Page 62 of Call Off the Dark

“If I literally told you every thought that entered my brain, it would drive both of us mad.”

“Well, this clearly isn’t working either,” he said.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked.

“Mad? No. Frustrated, yes. Confused, yes.”

Helen took a deep breath. “I don’t think I want to buy a house.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to buy a house,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“Since when?”

“I’m not sure.”

Tyler lowered his head. He looked tired, and for the first time ever, a little old. Helen could suddenly imagine him gray and stooped. If only a little messenger had been able to fly down from the heavens or the future or the secret places where little messengers reside and whisper in her ear: Tyler will never get the chance to be old and gray and stooped. If she had known that right then and there, every single thing that was eating at her would have fallen away. She would have boxed up her daily worries alongside her material belongings and run away with Tyler to someplace safe, if such places even existed.

Instead, Helen quietly said, “I’m sorry.”

Tyler lifted his head. “Is this about us, or is this about a house?”

There was worry in his eyes. Helen knew she should hug him and tell him everything would be okay. Except nothing felt okay.

“It’s not about us,” she said. “It’s just—I haven’t been happy. Not with my job, not with anything.”

“I know.”

“You know? Then why are you so confused to find me like this?”

“Lately, you haven’t been as talkative or funny or . . . I don’t know. But it’s winter. It’s rainy and gray, and you’ve been busy. I didn’t think you were crying in the middle of the night.”

“Well, I have been.”

Tyler sighed. “I feel like this is a longer conversation, but I don’t know that my brain is firing on all cylinders at two in the morning.”

“That’s okay. I don’t really have anything to say anyway.”

At that, his eyebrows drew together, and she realized that Tyler was probably thinking the same thing she was. If she had nothing to say, then where did that leave them?

They sat in silence for several long moments, then Helen said, “Are you hungry?”

“No.” Another long moment passed, then he said, “Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a frozen pizza.”

She wiped her nose. “That sounds kind of good.”

Tyler stood. “I’ll turn on the oven.”

But when Helen ate the pizza, even that tasted like a cardboard imitation of something that was supposed to be spicy and tangy and just wasn’t anymore.