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Timothy nodded. He looked back at the House, saw sparks like fireflies shooting into the night sky.

“Get in.”

And they drove away.

CHAPTER 22

The One Who Remembers

For a long while, many days and then weeks, the place was empty above the town. On occasion when the rains came and the lightning struck, the merest plume of smoke would arise from the charred timbers sunk inward on the cellar and its broken vintages and from the attic beams fallen in black skeletons on themselves to cover the buried wines. When there was no longer smoke there was dust which lifted in veils and clouds, in which visions, remembrances of the House, flickered and faded like sudden starts of dream, and then these, too, ceased.

And with the passage of time a young man came along the road like one emerging from a dream or stepping forth from the quiet tides along a silent sea to find himself in a strange landscape staring at the abandoned House as if he knew but did not know what it had once contained.

The wind shifted in the empty trees, questioning.

He listened carefully and replied:

“Tom,” he said. “It’s Tom. Do you know me? Do you remember?”

The branches of the tree trembled with remembrance.

“Are you here now?” he said.

Almost, came the whisper of a reply. Yes. No.

The shadows stirred.

The front door of the House squealed and slowly blew open. He moved to the bottom of the steps leading up.

The chimney flue at the center of the House hollowed a breath of temperate weather.

“If I go in and wait, then what?” he said, watching the vast front of the silent House for response.

The front door drifted on its hinges. The few remaining windows shook softly in their frames, reflecting the first twilight stars.

He heard but did not hear the sussurance about his ears.

Go in. Wait.

He put his foot on the bottom step and hesitated.

The timbers of the House leaned away from him as if to draw him near.

He took another step.

“I don’t know. What? Who am I looking for?”

Silence. The House waited. The wind waited in the trees.

“Ann? Is that who? But no. She’s long gone away. But there was another. I almost know her name. What …?”

The House timbers groaned with impatience. He moved up to the third step and then all the way to the top where he stood, imbalanced by the wide open door where the weather drew its breath, as if to waft him in. But he stood very still, eyes shut, trying to see a shadow face behind his eyelids.

I almost know the name, he thought.

In. In.

He stepped in through the door.