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Walking over to the built-in desk, he forced hi on it

Tues: Havers - checkup, 11:30

He dropped the pad and turned away, seriously questioning his sanity Why had he coood could coh the living roo a loop of the first floor&039;s public rooms until he felt like he couldn&039;t breathe, until the alchie buzz was beyond gone and his vision and his sense of s were unbearably acute Why was he -

Tohr blinked as he found himself in front of a door

He&039;d come full circle, back to the kitchen

And he was standing at the way into the basement

Ah, shit Not this he wasn&039;t ready for this

The truth was, Lassiter and his duood All those couples up on the screen even though they were contrived instruments of fiction, soered all kinds of things

None of which had been about Wellsie

Instead, he&039;d thought only about those days with No&039;One, the two of the with all those blankets between their bodies, she looking up at hi her, he holding back out of respect for his dead andcoward at his core

Probably equal bits of both

Given as banging around in his head, he&039;d had to coes of his Wellsie that otten, a powerful blast from the past to compete hat felt like a betrayal in the present

Frorab the doorknob Twisting to the right, he pulled the heavy, painted steel panel wide As the hts came on in the stairwell, he was hit with a whole lot of cream: the steps that went doere carpeted in acal and serene

This had been their sanctuary

The first step was the equivalent of ju off the lip of the Grand Canyon And number tasn&039;t any better

He still felt that hen he got to the bottom and there was no more descent to be had

The baseh only two-thirds of the space was finished with a ym, a laundry, and a e

Tohr had no idea how long he stood there

Eventually, though, he walked forward, toward the closed door up ahead

The fact that he opened the thing into a black hole seeht -

Fuuuuck, it still s inside, he closed hiing up the overheads gradually

The bed was h they had staff, she had been the kind of fe Folding laundry

Making their bed at the end of every day

There wasn&039;t a lick of dust on any of the surfaces, not the dressers, his and hers not the nightstands, his with the alarm clock, hers with the phone not the desk with the computer that they had shared

Goddamn, he couldn&039;t breathe

To take a little break from his crucible, he went into the bathrooen requirements of his body

He should have known better She was all over the tiled space, too; just as she was all over the house

Opening one of the cabinets, he picked up a pump bottle of her hand lotion and read the label, back and front - so he had never done when she&039;d been alive He did the same with one of her backup shampoo bottles, as well as a jar of bath salts that yup, smelled just as he remembered, lemon verbena

Back to the bedroom

Over to the walk-in closet

He wasn&039;t sure exactly when the shift occurred Maybe it was as he went through her sweaters that were stacked in the cubbies Maybe it was as he stared at her shoes in their neat,order on the tilted shelves Maybe it was as he trolled through her blouses on their hangers, or no, her slacks or maybe the skirts or the dresses

But eventually, in the silence, in his aching loneliness, in his perennial grief it dawned on hi, her makeup, her toiletries the bed she had made, the kitchen she had cooked in, the house she had made their own

It was only stuff

And just as she was never going to fill out herback here to claim any of this It had all been hers and she had worn it, and used it, and needed every bit of it - but it wasn&039;t her

Say it - say that she&039;s dead

I can&039;t

You&039;re the proble process had brought her back Not the agony of re, not the worthless weak tears or the resistance to another fe alone with an eone

And that meant that all of this was just stuff in an empty house

God this was not at all what he had expected to feel He had come here to pave over No&039;One Instead? All he&039;d found was a collection of inanimate objects with no more power to transform where he was at than they could walk and talk on their own

Although, considering where Wellsie was, the idea that he had been looking for a way to stop the connection with No&039;One was craziness He should be rejoicing at the idea he was thinking of another female

Instead, it still felt like a curse