The longer I examine the house, the larger it seems. I have an empty feeling inside of me, an uneasiness. Part of it was the sadness I saw in Tom’s eyes at the diner when he first came over, as well as the fact that my mission of finding you a place to stay in Nysa seems more and more outlandish the longer we are here. Then there’s the stillness of the trees, the removed choppiness of the lake, the way the candy-blue sky drapes around us all the way down to the tree line, placing us in a bubble.

And always, there is the knot on the side of my head.

I reach up and touch it. It feels bigger. A wave of nausea comes and goes, much faster than the other times. I grit my teeth. That’s the last thing I want to do, throw up all over Tom’s manicured lawn.

He emerges from the side door of the garage, and I stand where the driveway meets the yard. I expect to see him grinning, proud of this beautiful house, the view, the exclusivity that seclusion can bring. It’s the way I imagined him the entire drive here, speeding along in his expensive car the way he drove when he was eighteen, grinning, hand out the window. Did he roll down the window while we drove here from town? I didn’t notice.

But he’s not smiling. In fact, his face is drawn, and he seems even sadder than at the diner. You come around the corner of the house, run across to him, and grab his hand in an unexpected show of affection, and he reaches up with his other hand, pulls down gently on his chin.

“Can I show you the house?” he asks in a weary voice.

If the day outside is bright and blue and winsome, the inside of the house is nearly the opposite. Its floors are cold stone tile and dark hardwood, the walls covered in rich colors that surely took many coats of paint. The curtains are thick and swollen and keep out the light. There are old paintings on the walls, each with its own dim light above it. Some of the interior walls are brick, and I wonder if this was once a smaller home Tom added on to. I’ll have to ask him.

We follow him through a winding maze of hallways, up half a flight of stairs, back down, and around a corner.

“This will be your room, Pearl,” Tom says, and as you and I enter, I can sense the wonder rising between us.

The room is large, sits at the front left corner of the house, and would be long enough to have three beds side by side, although there is only one, right inside the door. The rest of the room stretches out in a long rectangle away from us. The ceiling is much higher than the ceilings in the other rooms, and it is painted light blue, so at the edges of my sight it feels more like the sky than a ceiling.