He steps inside. The carpet is recently vacuumed, the shelves dusted, the bed tightly made. His attention focuses on Tigey. Mia’s pink-and-white-striped stuffed animal is tucked into a Ziploc bag and propped up against the pillows. His hands reach for it and tremble before picking it up. The plastic ripples and bulges as he squeezes it. He hurriedly unseals the bag and pulls out the plush animal and brings it to his face and takes a deep sniff. All these years later, it still smells like her. Grassy. And sour-sweet, like milk poured over Cheerios.

He feels Nora’s hand on his shoulder. He prefers to think it’s a comforting gesture rather than a warning. But he tucks Tigey back in its bag and with two hands delicately arranges it on her pillow once more.

Downstairs, he eats four fried eggs splatted with hot sauce, two pieces of wheat toast smeared with butter and raspberry jam, a pile of veggie sausages, a banana, a cup of blueberries and yogurt; he drinks a short glass of orange juice and three mugs of coffee. He feels hollow. He can’t ever remember being hungrier. “Man, these eggs. The yolks. They’re so orange. They’re so good. Is this that free-range shit or something?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

Nora continues to bring him food, and this, more than anything, makes him wonder whether this is just one more level of the dreamscape he has been lost to. “I never thought I’d be here.”

“Here?” She takes a pan to the sink and scrapes some grit off it. “As in, your old kitchen?”

“Here more generally. The two of us, you know, just talking. Without some kind of wall between us, I mean.”

“I guess there’s something about you having had a psychotic break and waking up handcuffed and naked that makes this easier.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She dries her hands on a dishtowel and watches him as he speaks between smacking bites and slurps of coffee. “You know . . . when I was a kid . . . I had this recurring nightmare. I would wake up—but I was still dreaming; the waking up was part of the dream, understand?—and I would go downstairs for breakfast. But there were small things different about the house. Like a new rug. Or framed photos I had never seen before, like of me playing baseball when I had never played baseball. Or me standing in front of Old Faithful when I’d never been to Yellowstone. My parents were in the kitchen, puttering around like they always did, washing dishes and poking at something frying in the pan, but they were older. A little fatter and more stooped. A little grayer. I had lost time.” He sops up the last of the yolk with his toast, pops it in his mouth, and shoves his plate away. “I can’t help but feel like that’s where I’m at.”