Alex's words are a kind of balm, even as he keeps looking around, searching for some trace of anything left behind. He can see into the kitchen from here, the blue and white Delft tiles along the wall and the wood of the cabinets, just the edge of the old refrigerator in the corner--but no warm copper shine from Bernadette's pots on the rack over the stove. It has to be the same all over: the ballroom, his grandfather's bedroom, the library and the lounge, even the medicine cabinets in the bathrooms stripped bare of pill bottles and boxes of band-aids.

"It's a husk," he says, his voice turned hoarse for a moment. He clears his throat. "Not the worst of Darrow's shit, not at all, but...I really thought I'd get it all back."