“Still, we’re here,” Tom says. “Let’s take what we can.”
But most of the first floor is empty of anything useful. In the kitchen, they search the cupboards. Tom slaps his hands around a shelf until he finds some batteries. Small candles. Pens. As he puts each item into his duffel bag, he announces it to Jules.
“Let’s move on,” Tom says.
“What about the upstairs?”
“I don’t like it here. And if there was any food, it’d be down here.”
Using the broomsticks, they find their way to the front door, unlock it, and step outside again. They do not walk back to the street. Instead, they cross the lawn to the neighbor’s house, one farther yet from their own.
On a second front porch, they carry out the same ritual. They knock. They announce themselves. They wait. When they hear no movement inside, they break a window. Jules does it this time.
His fist comes in contact with some kind of weak protection. He thinks it’s cardboard.
“There could be somebody in here,” he whispers.
They wait for a response to the noise they’ve made. There is none. Tom calls out. He tells the house that they are neighbors. That they are looking for animals and can offer shelter in exchange. There is no response. Jules clears the glass and helps Tom through the window.
Inside, they repair the cardboard.
Using their brooms, they check the place. This takes hours to do. Moving with their backs against each other, they swing their brooms in arcs. Tom leads, telling Jules where to go. When they are done, when they’re convinced the house is empty, the windows are covered, and the doors are all locked, Tom declares the house safe.
Both men understand what must come next.
They’re going to remove their helmets and blindfolds and open their eyes. Neither has seen anything but the inside of their house for many months now.
Jules moves first. Tom hears him unfastening his helmet. Then he does the same. After sliding his blindfold up to his hairline, Tom turns, eyes closed, to face Jules.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
The two men open their eyes.
Once, as a child, Tom and a friend snuck into a neighbor’s house through an unlocked back door. There was no plan, no agenda. They just wanted to see if they could do it. But they got more than they hoped for when, hiding in a pantry, they were forced to wait the entire duration of the family’s dinner. When they were finally outside again, his friend asked him how he felt about it.
“Dirty,” he said then.
His eyes open now, inside a stranger’s home, he feels the same way.
This is not their house. But they’re in it. These are not their things. But they could be. A family lived here. They had a child. Tom recognizes a toy or two. A photo tells him that it was a boy. His fair hair and young smile remind Tom of Robin. In a way, every single thing Tom has encountered since Robin’s death has reminded him of her. And being here, in a stranger’s home, he imagines the way they once lived. The child telling Mom and Dad what he heard about at school. Dad reading the earliest reports in the newspaper. Mom calling the child inside. All of them, together on the couch, watching the news, frightened, as Dad reaches across their son and takes Mom’s hand.
Robin.
There is no evidence of a pet. No forgotten chew toy. No cat’s bed. And no smell of a dog. But it is the absence of people Tom thinks about.
“Tom,” Jules says. “You check upstairs. I’ll continue down here.”
“Okay.”
At the foot of the stairs, Tom looks up. He pulls his blindfold from his pocket and ties it around his eyes again. Despite their having checked the house, Tom can’t bring himself to climb the stairs with his eyes open.
Did they check well enough?
Climbing, he uses the broom to guide him. His shoulder brushes against hanging photos. He thinks of George’s photo, hanging on the wall at home. His boot tip catches a stair and he stumbles forward. There is carpet beneath his hands. He gets back up. More stairs. So many that it feels impossible, like he’s walked through the roof of the house already.
At last, the bristles tell him he’s reached the top. But his mind is behind the broom and he stumbles again, this time into a wall. It is silent up here. He kneels and sets the broomstick beside him. Then he takes the duffel bag and unzips it, searching for the flashlight. He’s got it. Rising again, he uses the broom to guide him. Turning right, his wrist knocks into something cold and hard. He pauses and feels it. It’s glass, he thinks. A vase. There’s a bad smell. He didn’t smell it before. His hand comes to a gathering of crinkly, dead leaves. Slowly feeling along the stalks, he understands they are flowers. Roses perhaps. Long dead. He turns left again. The smell of the dead roses fades as he’s confronted with something much stronger.
He stops in the hall. How could he and Jules have missed this smell?