Don could feel Sylvie slipping through his fingers. "No," he said. "Not till I've done... something."
"What?"
"I got to set things right."
"You can't."
"If Sylvie's going to fade from that house no matter what I do, then she's sure as hell not going alone!"
"If you thinking of killing yourself, do the kind thing and tear the house down first, all right?" said Gladys.
"I'm not killing anyone," said Don.
"You're killing me right now," said Gladys. "Me and these ladies. Look how they can't take their eyes off that house."
It was true. Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea had both wandered over to the window and now had their faces pressed against the glass like little children.
"Close that curtain, Mr. Lark," said Gladys.
Don excused his way past the Weird sisters and drew the curtain closed. Miz Evelyn was crying softly, and Miz Judea looked like she had lost her last best hope in life. Gladys was right. This couldn't go on.
"Thank you for your help," he said. And it was help. He knew more. Knowing was better than not knowing.
But not by much.
20
Lissy
All the way back around the fence to the Bellamy house, Don was filled with dread. Sylvie was fading already, Gladys had said. Now that she didn't have that aching hole of guilt and shame in her heart, the house didn't have so much power over her. What if she was already gone? At this moment it was an unbearable thought. I just found her, he thought. I didn't ask to be in this swamp, and neither did she, but we found each other, and it's not right that I should already be losing her.
The door wasn't waiting open for him. She wasn't in the alcove in the ballroom. He called her name, striding through the main floor. Called again, again, more loudly, as he ran up the stairs, searched the second floor. Then up to the attic, and she wasn't there either, and now he felt it like another death. How could it happen so quickly?
The basement? She never went down there on purpose.
But then, that was before she learned the truth about who killed whom. Don skimmed down the stairs like a schoolboy, then ran the length of the ballroom to get to the basement stairs. "Sylvie!" he called. "Sylvie!"
She still didn't answer, but now it didn't matter, because there she was, pressed against the foundation wall, almost behind the coal furnace. Near the tunnel entrance.
"Sylvie, what are you doing?"
She smiled wanly. "I don't know," she said.
"What brought you down here?"
"I just... wanted to see myself again."
Was it ghoulish to want to see a corpse, if it was your own? "So did you?"
"No," she said. "Part of me wants to go there. Down the tunnel. But the house doesn't want me there. I don't know what's the right thing to do."
"All I know about the tunnel is that it's not part of the house," said Don. "Gladys says it's older than the house."
"You know what it feels like?" she said. "If I go down there again, I'll be free!"
"Depends on what you mean by freedom." He explained to her what Gladys had said about how the house might be losing its hold on Sylvie. "If you want to be free, then go," he said. "I can't ask you to stay."
"Yes you can," she said.
"Then stay," he said. "Please stay."
She launched herself from the wall, ran to him, threw her arms around him.
He held her, but as he stroked her hair, it kept passing right through his fingers. Slowly, but passing through. He couldn't help the tears of grief that began to flow. "You're going," he said.
She pulled away from him, her eyes frightened. He showed her what was happening with her hair. In reply she clung to him all the more tightly.
He lifted her—lighter now, or was it his fear of losing her that made her seem like nothing in his arms?—and carried her upstairs, back to the alcove. "I'll tell you something," he whispered to her. "If I lose you, Sylvie, then you can count on this. I'll find Lissy wherever she's hiding. I'll find her and..."
"And what?" she said. "Look, your hair goes through my fingers, too." She shuddered. "Which one of us is disappearing?"
"You don't know how many times I've wished that I could."
"Me too," she said. "And now that I don't want to, the wish comes true." She kissed him lightly. "But you didn't answer my question."
"What did you ask?"
"What you'll do when you find Lissy?"
Kill her, thought Don. But then he knew that it wasn't true. He wouldn't have the heart for it. "There's no statute of limitations on murder," he said. "I'll turn her in."
"Waste of time," said Sylvie. "Don't even bother looking for her, Don. They won't do anything to her because there won't be enough evidence, nothing to point to her except you, and you got all your information from the victim's ghost. And they'll say to you, Well, Mr. Lark, where's that ghost now? And you'll say, Sorry, Your Honor, but she faded away."
"So Lissy gets away with it."
"She already got away with it. There's nothing you can do about that."
"That's all I seem capable of, when it really matters: nothing."
Sylvie leaned back. "I think I won't sleep tonight," she said. "I don't want to go to sleep and wake up invisible. So I'll stay awake. I'll watch you all night. I'll hold your hand. And then when your hand sinks through mine and leaves my hand empty, I'll know I'm gone."
Again Don's tears flowed. It made him angry, to have to face grief again. He clenched his fists. "Damn, what happened to me? I used to be stronger than this."
"Fat lot of good it did you. I'm glad you're crying for me, Don. I've been dead for a decade, and you're the first one to shed any tears of grief for me."
"This is just the start, kid."
"You want to hear something pathetic?" she said. "I've had more kisses from you than from every other boy or man in my life combined."
He kissed her again.
"What's that for? You've already got the record."
"Running up the score," he said.
She kissed him back.
"Mm," she said.
He broke off the kiss. "What?"
"Just thinking," she said. "About Lissy. Maybe we're giving her credit for being too resourceful. You know, coming up with a false name. That's not easy to do. I mean, sure, you can get fake ID, but don't you have to know somebody? How do you go buy a fake driver's license?"
"She bought drugs," said Don. "So she knew some underground people."
"No, Lanny bought the drugs. Just pot, mostly. I don't think she knew anybody like that."
"She really did coast on other people, didn't she," said Don. "He buys the drugs, you do her homework."
"That's the thing," said Sylvie. "When she needed some A papers right away, she didn't write them, she didn't do anything on her own, she just copied mine. Whatever looked easiest. Going underground and changing identities, that's hard. I just don't see her doing it."
"So you're saying she'll be living under her own name?"
"Don't you think?"
"No," said Don. "She knew she had to conceal her crime. That's why she killed Lanny, it's the only possible reason. She didn't know that neither body was going to be discovered. So she couldn't keep her own name."
The idea dawned on both of them at once. "She used mine," said Sylvie, as Don said, "How much did you two look alike?" They laughed for a moment, more at the excitement of the discovery than the coincidence of their talking at once.
"You said you two could swap clothes," said Don.
"Same color hair, nearly," said Sylvie. "Same basic shape in the face. Not that we looked like sisters, but if you didn't know either of us..."
"I mean, could she use your ID?"