Or maybe it was being here that was hurting her. Maybe if she had gone on she'd be happier. Instead of being trapped here. Maybe he should tear down the house, burn it right now, let her go, and free the Weird sisters.
Even the thought of wrecking the house made him sick with grief. He couldn't bear the thought of losing her.
Is this what it comes down to? My need for her? Is that more important than what the ladies next door need? What Sylvie herself might need?
He would gladly do whatever it took to set everything to rights. But what was the way things should be? Simple: Sylvie not dead, the Weird sisters free. But Sylvie was dead, except for the power of the house. And the Weird sisters were trapped because of the house. He could not save one without harming the other.
And somewhere Lissy was free as a bird, unharmed by any of this. He knew that, even though he had no evidence, even though for all he knew she was tormented by guilt and living in a hell of her own making. He knew that she was unharmed because that's the way the world worked. A decent person like Cindy lived in hell for a crime she only almost committed. While Lissy, a selfish, lying, conniving murderer, was probably doing just fine.
Wasn't there something he could do? Wasn't there some choice that didn't lead to somebody's destruction?
There was no one to ask. All he could do was lie down on the bed Sylvie had prepared for him and sleep at last.
He dreamed that he was a house. He dreamed that he felt the bones of it when he moved his hands, his arms. That he knelt to form the foundation, strong and steady, that the wind blew across his body, and inside him a heart was beating strongly, and it was his daughter there. She was in the most beautiful alcove in his body, playing, laughing. He heard her laughing. And then... silence. She was gone, and no heart beat there.
He grew cold. Snow piled on him, the wind tore at him. He bowed under the blast of the storm, empty. He did not understand why he was still kneeling there, why he hadn't simply ceased to exist. Why he was not dead, with his heart no longer beating.
And then it beat again. His heart was alive again, only he looked and there was still nothing there, nothing at all, and yet he was coming alive. Where was his heart? Why was he alive when he had no heart?
His eyes flew open and there she was, sitting in the alcove. Sylvie.
Why hadn't he been able to find her in his dream?
Because she wasn't there.
She did not know he was awake. She sat there, holding her knees, her head leaning back, her hair free, as she looked straight above her at the apex of the alcove. Was something carved there? What did she see?
For that matter, what did he see? What was it, exactly, that he wanted from her? With Cindy there had been no doubt about what was driving their passion. But what kind of passion bound him to Sylvie? Certainly he had taken her under his wing—reluctantly at first, but completely. So there was that fatherly, protective element. But she wasn't his daughter. When he thought about it, she might be a year or two older than he was. Except that she hadn't aged these years in this house, so she was still younger. Oh, but what did their ages matter? A man has his children under his protection, and his wife also, and his parents—it's part of what defines a man, to provide and protect. It's what you do when you grow up.
It was partly Sylvie's beauty, he knew that. It wasn't a traditional beauty, not the beauty of models or the fresh-faced beauty of the cinematic girl next door. She had a moody face, and her hair, while it couldn't possibly hold a coif, he was sure of that, had a kind of freedom to it, a contrariness that echoed her elusiveness. What was the beauty of her, really? Was it the line of her slender neck? Was it, in fact, how lean she was? A beauty that would be lost if she filled out to a more womanly shape? He didn't think so.
At last she sensed his eyes on her, and turned to look at him. She smiled. "What are you looking at?" she said.
"Beauty," he said.
"I laugh." But she didn't laugh.
"I'm trying to figure it out myself," he said.
"Thanks."
"I start with the beauty, Sylvie, and figure from there."
"Truth is beauty."
"Is that it?"
"I was just quoting Keats," she said.
"Are you the truth?" he asked. "That's pretty heavy. The truth is dead but still beautiful, haunting us but always out of reach."
She rose lightly to her feet and came to kneel beside his cot. She kissed his cheek. He touched her face and kissed her lips, warm and sweet and slow. "Not out of reach," she said.
"Oh, Sylvie," he said. "Don't you know how tempted I am just to live here forever with you? Keep the place up, leave only to earn enough money to come home to you?"
"Then do it," she said. "Oh, do it, please."
He rolled onto his back, looked at the ceiling. "For how long?" he said. "Until I'm sixty and you're still whatever age you are now?"
"I won't mind."
"I will," he said.
"Then you'll die and we'll be together."
"This is a good plan?" asked Don.
"The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" she said. "Did you ever see it?"
"There are some old ladies next door who are being destroyed by this house."
"Only because they fight it."
He turned to her. "They should come and live with us, too? Is that what you're saying?"
"I don't know why this house is so strong, Don. I didn't make it that way. They were trapped before I was born."
"I want to do the right thing, Sylvie."
"The right thing for whom?" she asked.
"The right thing."
"The greatest good for the greatest number? Did you ever take ethics?"
"Sylvie," he said. "I'm blocked. I'm stopped cold. There's nothing I can do that doesn't ruin somebody's life."
She kissed him. "I know."
"And if I don't do anything, that also ruins lives."
"Beginning with your own."
"Maybe," he said.
"Because you need children," she said.
He shuddered.
"Don't you?" she asked.
"I don't know if I could ever do that again. Now that I know what it does to you when you lose one."
"Is it any worse than losing a parent?"
"Yes."
"Worse than losing yourself?"
"I've never lost myself, Sylvie. Neither have you."
"I must have," she said. "Because it feels so good now that I've found myself again."
"You think because we danced, because we kissed, because we love each other—we do love each other, don't we?"
She kissed him again.
"You think," he said, "that this means our problems are over. But they're not."
She sat crosslegged on the floor. "Something's still wrong."
"Right. But what is it? What's the thing that if we fix it, everything will be all right?"
"It's not the house," said Sylvie. "The house isn't aware, really. It's strong, but it doesn't know anything. It... holds people. That's all it does. It makes them yearn for this place. It's a home."
"And that's not bad."
"That's not bad if you want to be here. My point is that the house isn't what's wrong. It just is."
"The ladies next door don't feel that way."
"You know what the problem is? She's still out there."
Don's mind was on Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea and the mysterious Gladys upstairs. "Who?"
"Lissy. My roommate. My murderer."
"Don't I know it."
"I know I can't live here forever, Don. If you can call me alive."
He squeezed her hand.
She smiled at him. "I know that if you're really going to be happy you have to love a living woman."
"I do," he said. "You."
"I know that maybe if I could let go of this place, if I could drift away. I mean, think about it. Who is it the house holds onto? Not the Bellamys. When they died, they drifted away."