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Standing in the hallway of the strange gray house, in a silence that felt heavy and exhausted, Luke could see two figures at either end of the table, eating dinner.
His eyes went automatically to one of them: to the shock of copper-bright hair that meant Elliot. He looked, more or less, like the Elliot Luke had met at thirteen. It was strange to see that face and be able to read it: Luke had not been able to read him at all, at thirteen. He thought Elliot looked unhappy. His gaze was fixed on the window, as though he was looking at something outside, but every so often it would flicker over to the other occupant of the table, a worn-out man with a thin face and sandy hair going gray.
Luke had never seen Elliot's father, not even in pictures, but this could only be him. He had Elliot's gray eyes and Elliot's chin, and he looked nothing like Elliot; Elliot was always alive with something, laughter or tenderness or passionate fury, and this man wore the fixed expression of someone who was trying very hard not to feel anything at all. There was a glass bottle on the table next to him, and as Luke watched, he reached for it and grimly poured himself another drink.
Throughout all of this, he did not look at Elliot. Not even once.
"What was Mum like?" asked Elliot, breaking the silence at last.
Elliot's father blinked at him, as if up until this moment he had not noticed that his son was in the room. "She was the first thing I saw when I walked into a room," he said, after a long pause. As he spoke, Luke could at last see the spark of something light behind his eyes. "And once I saw her, I never wanted to look anywhere else. She would speak, and whatever she said was brilliant and startling. She was like that, a constant bright surprise."
He had become more animated as he went along, as if the memory of having loved someone had woken something in him at last. All that changed when he looked back at Elliot: it was like a door slamming, or a flame being doused, it was so sudden. All at once, his expression flattened out, and was perfectly blank again. "You're not like her," he said tonelessly. "You're like me. Nobody will ever love you enough to stay."
"What?" Luke hissed, but he was the only one who had spoken, and it was clear that neither of them could hear him. There was no response from either side of the table.
Almost the worst thing about it, he thought, was that Elliot did not seem hurt or outraged. He did not even seem very surprised. His expression was resigned, as if this was what he should have expected for asking, and it would have been stupid to wish for anything else.
"Right," Elliot said, sardonic and flat to answer his father's flatness, although his father was no longer looking at him. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he had wanted to smirk but could not manage it. "Great talk."
Luke thought, heartbreakingly, that for the first time all night he could finally see a resemblance between the two of them.
"It's not true," he found himself saying, desperately, even though it was obviously pointless and Elliot could not hear him. "You know it's not true, don't you?"
Without thinking, he reached out -- to do what, he didn't know, to touch Elliot or pull him into a hug or even just to take him away from there, from that terrible dead house and his terrible dead-eyed father -- but at the instant when his hand would have brushed Elliot's shoulder it passed through instead, insubstantial as mist.
It was only a memory, after all. There was no way to change it.