“Will you be able to find us in the dark?” Tomasz says, sounding worried. “We will leave a candle burning outside –”
“No, we will not,” Regine says. “He’ll find it, don’t worry.”
“I still do not see why we cannot wait for him –”
“I just need time to gather my stuff,” Seth says. “Some of it’s private. It might take a while.”
“But still –”
“Sweet Jesus, Tommy,” Regine snaps. “He probably just wants to wank again in the last moment of privacy you’ll ever give him.”
Tomasz looks at him, astonished. “This is true?”
Seth can see Regine laughing silently in the moonlight. “I have a brother, Tomasz,” he says. “Wherever he is now, we grew up in that house. Before we moved to America.”
Regine has stopped laughing, and Seth can see her light another cigarette, pretending not to listen.
“While we lived there, something bad happened to him,” Seth says. “Something that made him different, not right. And in an important way, it was my fault.”
“It was?” Tomasz whispers, his eyes wide.
Seth glances down the street. The sinkhole’s ahead of them, his own road next to it. He’s only intended to mollify Tomasz, but the truth of his words cuts sharper than he expects. “Whatever this place is, real or not, my house is dangerous because of how close it is to the prison. And if I’m not coming back, I want to say good-bye to it.” He looks at Regine. “I want to say good-bye to the brother I had there before all the bad stuff happened.”
“And this needs to be done privately, yes, I see,” Tomasz says, nodding gravely.
Seth smiles, despite himself. “You remind me of him. You’re like a version of what he might have been. If he was Polish.”
“I thought you were going to say he was like the version of your brother that wasn’t right,” Regine says, taking another puff of smoke.
“That is not nice,” Tomasz says. “For myriad reasons.”
“We’re going to get the bikes,” Regine says, “so we’ll see you tonight, yes?”
“I’ll try not to be long, but don’t worry if I –”
He nearly falls backward onto the sidewalk as Tomasz lunges into him with a hug. “Be safe, Mr. Seth,” Tomasz says, his voice muffled against Seth’s shirt. “Do not let death get you.”
Seth’s hand hovers over the springy mess that is Tomasz’s hair. “I’ll be careful.”
“Leave him be,” Regine says. Tomasz backs away, letting Regine approach. “I’m not going to hug you,” she says.
“I’m okay with that,” Seth says.
“I wasn’t asking for your approval.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t even bother with the main entrance. That’s what I was going to tell you earlier. Follow the train tracks down to the far side of the prison. You’ll see a big section where the walls have fallen in.”
“Thanks,” Seth whispers back.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Regine says. “You’re not going to find whatever it is you’re looking for and you’re going to get yourself killed in the process.”
He grins at her. “Nice to know I’ll be missed.”
She doesn’t grin back.
“What are you two talking about?” Tomasz says.
“Nothing,” Regine says, then lowers her voice again. “Just think about maybe keeping your promise to Tommy.”
Seth swallows. “I’ll think about it.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, turning away from him. “Nice knowing ya.”
Tomasz waves happily again in the moonlight, but Regine doesn’t look back as they disappear into the darkness.
“Nice knowing you, too,” Seth says to himself.
Then turns and starts walking toward the sinkhole.
Walking toward his home.
42
The van is gone from the front of his house. From where Seth is hiding down the road, he can see the ruts it made in the mud as it turned around and drove away. He waits, but nothing moves, not even a cloud passing in front of the moon in the newly clear sky, the weather changing so quickly it’s like it’s on fast forward.
Somewhere out there, many streets away, Regine and Tomasz are riding northward, their bikes overladen with food and supplies. He takes a moment to wish for their safety. And the wish feels like as much of a prayer as this place can allow.
He moves out into the street, slowly, cautiously, trying to see any sign of the van or the Driver lying in wait, but nothing leaps out at him as he goes. The house looks unchanged as he approaches, aside from the shattered glass of the front window. It’s too dark to see through the broken blinds, and he curses himself for not taking one of Tomasz’s birthday candles to light. He’ll have to go pawing around in the dark for his lantern, and who knows how much damage the fire caused before the rain stopped it? There might be no lantern left to find, no clothes to change into.
No trace of the stuff left over from his family.
What is that stuff, anyway? he wonders, considering Regine’s explanation of everything. Is it his memories reconstructing a place or is it actually the same physical house from when his family moved to America?
Or when they chose to believe they moved to America, when in fact they just lay down in sleek black coffins and welcomed a new version of what was real?
He remembers the move, though, the stress and anxiety of it. Owen hadn’t been out of hospital very long and was still deep in rehab to get his motor skills functioning properly. The doctors were always hesitant to say how much was damage from his injuries and how much was psychological trauma, but his mother had been insistent on a change. It wasn’t too soon, she’d said, and even if it was, surely a new environment with entirely new stimuli – and entirely new doctors, for that matter, who weren’t so bloody useless – could only help her younger son. Plus, she couldn’t stand living in this house for one moment longer.
Seth’s father had come up with a surprising solution. A small liberal-arts college on the dark, wet coast of Washington, where he’d once spent a semester as a young visiting professor, had answered an inquiry and said yes, as a matter of fact, they did have a place for him to teach, should he want. It was even less money than he made in England, but the college was so desperate for staff, they’d provide a housing stipend and moving expenses.