She walks slowly and he holds here hand lightly. There is a smile on Grady’s face and he fears he is grinning like some idiot schoolboy. Sharon doesn’t seem to notice or care. Her eyes glance at him and then look away quickly, color flooding her cheeks as she blushes. When her eyes are not looking at him or her feet they are darting around the hallway and the various rooms they pass.

“Are you afraid he’ll attack us or something?”

“It’s hard to tell with him. When he gets like that, anything’s possible.”

Grady shakes his head. He is not concerned. As one who is familiar with death he knows his time is not now at the hands of a drunken lout. He feels no guilt over the idea of expressing passion with another man’s wife, either. Especially when that other man is barely a man at all.

“How on earth did you end up with him? You certainly must have had your choice of men.”

Sharon laughs and shakes her head. They begin to walk up stairs. Grady wishes at times like these that he could read the minds of those who are not close to death. There is no shadow anywhere near Sharon. Grady feels that she will end up living as long as the old man busy dying upstairs.

“You would be surprised. I have always been very shy. I wore glasses when I was younger. Big and thick glasses. I was quiet. I sat in the back of the room and never spoke. I was pretty much overlooked.”

She pauses until they reach the top of the stairway. She gets a far-off look in her eyes that Grady recognizes from Casey.

“When I first saw him I was in college. Just like every school I had gone to, I was ignored by the boys. I had a few dates in high school, but I was very much not popular. I never had a steady boyfriend. Tom was the first man who came right up to me in the library and started talking to me and it wasn’t about helping him find a book.”

Grady nods as she falls silent and lets the memories flow through her. He tries to imagine Tom as a young man and finds he can’t get past the image of the drunken lout he just saw in the kitchen.

“He was the first boy to ever ask me out. We just went to dinner and a movie, but it was the greatest night of my life. I felt like a human being for the first time and not just something that sat in the corner. When he kissed me goodnight I was afraid I would faint. He was going to be a famous writer and I was going to take over the family business and we would live happily ever after in Sydney or Perth or someplace huge.”

She pauses and looks down at her feet. Grady continues to admire the wallpaper, carpets and the rooms filled with their objects from around the world.

“At some point, it became obvious he wasn’t going to be a brilliant writer. He sold a few short stories and tried a few times to start a novel but nothing was ever completed. He actually did write a play once but I read it and it was awful. No one wanted to produce it. He started telling me he was going out to meet with some writer friends of his and to collaborate and I soon found out he was going to a bar near our house. Then my great grandfather got sick and I came back here.”

She looks up at Grady’s face and smiles. Her face flushes again. She seems a bit out of breath.

“What happened to your parents? How did you end up being the one out here?”

“My dad died in an automobile accident when I was twenty. My mother didn’t want anything to do with her crazy former father-in-law. I knew he was a little crazy as well, but I loved him. He didn’t have any other grandkids besides my dad. I think my dad’s death really took a lot of the life he had in him away. I think he’d live to be two hundred if my dad were still alive. My dad loved his grandfather and loved this house. I grew to love it too.”

The climb the next set of stairs. The house is silent and dark in most rooms. The only sound is her voice and the soft hushing of their feet on the thick carpet. Grady marvels at how clean this mammoth house is and he shakes his head.

“I don’t know what I am going to do with this place when he dies. He’s already told me the whole thing comes to me. I know what my husband wants to do with it, but I want to turn all of this into something. I have thought about turning it into a museum or perhaps some kind of crazy tourist attraction like that Winchester House I’ve heard about in California. I see tour busses and cars pass by this place all the time. They always slow down and people take pictures. I think people would want to come.”

“I know I would.”

“I have a feeling you’d come regardless of what was here. Perhaps as long as I was.”

Grady discovers his turn to blush and he laughs. He realizes it has been a very long time since he laughed. He cannot recall laughing since the incidents in Texas. He feels good, despite the nagging fear that her husband will appear at any time. The fact that he is still within the same house as the drunken idiot is a very curious feeling. Each room of this house feels like an entirely different house or region, so the distance between them seems very vast.

“Why do you stay with him?”

“I don’t know. Mostly because there just hasn’t been anyone else. During most days he isn’t around me. I spend my days cleaning this place and he spends them walking between the kitchen for beer and his bedroom. His bedroom used to be a den near the kitchen but he moved his bed in there a long time ago. I guess part of the reason is that I just haven’t had the heart to kick him out into the desert. I still see some of the potential that I saw in him so long ago. It is buried beneath the stench of the beer, but it’s still there.”

Suddenly they are in front of Grady’s room. Grady stares at the double doors and realizes that he had been very anxious to reach this room not that long ago but he has no desire to go in there by himself now.

Sharon comes to the realization that their walk is at an end at almost exactly the same time. She lets go of his hand and appears to try to melt into the carpet. Grady fears for her health when her face turns a truly bright shade of crimson. There is tension between them and the energy makes the hair on Grady’s neck stand up. His body is reacting to the tension and feelings well before his mind can step in and have its say. He finds he is smiling despite himself.

“I don’t suppose you would like to come in. I am really enjoying talking to you and I think your great-grandfather will be asleep for a while yet.”

“I’m afraid of what might happen if I come in there.”

“Are you afraid Tom might do something?”

“No, the door locks and we would be safe. He would have to find a way to knock the whole door down and more than likely he’s passed out anyway. No, I’m afraid of what might happen between you and me in there.”

Grady sighs and nods. He reaches out his hand and puts his fingers beneath her chin. He lifts her face until her beautiful blue eyes are looking into his own. He brushes strands of brown hair from her face.

“I don’t do relationships very well, Sharon. Given my talents, my job, and my life in general it just isn’t very conducive to long-lasting relationships. However, for the first time in a long time, I’ve been talking with someone and it hasn’t revolved around the fact that they’re dying. You made me laugh for the first time in months.”

She tries to look back down at the floor and he places his fingers back under her chin and holds her firmly but not roughly so he can lose himself in those eyes. She smiles and does not shrink away from him.

“So, what I am suggesting is that we continue our conversations in my room. I am not the type who puts moves on women because I haven’t had much time in my life to develop any moves. After you have filled your head with the things I’ve seen, many of them sexual depravities the world should never know, the very idea of sex is not the all-consuming need in me that it is for most men. So, if you come inside, you can guarantee that all I intend to do is talk. Anything else, well, we’d just have to play it by ear.”

She stares at him for a long time. Her smile changes from embarrassed and shy into something a little more genuine. He lowers his hand and her eyes stay locked on his. She reaches out and grabs the doorknob.

“I think you’re a fascinating man, Grady. There’s a lot of things I would like to know about you. I don’t even know how old you are. However old you are, I feel like there’s a large part of you that’s much older than that, if you know what I mean.”

She opens the door and walks into the room. He watches her as she walks across the floor and takes a seat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“Really? See, I was right. I would have guessed much older.”

He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. Almost as an afterthought he locks the doors and then tests them to make sure they’re locked.

“I’m telling you, those doors are solid.”

“Just being cautious.”

He walks slowly over to the bed. She shifts slightly, making more room next to her. He smiles at her and, again, is amazed at how nice it feels to smile again. He sits down next to her and places his hands in his lap.

“So, since we’re both so interested in each other, who wants to go first?”

She lays her head against his shoulder.

“I think I’ve told enough about myself for a while. I think I’d like to know a little about you. I’m sure some of the things you’ve seen would turn my hair white.”

“Sharon, you have no idea…”

For the first time in a time so long ago that Grady cannot remember another, he forgets who he is and what his purpose is. Even though he is talking about what he does, he gets lost in telling these tales to her, as though he were merely the teller and not the one who lived them. Outside the darkness becomes absolute and hugs the enormous house. The desert comes alive with animals looking to forage and exist in the darkness. Bats swirl around the lights that circle the property. It is the greatest night in Grady’s life up until that point and it is a night he will remember for a very long time.

When the nightmares come for him at night in the years to come, it will be that night he remembers. He will feel her head against his shoulder and he will hear her voice as she speaks and the memory alone will often be enough to push the nightmares and memories and sins away. Sharon brings him light.