Joe was sure to find something, though. Even if it meant flipping burgers at McDonald’s. He shuddered at the thought, then put it out of his mind. That was a problem for another day.
He walked around the house, turning on lights in each room. The place was huge, but each room was modest in size, no bigger than the rooms at his own family’s house. The tall ceilings and large windows gave the illusion of more space; the illumination from the hanging light fixtures cast creepy shadows.
Some of the rooms were completely empty of furniture; others were furnished, with each piece covered in a sheet or blanket. The bookcases were, for the most part, empty, but there were still paintings and framed family photos on the walls. It was as if someone had started packing up the house to move but had gotten interrupted and never quite finished. Joe stopped in the hallway to inspect a photo of two young parents and a little boy. The woman sat ramrod-straight, wearing a high-collared blouse and a long pleated skirt. With a start, Joe realized the woman was Pearl in her younger days, which meant the father in the picture was his grandfather and the little boy, a toddler dressed in a sailor suit, his own father.
Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen a photo of his father as a child.
Joe took the framed photo off the wall and flipped it over, but there was nothing written on the back. Turning it back around, he examined each face. Pearl had been a stunner back in the day. Hollywood glamorous. Even in the black-and-white photo, it was easy to see her white hair had once been golden blonde. Her husband too was good-looking, broad-shouldered, tall, and clean-shaven, with slicked-back hair. The boy, his own father, sat on Pearl’s lap, his hand wrapped around one of her fingers. The man, his father’s father, stood behind them, one hand on his wife’s shoulder. He looked proud, Joe thought. Both the father and the son gazed adoringly at Pearl, but she looked straight ahead at the camera, her chin tipped upward, her lips curved into a satisfied smile.
Whatever happened to this family? They looked happy enough when this picture had been taken, but later on something had gone terribly wrong.
Joe had lost his mother but had known only love from all the mother figures in his life. How did this permanent rift start? He’d ask Pearl about it the next morning, and if she wouldn’t talk, he’d question his dad. He wasn’t going to push it until he was home, but he hoped his father would trust him enough to let him know the truth of the matter. If he didn’t find out, he’d always wonder.
He wandered some more, taking note of other family photos. He had no clue who most of them were, but there was one of a large family, parents with four daughters, taken in the front yard with the house in the background. One of older girls was almost certainly Pearl. Were the others her sisters? He shook his head. So many questions.
In the kitchen, he checked the cabinets and the fridge, glad to see eggs, juice, coffee, and milk for breakfast. He wasn’t hungry at the moment but knew tomorrow he’d be ready for a meal.
By the time he’d gone through the house, it had gotten late. His body was still on Trendale time—medication at nine thirty, lights out at ten, and not a peep after that. When he felt his eyelids drooping, he decided to get some sleep.
He debated for a moment, then decided that leaving some lights on downstairs would be reassuring to him. Not that he was afraid, but it would be a good deterrent to some would-be thief who might think the house was vacant. Plus, it helped guide the way. Just as Pearl had said, the second door on the left upstairs led to a room that was cleaner than the rest of the house. The sheets and blankets smelled fresh too, like fabric softener. He found a nearby bathroom, washed up for the night, and brushed his teeth.
Stripping down to his briefs, Joe slipped between the sheets and turned off the bedside lamp. He’d been afraid that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all without the nighttime pills he’d gotten at Trendale, so he was glad when a wave of fatigue washed over him. There was something rewarding about the feeling of drifting off to sleep, particularly after a long day. And it had been a long day, at least emotionally.
Joe dreamed.
Again, it wasn’t the shapeless nonsense of most dreams but a scene unfolding sequentially as experienced by someone who was there. He used the word dream when describing it only because he didn’t know what else to call it. There were some similarities. He experienced it during the night while he slept, like a dream. Also, he had no control over what unfolded. But there were differences too. More vivid than a memory and more real than a dream, it felt like he was there, thrust into the situation, hearing and seeing and smelling and feeling all of it. All of it. He had no choice in the matter. He never knew he was dreaming at the time he was experiencing it, just that he’d been thrust inexplicably into someone else’s life. He was another man, or at least that was the sense he got, and when he was this other person, he wasn’t Joe Arneson anymore. When he woke up, it was always with a shock at finding himself transported to a different body.