Alice pulled her robe tighter around her body and secured it at the waist. She tucked her legs underneath her body and snuggled down into the cozy, oversized armchair in the living room. Her wet hair was wrapped neatly in a towel; her skin still held the scent of fruit after her long shower. She cradled a fresh mug of tea, complete with a splash of milk, and continued to stare at the television.

She was literally watching paint dry. Her favorite house makeover show was on, and she loved to see how they could transform the most chaotic, messy rooms into sophisticated, elegant homes.

Ever since she was a child, she loved giving everything in her home a special appearance. She spent the most of her time waiting for her mother by decorating the kitchen table with fresh flowers, sprinkling glitter on the welcome mat by the entrance, propping bundles of flowers and ribbons by photo frames, and garnishing the bed sheets with flower petals.

She supposed it was her fix-it nature, always wanting something better than what she had, never settling, never satisfied.

She also supposed that it was her own childish way of convincing her mother to stay. She remembered hoping the prettier the house, the longer her mother would remain home. But the daisies on the table were celebrated for no more than a few minutes, the glitter on the doormat quickly trampled on and scattered, the flowers by the photo frames could not survive without water, and the petals on the bed would be tossed, withered and browned on the floor by morning.

Whenever her attempts were tired of, Alice would immediately start thinking of something that would really grab and hold her mother's attention, something that she would be drawn to longer than five minutes, something that she would love so much that she'd be unable to leave. Alice had never considered that as her mother's daughter, she should have been that something her mother wished to stay with.

As she grew older, her love for bringing out beauty in things grew as well. She had plenty of practice at her father's old farmhouse. Now she loved days at work when she could restore old fireplaces and rip up ancient carpets to reveal beautiful original floors.

Even in her own home she was always changing things, rearranging, and trying to improve. She strove for perfection and loved setting herself challenges, sometimes impossible ones, to prove to her heart that underneath every seemingly ugly thing, there was something beautiful to be found.

She loved her job, loved the satisfaction it brought, and with all the new development in Baile na gCroíthe and nearby towns, she was making a very good living out of it. If anything new was happening, Alice's business was called upon. She was a firm believer that good design enhanced life. Beautiful, comfortable, and functional spaces were exactly what she promised.

Her own living room was about soft colors and textures; suede cushions and fluffy carpets; she loved to touch and feel everything. There were colors of light creams and coffee, and just like the mug in her hand, they helped clear her mind. In a world where most things in life were a cluttered mess, having a peaceful home was vital for her sanity. It was her refuge, her safe place where she could hide from the problems outside her door.

At least at home she was in control. There, unlike the past, she allowed in only those whom she wanted, she could decide how long they should stay, and where in her home they could be. Not like the heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she didn't have a say in, and then yearned for them to stay longer than they had planned.

No, the guests in Alice's home arrived and left at her command. And she chose for them to stay away.

Friday's meeting had been important. She had spent weeks planning for it, updating her portfolio, creating a slideshow, gathering magazine clippings and newspaper write-ups of the places she had designed. Her life's work had been condensed into a folder book in order to convince these people to hire her.

An old tower stood tall on the mountainside and the original plan was to knock it down to build a hotel. It had once protected the small town from approaching attackers during Viking times, but Alice didn't see the point of keeping it as it was neither pretty nor of any interest. When tour buses packed full of eager eyes passed through Baile na gCroíthe, the tower was rarely mentioned.

No one was proud nor interested in it. It was an ugly pile of stones, neglected to crumble and decay, which held village teenagers by day and drunks by night, Saoirse having been among both of them.

But when the time arrived to knock the tower down, a surprising amount of townspeople put up a fight to prevent the hotel from being built. They claimed that the tower had some sort of mystical and romantic story behind it. A story began to circulate that if the ruins were to be knocked down, all love would be lost.

It certainly caught the attention of tabloids and news programs, and eventually the developers saw an opportunity for a greater goldmine than they had expected. They decided to leave the tower standing and instead build the hotel around it, leaving the tower as a historical piece for their courtyard as a way of keeping love alive in the Town of Hearts.

Alice would have driven a wrecking ball through it herself. She thought it was a ridiculous story, created by a village afraid of change and stubborn intent on keeping a useless tower on the mountainside. Even so, she had to admit it was a good idea business-wise, seeing the sudden rush of interest from believers around the country, wanting to stay in a hotel blessed by love.

Despite the talk of the tower, she was excited about the prospect of the hotel being built, as the job of designing the interiors would be perfect for her. It would be a small hotel, but it would provide employment for the people of Heartstown. Even better, it was only a few minutes away from her home so she wouldn't have to worry about being away from Peter for long periods of time.

Before Peter was born, Alice used to travel all the time. She never spent more than a few weeks in Baile na gCroíthe and loved having the freedom to move around working on various projects in different countries all the time. Her last big project brought her to New York, but when Peter arrived, it had all had to end.

As his guardian, Alice couldn't continue with her work around the country, let alone around the world. It had been difficult when she first set up her business in Baile na gCroíthe, trying to raise a child. She had no choice but to hire Tino, as her father refused to help and Saoirse wasn't interested.

Now that Peter was older and settled at school, the difficulty of finding work within commuting distance increased as well. The boom development in the Town of Hearts would settle eventually, and she worried constantly whether work would dry up completely.

Having to walk out of the meeting on Friday should not have happened. No one in her office could sell her abilities an interior designer better than she could. Her employees consisted of Madeline, Feliks, and Feliciano. Receptionist Madeline was a timid and extremely shy seventeen-year-old who had joined Alice as a part-time replacement at first, then officially became a full-time employee after she graduated.

She was a hard worker who kept to herself and was quiet around the office, which Alice liked. Alice had hired her quickly after Saoirse, who had been originally hired by Alice to work part-time, had let her down. Her sister had more than let her down, and Alice had been desperate to find someone quickly. To tidy up the mess. Again. Her attempt to keep Saoirse with her during the day had turned out to be a mistake and ended up driving her sister further away.

Then there was Feliks and Feliciano, both graduates from a nearby Arts College. Feliks was a chatty, aspiring Polish designer full of lots of wonderfully impossible creative ideas, while Feliciano was a equally cheerful Italian artist who was ready to paint the world a color he had yet to invent.

There were just the four of them in the office, but Alice often called on the services of Mrs. Braginsky, a fifty-eight-year-old genius with a needle who ran her own upholstery shop in town. She also was an incredible grump and insisted on being called Mrs. Braginsky and not Natalya, out of respect for her for her dearly departed Mr. Braginsky, who Alice didn't think had been born with a first name.

And finally there was Mathias Andersen, fifty-two years old and an all-'round handyman who could do anything from hanging paintings to repairing fixtures. He was also obnoxiously loud and nosy, but he was good at what he did. Depending on people's budgets, Alice would do anything from instructing painters and decorators to doing it by herself, which she usually prefered to do so. She liked to see the transformation before her eyes, and it was in her nature to fix everything her way.

It wasn't unusual for Saoirse to be at Alice's home that morning. She visited often enough, drunk and abusive, for Alice to handle, and willing to take anything she could get her hands on—anything worth selling of course, which automatically excluded Peter. Alice didn't know if it was the only substance she was addicted to anymore; it had been a long time since she had a real, sober conversation with her sister.

Alice had been trying to help her ever since she began at the irresponsible age of sixteen. It was like some sort of switch had been flicked within her and they had lost her to another world. Alice tried her best, sending her to doctors, counseling, rehab. She gave her money, found her jobs, hired her herself, allowed her to move in her house, rented her flats. She had tried being her friend, tried standing against her as her enemy, had laughed with her, had screamed at her, but nothing would work.

Saoirse was lost, lost in a place where nobody but herself mattered.

With a sigh, Alice couldn't help but think of the irony of her sister's name. Saoirse wasn't free. She might have felt like she was, coming and going as she pleased, not tied down to anyone, anything, any place, but she wasn't free. She was a slave to her addictions.

But she couldn't see it, and Alice couldn't help her see it. She couldn't completely turn her back on her sister and, thanks to her stubbornness, she had lost friends and lovers. Their frustration would grow and they helplessly stood by and watched Alice being taken advantage of over and over again, until they could no longer stand to be in her life.

No matter what others thought, Alice didn't see herself as the victim. She was always in control. She knew what she was doing and why she chose to do it, and so she refused to abandon a family member. She had worked too hard all her life just to be the opposite.

Suddenly, Alice pressed the mute button on the remote control, silencing the room immediately. She slowly inclined her head, listening carefully. She thought she heard something again. After looking around the room, seeing everything as it should be, she turned the volume back up.

There it was again.

She silenced the TV once more and stood up from the armchair.

It was 10:17, not fully dark outside yet. She glanced out the window, and in the dusk she could only make out black shapes and shadows. Quickly, she pulled the curtains shut, immediately feeling safer as soon as the unknown disappeared from her sight.

She tightened her robe around herself again and sat back in her armchair, tucking her legs closer to her body and wrapping her arms protectively around her knees. The vacant cream leather couch stared back at her. She shivered, turned the volume up higher than before, and took a gulp of tea. The soothing, flowery drink slid down her throat and warmed her insides.

Alice turned her attention to the screen once more, and tried, unsuccessfully, to be absorbed back into the world of television. All day, she had felt strange. Her father always said that when you got a chill up your spine, it meant that someone was walking on your grave.

She didn't believe that, but as she faced the TV, she forced herself to not look back at the three-seater couch and tried to shake off the feeling that a pair of eyes were watching her.

Alfred watched her mute the television once more, set her mug on the table next to her with a loud clatter, and leap out of her seat as if she had been sitting on spikes. Here she goes again, he thought. Her eyes were wide and clearly frightened as they darted around the room. He braced himself, sliding down to the edge of the couch once again. The denim of his jeans squeaked against the leather.

Alice jumped to look at the couch.

She hurriedly grabbed a black iron poker from the white-brick fireplace and spun around on her heels. Slowly surveying the room, she quietly tiptoed about, eyes wild with fear. Underneath him, the leather squeaked again, and Alice charged towards the couch. Alfred narrowly escaped, diving to the corner of the room.

Hiding behind the curtains for protection, he watched her pull the cushions away, muttering to herself about mice. After ten minutes of fruitlessly searching the furniture, Alice put all the cushions back in place.

She picked up her empty mug self-consciously and made her way into the kitchen. Alfred trailed her closely; he was so close that the strands of her blonde hair peeking out of the towel wrapped around her head tickled his face. Her hair held the scent of coconut and her skin of sweet fruits.

He couldn't understand his interest in her. He had been watching her since after lunch on Friday. Peter constantly called him to play game after game when all Alfred wanted was to be around Alice. At first it was just to see if she could hear or sense him again, but then after a few hours, he found her fascinating.

She was obsessively neat. He noticed that she couldn't leave a room without tidying up and wiping everything clean. She drank a lot of tea, stared out into her garden, picked invisible pieces of fluff from her surroundings. And she thought a great deal. He could see it in her face.

Her brow would furrow in concentration, and she would make all sorts of facial expressions as if she were having conversations with people inside her head. They seemed to turn into debates more often than not, judging by the activity on her forehead. That would explain why she was always surrounded by silence.

There was never any music or sounds like most people had in the background, no radio blasting the latest tunes nor a window thrown open to let the sounds of summer—the birdsong and the ptptptptptpt humming to drumming of a lawnmower—inside. Peter and Alice rarely spoke to each other, and when they did, it was usually her giving him orders, him asking her for permission, but there was nothing fun about it.

Phone calls were occasional but rare, and nobody dropped by to say hello. It was almost as if the conversations in her head were enough to fill her silence.

He had spent most of Friday and Saturday following her around, sitting on the cream leather couch in the evenings and watching her watch the only program she seemed to like on TV. They both laughed in the same places, groaned in all the same places, and they seemed to be completely in sync, yet she didn't know he was there.

Alfred observed her sleeping patterns during the night.

She was restless, could have only slept about three hours at most, the rest of the time spent in her room reading a book, putting in down after five minutes, staring into space deep in thought, picking up the book again, reading a few more pages, flipping back over the same pages, putting it back down again, closing her eyes, opening them again, lighting a nearby candle, doodling sketches of rooms and designs, sorting out colors and shades and scraps of materials, blowing out the light again.

Alice had made him tired just from watching her. The trips to the kitchen for tea couldn't have helped her much either. On Sunday morning she was up early cleaning, polishing, vacuuming and tidying an already spotless home, while Alfred chased Peter out in the back garden.

He recalled Alice being particularly upset at the sight of her nephew running around the garden, screaming and laughing to himself. She had joined them at the kitchen table and watched Peter playing cards by himself, shaking her head and looking worried when he lost a game of spoons against himself.

When it was time for Peter go to bed at nine o'clock, Alfred read him a story of maths and numbers a bit faster than he usually would, effectively guiding him to sleep before rushing back to Alice. He could tell she was growing agitated as the days flew by.

She was at the kitchen sink, rinsing out her tea mug and ensuring that it was spotless before placing it into the dishwasher. She wiped down the wet sink with a dish towel and threw the towel into the laundry basket. She picked miniscule bits of fluff from objects in her path, swept up the crumbs off the floor, switched off all the lights, and began the same process in the living room. She had followed this exact routine the last two nights.

But before leaving the living room this time, she stopped suddenly, Alfred almost walking into her back. His heart drummed wildly. Had she sensed him?

She spun around slowly.

He fixed his shirt to look presentable.

Once she was facing him, he smiled. "Hi," he said, feeling very self-conscious.

Alice rubbed her eyes wearily and opened them again, blinking slowly. "Oh, Alice," she whispered in disbelief, ". . . You are going mad."

She bit her lip and charged at Alfred.