The afternoon after that, they return to the house in the fields. The storm has freshened its weeds and battered its boards, but it remains intact and largely unchanged, and when they finally ascend to the upper levels, having tired of the cellar and its creepy corners and narrow passages, the dust tells Ryan that the storm couldn’t reach into all the corners.
By now, they have explored almost every cranny of the ground floor, and whatever crannies are still accessible, between the rotten floors and collapsed walls, of the first floor. For all its lonely existence, the house is a dull place, once the exploration is done, and Ryan no longer imagines that Alex spends much time here during the rest of the year.
But one place has gone undiscovered: the attic.
Their purpose, they decide, is
