Chapter 19: Curtis Goes Back In Alone

Curtis left at four-seventeen in the morning.

He knew the exact time because he had been watching the green numerals of his alarm clock since two-thirty, lying in the dark of his bedroom with his hands folded on his chest like a man in a casket, which was not the most encouraging image he could have chosen but which his brain had apparently decided was appropriate. The house around him made its nighttime sounds: the groan of the water heater, the particular creak on the third stair that his father's late-night bathroom trips had worn into something reliable, the slow mechanical breathing of an old house that had not been paid attention to in years. He listened to all of it and thought about the map.

He had been thinking about the map for three days.