"Men?" Liliana's voice sharpened. "Oleander, what are you doing? You went there to settle an estate, not to join a cult. What men?"
"They're part of it," I whispered, my voice cracking. "The town. They see things I don't want to see. And Dominic... he's here, Lili. Not just in the papers. I found a notebook in the closet. It's full of symbols I can't read and handwriting that looks like he was trying to claw the words out of the paper. It's manic. It's frantic."
The line went quiet.
"Oleander," she said finally, her voice dropping an octave. "Dominic was into weird shit at the end. You know that. I'm the one who told you something was wrong, and you didn't listen to me. I told you for six months that he wasn't himself."
She was right. She'd told me about the books, about the late nights, about the way Dominic's eyes had changed in that last year. I'd told her she was imagining it. I'd chosen his version over hers because his was easier to live with.
"I know," I said, the words barely a breath. "I know you told me."
"He had those books, Oleander. Those maps of places that don't exist on any satellite feed. He stopped being a husband and started being a... I don't even know the word for it. A researcher? A zealot?" Her voice broke. "And now you're in that town. In his apartment. Touching his things. You're standing in the middle of the mess he made, and you're letting it swallow you just like it swallowed him."
"There are things here I need to understand," I said. "Julian played a melody the other night. Something Dominic used to hum. He didn't know where it came from. He said the music just arrived in his head. How does that happen, Lili? How does a dead man's song end up in a stranger's fingers?"
"It happens because you're staying there!" she snapped. "It happens because you're giving it a reason to stay alive. Please, Oleander. Just pack a bag. Leave the keys on the counter. Get in the car and drive until you see a Starbucks or a billboard for a fucking dental clinic. Come to London. My sofa is terrible, but the air is normal. The fog doesn't talk back in London."
I felt the weight of the apartment around me.
"I can't," I said.
"Can't or won't?"
I didn't answer. The honesty of the "won't" was too heavy to speak. I wanted to stay because Rowan's hands made me feel like I existed, and Julian's music made me feel like I was heard, and Theo's camera made me feel like I was permanent in a shifting world.
"I'm scared for you," she whispered, and I could hear her crying now, a soft, muffled sound. "I love you so much, and I am so fucking scared that I'm going to lose you to the same thing that took him. If you're not going to leave, then you have to stop doing the thing you do. You have to stop looking away."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. You're a professional at denial, Oleander. You could win gold at the Olympics for pretending the house isn't on fire while you're sitting in the kitchen. But this town... if it's what I think it is, it will eat you if you don't look it in the eye. Promise me. Promise me you'll actually look this time. Don't let him hide from you anymore. Not even now."
I gripped the phone as the scent of cologne flared in the hallway, sweet and suffocating.
"I promise," I said.
I didn't know if I meant it. I just knew that when I hung up the phone, the silence in the apartment felt like it was expecting something.
thirteen
THEO
The sinking building on Mercy Street was worse than last week. I could see it from half a block away, the left side dipping lower into the soft ground, the front door now a trapezoid. One entire wall leaned inward at an angle that shouldn't have been possible without the whole thing collapsing. The bricks were buckling in a spiral pattern that I'd been documenting for months, and every time I came back, the spiral had tightened.
Oleander stood on the sidewalk beside me, his hands in his coat pockets, staring at it with the expression of someone recognizing their own reflection in something ugly.
"It's trying to fold itself shut," he said quietly.
I didn't answer. I was already adjusting my settings, crouching low against the rusted fence across the street. The light was doing something useful for once, hitting the cracked glass at an angle that made it look like the windows were swallowing the sky rather than reflecting it. I held my breath and clicked the shutter.
"Why that angle?" Oleander asked from behind me. "From here it just looks like a pile of broken wood."
I smiled without looking up. "Because from here, the sky looks like it's falling into the attic. I want the viewer to feel the weight of the atmosphere."
I stood up, brushing dirt from my jeans. He was watching me with genuine curiosity, his head tilted slightly, and I realized he was the first person who'd ever asked me about the why instead of the how. Rowan didn't ask about my work. Julian listened when I talked about it but never initiated. Oleander looked at the building and then looked at the way I was looking at the building, and the difference between those two things was everything.
"Most people just ask if the lens is expensive," I said.
"It's hard to ignore the feeling in this town," he said. "Everything feels like it has an agenda."
