Everything is a grim whirlwind after Owen books a helicopter and we fly out of New York City.

We disembark at a tiny airport with a helipad. It’s late afternoon, and we’re seemingly in the middle of nowhere as he drives us in a relatively low-profile rental car the short distance to our final destination.

In the black, cataclysmic mood he’s in, he doesn’t tell me much—only that we’re going to meet his parents and that he grew up in the home that we’re about to visit.

Everything else remains a mystery as he turns the music up loudly and keeps his gaze on the road until we pull up to a faded brick house in a leafy suburb. The lawn is dry, and the trees and bushes haven’t been trimmed in ages. There’s a broken porch swing that hangs by one chain. The windows are curtained, and the garage door is flaked with white paint.

The place is downright creepy.

Every other house in the neighborhood is middle-class and neat, but this one stands out because of its sadness and shabbiness.

Are his parents poor? Is that his big secret?

A million questions attack me as we get out of the car and I glance at Owen. He must be seeing something in the house that I don’t, because it’s as if he’s looking at the materialization of one of his nightmares.

What’s inside that has him so anguished?

He shuts his car door then merely stands there. He looks so out of place here in his fancy suit, a prodigal son who clearly didn’t want to come home.

He finally looks over at me. “You’re no doubt wondering why my parents don’t live in a mansion since I’ve got enough money to manage that.”

“I’m ready to listen to anything you want to tell me.”

“You need to see for yourself.”

He stalks toward the porch.

I follow him with a sense of isolation, as if I’m only an observer in the bad dream he’s walking through.

When we arrive at the door, he looks down at me. His gaze is steely, but not because he’s angry. He’s protecting himself from something by hiding behind a sterile, immovable wall, and it’s more fortified than I’ve ever seen it.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says.

Then he knocks.

It seems to take hours for someone to answer, but when whoever it is starts to open the door, I prepare myself for Owen’s mother, whom I’ve pictured as a pretty, middle-aged woman. Or maybe it’ll be his father, who must be a big, burly handsome man with a strong resemblance to his son.

But the halfway-opened door only reveals a bent, elderly lady wearing glasses held together by a piece of tape. Her skin is pale and sickly, as thin as parchment that exposes the veins underneath. What I can see of her housedress is stained.

For a moment, I think that maybe this is Owen’s grandmother.

Then her dark eyes light up as she smiles up at him. She’s missing a tooth.

“My darling son!” Then she turns behind her as she holds onto the door, blocking the view inside. “Look who’s here, Daniel!” She turns back to Owen, looking as if all she wants to do is rush forward and hug him.

But Owen isn’t even remotely approachable.

“Mom,” he says civilly.

It’s as if he’s restraining himself; he wants to embrace her, but there’s something holding him back.

He’s beyond tense, almost to the point of being horribly pained.

His mom steps outside, wringing her hands as she anxiously keeps her distance from Owen. Then someone else emerges from the house. He’s limping terribly with a cane and has a scruffy, long, white beard. He looks as if he was once a tall man like Owen, but he shrank down several sizes. He’s just as sickly as Owen’s mom.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” says the old man. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Owen looks as if he only wants to escape from his parents and this house, but he’s been cornered.

He addresses them without any more niceties. “Liam called me today and told me the news. I thought it best to stop by so we can take care of this once and for all.”

No one says anything for a moment, and it’s all I can do not to show how stunned I am by everything that I’m seeing. These are the last people who should be Owen’s parents. It’s as if we’ve entered the wrong town and we’re standing in front of the wrong house.

After the awkward moment passes, his dad finally laughs, then falls into a fit of coughing. He waves his wife’s attentions away. “Don’t listen to anything your brother has to say, Owen. He and your other brothers already tried to lecture us, but we’re fine.”

“That’s what Liam said you’d tell me.”

Owen stiffly looks around. His expression hints that he somehow feels contaminated.

But his parents don’t seem to notice that. They only look at me with bright eyes.

“And who’s this?” his mom asks.

“Juliet Hope,” Owen says. “Juliet, meet my parents.”

“Oh, isn’t she just a doll!” Mrs. Gregory doesn’t seem to mind her soiled appearance—the blemished dress, the slightly off-putting smell I’m detecting. As she extends her hand to me, I notice there’s crusted dirt under her long, ragged nails, but I accept her greeting, then his dad’s.

Meanwhile, the house’s door has creaked all the way open, showing me what’s inside.

Oh god.

The full odor hits me first—the stench of things that are old and dead. Then I see what looks like a garbage dump in the front room—piles of newspapers, magazines, mail, pillows, threadbare clothes, and even what looks to be beer cans. I think there’s furniture beneath it all, but I can only see hints of unclean upholstery and scarred wood.

Sorrow mixes with disgust, and I hope to heaven that they don’t see how horrified I am.

Mrs. Gregory is beside herself. “Come in! Come in!”

Owen’s parents slowly return toward their door, and I catch Owen’s tortured gaze. I nearly sob with sympathy for him and these poor people.

Hoarders. And not just collectors.

The home isn’t just badly cluttered…

Dear god, their home is absolutely filled with junk and debris and even insects and vermin. It’s filthy and dangerous, and this is where Owen grew up.

This is why he has nightmares.

Suddenly, so much about his fanatical crusade against germs and his aversion to uncleanliness makes sense, even while there’s so much he still needs to explain to me.

As his parents go inside, he remains rooted to the faded porch planks. “I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that I’m not coming in. I’m only here to save you from yourselves, to get you to finally see some common sense. As usual, if you’re not going to listen to me, I have no reason to be here, but I think, this time, you need to listen.”

“What’s important is that we get to know Juliet,” his mom says, looking surprised at Owen’s strictness. “She’s the first girl you’ve ever brought home.”

My throat is burning so badly that I don’t know if I can hide my shock and sadness anymore. This is awful, so damned awful.

Just before I follow them, Owen wraps his fingers around my arm.

I notice he doesn’t grab my hand where his parents made contact with me.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says softly but firmly. “It’s unsanitary in there. Dangerous. I only brought you with me so you’d know why I—”

His words grind into nothing. He’s too busy controlling the emerging panic in his gaze, and I see the little boy in him who grew up here. I see the young man who dedicated his life to helping patients who are neck-deep in the “harmful things” and germs that could debilitate any person. I see why he needs everything to be so clean and perfect, and why his obsession with order has created a stainless steel wall between himself and the world.

Most of all, I see why he wakes up some nights, pushing his hands away from him as if he’s covered in piles of rotting garbage, choking to death as his mouth fills with dirt. To think of an infant living in this, or a young child with stacks of clutter teetering over him, and dead animals rotting nearby as he slept…

“I’ll be back soon,” I say. “I only want to—”

“See how bad it can get?”

“No. That’s not it at all.”

I smile at him, trying to assure him I’ll be okay. Then, as he restrains himself, I venture inside.

I leave the door open with Owen standing nearby, calming down enough to fold his hands behind his back, doing everything he can to not pull me back to what he considers the safety of the outside world.

I don’t go too far into the house—I can’t. Jeez, I just can’t. The stench is hardly hidden by some old air fresheners that his parents seem to be hoarding in a clump near a wall of shoeboxes and a clutter of milk cartons.

Mrs. Gregory comes out of the kitchen, her posture slouched as she carries a gray, steaming mug. A teabag hangs limply out of it. I accept it with another smile.

“Thank you.” Is this really me, staying so composed?

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she says, sitting on the one clear spot—the arm of a couch. The rest of the couch is hidden beneath piles of newspapers and cardboard boxes.

Mr. Gregory is already squeezed next to her, leaning on his cane, and he gestures for me to join them.

On the armrest.

“Oh, thanks so much,” I say. “The thing is, Owen and I are just dropping by. But I appreciate your hospitality.”

I look down and notice some roaches scurrying in and out of a pile of trash bags that sit just a few feet from us.

There are small rows that they’ve cleared within the mess, and these narrow aisles allow someone to sidle slowly in between the rotting husks of garbage and junk that fill every other spare inch of the house.

“She’s so sweet,” Mrs. Gregory says.

I glance back at the door, but Owen isn’t standing there anymore. The odors, the sight, the tragedy of all of this mixed together is probably more than he can take. It almost is for me, too, except that I don’t want to make a scene.

His mom sighs, and in that moment, I know that their politeness is only a cover for something else. They know exactly what’s going on with themselves—they know they should look younger, should be healthier, but somehow the hoarding got out of hand and claimed them like the creeping disease it is.

“Owen’s gone, isn’t he,” Mrs. Gregory says softly.

“Yes,” I say. “But I know he still wants to talk to you.”

“I’m sure he does.” She adjusts her broken glasses. “He tries with us. He really does. But he doesn’t understand that most of our collections will be worth a fortune someday. He’ll never have to pay us a penny to support us.”

Whoa, maybe they don’t have any idea of what’s really happening here. “I’m sure he would gladly give you anything you needed.”

Mr. Gregory chuffs in much the same way I’ve heard Owen do on occasion. “We don’t need his money. Like Mrs. Gregory said, we’re sitting on a fortune, and that doesn’t even count everything here that has sentimental value.”

I glance at the junk mail around me, the things that probably couldn’t even be sold at a yard sale for a total of a dollar.

Surreal. This is a disorder, and it must kill Owen that, as a doctor, he can’t do a thing for his own parents. Are they delusional? Or do they know something is very wrong here?

Mrs. Gregory picks up an old cereal box from next to her. “Look at this, for instance—there’s points on the box top so we can collect prizes someday.”

“We’ve got a million of them,” says Mr. Gregory.

The smell is really getting to me, and I don’t know how long I can stay, but I smile at them again. “I understand, but can you see how Owen might be concerned about this?”

“Oh,” says Mrs. Gregory, “he’s always on us about cleaning up. His three brothers aren’t nearly as pushy, but they’re all such neat freaks.”

“Three brothers,” I repeat, because, until today, I had no idea he had any.

She shrugs. “Owen rarely sees or speaks to them. Liam told us that seeing them makes Owen remember the way he grew up here, and he hates dwelling on that. As I said, all of them try to stay away because they’re rather finicky.”

Either they’re refusing to admit that Owen could’ve been traumatized or they don’t really get it.

At any rate, it seems as if Owen’s parents don’t have many people who’ll just stand here and listen to them, so I try my best to endure the stench. I won’t drink the tea, but I’ll listen.

Mr. Gregory continues. “He’s tried a few times to help us rid this house of all the so-called junk and, as he says, make it safe to live in. We allowed him to have at it one time.”

“He brought in a cleaning team and a therapist who told us we couldn’t hang on to everything they were taking,” Mrs. Gregory says. “But after it all was said and done, that only meant we had to replace what they took.”

Replace?

Oh man. So Owen has done more than merely try to talk sense into them. I don’t doubt that he would’ve been so insistent, but how many tries did it take before his parents finally gave in that one time?

I’m sure he’s frustrated, angry, and probably fed up if all this garbage piled up all over again.

As his parents start talking about things in their “collection,” I stay longer than I intended to, and I’m more patient than I ever thought I could be with anyone. I really try to talk to them and, more importantly, listen some more (all while trying my best to hold my breath and not inhale through my nose). But all I can withstand is another ten minutes in there, and I excuse myself, saying that I need to see where Owen went.

They’re perfectly sweet as they say they’ll wait for me.

When I walk outside, I feel as if my clothing and hair have absorbed the terrible smell, and when I spot Owen at the front of the yard, staring at the trunk of an oak tree, I go to him, hoping the fresh air will make me feel better.

His suit jacket is gone, as if he tossed it somewhere because it caught a case of germs, and I see that he’s staring at a carving in the tree. OWEN, it says. He must’ve written it there one day when he was young, after he escaped from what was inside that house.

“They might be willing to listen to you now,” I say. “Maybe—”

“No. They’re a lost cause, Juliet. That’s why I brought you here, so you wouldn’t ask me about it anymore. Now we’re leaving.”