Once Charles' house was finished, Erik went home.
He hadn't been certain that it would still be standing. The mob might have come instead, might have burned it down in retribution. Perhaps they'd been dissuaded by fear of him, perhaps by guilt at what their brothers and fathers had done in the woods. Either way, the house still stood, exactly as they had left it on that day.
Erik hadn't been here since the day he and Magda had rushed outside in search of Nina. Now, he hesitated at the front of the house for a long time before going around to the back. The lawn was overgrown, but otherwise everything else was the same. The back door was still ajar—as it had so often been on those days Nina had spent playing outside in the yard, as it had been when they'd gone to look for her, so certain they'd be back within just a few minutes.
It had taken Erik six months to return, and now that he was here, he didn't hesitate to push the door open further and step inside. It was dank and dark, and it smelled: the result of six months of rain, sweeping in through the door and the open windows; the result of six months of animals nesting here, with no one to tell them not to piss or shit inside, or that they had to go when it was eight o'clock and bedtime.
He had hesitated to come here, fearing he would feel too much, but now found that he felt nothing at all. Numb, he switched on the light with a wave of his hand, took in the visible evidence of what his nose had told him already: a house that had neither been torn down nor burned to the ground, but that was a ruin all the same. A squirrel jumped out the kitchen window, a few small birds rushed out from the living room, and before Erik could take in any of the rest of it, a voice said, "What a mess. Wow."
When he turned, Erik wasn't surprised to see who had spoken. Pietro had followed him around awkwardly ever since Cairo; somehow, it wasn't surprising that he'd followed Erik where no one else would have dared. It was less surprising than it should have been, too, that all Erik had to say in reply was a mild, "Yes."
"Do you need help cleaning it up?"
"—No. I came here for something else."
Even Pietro had the sense not to ask what that was. He got his answer a moment later, anyway, when Erik went to the mantel and began stuffing photographs into the duffel bag he'd brought with him.
For a moment, it seemed Pietro would have the sense not to ask about that either, but then: "That's her, right? That's your daughter? My—"
My sister. That was what he couldn't bring himself to say. Erik had known it ever since he'd glimpsed Pietro's mother when she'd come to visit him at the school, not long before his cast had come off; he'd made sense of so many of their interactions that day, but in the weeks since, neither he nor Pietro had ever said anything about it. Pietro knew, and though Erik knew that Pietro knew, Pietro did not know that Erik knew, and that was where they stood.
There were many things Erik could say, now. He saw the kind of moment this was very clearly. He could drive the boy—this man, this son who'd grown up without him—away with just a few cutting words, which could be just as much a weapon as his gift had ever been. He probably should have—it was clearer now than ever how he destroyed everyone he cared for, including those he'd had a hand in creating in the first place. Perhaps Nina, too, might have lived to grow up, if he hadn't been there.
The man he'd been before Magda and Anya would have done it, would have cut his barely-known son off just as easily as he'd cut off Charles, and Pietro's mother before him.
Now, though, Erik saw the opportunity. Even through the grief that was beginning to rise again, looking at the picture Pietro had gestured to—one of Nina, kneeling next to a young fawn, its mother licking her hair, as if she were another of its young and in need of a thorough washing. Even now, he saw it, what he'd missed a decade ago, when he and Pietro had first met—the chance to make a connection, instead of holding himself always apart.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, that's Nina. Was."
He left that picture alone on the mantle; he'd come back to it later. He headed into the bedroom for the rest of the framed pictures, and the albums he and Magda had kept. They'd taken so many pictures. Erik had left Auschwitz with only one photograph of his parents, and considered himself lucky; the pictures in this house were riches in comparison, and he intended to take each and every one of them with him.
He wasn't surprised when he returned to the living room and found it sparkling clean. Wasn't surprised, either, when Pietro handed him the framed photograph of Nina and the deer and said, "What was she like?"
He could have been angry, could have refused to answer, but he'd already decided, minutes ago. He thought of the joy Pietro took in his mutation, the many pranks he'd pulled ever since the cast's removal; he thought of the way Nina had giggled, the many times she'd convinced her friends to help her pull some nonsense or other.
In the end, there was no other way to begin except, "She was a lot like you."