Archer didn’t laugh. “Jack Shackley’s the listed agent on this. Maybe he was in to tidy up. Somebody did a phenomenal job, anyway. The listing is house and contents and it looks like you have some nice pieces here—maybe a little dated. Shall we have a look around?”

“I think we should.”

Tom circled twice through the house—once with Archer, once “to get his own impression” while Archer left his business card on the kitchen counter and stepped outside for a smoke. His impression was the same both times. The kitchen cupboards opened frictionlessly to spotless, uniformly vacant interiors. The linen closet was cedar-lined, fragrant and bare. The bedrooms were empty except for the largest, which contained a modest bed, a chest of drawers, and a mirror— dustless. In the basement, high windows peeked out at the rear lawn; these were covered with white roller blinds, which the sun had turned brittle yellow. (Time passes here after all, he thought.)

The building was sound, functional, and clean.

The fundamental question was, did it feel like home?

No. At least, not yet.

But that might change.

Did he want it to feel like home?

But it was a question he couldn’t answer to his own satisfaction. Maybe what he wanted was not so much a house as a cave: a warm, dry place in which to nurse his wounds until they healed—or at least until the pain was bearable.

But the house was genuinely interesting.

He ran his hand idly along a blank basement wall and was startled to feel … what?

The hum of machinery, carried up through gypsum board and concrete block—instantly stilled?

Faint tingle of electricity?

Or nothing at all.

“Tight as a drum.”

This was Archer, back from his sojourn. “You may have found a bargain here, Tom. We can go back to my office if you want to talk about an offer.”