“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Breathe. Come inside. There’s something I want you to see.”
She looked at him the way people look at strangers when they are calculating basic safety.
“I’m not a person who goes into strangers’ houses,” she said.
“You’re right not to be. But I’m not a stranger.”
She studied his face.
“What do you mean?”
“Come inside,” he said gently. “Please. Give me five minutes.”
She stood
in the doorway for another moment. Then she stepped over the threshold.
He turned on the living room lights.
Charlotte stopped moving.
The room was strung with warm string lights, which he had spent the better part of the afternoon arranging. Along the mantel, on the shelves, arranged on the side table — enlarged photographs from a night in April 2006 that his uncle Ray had kept in cardboard boxes in the storage room of his house, pulled out without much question when Tyler called him that morning and explained what he needed.
