Sometimes she and Millie played hide and seek at Lilith House, running through the long hallways, and pressing into the dark corners, Haddie covering her mouth so Millie wouldn’t hear her giggle, and then Millie tickling her ribs and saying, “Gotcha!” when she found her so that they both fell to the ground laughing so hard they had to hold their stomachs.
Lilith House was almost fully awake now, and it liked the sounds of their laughter. Haddie could tell because the bad and the sad felt . . . less, and the light felt more. It was like every window had been opened so the sunshine poured through the halls, chasing away the shadows. The rooms on the second floor still felt heavy to Haddie and made her bones twinge, but not nearly as much as before.
Today the workmen weren’t working at Lilith House, so Millie wouldn’t be coming to play with her. Her mommy was mixing colored gels together in the kitchen, creating shades for her cakes, and when Haddie entered the room, her mommy smiled, setting down the tube in her hand next to a bowl that contained the prettiest peach color Haddie had ever seen.
“Hey, baby. How are you?”
“Good. Can I go read in the gazebo?”
A worried look took over her mommy’s face and she glanced at the window, then brought her hand up, putting it on Haddie’s forehead. She’d been doing that a lot recently even though she’d never had a fever. It was like she expected Haddie to come down with a sickness at any second. She knew it was because after she’d wet herself, she’d told her mommy the reason was that she didn’t feel good. That had been a lie, but she couldn’t tell her mommy the real reason. Her mommy liked that man. Haddie had felt the . . . glitter in the air between them, like little bursts of popping light that she could feel, but not see.
Yes, her mommy liked him a lot, so Haddie couldn’t tell her mommy what he was.
She didn’t think her mommy would believe her anyway. Haddie didn’t even know what to believe.
Her mommy sighed. “I suppose some fresh air would be good. Go on out to the gazebo. I’ll be done with this mess”—she waved her hand over the many bowls in front of her—“in about an hour and then I’ll call you in for a snack, okay?”
“Okay,” Haddie said.
Haddie did go to the gazebo, but after a few minutes, she placed her book down, and walked to the edge of the woods, hesitating, and then stepped through the cover of the trees.
Haddie walked and walked, stepping over pinecones, and around bushes laden with dark, plump berries, learning more about the forest and all the things that lived there.
She placed her hand on a rock sitting in a quiet clearing, still warm from the sun, running her skin over the rough surface, letting her palm linger in the large dip in its center. A cradle. It looks like a cradle. She shut her eyes for a moment to block out the distraction of her sight, helping her to focus inward. The weight was strange here. There was mad or sad—she couldn’t always distinguish well between the two because often, they were virtually the same—but also . . . lightness. Fear that made her tremble and . . . safety, like when her mommy held her tight after she had a nightmare. Rescue. There was life . . . and death. The feelings surrounding this large rock were not together, but they also wove around one another. Sort of like Haddie’s memories. Her recollections were all from different times, but they all had her mommy in them. Some were happy and some were sad, but her love for her mommy ran through all of them like . . . a thread that connected different squares of a quilt like the ones her gram sewed.
Haddie stood there for another moment trying to make sense of the differing weights, attempting to understand what this particular thread was in this specific place, but she couldn’t. After a minute, she turned, moving in a slow circle and gazing around the forest.
She didn’t think the thing was near. She couldn’t feel its weight even when it was, but the more she’d been in its presence, the more she’d been able to sense it in some new way she couldn’t describe. It was like its weight drifted around her, just out of grasp, and she didn’t know how to latch onto it but could tell it was there. Somewhere.
The sun shifted in the sky and Haddie looked up, blinking at the streams of light bursting through the trees. She had to get home. If her mommy came outside, she’d notice she was gone from the gazebo and would worry.