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He must still be in the attic.
She looked at the vent, squinted. She couldn’t see the children. She leaned down and put her face to it.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. Stay quiet. I love you!”
She listened, couldn’t hear a response.
That’s good, isn’t it?
There was a needle dragging a thread through her chest, sewing a bloody message that said,You hurt them. You hurt them.
No, you didn’t! Not much. All you did was push them away.
The panic wouldn’t stop throbbing in her throat.
No time, no time!
“I love you! I love you!”
There was a whisper of movement.
“Quiet. Stay quiet,” she said. “And don’t come out.”
She looked up the stairs, listened again for any hint of what the Corner was doing.
Did you miss any noises? He’s up there now, looking, but for how long? How long until he gets angry, starts trying to flush them out? Hurry.
She turned to the door. There was the unavoidable wince of iron on iron as she threw the bolt. Then she lifted the little locking bar with one hand, the latch with the other.
As she opened the doors, she was sliced by a blast of cold wind, by swirling ice. Already her eyes were tearing with it. Instantly her skin ached and her body shook fiercely with the shock of that bottomless cold.
She couldn’t make herself step out into the storm.
Go, go!
Her body didn’t budge. She clutched at the coat as her feet stayed planted.
You’ve been here before! There’s no real choice about what will happen. There’s no real choice about the pain. The pain is coming no matter what you do, will get so much worse before it can get better.
“You’re being so brave!” the nurse told her, her husband told her, and she remembered knowing she wasn’t brave, not at all. It was simply that she had no say in the matter. The baby was coming, labor had hit her fast, it was too late for the drugs, the end. She remembered thinking,Maybe bravery is just enduring. Maybe bravery doesn’t exist. All there is is getting through it.
This is the same! No different than childbirth. The ball is already rolling downhill. Gravity has got you. If you stay, there’s even worse pain. There’s violence. Death. Not just for you, but for them. Them! So no, no real choice at all. No real matter of bravery. You have to push, you have to cause yourself more pain before the pain can ease.
There at the threshold, the agonies that could emerge from the Corner exploded in her head, infinite. What was that, compared with what was outside this door?
She breathed in and out, and at last accepted it. She stepped out of the house. As she closed the entry doors behind her, her eyes fixed on the grate in the stairs until the doors shut and the little bar fell into place, locking her out.
The point of noreturn.
16
Standing outside in the storm, she knew immediately it was impossible.
Who do you think you are?
She kept herself plastered to the side of the house.
Stories of superhero mothers swirled in her head. Mothers who’d lifted cars off their trapped babies. Who’d fought off bears, tigers, snakes. Pulled children from the mouths of alligators. Shot to kill. Screaming, righteous, winning.
