Chapter 5: The Nursery

"Forty-one," I said.

"Forty-two, if the man in the golf shirt doesn't turn up."

"You bury them?"

"In the garden, behind the hedge maze. I dig, and I say a few words." He looked at the wall. "Then the next morning they get up and put on an apron."

I sat down on the landing.

He waited. He didn't rush me.

After a while he sat down two steps below, so his head on his knee was level with mine.

"I teach four-year-olds," I said. "I'm not built for this."

"You walked under a cleaver an hour ago."

"Yeah, and now I'm going to throw up."

"Please don't. The cook will take it personally."

I laughed. It came out wet.

"Where's safe?" I asked. "Is anywhere actually safe?"

He thought about it for a long time.

"The house doesn't hunt in Mouse's room," he said. "It never has."

"Why not?"

"Because it's Mouse's room."

"Has anybody ever slept there? Besides me?"

"Nobody's ever asked."

So I asked.

By dinner I had dragged six mattresses down from the attic, with help.

The boy in the Indiana hoodie carried two at once to prove his arm was fine.

Penny carried one and complained about it the whole way.

The woman who'd slid off Kyle's counter came to the nursery door holding her own pillow.

"Is this the place?" she said. "Where the house doesn't get you?"

"This is the place."

She came in. Two more came behind her.

Mouse sat in the middle of the floor with her rabbit and watched every one of them.

"They're all mine?" she whispered to me.

"They're your guests. Guests are different."

"Different how?"

"You have to be nice to guests. And they go home after."

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