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He had no answer, made silent by the force of her stubborn optimism. He'd hoped that accompanying her down here he might find it contagious and grab on to some shred of belief that he could do here what he could not do before, and find some kind of normal. It hadn't worked. If anything the ramshackle halls and cracked blackboards and water-damaged, soot-stained books strewn across the floor had just reminded him of how completely impossible everything she was suggesting was, and it was always startling to remember how young she actually was--younger than Peyton, he reminded himself--but he'd never felt the gap more intensely than he did now. She had been, what--nine? the first time he'd picked up a needle. She had been thirteen years old when he had been raising a child, or trying to.

He had been holding the stump of a pencil that had at some point in time been bright pink and dotted with Easter eggs, and unthinkingly he pushed it into his pocket as he turned to go, apparently having accomplished whatever it was he came in to do.

"Sorry for the detour," he said quietly. "Lead the way."

He stood hunched with his hands in his pockets, no longer chucking things up and down the road, instead observing dispassionately what was wrecked, what wasn't. It was possibly not very surprising, given his personal proclivities when it came to his living space, that he absently fixated on a crisply geometrical midcentury modern off to one side of the cul-de-sac, a cluster of attractively-stacked boxes that all boasted broken windows and crumbling eaves, the paint peeling and the gutters sagging off like the house had died in the process of shedding a skin that at some point had been the epitome of modern. He stared at it without expression for a long minute or two before he answered.

"More parks than houses," he said, but the venom was out of it. He was, he realized, feeling sorry for her, irritation gone to pity. "Why this spot? And which house," he added, hoping he'd stop feeling sorry for her if she kept talking and come back around to being irrationally angry with her for failing to convince him.

He followed her, equally undaunted by the disrepair although probably for different reasons.

"Is it exhausting?" he asked her flatly. "The relentless optimism."

He didn't look up from where he was running his fingertips over a peeling bit of wallpaper, smoothing it futilely back up. "I get plenty done," he said quietly.

He didn't so much prevaricate as outright dodge, letting the wallpaper fall back and turning. He didn't try to fake a smile, which made the tone--abrupt change of subject, forced airiness--seem more sincere. This was less about avoiding answering her question, apparently, than about apologizing for raining on her parade yet again.

"This trip isn't about me. All about you. Show me around." He gestured outward, indicating the dilapidated shelves, the falling balustrades, the dust-thick floorboard. "Show me where you're going to put everything. Regale me," he said, "with your future plans. I'm all ears."

Where America saw right past the wreckage and into potential, Taym's ears filtered her chatter into an endless and insurmountable list of obstacles--and this, just to get one house functional. This, after the general clean-up. This, and where would they be then? He quietly hated her for thinking she could fix the school building, and more for thinking she had any reason to. He hated her for every "one day" and "but by then." There was a song stuck in his head: a cheery preschool song, about a cat and a dog and a donkey and a rooster off on an adventure.

There was a section of Taym's head forever roped off for the business of, against all odds, scheming out ways of making women fall in love with him. It didn't matter particularly whether they were women he wanted, or if they wanted him. It was a matter of principle, a leftover habit he'd never quite shaken, because few resources were as endlessly generous and easily renewable as a woman in love. He had never stopped practicing, at least in theory.

He could, he thought, wander down here a couple of weekends and sweep the glass out of the floor, scrub the place down until the kitchen, at least, looked like it was just waiting for the power to come back on after a summer thunderstorm. He could drag one of the tables from the neighboring wrecks over, cover over its ruined surface with a tablecloth--something bright, something she'd like, not the white he'd have wanted. In the sped-up time of idle fantasy he attempted to imagine her reaction to the candle-glow of the windows from outside, to the spread of caviar and grilled peaches and some inflated, top-shelf whiskey because Taym had never had the patience for wine. He could do all this--at least in theory.

He imagined, dully, the sudden thump and crash of some creature at the door, and the candles whiffed out while strange shadows climbed the walls. And there would be, besides, the wreckage just outside the oasis of calm. The stairwell would still be falling in. The thresholds would still be stained with rust.

He could not even conceive of a single peaceful evening. He laughed, a weak little sound, and he was laughing at the idea that she could somehow make a home here, but it worked well enough as an answer to her culinary pride.

"What do they want you to do before you're allowed to start sinking your teeth into this?"

"It's cute," he said finally, a weak response to her firm, triumphant affirmations. "I'm sure it'll... I'm sure you'll clean it up great," he said, remembering too late that she'd told him that honesty was more important than her feelings before deciding that it didn't matter anyway because while he was a good liar, he wasn't trying especially hard right now. "Let me know if you want help," he added, running his fingers idly over a countertop. Because he liked having work to do, even if it wasn't in the service of some lofty goal. Even if he didn't think it would be worth the effort. And because, miserably, he felt guilty for not being able to rise up and meet her enthusiasm and optimism with anything of his own.

"I knew you didn't," he said, moving past her back into the hallway, threading an arm around her waist for an instant as he did, as if he'd leave it there and lean fondly into her and they'd squeeze down the narrow corridor side by side. None of it, of course: just a fleeting, instantly-revoked gesture and then he was meandering back towards the front of the house, absently touching the walls, the thresholds of doors.

"We should come back some time," he said without turning, "and look at some of the other ones." And this time he tried, tried, to lie convincingly.