Boyce pauses and turns back to Carr. “You never ask about them-about Declan and Tina. Not once.”
“There’s nothing I want to know,” Carr says, and Mr. Boyce folds himself into his Mercedes and is driven away.
Carr brings his coffee mug inside. The front hall is warm and smells of soap and floor wax and fresh paint, and the living room smells of apple wood from the fire he built the night before. He raises the shades and white winter light pours in and pools on every polished surface-the floorboards, the andirons, the silver bowl on the mantel, the silver frames atop the gleaming black piano.
The frames are empty still-the photographs of Carr’s parents lost in Prager’s toolshed, or in the storm, or maybe to the sea-and the glass panes are like black windows. Arthur Carr has assured him that there are other photos of them- just as damned blurry -in a box somewhere in the attic, but Carr has yet to look. It’s freezing up there now, and there are dozens of boxes to search, and Carr knows that in these matters his father is not reliable.
Carr straightens the frames on the piano, carries his coffee mug to the kitchen, and raises every window shade along the way.
