Part 13 (2/2)

nuzzled her neck.

”There are things in the dark,” Emma whispered.

”Your daddy will chase them away. Won't you, Bri?”

The Irish in him, or perhaps the drug, made him weepy when he looked at

the woman he loved holding his child. ”Sure. I'll chop them up and

toss them out.”

”After you do, you'd better sweep this up,” Bev told him.

Emma spent the night, the first of her new life, snuggled with her

family in a big bra.s.s bed.

AS SHE Had every day for nine days, Emma sat on the big window seat in

the front parlor and looked through the mullioned gla.s.s. She stared

beyond the edges of the garden with its nodding foxglove and bushy

columbine to the long graveled drive. And waited.

Her bruises were fading, but she hadn't noticed. No one in the big new

house had hit her. Yet. She'd been given tea every day, and presents

of sugar plums and china dolls from the friends who came and went so

casually in her father's house.

It was all very confusing for Emma. She was given a bath every day,

even if she hadn't been playing in the dirt, and clean-smelling clothes

to wear. No one called her a stupid baby because she was frightened of

the dark. The lamp with the pink shade was turned on in her room every

night, and there were little rosebuds on the walls. The monsters hardly

ever came into her new room.

She was afraid to like it, because she was sure her mam would be coming

<script>