Two Crayon Suns Above the Windowless House

The girl stood beneath the estate door as if the black stone around her had grown taller while she crossed the grounds. Night pressed against the walls, and the guarded corridors behind me held their usual silence. She was small enough that the brass handle sat above her head. Her white nightgown hung crooked on her narrow frame, its faded yellow daisies almost gray in the dark. Her feet were pink and bare. One hand gripped a battered stuffed rabbit by its worn ear.

The contradiction stopped me before the fear did. A child had crossed a guarded estate alone, yet she did not look lost. She looked certain that this was the door where help could be found. I saw cold shining on her toes and a smear of dirt along the hem of the nightgown. Then she raised her face toward the entry light.

“Please, my mama won't wake up.”

My name is Murphy Moretti, and I was the man who opened that door.

I had been moving through the front hall when the sound came, too soft for a knock and too deliberate for an accident. I looked through the glass first. The girl stood alone beyond it. No adult waited at the drive. No vehicle idled near the gate. The dark estate offered no explanation for how she had reached the threshold.

I opened the door.

The girl looked up at me. I saw her eyes before I saw anything else: large, blue, and fixed on my face with the concentration of someone trying to decide whether I could be trusted. My suit made me seem larger than I was, and the scar along my jaw caught the entry light when I bent toward her.

“You're too tall.”

It was not fear in her voice. It was an observation, quiet and exact.

I lowered myself until we stood closer to the same level. The rabbit dragged against the stone as she stepped forward. Her hand came up slowly, paused beside mine, then closed around two of my fingers. Her grip was warm at the center and cold at the tips. I did not pull away.

She turned without waiting for permission.

I followed her across the entry and into the passage leading toward the staff quarters. The estate changed there. The polished floor gave way to worn boards. The air smelled faintly of dust, old heat, and the damp carried in from outside. Her bare feet made almost no sound. I kept my pace short so she would not have to tug me along.

At the narrow room, she pointed toward the bed.

“Where's your mama? My mama needs help, she's on the floor.”

The woman lay beside the bed, one shoulder against the frame. I recognized Allie Carter, the housekeeper, though I had never seen her outside the controlled rhythm of work. Her face had gone slack. The battered rabbit slipped from Lily's hand and landed near Allie's hip.

Lily's other hand pointed past them, toward the plain wall.

Two crayon drawings were taped there. Each showed a mother, a little girl, and a bright yellow sun above a house without windows. The pictures were simple enough to belong to any child. The missing windows held my attention longer than they should have.

Lily looked from the drawings to her mother, then back to me.

“She’s on floor.”