Homebody

"That makes my skin crawl," said Don. "To think of her out there in the world, using your name. People asking for Sylvie Delaney and she's the one they mean."

Sylvie shuddered. "Well, after killing me, I guess that's only adding insult to injury."

"I'm going to call," he said.

"Call who?"

"Directory assistance," he said. "Providence, Rhode Island."

"And then what?"

"And then I'll invite her here," he said.

"What makes you think she'd come?"

"Come on, Sylvie, give me credit." He put on his Marlon-Brando-as-Don-Corleone voice. "I'll make her an invitation she can't refuse."

"I don't want you hurting her, Don," said Sylvie. "You'd only get in trouble yourself. It won't help me for you to be in jail."

"No, I won't hurt her," said Don. "All I want is for her to face what she did. To face you. While you're still here."

"Oh," she said. "Oh, Don, I'm not sure I want to—"

"Why not?" he answered. "What can she do to you? What are you afraid of? Let her face her own shame and guilt."

Those words resonated with what he had told her from his interview with Gladys. "You're hoping the house will hold her," said Sylvie.

"Maybe," said Don. "It probably won't, though. She's guilty and what she did was shameful and she knows it, she can't hide from that. But pain and loss? She's got everything. I'm betting she feels no pain."

"She lost her family," said Sylvie. "Remember?"

"Then the house will snag her. That's justice, Sylvie. To have her trapped here."

"But how will you finish your renovations then?" she said.

He looked away from her. "I don't know if I will."

"You can't afford to walk away from this place."

He shrugged. "I have some money in the bank. I can break the house up a little bit, weaken it so the Weird Sisters aren't so drawn to it."

"But then she won't be drawn to it anymore."

"Sylvie, why don't you want me to bring her here?"

"I don't know," she said. "Because... because this is our place. If I'm going to fade, the only memory I want to take with me is this one. You and me. In this place."

Don got up from the alcove, paced toward the far wall, then stopped. "OK," he said.

"OK what?"

"OK, I won't call her. I'll let her get away with it. We'll have these last days or hours, whatever we've got, we'll spend this time together, and then I'll just... I'll just forget it all." He turned around and kicked the wall. It was tough and strong. It hurt his foot through the shoe. He slapped the wall with the flat of his palm and leaned there, crying again, dammit.

After a while he felt her hand on his back. Lightly, too lightly.

"Don," she said. "I can face her."

"No," he said.

"I want to," she said. "What she did to me, that's done with. But what she's done to you—that really pisses me off."

He laughed in spite of himself, turned around, held her. "You mean it?"

"It's less than a twelve-hour drive to Providence if you go straight through," she said. "I had that all figured out. Feels like only yesterday."

"Let me guess. The bitch took your car."

Sylvie danced away from him. "We're such stupid children," she said. She pirouetted lazily. "We've built up this whole castle in the air, and she's probably married to some executive with Coca-Cola and living in Atlanta under his name."

"Still, it's worth a shot. It makes sense," said Don. "I'm going next door to see if they'll let me use their phone."

"Hurry back," she said.

"Stay out of the basement, please."

"Of course," she said. "I'm too busy dancing my life away to bother with basements." She was still turning around and around as he closed the door behind him.

Next door, Miz Evelyn let him into the house. "So have you decided what you're going to do?" she asked.

"Sylvie's fading. When she's gone, I won't leave the house strong like this."

"But all your money's tied up in it."

"I've lost a lot more money than this," said Don. "Lose enough of it, and you start thinking of it as nothing."

"Money's never nothing," said Miz Evelyn. "All those years we took in laundry and sewing, living on nothing, growing a garden, saving, saving. All so we could keep living here and never go out of the yard. Money is very much something."

"Not compared to saving people I care about."

"Well, all I can say is, if you weaken that house I'll be the first to kiss you."

"Too late," he said.

"There's already a line?" Miz Evelyn laughed. "Should have known, a strapping young man like you."

"Miz Evelyn, you ladies do have a phone, don't you?"

"Oh, you need to borrow one? It's right here in the parlor, right over here on the writing desk."

It was an ancient black dial phone. "You don't know how many years it's been since I've used one of these," he said.

"Oh, I don't know how we could ever get along without it. That's how we get our groceries delivered! And lightbulbs and things like that!"

"I didn't mean the phone, I meant that phone." She didn't understand. "They have phones with buttons now."

She looked baffled. Then comprehension dawned. "Oh, you mean pushbuttons. For a minute I thought, what in the world would you need to button up a telephone for!" She laughed. "Oh, my laws, I don't get out much." She looked wistful.

Don picked up the phone and dialed 411. He got the area code for Providence and then dialed directory assistance at that number. It was amazing how irritating it could be. The pressure on the sides of his finger. The endless waiting for the dial to return to position.

"For Providence," he said.

Miz Judea walked into the room.

"I need a listing for Sylvia Delaney. Or Sylvie. I'm not sure how the last name is spelled. Delaney."

He realized he had nothing to write with. He flung out a hand toward the Weird sisters, who were eavesdropping unabashedly. "Pen pen pen, please," he said.

Miz Evelyn fetched a pencil for him from a cubbyhole in the writing desk, and took an open envelope from the mail table.

The operator came back on. "Could that be S. Delaney, D-E-L-A-N-E-Y, on Academy Street?"

"Could well be, it's worth a shot."

"Hold for the number, please." After a moment, the computer voice started intoning the number. Don wrote it down and dialed it immediately.

"Am I missing something?" Miz Evelyn asked. "Ain't Sylvie Delaney the name of the haint?"

Don nodded, listening to the phone ringing.

Miz Evelyn went on talking, ostensibly to Miz Judea. "Why's he calling a dead girl in Providence when she's haunting the house next door?"

"Hush and listen, Miz Evvie," said Miz Judea.

Someone picked up the phone. A woman's voice. "Hello?"

"Hello, is this Sylvie Delaney?" He did his best to keep his voice sounding breezy, cheerful.

"Yes," she said. "Who's this?" Bored. Must have a lot of unidentified men calling her.

"Forgive me, but I just want to make sure I've found the right person. Did you get your graduate degree at UNC-Greensboro?"

"Who is this?"

Don waited a moment. "When I'm sure you're the right person," he said.

"Yes, I did my graduate work there. Now who are you?"

"We've never met, Miss Delaney," said Don. "But I feel as though I know you. You see, I've been renovating the old Bellamy house."

"I don't know of any such place," she said.

"You roomed here back in the mid-eighties."

"You must be thinking of somebody else. Good-bye."

"Hang up if you want, Miss Delaney, but I've seen what's in the tu

She said nothing.

"You don't seem to be hanging up," said Don.

"Maybe we do need to have a conversation," she said.

Don covered the receiver and whispered to the old ladies, "Now she wants to talk." Into the phone he said, "Yes, I think we ought to meet."