And that’s when Dhaval rushed in the door, in his soccer uniform and drenched in sweat. Gavin couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy to see anyone other than Delilah.
“Is she okay?” Dhaval asked, panicked.
“They’re cleaning her up now,” Gavin told him.
“Cleaning her up? She said she’d had a little accident!”
Holding out his hands to calm Dhaval down, Gavin whispered, “It was, and she’s fine. I promise.”
“She’s completely fine—you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” Gavin led them over to a hallway just off the main waiting room and, apparently satisfied that Delilah wasn’t moments from death, Dhaval followed.
“Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
Gavin wasn’t sure how to start.
“You know my house isn’t. . .” He struggled to find the right word. Sane? Safe? Inanimate? “Normal.” There, that was clear enough.
Dhaval narrowed his eyes. “You’re saying your house did this?”
“Delilah’s saying that,” Gavin hedged.
Dhaval looked at him harder now. “But you don’t believe her.”
“I do, but. . .”
“But what? What exactly is wrong with her?”
Gavin told him everything he knew: how Delilah was wary of the house, how he’d invited her over for dinner, thinking maybe they needed to allow House to give them its blessing in a way. And then he explained what Delilah had said about the roaches and her mother’s statue being in the bathroom, about getting lost in all the rooms and attacked in the shower. He admitted he hadn’t seen any of it. He described how it looked like someone had branded a handprint into her arm.
Dhaval stared at Gavin for several breaths before leading them over to a vending machine. “I didn’t eat after soccer practice. I came straight here, and this has me really freaked and I feel like I might pass out. You mind if I. . . ?” With a shaking hand, he motioned to the rows of colorfully packaged snacks.
Gavin shook his head. “You’re sure Delilah wouldn’t. . . ?” he asked, and immediately regretted it.
Dhaval stilled from where he’d been digging for money in his pocket. “Are you serious?”
Gavin winced, rubbing a hand over his face. “No. No. I know Delilah wouldn’t hurt herself. It’s just that, that bathroom is the only room where I ever felt like I was totally alone. If that’s not true, it’s a little hard for me to take.. . .”
“Where was your mom in all this?”
Gavin paused, blinking. Dhaval was obviously starting to believe what they’d been saying about House, but Gavin realized he also thought Gavin’s mom was still around.
Everyone thought his mom was still around.
Deflecting, he asked, “Have you ever met her? My mom?”
Gavin watched as Dhaval pulled two crumpled bills from his pocket and tried to straighten them against the corner of the machine. “Well, no,” Dhaval started. “I mean no one sees her.” He looked up at Gavin’s puzzled expression and added in a slow, patient voice, “Because she never leaves?”
“Right. Yeah,” he said, suddenly light-headed. Gavin was starting to realize how much easier it was for people to believe his mom was so freaked out by strangers that she’d essentially lock herself up in her own house than to believe she could have abandoned her small child or that something terrible could have happened to her right in the middle of their nice, safe neighborhood.
Gavin knew this was insane. He should be horrified that everyone had essentially let him fend for himself, but it almost. . . made him feel better. Like he hadn’t been abandoned by the entire town, after all.
The question was, where was his mom? All he had was a picture of her, but no memories. His stomach turned, and he closed his eyes, trying to breathe deeply enough to stave off the wave of nausea.
“But my mom knew her,” Dhaval said. “Mom was friends with Hilary when we first moved here and I was a baby.”
Hilary. His mother’s name was Hilary.