Page 78 of Monster Queen Rising

Epilogue

Jen- Gabi’s almost 1 year old

Gabi's on the porch rail again.

She got up there the way she gets everywhere now — hand, foot, hand, no hesitation, no checking to see if anybody's watching — and she's standing on it with one fist around the post and eleven months of opinion in her face.

"Gabi. Down."

She looks at me.

Walking since seven months. Climbing since eight. There is not a surface in this house she hasn't been on top of, and every single time I saydownI get exactly this look.

The one that saysand then what.

"Gabi."

She lets go of the post.

"Gabi —"

She steps off.

And she doesn't fall right.

Not the way nineteen pounds falls off a four-foot rail. She goes down wrong — too slow, like the air got thick — her arms out and her shirt lifting and her hair going up off her forehead, and she lands on both feet with a soft thump and stands there.

Two seconds. Maybe less.

Crull's head comes up off the lumber pile. Fen's line goes taut at my sternum from wherever he is. A dog starts barking in the bunkhouse.

Gabi opens her hand.

The dark gathers under the skin of her palm and surfaces. Small. Dark. The size of a dime. The way it's done maybe ten times in eleven months.

It doesn't sink back down.

I wait for it. I've waited for it every time. It sits there in the middle of her palm in the flat afternoon light and it doesn't go anywhere.

She looks at it. Then she looks at me, to see what I'm going to do about it.

"Well," I say. "There you are."

She wanders off toward the trees eating a leaf.

Madison comes out with a dish towel over her shoulder and watches her go.

"She did the thing."

"Off the rail?"

"Yep."

"I told you she'd figure it out." Madison leans on the post. "She's been doing it off the bottom stair all week. I thought she was just bad at stairs."

I look at her.

"She's not bad at stairs," Madison says.