around, fished in the pack hanging from his chair and pulled out his store keys. The ring had one of those keychain flashlights on it, which he detached and put in her hands. “Go get whatever it is and bring your ass back up here. Don’t overthink it. Just go. Now.”
He propelled her off his lap and toward the ladder, a little push. Since that near-topple over the opening was way too fresh in his mind, he kept his hands on her until she descended. She seemed pretty steady now, though, moving quickly. He thought she was hurrying, trying to do what she needed to do before the visuals they’d planted in her head to handle this were overwhelmed by other things.
As he moved closer, he could see the space where she was descending. At least for this moment, these purposes, he was relieved to see it wasn’t large, more like an underground walk-in closet. There was nowhere down there she’d be outside his view, which might partly explain why they’d never bothered to put in a light.
She stopped in front of a set of empty shelves, and her gaze went down to her feet. He adjusted to see what she was looking at, and saw a space just big enough to shove a sack of flour, to keep it fresh and cool. As she dropped to her heels, she gripped the shelf above that alcove, and laid her palm on the ground beneath. Her shoulders rounded, her head bowed, and he saw her body jerk, as if caught by a sob.
Damn it. He bit back an order for her to return now, and instead waited her out. He was here. Whatever she needed to do, she needed to do it.
She went to her knees, putting both hands on the cold concrete floor. Anguish and fury struck him in the gut as he realized the spot was big enough for a child to hole herself up, try to shield herself against the dark and what she might imagine inhabited it.
“Daralyn,” he said.
She didn’t respond. She hadn’t heard him. He was trying to figure out the impossible, how to get himself down the ladder, when she shook herself out of it, lifted a hand toward him, an acknowledgement. Then she rose and came back up to him. She sank down on the floor, her feet on the top step of the ladder, her hand on his foot. Her face was ashen, her eyes bright with pain, a brittle coldness to her face. Her hands were empty.
“Did you not find it?”
Her gaze cleared, though she looked puzzled by his question. Then she understood. “It wasn’t an object. It was me. I needed to tell that version of myself that it was done. That she isn’t trapped down there anymore.”
Her hazel gaze rose to his, and suddenly that lost look vanished, swallowed by something feral as a wolf, as focused as a dog on a scent.
She bounded to her feet, squeezed past him and charged into the kitchen. When he backed out of the mud room, he saw she was yanking open the drawers, one after the other. She found what she was seeking under the kitchen sink.
A hammer.
She moved back into the mudroom, fell to her knees and attacked the hinges of the cellar trapdoor. She knocked the pins loose with impressively precise swings. But when the door came loose, that was where any control to her movements gave way to that wildness again. She yanked the door free with a strength fueled by something far beyond the physical, and hurled it down that narrow opening. It bounced off the ladder, landed against the empty shelves with a loud clatter and landed on the subterranean floor.
“No door for the cellar. Never again,” she said.
Then she collapsed to her knees, buried her face in her hands and started to rock, making a keening noise.
“Ah, baby.” He locked the chair, lowered himself to the floor so he could collect her against him. She toppled over, a tight human coil in his lap. Curling over her, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her. She wasn’t crying. She was literally like a wounded animal, expressing pain with a quiet, heartrending noise.
As he murmured to her, held her, he lifted his head and noted the rear door led to a back porch. Outside, the sun was hitting early afternoon. It was a memorable fall day. The trees in the backyard were an assortment of maples, red