Sarah turned into the laundry room. She enjoyed how her days were falling into a peaceful pattern, which allowed her to daydream that she was someone else and had a regular life. After eating breakfast, she’d enter Mick’s house and begin the day’s work. She’d always start in the kitchen and add to the list she had created with notes on which foods had been eaten. She was getting a pretty good idea of what foods he preferred and how much to purchase. As she worked through the day, she could feel his presence. It was like having a conversation, a relationship with an imaginary friend. He didn’t have any photos lying about, which was odd; but then, she didn’t have any either. Hadn’t had a chance to grab some before she ran. Every now and then she would duck into a public library and look her parents up online to see their beloved faces at a past gala or a fundraiser. She would magnify the photos and trace her fingers over the familiar planes of their faces, longing to print them out so she would have something concrete, but it was too risky. Someone might discover them. All she had was her mother’s robe, which Auntie Jane had brought to the hospital the night before she ran. Why didn’t Mick have any family memorabilia lying about? Did he have brothers and sisters? Were his parents alive? Maybe he was an orphan. That would make sense, as there was a wounded wild wolf quality wrapped around him like a cloak, a loneliness beyond the brash mask he wore, which seemed to have burrowed bone deep. She did find a worn hard copy of the children’s book Amelia Bedelia tucked in the bottom of his underwear drawer when she was putting away laundry. The library’s borrowing card was still tucked in the pocket toward the front. Goldfield Elementary School. Did he go there? And why this book? But other than that the only personal objects were his clothes and a couple of books on his bedside table: Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Lantern, Andre Dubus’s The Times Are Never So Bad, George Saunder’s Tenth of December, and Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House. In his office was a Golden Globe and an Oscar for the movie Run, and another Oscar and Golden Globe, as well as a Prix de la mise en scène and a Palme d’Or, for The Spider’s Kiss. But the rest of the objects in the house, the cut crystal, the choice of furniture, the artwork and decorative touches, seemed at odds with the man. It felt almost as if Mick had arrived with a suitcase and a couple of books and was squatting in someone else’s home.