Before I could ask him what he meant, before he could gather the strength to tell me more, we both heard it: footsteps in the hallway, heavy and unhurried, coming toward the room.

Raymond’s eye flicked toward the door, our signal, and then his face went slack and empty, his jaw loosening, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling, the very picture of a man with nothing left in him, a body that had outlived its tenant.

It was a performance, I realized, watching him vanish into helplessness in the space of a breath.

And it was a performance he had clearly been giving, out of sheer survival, for longer than I had been in that house.