Blaine pulls up to the house at a quarter after ten. It looks exactly the way he left it, horrendous paintjob and all, but with the addition of a U-Haul truck parked by the curb, and a grown man wearing a navy blue polo and retro 1980s acid wash jeans staring in at the window with his hands pressed to the glass. From the back, he looks like an oversized Cabbage Patch kid, but in the reflection of the window, he more closely resembles a young Karl Marx with the iconic frizzy beard.

“Blaine,” the man plaintively moans. “Blaine, where are you? Open the door…”

Blaine shakes his head when he sees him, chuckling at his woeful wail. Blaine parks in front of the house, but the man doesn't notice, focused as intently as he is on the living room full of toys, visible through the curtains that Blaine neglected to pull closed the night before.

“Gary!” Blaine calls out as he steps out of his minivan. “Have some self-respect, man.”

“Blaine!” Gary exclaims. He spins around, face glowing with childlike excitement, but his voice tinged with exasperation at being kept waiting. “You can't leave me out here with all those toys inside, begging for me to take them away from this awful house.” Gary presses his ear against the glass. “I can hear them, Blaine,” he says as Blaine approaches the door. “They're saying Gary…come rescue us, Gary. We need you…”

“I'm sorry,” Blaine says, sorting through his key ring for the correct key. “I got held up.”

“Yeah” - Gary flashes a knowing grin and a wink - “your brother told me all about it. Getting into the puppet biz, huh, Blaine?”

Blaine makes a disgusted face and turns away from Gary to unlock the door. “Jesus Christmas! You, too?” Blaine pushes the door in as far as he can. He grabs a broken ottoman to prop it open.

Gary walks in behind Blaine, but stops inside the doorway, his eyes wide with awe, his jaw dropped, a hand raised to cover his heart.

“I can't…I can't believe it,” he says dramatically, staring at the heaps of toys and the stacks of boxes. “It's…it's amazing.”

“Yeah,” Blaine agrees, pulling his webcam out of his pocket and switching it on, “and this isn't even half of it.”

Gary whimpers. Blaine trains the camera on his face.

“It's like a dream come true,” Gary whispers, wiping an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.

“Snap out of it, Gary.” Blaine snaps his fingers in the air above the webcam. “You have to do your spiel.”

Gary startles out of his trance at the unpleasant noise.

“Right, right…” He tugs down on the hem of his polo to straighten out the wrinkles (not that it does any good, or that they matter compared to the mustard stain on his collar) and looks into the camera. “When should I…”

“Now,” Blaine says, launching straight into the segment. “Hello, guys, gals, and Internet pals (Cooper's tagline; Blaine had nothing to do with it). This is Blaine Anderson, coming to you from day 2 of our renovation. I'm here with our good friend Gary Shepton…” Gary gives the camera a timid wave, his eyes bouncing between Blaine and the webcam, unsure where to look even though they've done this several times before already “…and he's going to be appraising the toys in the house. Gary, please tell our viewers what exactly it is you're going to be doing while you're here.”

“I'm going to start off by photographing and cataloging,” Gary explains. He pulls an iPad mini tablet out of his back pocket and holds it up. He accesses an empty Excel document and shows it to the camera. “When I'm done, I'll load up the toys that I can sell immediately into my U-Haul and take them to my shop. In the interim, I'm going to send Cooper a detailed inventory of all the toys, their conditions, and their estimated values.”

“How will you get that information?” Blaine asks, again taping filler for Cooper to use in case he runs a few minutes short of his time slot.

“I use Google Goggles and other appraisal specific Internet surfing software to help me research the items I'm looking at fairly quickly. One photograph and I can bring up the information I need.” Gary switches to a program on his tablet and turns on a demo that illustrates the technique. “It makes researching a lot easier and more accurate. It can also put me in contact with other appraisers who have encountered the same items, who might have some insight that could be useful. Cuts down on the possibility of accidentally dealing in counterfeit merchandise.” Gary smirks. “I wish I had this five years ago, I'll tell you what. Would have saved me a ton of money on my AT&T bill, tracking that information down one phone call at a time.”

“We have rooms and rooms full of toys in this house. How long do you think that's going to take?” Blaine asks, his question a veiled way of finding out how long they're going to be there.

“Most of the day, if I'm lucky,” Gary says with a dreamy sigh.

Great, Blaine thinks, hoping that Kurt and Sebastian don't get too bored watching old movies all day long.

Yup, bored puppets. Because that's a definite possibility.

“Okay,” Blaine says, switching off the webcam while trying not to sound too disappointed. “I have some things to do in the house and some phone calls to make. If you need me, just holler.”

“Will do,” Gary says, his attention already drawn to a stack of vintage Barbie dolls in the far corner.

Blaine watches him go, shaking his head at the odd man.

“Have fun,” he says, watching Gary put on a pair of white cotton gloves and get to work.

***

Unlike dealing with Cooper's other project houses, which were a simple matter of calling in a clean-up crew to get rid of the garbage and occasionally coming across a gem or two that they could sell, this house is a complicated mishmash of treasures and antiques, coupled with the fairly typical, grotesque trash. Blaine needs to pull out his whole metaphorical Rolodex of contacts for this project. He needs to find someone to unload the heavy tools in the basement, someone else to appraise the sports memorabilia upstairs, and he needs to order a temporary storage unit for the furniture. Authentic Victorian furnishings are highly coveted, which makes them hard to locate, and ultimately expensive when you find someone willing to part with them. He intends on keeping anything he can salvage and repurposing it for the renovation.

The upstairs bedrooms are going to be the easiest rooms to renovate by far. It's a given that Cooper is going to want to sell the baseball pennants and the bat, and probably the opera posters, too. There's a huge market for those vintage posters, especially ones in mint condition with bright colors like these posters have. But the furniture will stay.

A pit blossoms in Blaine's stomach at the thought of dismantling Kurt's bedroom.

Blaine had originally thought that the workshop in the basement where the puppets were made was the heart of the house. After he saw the bedrooms, he realized he was wrong. The upstairs rooms, so well-tended, adorned with carefully chosen mementos – those rooms are the heart of the house.

Blaine feels sick at the idea of tearing that heart apart.

But he has Kurt, he reminds himself. He saved Kurt…and Sebastian…and that's all that matters.

Yes, all that matters is my burgeoning insanity and a future on tabloid talk shows, he acknowledges ruefully.

Blaine heads down the hallway to the dining room, smiling to himself when he hears Gary chirp in triumph at some amazing doll-related discovery.

“They had the whole Bob Mackie for Barbie collection? Sweet!”

Blaine heads up the stairs to the next level, but bypasses the bedrooms, opting to start in the attic. They spent practically no time up there yesterday during the walkthrough. Blaine wants to get a better look at the neat stacks of boxes and the furnishings that were kept up there. He knows he'll have to deal with those latent memories in the bedrooms eventually, plus the possibility of another fantasy involving Kurt, so for now, he'll start with the easy-to-handle stuff.

Blaine switches the webcam to still-camera mode as he heads up the last flight of stairs. There doesn't appear to be a light switch up here, but sunlight floods in through a large circular vent in the outer wall, making the whole room warm and bright.

Blaine puts on a pair of his own protective gloves and examines the furniture items stored up there closely – a stand-up lamp with what looks like a Tiffany shade; another table lamp with a pleated, cream-fabric shade, sitting on a squat, cherry wood end table that had most likely been in the living room at some point; four chairs that belonged to the dining room table downstairs; and a matching pair of Queen Victoria wing chairs, upholstered in a cream fabric imprinted with gold ivy leaves.

Blaine photographs each piece, mentally fixing where he wants to put them in the house. He wonders if Kurt would have liked one of those wing chairs in his room, or maybe the stand-up lamp next to his sewing machine while he worked. What kinds of clothes did he sew? Did he make outfits for himself, or did he maybe make clothes and sell them?

Or perhaps he worked in the theater, designing costumes. Those posters in his room could be from performances he worked on.

Blaine smiles, imagining Kurt as a student at McKinley, working on the costumes for the musical Blaine starred in his junior year – West Side Story. They could have chatted while Kurt took his measurements, discussed what outfits Kurt could see Tony wearing during certain scenes and why. What insights might he have had on Tony and Maria's motivations, and how would he have portrayed that through their costumes? Blaine always felt that the people in charge of wardrobes on certain television shows understand the characters better than the writers do sometimes. What would Kurt have to say about that?

Blaine moves the standing lamp into better lighting while he daydreams of afternoons spent with Kurt after school, talking over fittings between rehearsals. Blaine could picture himself asking Kurt to help him run through his lines while he built up the nerve to ask Kurt out on a date…provided, of course, that Kurt liked guys that way. Blaine can't shake the feeling he did. Blaine sighs. Didn't he get on Cooper's case for making assumptions about the sexual identity of the person who inhabited Kurt's room? Blaine doesn't want to be a hypocrite, but for some reason he can't help doing the same thing. Everything he sees, everything he touches is a clue to who these people were, the same as in every house, but with Kurt…there's an impression Blaine gets that has nothing to do with the posters or the sewing machine. It's like he feels Kurt in this house. A part of him is there, telling Blaine about him; things that Blaine wouldn't otherwise infer from the stuff lying around. But it's not as simple as that, either. This impression of Kurt, it's not passively hiding in individual objects, waiting to be uncovered. Blaine feels like it's following him, guiding him, the same way he did when he first went down to the basement.

Whatever secret this house holds that has to do with Kurt, it wants to be revealed.

Blaine repositions the lamp shade so that the sunlight streams through the dark glass and takes a picture. He's all set to take another picture when, out of the corner of his eye, he spots peculiar markings along one side of the boxes. Blaine pockets his webcam and walks over to take a look. He runs a gloved finger over one line of writing. It's difficult to read because whatever marker had been used to write this has bled into the cardboard, but a skeleton of the words remains.

Blaine has seen this before. He wishes he had brought one of the photographs from the album at the beach house with him to compare against. He had thought about carrying Kurt's picture in his pocket, but he didn't want to ruin it. These nearly unreadable words, hastily scribbled by a hand that probably didn't spend too much time writing, look identical to the writing on the backs of the photographs.

Blaine tears into the first box. The interlocking flaps, softened by age and dampness, pop up with little effort. The very top of the box is layered in newspaper, faded where the inch-wide seam between the loose flaps exposed it to sunlight but otherwise intact. Blaine digs through the pages, catching sight of conflicting dates. The newspaper on top is the most recent, albeit from about thirty years ago, but a few layers down the dates get older. Beneath them, Blaine finds a wealth of leather bound books. Blaine lifts the ones on top to peek underneath.

Yup, more books.

Blaine frowns.

A lot of people collect vintage books. That's not unusual. It just seems too normal for this house. Blaine isn't sure what he expected to find in this box, but it wasn't boring books. Blaine picks one up anyway to examine it.

At least Cooper will be thrilled. He has a guy in L.A. who buys rare books, and considering all the other collectibles in the house, these books are probably first editions.

Blaine opens the cover and turns to a random page.

January 18th –

I'll never get used to the weather in Seattle. Always so wet, always so dreary. I much prefer the California coast with its sunshine and warmth. And the ocean. God, I love the ocean. If only we could find a place to settle down there where we all can be happy. I miss you guys. Every day I miss you guys. I'll never forgive myself for missing the most important day of our lives…and I did it again. But I'm trying to make a new life for us, doll, and when I break into the big time, it's going to be the best of the best for the Smythe family.

Blaine stops reading. He looks at the black leather cover, the spine bare except for a gold embossed number – 1915.

These aren't just books, Blaine realizes. They're journals.

Blaine reaches into the box and looks at the books again, each one similar, each with a different year embossed along the spine – 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919…

It doesn't seem like there's an end to them. Blaine returns the book, pulls the box down from the stack, and goes for the next box. The flaps spring open as if they have been waiting years for someone to come along and find them, and a strong smell escapes.

A burnt smell, like coals left over after a barbecue.

No newspapers cover these. Blaine picks up the first journal on top. The date on the spine is worn flat and almost too difficult to read. He traces his finger over it, revealing an imprint of the number 1932. Blaine examines his glove covered digit. The cotton is stained black by a layer of fine ash. He raises the book to his nose and takes a tentative sniff.

It smells like a fireplace.

Blaine looks the journal over thoroughly. The gold rind on the pages is singed, and parts of the leather cover are burnt. Blaine opens the book to a page in the middle.

November 24 –

It's Thanksgiving Day, but there's nothing to be thankful for. Everything is gone. All of it, my entire life, gone. I would bring you all back if I could. I would trade everything that I said and did to make it all right again.

The paragraph cuts off there with a long, violent swipe of black ink cutting across the page, leaving an impression so deep that the tip of the pen sliced through the paper. Blaine turns the page to look for another entry but there's nothing. No entry for November 25, none for November 26, no other entries for the rest of the month. Blaine keeps flipping the pages, but the book is blank until Christmas Day.

December 25 –

Merry Christmas to all those I love who are no longer here with me. I feel your presence every day, haunting me, but it's not the same.

That's the last entry for the remainder of the year.

Blaine stares at the blank page labeled December 31st.

It seems so empty, so final.

Blaine wishes there was something written there – anything. Something that tells him that despite it all, despite this obvious pain, life continued on and good things happened.

Blaine turns back to the beginning of the journal, to the earlier entries for the year.

February 14 –

It's Valentine's Day, and I miss you so much that I don't think that I could even begin to tell you. I made your favorite dinner, bought a bottle of that God awful wine you loved so much, and ate alone. Well, not alone. Kurt was here with me. I love that boy and I appreciate his company, but it wasn't the same as having you here. Meanwhile, Sebastian went out drinking…again. He takes a little too much after me, I'm afraid. He's going to get some floozy knocked up, and then what? He'll get chained down with a brood of simpering brats and no future. That's not what you wanted for him, and it's not what I want for him, but he doesn't listen to me.

The sad thing is that I'm past the point where I think I care anymore.

Blaine feels his throat tighten as he reads on, blowing through a bunch of pages, letting the book lead him to where he should read next.

March 6 –

Everyone is telling me to pack it in. They tell me that it's over, but I refuse to believe it. So maybe the work isn't out there the way it was, but we've suffered dry patches before. The audiences will come back. Once they realize these talkies are just a gimmick, they'll return. They always do. They'll be begging us to perform for them, and we'll be able to name our price. The money will flow in ten deep, I'm sure…but if they don't, what will I tell my boys? How do I tell them it's over? That the world thinks we're finished?

“What?” Blaine asks the book, thumbing through the pages and hoping he'll magically stumble on the answer. “What's over?”

Blaine scans the pages, but he's overwhelmed by the amount of entries and the nearly indecipherable script. He looks at the boxes stacked in front of him. There are six total. They can't all be full of books, can they? Did whoever wrote in these journals write one for every year of his life?

There's only one way to find out. Blaine would have to read through them all.

The boxes are going home with him.

Blaine repacks the box and hoists it into his arms.

It's a treacherous trip down the narrow stairs with this box of books he's carrying, but as with the puppets, there's a compulsion within him to see this through. Whatever went on here, these books are a clue he'll need to solve the mystery. He can't leave them behind.

Blaine walks into the dining room and shuffles across the floor, down the hallway and into the living room, which has become emptier now that Gary has started loading the dolls into his U-Haul. Less clutter means more room for the house to breathe. The atmosphere in the downstairs level already seems lighter.

Blaine carries the box out to his minivan. He balances it between the door and his leg in order to fish his keys out of his pocket and open the back hatch. He puts the box in his trunk, shoving it over as far as he can to one side to make room for the others. He doesn't shut the hatch completely before rushing back inside for another box.

“How's it goin', Gare?” Blaine asks as he blows past the man heading toward the front door, his arms laden with pink boxes. Blaine asks the question, but doesn't stop to wait for an answer.

“I never want to leave,” Gary calls after him.

Blaine grumbles to himself, “Well, you're gonna.”

One by one, Blaine carries the boxes of books down to his van, eager to go through each box and unlock whatever secret these journals may hold.

As he carries the last box through the living room, he remembers that he's supposed to be filming Gary working, and to a lesser extent, himself.

“When I come back in, I need to film you, Gary,” Blaine yells to the man unloading the toys in the downstairs bathroom.

“Whatever floats your boat,” Gary replies. “By the way, I think your brother is going to be really happy with the numbers I'm going to send him.”

“That good?” Blaine asks, stopping for a moment out of curiosity.

“Oh, yeah,” Gary says. “Most of this stuff is going to be no problem to move. I have a guy who's looking for half the stuff I've found already, and he's willing to pay higher than market price. I think he's reselling them in Japan or something. He'll probably get ten times as much over there.”

“Wow,” Blaine says, genuinely impressed.

“Yeah. If I were you, I'd ask for a raise.”

Blaine swallows. Too late for that, he thinks. God knows he could have used the money, too. But he's not about to unload on Gary – not about this.

“I'll do that,” Blaine says instead and heads out to his van.

All six boxes fit, shoved against each other tight without a single centimeter of space between them. The rear of his minivan sinks about a foot beneath the weight.

He closes the trunk, intent on heading back into the house right as a silver Lexus pulls up to the curb. Blaine doesn't recognize the car and waits to see who it is. Maybe a neighbor stopping by to see what the activity is about. Blaine hasn't met anyone from the neighborhood yet, which seems peculiar. Not one lookie loo. Not a single nosy neighbor.

The Lexus parks in front of Blaine's Honda, nearly bumper to bumper. The driver's door opens and a woman steps out, but she doesn't acknowledge Blaine. She may not even realize that he's standing there with the way she has her gaze honed in on the house in front of her. When she stands completely, she's an inch or two taller than Blaine. She's dressed to intimidate in a tailored, aubergine suit. A billowy, white shirt underneath the jacket lends an air of femininity to her starched ensemble. She has sleek, auburn hair styled in a bob that falls an inch above her earlobes. Her tan looks artificial – too perfect, too even, and a touch too orange, but everything about her appearance has been meticulously thought out. She seems put together with exceptionally clean angles, from the razor cut of her hair, to the severe downturn of her mouth and her sharp, pointed chin.

“So, it finally sold,” she says, shaking her head with blatant disapproval. “I almost didn't believe it when I heard.”

“Uh, may I help you?” Blaine asks. He walks toward her, reaching for his webcam, but the scowl on the woman's face causes him to reconsider whether or not he should record this conversation for his brother's show. She turns only her head and looks Blaine over from head to foot with an unamused half-smile/half-frown playing on her lips.

“I don't know,” she says curtly. “Can you?”

Blaine jerks back at her impolite and, frankly, adolescent response. “I probably can if you tell me…”

“My name is Catherine Dorst,” she interrupts. “I'm a liaison for the San Diego Historical Society, and I'm curious to know what the new owners have planned for this house.”

“I'm Blaine Anderson.” Blaine offers the woman a cordial smile and his hand. She looks him over again and scoffs, turning back to the house.

“Okay,” Blaine starts, pulling his hand away, “well, we plan to bring the house back to its original design,” he says confidently. “We're going to keep all the original structural details and…”

“We?” she interrupts again with a smirk, examining Blaine shrewdly. “You and who else? I mean, how old are you? Twelve?”

“Uh, no,” he says, ducking his head and adopting what tries to be a polite smile. He doesn't take too much offense since looking younger than his age is a boon in his chosen profession. “Cooper Anderson bought the house for his home renovation show. I'm his brother. I'm in charge of the renovation.”

Her eyes pop open, still glaring at him, but with an excited expression on her face.

“Cooper Anderson?” she asks. “The Cooper Anderson?”

Blaine sighs. Oh boy. A fan.

“The one and only,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“I've seen him on TV,” she says, straightening her suit and fussing with her hair. “Is he here?” She starts up the walk as Gary walks out with another armload of dolls, humming to himself and laughing at odd intervals. She glances at him with a grimace but keeps on walking.

“No,” Blaine replies, tailing after her, “he's not here. He's in L.A.”

She stops short and stares at the open door, deciding whether or not it's worth going inside and checking for herself. When she spots Gary walking back to the house, brushing grey dust off the legs of his jeans, she comes to the conclusion that risking similar damage to her $1200 suit isn't worth it.

“Shame,” she says, turning back around and heading for her car. She crooks a finger over her shoulder, summoning Blaine to follow. “The Historical Society has been trying to buy this house for a while now, but I guess it just wasn't in the stars.” She opens her passenger side door and pulls out a leather briefcase. Resting it on the roof of her Lexus, she dials the combination to the lock. When the lid snaps open, she pulls out a manila file full of paperwork. “Since this is a historical point of interest, we have some recommendations for the renovation, a list of materials we ask that you use, a request form to put the address of the house on our tour list…”

“What list?” Blaine asks, taking the papers that she thrusts in his direction.

“Our website lists the addresses of authentic Victorian houses in the county for people to drive by and look at. You're not required to add the Smythe House to the list, of course, but that doesn't mean people won't find you and drop by anyway. At least if you are listed on our website, people will have to abide by the rules we lay down to protect your privacy.”

Blaine's eyes flick up from the papers in front of him. “Smythe House?”

“Andrew Smythe,” Catherine says. “He bought this house back in the mid-30s.”

Smythe. The same name that's on the Little League jersey in the bedroom upstairs.

“Who was Andrew Smythe?” Blaine asks, giving Catherine his undivided attention.

She rolls her eyes. “Did you even Google this house before you started tearing into it?” she asks bitterly.

“I only first saw it yesterday,” Blaine says, trying not to sound too defensive. “And I haven't torn into it. We're in the process of clearing it out. I intend on taking my time to get this renovation right. I was actually planning on dropping by your offices myself later on this week for some advice.”

Catherine stands up an inch straighter, visibly impressed. “Well then…Andrew Smythe was one of the last great Vaudevillians of his time,” she explains with a smidgen more respect, but for him or for Andrew, Blaine doesn't venture a guess, “as well as one of Vaudeville's staunchest supporters.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Catherine shuts her briefcase and puts it back in her car, closing the door to lean against it while she speaks. “He was one of those precious few who were holding on with both hands, waiting for Vaudeville to make a revival.” She crosses her arms, and her eyes go slightly unfocused, recalling a memory. “Vaudeville took a lot from Andrew, like it did from other performers.”

Blaine has a feeling he knows what she's referring to, but he asks anyway. “What did it take?”

Catherine gazes over Blaine's head at the house with a sorrowful look in her eyes before she answers. “His wife,” she says heavily, “and his sons.”

“He had sons?” It's both a question and a declaration. Blaine is stitching up the clues he already knows, adding Catherine's confirmation to the seams.

“Yes. Two. Though there was speculation that one of them wasn't his son.”

Blaine narrows his eyelids at the woman staring past him at the house. “Were their names…Kurt and Sebastian?”

Those names seem to snap her out of her haze, her eyes shooting down to meet his. “Yes, they were.” She smiles. “It looks like you may have done some homework after all.”

Blaine is about to mention the puppets in the basement and the journals from the attic, but he holds his tongue. He doesn't want Catherine asking to see them…or possibly to take them. This house was declared a historical landmark before Cooper bought it. According to the auction company he purchased the property from, everything inside the house belongs to him, but if it has historical significance, can Catherine claim it? Blaine is iffy on the legalities of their situation, so he says nothing. He's not willing to part with his puppets – to part with Kurt - or these new clues that he's found.

“Look,” Catherine says, her turn to break Blaine from his thoughts, “I apologize if I'm being a little touchy about this, but we were supposed to be the first ones contacted when the owner died. We were poised to buy this house, but the bank moved straight to auction and we were never informed…”

Catherine's comment strikes a chord – something Blaine read in the paperwork his brother sent him that doesn't match up to Catherine's story about Andrew Smythe owning the house.

“Okay, but what I don't understand is” - Blaine interrupts this time, feeling an ease to do so - “my brother bought the house at auction, but the owner prior to the bank is listed as…Terry? Tricia?”

Catherine shakes her head as a breeze picks its way through her auburn bob, blowing a few strands in her face. “Teresa,” she corrects, brushing the hair from her eyes. “Teresa Calhoun. She was named on the deed to the house as his niece.”

“So, Andrew had a sister?” Blaine asks hopefully, interested in finding a living relative who might know the story of Andrew and his sons.

“No, Andrew Smythe had no other family according to public record. I don't think she was a blood relative. Vaudeville performers were a tight knit group. I think Teresa was dumped off on Andrew because there was no one else to care for the girl, and he couldn't say no. But by that point, he didn't quite have all his ducks in a row, if you catch my drift, and with good reason.” Catherine sighs. It's a fretful sound. “I don't think he sent her to school. I don't think she even left the house.”

Catherine pauses, watching Gary emerge through the front door while Blaine stands by quietly, waiting for her to continue.

“Before Andrew died, he tried to make arrangements for Teresa, but she had no other relatives, and she couldn't live on her own. Without a guardian, she would have been committed. So he contacted us, and we worked together to have the house declared a historical landmark.”

“I heard Victorian houses were a hot commodity out here,” Blaine interjects.

“They are, but being a historical landmark, she would be safe to live out the rest of her life here. There were some requirements with regard to the house's upkeep that Andrew still had to fulfill. We had discussed plans for turning the house into a Vaudeville museum eventually, but Andrew died before we could finalize the paperwork. After that, Teresa wouldn't answer the door when we came by, and she never picked up the phone.” A veil of longing clouds Catherine's eyes. “You know, Andrew bought this place pretty much right after his sons died. I think it was a way for him to try and start over. Maybe he was considering starting another family. I don't know. But I hope whoever buys this house knows what it's worth.”

“I'll make sure my brother finds someone worthy of it,” Blaine says. The moment the words come out of his mouth, he commits them as a vow. Usually Blaine doesn't concern himself with who buys the renovated houses off of his brother once he's done with them, but he can't let just anyone buy this house…not now.

“See that you do,” Catherine says with a wink, extending a hand his way. “It was nice meeting you, Blaine.”

Blaine takes her hand and shakes it. “It was nice meeting you, too.”

She smiles at him, takes one last look at the house, and then climbs back into her Lexus. She starts the engine, but doesn't pull away from the curb. She rolls down her passenger side window and leans across the seats.

“Oh, Blaine? One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“We still have an exhibit down at our main offices on the history of Vaudeville in San Diego, but we are desperately short on any actual artifacts. If you come across something in there that you think you can part with, would you give me a call?” Catherine reaches into her glove box, pulls out a business card, and hands it through the window to Blaine.

“Sure.” A spark of possessiveness lights in Blaine's chest, almost as if she had asked for his puppets outright. “Anything in particular you're looking for?”

“Anything really,” she says with a non-committal twist of her lips. “Posters, costumes…if you guys find Sammy, and your brother is willing to part with him, I'd be extra special grateful.” Her words sound oddly suggestive, but Blaine lets it go.

“Sammy?” Blaine scrunches his nose.

“Andrew's puppet,” Catherine clarifies. “His main puppet, I should say. After Andrew left Vaudeville, no one saw Sammy again. I would love to see him resurface.”

“So, Andrew Smythe was a ventriloquist.” Blaine reads the words on the business card before sticking it in his back pocket. “Were Kurt and Sebastian ventriloquists, too?”

“Sebastian was” - Catherine sits up in her seat, preparing to drive - “or his dad was training him to be. People say he wasn't all that good at it.”

“And Kurt?”

“He sang. He was a countertenor - a rare talent. He would have been a headliner, too, only…” Catherine glances down at her steering wheel. “Well, I think you can guess.”

“Yeah. I can guess.”

Catherine raises a hand and waves at Blaine. Then she turns her Lexus around in the cul-de-sac and drives away.

Blaine stares at the papers in his hands. Every day at this house is going to be a new adventure in pain and heart break; he can feel it. Now along with Andrew and his sons, he can add the mysterious Teresa to the mix. But even with this new information, he has more questions and less answers than he did before. He stows the paperwork Catherine gave him in the van and returns to work, eager to wrap things up for the day and go already.

“Hey! I uncovered the fireplace,” Gary says, gesturing to a space in the far corner of the living room when Blaine re-enters the house.

“Fireplace? Oh, yeah…” Blaine had seen the chimney from the outside, but for some reason the idea of the house having a fireplace hadn't occurred to him. A working fireplace will definitely tack higher digits to Cooper's asking price. But that hollow recess in the living room wall made of soot baked bricks, the corpses of dead birds piled where logs normally would be, immediately brings to mind the burnt journal currently sitting in his trunk, waiting to be read. And he's dying to read it. He groans, knowing he can't leave until Gary is done with his work.

There's got to be a way to get him to move faster.

Blaine spends the rest of the afternoon slogging through the busywork that he didn't get done the day before. He makes his phone calls, schedules more appraisers to come down to the house, and orders a storage unit for the furniture. Then he putters around with Gary, taping him for Cooper's show. He gets the brilliant idea to help him move the dolls to the U-Haul so he doesn't just sit around and count the hours before he can return to the beach house and Kurt.

It's a little before seven in the evening before Gary has to call it quits for the day, his eyes crossing every time he tries to read the print on another pink box. He begs Blaine for the opportunity to come back tomorrow and finish with the lot.

Blaine needs Gary to sell the toys. Did Gary really think Blaine would say no?

Blaine waves to Gary, watching the box truck pull away with its haul. Blaine is glad that those toys will find new homes, but seeing them go feels like carving away at the spirit of the house. But without them littering the floor, Blaine gets a better idea of what the house looked like when it was new. It wasn't a glorified storage unit or a junk pile. It was a home, and this one might have been more full of hope than any Blaine has ever seen. It was supposed to be a way to start over.

Blaine wonders how far Andrew Smythe really got with that goal.

He peeks over at his trunk, filled with boxes of journals that might answer that question, ready to travel to the beach house.

That's a lot of reading he's got ahead of him.

Blaine starts locking up, making sure that the curtains are drawn this time around before he leaves to deter any other curious eyes, but just as he's about to throw the deadbolt, he has a thought. He unlocks the door and heads back in, jogging upstairs to the bedrooms. He goes into Kurt's room and retrieves the suit from the bed.

This suit was made for Kurt, and Blaine is eager to see him in it.

It still astounds Blaine how this suit seems so brand new, like it could have been made yesterday.

Blaine brings the fabric to his nose and sniffs it.

It even smells new; not like it's ever sat in mothballs, even once. Blaine's mother had inherited dresses of her grandmother's that had been stored improperly in mothballs after she passed away. His parents had those dresses professionally repaired, but no amount of dry cleaning could get that odor out. It adheres to the fibers, embeds itself there.

But this suit simply smells like fabric.

Blaine examines it. He admires the weave and the stitching. Then he turns his attention to the rest of the room – the bed, the sewing machine, the dress form, the posters… Everything in here was tailored for Kurt, the way the other room was decorated specifically for Sebastian.

Everything looking brand spanking new…new and unused.

Blaine thinks over his conversation with Catherine, and as her words repeat in his head, he pulls the suit close to him, hugging it tight to his chest.

If Andrew Smythe bought this house to start over after his sons died, that means Kurt and Sebastian were never in these rooms.

Sebastian likely never wore that jersey, never saw that signed baseball bat or those pennants hanging on the wall.

Kurt never used the dress form, nor the sewing machine, even though the bobbins are full and the needle threaded.

They never opened their wardrobes, never slept in their beds.

Blaine gulps down the pit that's been bouncing around in his stomach all day.

Kurt and Sebastian never set foot in this house.

This isn't a bedroom he's standing in.

It's a shrine.