(she said, and Andy worked hard to keep the grin off his face, for he'd
been miserable during her long absence and now he could scarcely contain
his delight)
I went to the house, and there was no one home. I had the address you'd
given me, and it was just like you'd described it to me, down to the
basketball hoop in the driveway.
It was empty. But it was as I'd remembered it. They'd lived there. I'd
lived there. You were right, that was the house.
That was the house I'd lived in. I rang the doorbell, then I peeked in
through a crack in the blinds. The rooms were empty. No furniture. Just
blinds. It was night, and no one was looking, so I flew up to the third
floor, to the window I'd stared out all those times.
The window was unlatched, and I slid aside the screen and let myself
in. The room was empty. No carpet. No frilly bed and stuffed animals. No
desk. No clothes in the closet, no hangers.
The only thing in the room was a small box, plugged into the wall, with
a network cable snaking away into the phone jack. It had small lights on
it, blinking. It was like the one you'd had in your attic. A wireless
access point.
I remembered their names, then. Oliver and Patricia. They'd been my
mother and father for a few years. Set me up with my first
apartment. This had been their house.
I slept there that day, then, come nightfall, I set out again to come
home to you.
#
Something woke Andy from his sound sleep, nestled in her wings, in her
arms. A tread on Craig's inviolable soil, someone afoot on his brother.
Slowly, he got himself loose of Mimi and sat up and looked around.
The golem standing before him was small, and its eyes glowed red. It
bent over and set something down on the earth, a fur-wrapped bundle of
smoked meat.
It nodded at him. He nodded back.
"Thank you," he said.