Nikola lay beside Louise. “What is happening? Why are we here? Why didn’t we go home?”
“Something happened to Mom and Dad.” Louise felt the words tumble through her, burning as they struck sides, to vanish into the emptiness. The darkness swallowed everything up, leaving nothing but the remembrance of pain.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they’re gone away and they’re never coming back.” Louise had been little when Grandma Johnson and Grandma Mayer had died, but it set a pattern. Each time there had been a tiny funeral, sparsely attended by Aunt Kitty and old people that Louise didn’t know. They would clean out the house, taking first the treasures. The old photographs. The family Bible. The beloved Christmas ornaments. Then there would be the mountain of unwanted things to be given away to Goodwill.
After that—nothing. No calls. No visits. No cards in the mail. A painful emptiness that at first is constantly tripped over but slowly heals to nothing.
As much as she wanted to go home, she dreaded it. It would be another step along the familiar road. The house would be too still. Too silent. They would gather up what they wanted, constrained by common sense, and forced to throw out everything else. Their mother’s beloved shoes. Their father’s wine cork collection. The everyday dishes.
The house would be emptied and then it would be gone and there would be nothing left at all of their parents.
The grief came flooding back, surging up through her throat, hot and burning, to spill out as fiery tears.
Nikola gave a raw whimper of pain. “Why do we feel so bad? What’s wrong with us? Are we going to die?”
She scrubbed away her tears and hugged him tight. “No, no, you’re just sad. You’re okay. It will go away.”
“This is sad? Sad is horrible.”
“Yes, it is.”
“How do you stop being sad?”
“You think of something happy.”
“Like being real and able to hug back? And being able to smell flowers? And eat cake?”
Louise hugged him tighter. “Yes, think of being real.”
* * *
She tried to sleep. She knew that she did a little, in that she became aware that she had been dreaming, and thus must have been asleep. Alexander haunted her dreams, pursued by monsters. At four in the morning, she gave up and cautiously lowered the bed.
“What are you doing?” Nikola whispered as she emptied her backpack and dressed in her stage ninja clothes.
“Joy is going to wake up hungry. I’m going to find her something to eat.”
“Okay.” Nikola padded to the door and waited expectantly for her. Much as Louise didn’t want to creep around the big scary house alone, she knew that there was less of a chance of her getting caught if she didn’t take Nikola. He just wasn’t built with sneaking in mind.
“Stay here,” she said.
“We want to come with you.”
“You need to stay here and keep Jillian and Joy safe.”
“Joy never listens to us. She says we’re just a dumb babies.”
“You’re not dumb.” Louise responded to the part she could positively address. “There are things about the world that you know a lot more about than she does. Like the Internet and robotics.”
“Hm.” Nikola sounded unconvinced.
“I don’t want Jillian to be alone while she’s asleep, so please, just stay here with her.”
“Okay.”
Louise was filled with sudden certainty that Jillian would try to come looking for her and get caught. “And don’t let her come looking for me! Sit on her.”
* * *
The house was huge and dark and quiet. She used her flashlight to pick her way through the seemingly endless halls, trying to quietly find the kitchen. Downstairs, every room she peered into could swallow her parents’ entire home. They were vast Cinderella palace rooms with marble and crystal that echoed every slightest sound.
The kitchen was tucked in the corner, behind a great dining room with a table that could sit dozens of people. There were two massive gas ranges, a granite countertop island nearly fifteen feet long and an entire wall of cabinets.
The far door led to a service entrance facing the massive detached garage. Since no one seemed awake in the house and she would be able to see a car drive up, the kitchen seemed safe to ransack at will.
Louise opened a door to what she thought might be the pantry and discovered an entire room of dried beans, sacks of flour, sugar, and cartons of salt. A locked door in the back of the pantry suggested a way down to a wine cellar. Bins along the bottom shelves held three types of potatoes and four types of onions. The elves apparently were preparing for nuclear winter. Despite the abundance, there was nothing she could carry back to the room and feed Joy. She loaded one of potato into the pillow just in case she found nothing else. Did these people not have anything that could be eaten instantly?