In the old house, the pro­tag­o­nist delved into a chaot­ic col­lec­tion that mir­rored his mad­ness, redis­cov­er­ing items left untouched for a decade, all of which once brought him clos­er to Grace. The shelves sagged under the weight of “Time,” along­side local news­pa­pers and arti­cles. The walls were adorned with aged maps, scrib­bled streets in mark­er, and a col­lage of clip­pings from var­i­ous cat­a­logues such as Junior Bazaar and Miss­es Fash­ion. These items reflect­ed out­fits that he pieced togeth­er from frag­ment­ed conversations—fragments that had sur­faced dur­ing the qui­et of night, com­pelling him to rush down­stairs and write in near­ly fifty jour­nals. His thoughts, dis­joint­ed yet vivid, encom­passed words like plaid, cut loose, emery, and vanil­la, inter­pret­ed vari­ably with the pass­ing days through sounds, smells, and visions.

He engaged in a pecu­liar craft, inter­twin­ing mag­a­zine faces with news­pa­per hair­styles, often alter­ing eye col­ors with a paint­brush. Acknowl­edg­ing the seem­ing­ly inevitable truth of Grace’s absence, and pos­si­bly view­ing his past fool­ish­ness through a mind now clear­er, he decid­ed to purge his col­lec­tion. With resolve, he stripped the rem­nants from his old bed­room, fill­ing a met­al trash can in the yard to the brim. After retriev­ing a can of gaso­line from the garage, he soaked the pile and ignit­ed it, watch­ing his mem­o­ries suc­cumb to the flames.

As he inhaled the acrid smoke and closed his eyes, he found him­self trans­port­ed back to a moment long buried in darkness—a moment ignit­ed by the specter of Grace. Amidst the smoke, he recalled her des­per­ate plea: “Wake up, Patch. I’ll try and pull you out. I’ll try and keep you with me.” Her voice, strained with exer­tion and emo­tion, echoed in his ears, fram­ing his iso­la­tion as she con­fessed her inabil­i­ty to res­cue him alone. Final­ly, as the smoke spi­raled upwards, he looked up through tear-filled eyes, reveal­ing a night sky he had long over­looked, stark against the mem­o­ries now sur­ren­dered to the fire.