I pull into the driveway cautiously to avoid the cars simultaneously pulling out of the driveway. It looks like today`s sheet rocking crew is starting to disband, and I wait with my car door partially cracked open as the crew joke and chatter amiably with each other. I have no interest in becoming a part of their conversations despite their pleasant demeanor. Their conversations are spent discussing holiday plans with their families, the latest sporting event, some show several of the guys have all seen&.

　　"No!! Don`t spoil it for me!" someone squawks. "I haven`t been able to watch the last episode yet!"

　　"Get on that, man! If you haven`t watched it by tomorrow, you can eat my spoilers for lunch!"

　　"Yeah, yeah. I`ll get to it tonight."

　　"Oh, but she dies."

　　"NOOO!!! YOU DIDN`T!!!"

　　The playful despair is met with equally playful laughter. The joyfully mundane. It clashes jarringly with my own mood- with the heaviness of the conversations and interactions of my day.

　　"Alright, man. Have a good night. I`ve gotta get home in time to tuck the kids in or Wyatt especially won`t let me live it down for a month."

　　"Serves you right! Show spoiler. Good night."

　　"Night."

　　Chuckling. A car door shutting. An engine sputtering to life and then growling as a car pulls out of the driveway. Footsteps on gravel. A car door latch releasing. The squeaking of suspension. The soft thump of a door closing. Keys in the ignition&.

　　I deem it safe to emerge and quietly make my way up the stairs and across the porch, entering the front door with the intention of simply slipping past anyone who is left and escaping to my room.

　　"Hey, Lottie! Perfect timing!"

　　No such luck. I turn to Jay with a social smile reaching just short of my eyes. "You`re still here?" He chuckles and beckons me deeper into the house, the framing still exposed to view throughout the entire main floor. And a part of me wonders what he`s been doing all day.

　　"So, I`m guessing you`re wondering what the heck we`ve been doing all day?"

　　Genuine surprise widens my eyes. "I didn`t realize you were a mind-reader, Jay."

　　Another small laugh, and Jay gestures to the stairs. "Let me show you." He smells like he`s been sweating all day, and the higher up I climb, the more generic, sweaty man body odor I register- an indication that I am entering the space where actual work got done. We arrive at the second floor where I`m given a tour through the separate mister and missus apartments and shown that approximately three quarters of the walls are now in place and mudded at the joints in the sheetrock to make the walls appear cohesive. "Alright, so, as you can see, the second floor is getting close," Jay says, and I nod approvingly.

　　"It looks good. You guys got a lot done."

　　Jay grins at this and beckons me back toward the stairs. "Just wait. You haven`t seen the half of it yet."

　　"There`s more?" He merely continues to grin and leads me up another flight of stairs.

　　"The third floor and attic are completely done except sanding down the mud," he explains as I wander the now very defined hallways leading to wings of what were once guest rooms and a children`s nursery.

　　"You said the attic is done too?"

　　"Mhmm. It looks good. They guys already sanded and tidied in the attic. It`s ready to be painted& or wallpapered or whatever," he shrugs. "Point being, we`re working from the top down, and if we could get in another day like today, I think we could finish this step."

　　"Wow. That`s impressive."

　　"Many helpers, light work? I think that`s how the phrase goes?" he shrugs happily.

　　"It`s many hands make light work`."If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

　　"Eh, close enough," he chuckles. "You got the gist anyway. Well&. So how was your day out, Lottie?" he asks as we descend the stairs.

　　"I got to visit an old friend," I reply.

　　"Ah. That sounds nice. Did you do anything fun?"

　　"We just talked and watched some old shows. Had lunch together. Nothing too exciting."

　　"Still, it`s nice to spend a quiet day with friends sometimes."

　　"I suppose so, yes."

　　We step into the foyer of the main floor and Jay yawns into a deep, back-arching stretch. "Well, Lottie, I`m bushed."

　　"You worked hard today," I say by way of excusing him.

　　"Imma head home now, but we`re planning on coming back tomorrow to finish installing the walls. You might want to plan another day out and about."

　　"I`ll take that under advisement. Good night, Jay."

　　"Yup. Night."

　　Jay leaves as the sun outside is setting- the conclusion to an odd day. And the house is still. And then she sighs in a greeting meant only for my ears. And I realize that I spent an entire day without auditory hallucinations except for the morning (and now) when I was in the house. So now I must wonder& is it me, or her?

　　Lottie&. Sigh&. Oh, Lottie&.

　　I sigh in reply, flip off the recently installed electric lights, and shuffle off to my little chapel room, closing the door immediately behind me and leaning my back against it with nothing but the fading natural light filtering through the circular window above the original altar space illuminating the room.

　　I feel a headache coming on. Preemptively locating my current bottle of ibuprofen and swallowing a couple of pills, I begin my nightly routine, stripping off my nice clothes in favor of comfortable, fleece pajamas. A quick jaunt to the bathroom to brush my teeth and I return to the chapel where I sit in my grandmother`s rocking chair with plans to read Sarah`s diary.

　　Instead, I find myself staring blankly at the irregular stone wall of the chapel. I`m not really looking at it. It`s more that the wall exists in the direction of a void that has me transfixed. My eyes zone in and out, the wall coming into focus only occasionally as it passes through my eyes` focal point. And there are faces in the walls- face pareidolia. And the faces are partially obscured or bizarrely incomplete like eyes peeking around a corner or a wax figure with half of its face melted. They too blur in and out with the wall. And they fascinate me.

　　I wonder what Thomas`s face looks like now. I wonder if I`d even recognize him if I were to pass him on the street. Will I forget him before the end? Will I get stuck with a regressed memory of his features? Will a deranged future me insist that he`s coming? That he`s present? That he never left? And if he does come to visit and reconcile, will it even matter? Or will these half-formed faces in the wall become more familiar to me than the face of my own son?

　　Perhaps these faces- these deformed, unformed, or half-formed faces- are the ones that I deserve as my company. And as my eyes continue to focus in and out on the cracks, crevices, and shadows cast by the uneven surfaces of these stones, the faces morph and shift and bleed into other faces. The curves of an ear become the angle of a nose when two creatures claim the same eye. The side profile of another face gives its chin up to become a cheekbone, and that face in turn sacrifices an eye to benefit a third face needing a pair of lips.

　　And I`m tired. My eyes close but my mind churns, my thoughts drifting between Thomas and Uncle Jack. Will he visit me before the end? Did he see faces in the shadows where none should exist as his mind slipped slowly away from him? Would he even recognize me? Did he know that he was going crazy? Is he happier without me? Am I becoming like him? Does it even matter?

　　Mother and Uncle Jack were the only children of my grandparents who both died before a time when I could honestly remember them, and Uncle Jack opted to remain unmarried and childless. My father`s death in 92 left my mother alone to deal with Uncle Jack`s multi-year downward spiral that began the following year and ended when he passed away in 1997. She wasn`t prepared to handle him, so it became my burden too. Or maybe it simply became my burden. Grief changed Uncle Jack. He lost his mind to the mine accident. What was shamelessly charming when sober became violently angry when drunk, and Uncle Jack refused to put the bottle down for the entirety of those four years. "You can pry it out of my cold, dead fingers when the time comes if it makes you happy, Lottie. You can tell Nancy that I don`t even give a crap what she thinks anymore! Tell her to stop mothering me! I`m a grown a-*hic* man!"

　　Nancy was my mother`s name.

　　It runs in the family, you know. Alcoholism. There`s a reason why I don`t drink. Supposedly that`s what my maternal grandfather died from too, and that`s probably why my mother couldn`t handle dealing with Uncle Jack- too much associated trauma. It didn`t help that Uncle Jack was the last of her family besides yours truly, and I think she recognized the signs of his intentional self-destruction and took that personally.

　　But the mental illness that accompanied his alcoholism accompanied her without the alcohol playing a factor. They both changed at the end, becoming entirely different people. Maybe that runs in the family too&.

　　And that terrifies me.

　　How am I supposed to know if I`ve started down that path? How do I stop it? And is it even possible? Or am I doomed to follow them? Perhaps I`m already on that path. Perhaps I`m already beyond help&.

　　Creak&. Sigh&. Oh, Lottie&.