at all.”
Another silence descended, Lila staring at the floor, Grey wondering what she would next say. Whatever it was, he sensed their survival depended on it.
“I lost one before, you see,” Lila said. “A baby girl.”
Grey waited.
“Her heart, you understand,” she said, and placed a hand against her chest. “It was a problem with her heart.”
It was strange; standing in the quiet, Grey felt as if he’d known this about her all along. Or, if not the thing itself, then the kind of thing. It was as if he were looking at one of those pictures that made no sense when you saw it up close, but then you backed away and suddenly it did.
“What was her name?” Grey asked.
Lila raised her tear-streaked face. For a moment she just looked at him, her eyes pulled into an appraising squint. He wondered if he’d made a mistake, asking this. The question had just popped out.
“Thank you, Lawrence. Nobody ever asks me that. I can’t tell you how long it’s been.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders lifted with a tiny shrug. “I guess they think it’s bad luck or something.”
“Not to me.”
A brief silence passed. Grey didn’t think he’d ever felt so awful for anybody in his life.
“Eva,” Lila said. “My daughter was Eva.”
They stood together in the presence of this name. Outside, beyond the windows of Lila’s house, the night was pressing down. Grey realized it had begun to rain—a quiet, soaking, summer rain, pattering the windows.
“I’m not really who you think I am,” Grey confessed.
“No?”
What did he want to tell her? The truth, surely, or some version of it, but in the last day and a half, the idea of truth seemed to have slipped its moorings completely. He didn’t even know where to begin.
“It’s all right,” Lila said. “You don’t have to say anything. Whoever you were before, it doesn’t make much difference now.”
“It might. I’ve had … some troubles.”
“So that would make you just like the rest of us, wouldn’t it? One more person with a secret.” She looked away. “That’s the worst part, really, when you think about it. Try as you might, nobody will ever truly know who you are. You’re just somebody alone in a house with your thoughts and nothing else.”
Grey nodded. What was there to say?
“Promise me you won’t leave,” Lila said. “Whatever happens, don’t do that.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll look after me. We’ll look after each other.”
“I promise.”
The conversation seemed to end there. Lila, exhaling a weary breath, pushed her shoulders back. “Well. I guess I’d better turn in. I expect you’ll want to be leaving first thing in the morning. If I’m reading you correctly.”
“I think that’s best.”
Her eyes wistfully traveled the room with its shiny appliances and overflowing trash bags and dirty dishes in piles. “It’s too bad, really. I did want to finish the nursery. But I guess that will have to wait.” She found his face again. “Just one thing. You can’t make me think about it.”
Grey understood what she was asking. Don’t make me think about the world. “If that’s what you want.”
“We’re just …” She looked for the words. “Taking a drive in the country. How does that sound? Do you think you can do that for me?”
Grey nodded. The request struck him as strange, even a little silly, but he would have put on a clown suit if that’s what it took to get her out of there.
“Good. Just so long as that’s settled.”
He waited for her to say something more, or else leave the room, but neither thing happened. A change came into Lila’s face—a look of intense concentration, as if she were reading tiny print that only she could see. Then, abruptly, her eyes grew very wide; she seemed about to laugh.
“Oh my goodness, what a scene I made! I can’t believe I did that!” Her hands darted to her cheeks, her hair. “I must look terrible. Do I look terrible?”
“I think you look fine,” Grey managed.
“Here you are, a guest in my home, and off go the waterworks. It drives Brad absolutely crazy.”
The name wasn’t one he’d heard from her before. “Who’s Brad?”
Lila frowned. “My husband, of course.”
“I thought David was your husband.”
She gave him a blank stare. “Well, he is. David, I mean.”
“But you said—”
Lila waved this away. “I say a lot of things, Lawrence. That’s one thing you’ll have to learn about me. Probably you think I’m just some crazy woman, and you wouldn’t be wrong.”
“I don’t think that at all,” Grey