“We could go home,” you say, and clearly that is where you want to be. “Do you believe me?”

“Pearl,” I reply, not knowing what else to say.

“Do you believe me?” you ask again.

Morning light drifts down through the windows. “It doesn’t matter if I believe you, Pearl. This”—I open my arms, indicating the destruction—“this is what we have to deal with right now. What am I going to tell Tom? That you destroyed a room that was precious to him because a ‘kind woman’ told you to? That doesn’t sound very kind to me. Should I tell him that there’s a door in his floor, under this carpet, but apparently there isn’t?”

I feel like shouting. I feel like crying. I feel like leaving. But I keep picking up strands of carpet, chunks of carpet, not even knowing what to do with it all.

I hear you whisper something, but I can’t hear the words.

“What?” I ask in a sharp voice.

“It does matter whether or not you believe me,” you whisper. “It’s all that matters.” You get down on your knees and, through your tears, begin to help me.

After some time, I go into the kitchen and find a bucket, fill it with soap and hot water, and return to your room, settling in to clean the remaining scrap of rug. The worst of the dirt comes up, but even after I’ve cleaned it as best as I can, there is still a tan effect to it, a kind of tint of the lightest brown that covers everything. Scrubbing only made it worse. We try to piece the squares and rectangles of cut carpet back into their original spots, but as we stand there beside your bed and look over the massive rug, I sigh.

It is completely ruined. There is nothing we can do.

I walk back to the kitchen and dump the brown, soapy water down the sink. I stand there and watch it swirl around, listen to the sound the water makes as it vanishes. I rinse out the bucket and the sink and put it all back. I return to your room.

You come out and stand in the hall. There are tears in your eyes.

“Come,” I say. “Don’t worry.” I walk you into the bathroom and start a bath. “Sit in here for a little while. Relax for a minute. I’ll tell Tom when he comes back.”

“But he’ll be so mad. He’ll ask us to leave.”

I think about Tom. I think about Shirley and the room he created for her. I think about the cabin farther up the lake where the four of us stayed and The Point where Mary left us, and the life I lived in this small town seems a million years ago.

“We’ll see,” I say, and I really have no idea if he will or not. He is so different from the Tom I knew as a teenager. No reaction would surprise me.