He shook his head. "Like that makes you different from the rest of us."
She buried her face in her hands. "You like me now, don't you, Don."
"Yes."
"Because I stopped you from wrecking the house."
"No. I liked you a long time before that. Now is just when I could admit it to myself."
"But you shouldn't," she said. "You shouldn't like me."
"Oh, right. OK. Whatever."
She laughed a little. But maybe it wasn't a laugh.
"If you knew what I did. What I've done. You wouldn't like me."
He could feel it coming. Another confession. Like Cindy's.
"Well then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to know."
"I don't want to tell you."
"So don't, then! Why do people have to confess things? I'm not a priest! I'm just a guy with an incredibly screwed-up life who's trying to maybe fix it up into something, and every time I turn around somebody's laying their own screwups on me, and I don't want to hear it!"
She was starting to cry. Dammit, he didn't want to make her cry.
"Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't believe you before. I'm sorry you've been shut up in this place for—ten years? Why did you stay here for ten years? You had everything going for you. A degree. A job. Providence, right? It was a job you wanted, right?"
She nodded.
"But here you are. What is this, then? Penance? What crime did you commit that was so terrible you should be put away for ten years? In solitary confinement, it's a miracle you didn't go crazy. In this house, prowling around, letting it get under your skin, letting it get into you. What did you do that deserves this?"
In reply, she bent over and buried her face in her hands and wept.
"Your turn now," he whispered. "First me, now you." The family that cries together... what? Dies together? Fries together? Lies together? He shook the thought out of his mind. We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again.
Black hole.
He thought of the tunnel under the house. The one thing she didn't know about. The one place she couldn't see.
15
Tunnel
"Okay, look, I'm not doubting you now," he said quietly. "I think this house does some weird things. OK? And you have this sense of the house, right? Like—what, like it's part of you, right? Or you're part of it."
She nodded.
"But you really didn't know where my wrecking bar was, did you?"
She shook her head.
"The stuff high in that cupboard over the fridge, you knew about that. It sort of washed up there. Washed to shore, so to speak."
She nodded.
"So why couldn't you see behind the furnace?"
No answer. No movement.
He'd have to try another tack. "Why didn't you ever get to that job in Rhode Island? Why didn't you go? You were so close."
Still no answer.
"And you never got your degree. After working on it for so many years."
"Some of us don't suffer from completion anxiety."
Good. She was talking. She was joking a little. "What held you here, Sylvie? There were other people living in this house that last year before the landlord closed it down. I bet some of them even lived here longer than you. They were able to leave. The house didn't hold them. Your roommate, Lissy. She left, right? Got her degree?"
Sylvie shrugged.
"But you stayed."
"I guess I washed up here." She wasn't crying anymore. That was good, too.
"The whole house, you feel it, the shape of it, the strong points, the weak points. All the... moods. Of the house."
"Maybe. I feel things, anyway. Nobody knows everything about anything."
"Why not that tunnel in the basement?"
"I don't like the cellar," she said. "So sue me."
"It's more than that, Sylvie," he said.
"The house wants to be beautiful again. The tunnel doesn't have a thing to do with that."
But it did. He knew that. Whatever was holding her here had something to do with that tunnel. She couldn't go near it, but she couldn't get too far from it, either. He thought of how the tunnel had been closed off. The rocks piled up, yes, but placed lightly, balanced, not a solid barrier, not enough to contain anything large or strong. Just enough to keep from having to see what was down there. Or to keep something down there from seeing in.
"I thought for a while you were getting in and out of the house through that tunnel."
She shook her head. "Please just forget about that. It's nothing."
Forgetting it was the one thing he couldn't do. He was already filthy from plaster, from the dust of the rubble. He might as well do it now. He was going to have to do it eventually. "Look, just stay up here, OK? Nothing down there can hurt you." He got up from the bench and stepped through the newly disarranged piles of his tools until he found the pick.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Like you said, it has nothing to do with you. I'm going to walk the tunnel, see if it's caved in. See if it's a hazard. If it is, I have to seal it off for real."
"It's no hazard."
"Forget about it. It's nothing. Like you said." He grabbed his flashlight and headed down the hall for the cellar stairs.
She ran after him down the hall. "Please," she said. "Leave the tunnel alone."
He didn't pause in his stride. "I have a feeling that tunnel's the most interesting feature of this house."
"It's not. It's just damp and dirty."
"So you have been down there." He jogged down the basement stairs.
"Yes. But I stopped going because it isn't safe, it could cave in on you."
Don reached up and switched on the basement worklight. "Fess up, Sylvie. What are you hiding down there? You keep your stash down there?"
He meant it as a joke, but she wasn't laughing. "There's nothing down there that belongs to me," she said.
"Then stand back and watch the rubble fly."
Now, with a light, he could see how much the barrier had collapsed from his previous foray here, searching for the wrecking bar. The gap at the top was now several feet high. He could crawl over. But he didn't want to do that. He'd have to clear the rubble away to seal up the gap or to open it permanently. Either way, the job needed doing.
He set to work with the pick. Mostly he just used it like a scraper, drawing the stones away from behind the furnace. As he cleared them away, more fell from the barrier. "Look at this," he said. "Easy. Not much of a barrier at all."
He turned to face her. She stood half-hiding behind the furnace.
"Flimsy," he said. "Like it was built by somebody little and not very strong."
Finally it had collapsed as much as it was going to. Then the work got tedious and slow as he bent over and picked up the stones and pitched them or hiked them across the cellar out of the way. Sylvie backed out of range. He was vaguely aware of her waiting by the stairs.
By the time the job was done, his back was aching from holding that bent-over pose. But the door into the tunnel was clear. Taking up the flashlight, he took a couple of steps into the tunnel.
"Wait!" Sylvie called from behind him.
He turned back, found her standing between the furnace and the foundation.
"I'm begging," she said. "Don't go." She looked almost frantic, and yet she spoke quietly.
"Tell me why not," he said.
"Because I like you."
"What, there's something terrible down there?"
"Yes."
"Some kind of monster?" He said it mockingly. "I'm not much afraid of a monster that couldn't get through that barricade."
"There's no monster now."
His patience was wearing thin. "Stop the mysteries and tell me!"