But the walls—there are no walls, not exactly. There are only bookshelves. The walls are covered in books from floor to ceiling, from corner to corner, the only break being two tall, narrow windows that face the driveway and another window at the far side of the room that faces the side yard and, beyond it, the forest. The shelves are stained a light, almost transparent stain so that the wood comes alive. Light comes through the far window in a long, shining beam.

“Oh,” you say, and that is all. You take two or three hesitant steps into the room, waiting for Tom to say it’s a mistake, this is not your room, you shouldn’t go any farther. But he doesn’t say anything. I glance at him, and he is watching you, his face placid, his eyes sharp.

The floors of the room are a light wood, but the wood is only visible around the edges, because the floor is covered in the most incredible Persian rug I’ve ever seen, bright red with swirling patterns of blue and green and tan. The short ends of the rug have long, ancient-looking tassels that are tangled on each other. Your feet sink into the rug.

“That’s why we take off our shoes before we come into the house,” Tom says in an emotionless voice.

You nod, your face serious, looking slightly embarrassed because you have your shoes on. You slip carefully out of them and place them beside the door. There is a round table by the far wall of books, and you move toward it. Three books rest on the table, and you sit lightly in one of the two chairs, your eyes sinking into the book you open.

“This is the room I built for Shirley at the end,” Tom says in a quiet voice. The room is so long and he talks so quietly that I doubt you can hear us. “She lived her last days in here, reading, sleeping.” He pauses, and his voice is without emotion. “Don’t tell the girl. I wouldn’t want her to be afraid.”

“Shirley’s . . . gone?”

He sighs. “Yes.”

“How?”

“She had cancer. But that’s not how she died.”

I look at him, waiting.

“She drowned,” he says, and I can feel my pulse quicken.

“Drowned?”

He nods. I think again of what the man told me in the diner, but I’d rather talk about that with Tom when Pearl isn’t around.

“So, you were married all this time?”

“Nearly forty years,” he says.

I sense his disappointment that we weren’t together all that time, that he and Shirley and Mary and I weren’t great friends for all of those decades. Disappointment that I left them. That I never came back.

“So, we just missed her.”

“She would have loved seeing you.” He glances over at Pearl. “And her.”

I am penetrated by a deep guilt. “This room. It’s rather incredible.”

“I don’t come in here much.”

I nod, walk to the table, and check out the three books. One is called Pan’s Labyrinth. It has a blue cover with a girl in the middle and tall trees growing up around the edges. I fold over the book you’re reading and see it is a worn paperback called The Golden Key. The third is a beautiful, sky-blue, hardback book embossed in gold lettering: The Light Princess.