Chapter 11: The Padlock

Lois did not sleep.

She lay in the dark with Ilu curled against her side, and listened to the house tick.

Ilu had eaten two bowls of macaroni and cheese at supper, and fallen asleep halfway through a story about three bears.

She had said "more" in the middle of it, in English, and Lois had cried into the book.

Now the clock on the dresser said ten to four.

At five past, headlights slid across the ceiling.

Lois lay very still.

The lights stopped at the top of the drive and idled.

An engine sat running out there in the January dark, a long minute, then two.

Then the lights swung away, and the engine faded down the county road.

"He's checking on me," she whispered into the pillow. "He's checking that I'm still in bed."

She waited ten full minutes by the clock.

Then she slid out from under the quilt, and Ilu opened her eyes at once.

"Mar?"

"Shh. Put your boots on. The real ones."

She dressed the child in the fur parka and leggings from the trash bag.

On top of them she pulled a puffy purple coat she'd bought that afternoon, still stiff with tags, and zipped it to the chin.

Ilu looked down at herself, delighted and scandalized.

"Pink," she whispered.

"It's purple."

"Pur-pull."

"Good girl."

Lois went down the dark hall in her socks.

The cellar door stood at the end of it, with the brass padlock gleaming faintly on its hasp.

She turned on the porch light and went out in her slippers, through the snow, to the barn.

Her husband's workbench was exactly as he had left it.

His bolt cutters hung on the pegboard with the red handles still wrapped in tape.

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