Somehow I went through the motions of fixing supper, of eating, of washing up. Girlie went to bed, and Rachel and I sat, each of us wrapped in our own little cocoons of fear, starting at every noise, looking hopefully at the door, only to fall back, disappointed, into our worst imaginings. I looked in often on Franny, but there was no change. The look of terror remained, and what was left of the girl I’d known kept itself hunched in a ball on the bed, fists knotted to fend off perpetual darkness. “There isn’t anything you can do,” Rachel told me, glancing up sadly from the untouched sewing in her lap. But I could be there. Whether Franny knew it or not, I could be there with her, where I should have been when she needed me most. I felt that I’d failed her. “It’s not your fault,” Rachel said at length, as I dragged myself downstairs and back into the parlor for the fifth time. “I should have heard her—” “But you said she didn’t scream.” “No…she didn’t scream…”And I felt the confusion closing in around me, choking off all sense of logic.
