would make the effort, I’d bend my life to match his.” The rooms are very quiet, but the Manse is listening to me. “I’m tired of doing that.”

I don’t want to fight, he said.

Sure.

Oh, come on, Ailsa, what do you actually want from me?

Maybe I do want you to fight. Maybe I want you to fight for me.

Jesus, Ailsa, what does that even mean?

“You shouldn’t have to bend,” she says. “It should be more . . . organic than that. Honey, I’m really sorry.” I hear her blow out a breath down the phone. “I’ll get back as quick as I can tonight. Just . . . be kind to yourself today, okay?”

Be kind to myself. I don’t know what that equates to in her mind. Chocolates, a trashy magazine? A hot bath with scented candles?

I climb the stairs to the second floor and stand in the landing. If this was a television series, there would be some kind of police tape hanging limply from the doorframe of the spare bedroom, but there’s nothing to show that someone once carefully placed a human skull in there. I head into my own bedroom instead.

Detective Laws still hasn’t called. The bones are still in both states: they are my father’s and they aren’t. And I am, too, though I think I have splintered into more than two states. There’s the Ailsa that believes there’s nothing to fear, that every oddity can be explained away, and there’s the Ailsa that sees the layers beneath the Manse. There’s the Ailsa that’s suspicious of each and every person here: Ali, Jamie, Fiona, Ben—Jesus, even Carrie (How well do you really know her?). That’s the Ailsa that scares me most. She might be the one I can never shake.

I sit on my bed and look around the room. Even with the alarm, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sleep here tonight. A sudden shiver runs through me, and it occurs to me that the house is cold. Perhaps the flame on the boiler has snuffed out again. I really ought to get it serviced.

A door thuds.