Chapter 15: Tantrum

The dark came up through the floorboards.

It wasn't shadow. It was thick and cold, and it was already over my sneakers.

"Mouse!" Ambrose shouted.

She was gone. Her rabbit lay face down on the boards where she'd been standing.

I grabbed it before the dark could cover it.

"Back to the bedroom," Ambrose said. "Now. It's nearly midnight."

He took my hand and we ran up the narrow hall.

Toward him, not away. Rule three.

We ran for a long time.

Then the bare boards turned back into red carpet, and the gold mirror was in front of us again, cracked corner to corner.

We'd come out the same end we'd gone in.

"She's looping it," he said.

We tried again. Left this time. Past the parlor.

The parlor door came up twice on the same side. Then a third time.

Then the cracked mirror.

The dark was at my knees now. It was so cold my legs ached.

Somewhere far off, through a dozen walls, I heard Penny pounding on the nursery door.

"Daisy! Daisy, it won't open! Where are you?"

"I'm okay!" I yelled, as loud as I could. "Stay in bed! Everybody stay in bed!"

I don't know if she heard me.

Ambrose was trying the next door with both hands. It didn't even rattle.

"Stop," I said.

"There's a linen room on the..."

"Ambrose. Stop running around."

He turned.

"She's not a burglar," I said. "She's a kid having a meltdown. You don't chase a kid having a meltdown."

"What do you do?"

"You get low and you get boring."

I sat down right there on the carpet, in the black water, with my back against the wall.

It soaked straight through my sleep shorts. I gritted my teeth.

"Daisy, the baby..."

"The house can't hurt the bride. You told me that on night one." I patted the floor. "Sit down. Way over there. And don't talk."

He looked at me.

Then he went up the hall and sat down against the opposite wall.

I put Mouse's rabbit in my lap and smoothed its ear.

I waited.

At daycare, the worst drop-off I ever had was a little boy who screamed for two hours straight.

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