never said flock or carry off, or Transylvania.”
A disturbing idea rattled Naomi. She eased up from her pillows and whispered, “There’s a gap under the door.”
Minnie whispered, “What door?”
Whisper discarded, Naomi said, “What door? The closet door, of course. What if it comes out of the mirror and slips under the door?”
“It can’t come out of the mirror unless you ask it.”
“How do you know? You’re in third grade. I’ve been through third grade – the spectacular tedium of it – I finished it in three months, and there was no lesson about shadowy things in mirrors.”
Minnie was silent. Then: “I don’t know how, but I know. One of us needs to invite it.”
Sinking back against her pillows, Naomi said, “Well, that’s never going to happen.”
“You can invite it all kinds of ways.”
“What ways?”
“For one thing, by staring at it too much.”
“Mouse, you’re just making this up.”
“Don’t call me Mouse.”
“Well, you are making it up. You don’t know.”
“Or if you talk to it, ask it a question, that’s another way.”
“I’m not going to ask it beans.”
“You better not.”
The room seemed colder than usual. Naomi pulled the blanket under her chin. “What kind of thing lives in a mirror?”
“It’s a people, not a thing.”
“How do you know?”
“I know in my heart,” Minnie said so solemnly that Naomi shivered. “He’s people.”
“He? How do you know it’s not a she?”
“Do you think it’s a she?”
Naomi resisted the urge to pull the covers over her head. “No. It feels like a he.”
“It’s definitely a he,” Minnie declared.
“But he who?”
“I don’t know he who. And don’t you ask him who, Naomi. That’s an invitation.”
They were silent for a while.
Naomi dared to look away from the closet door. Backlit by a streetlamp, silvery worms of rain squiggled down the windowpanes. The scarlet oak on the south lawn loomed huge, its glossy green leaves here and there reflecting the lamplight as if crusted in ice.
Eventually, Naomi said, “You know what I’ve been wondering?”
“Something weird, I bet.”
“Could he be a prince?”
“You mean Mr. Mirror?”
“Yeah. If he’s a prince, the mirror might be a door to a magical realm, a land of tremendous adventures.”
“No,” Minnie said.
“That’s it? No. Just like that?”
“No.”
“But if he lives beyond the mirror, then there’s got to be another world on that side. The fabulous world beyond the mirror. That sounds like a magical but true thing, doesn’t it? It could be like in all those stories – an heroic quest, high adventure, romance. My destiny might be to live over there.”
“Shut up when you say that,” Minnie said.
“Shut up when you say shut up,” Naomi bristled. “You can’t know my destiny. I might live over there and be queen one day.”
“No one lives over there,” Minnie said solemnly. “Everyone over there is dead.”
Wearing a dark-blue robe over his pajama bottoms, John stood before the gallery in his ground-floor study. There were photos of the kids when, as infants, each had come home from the hospital, and others taken on every birthday thereafter, a total of thirty-five pictures. Soon the gallery would be continued on the next wall.
The girls liked to come in now and then to recall favorite birthdays and to make fun of the way each other had looked when younger. Zach was less inclined to enjoy photographs taken when he was a toddler and a grade-schooler because they didn’t comport with his image of himself as a young man in preparation to be a tough marine.
More than he could have expressed even to Nicky, John looked forward to seeing his daughters become women, because he believed that each had a great good heart and would change her small corner of the world for the better. He knew they might surprise him but would always delight him by the way they lived their lives. He knew, as well, that Zach would become anything he wanted to be – and in the end would be a better man than his father.
One of two windows in the study provided a view of the flagstone terrace and the deep backyard, which now lay in absolute darkness. Their house stood on a cul-de-sac, on a street that was a peninsula between two converging ravines, quiet and sequestered for an urban home. Beyond their back fence, the land dropped off steeply, into brush-choked woods. On the farther side of the ravine, the lights of other neighborhoods were smeared and faded by the rain. Between the study window and that distant glow, nothing could be seen: not the terrace or the lawn; not the arbor twined with climbing roses; not the great deodar cedar, its boughs drooping gracefully.
Although not remote, the house was sufficiently secluded to allow a rapist-murderer, hot with need and icy with determination, to come and play and go with little risk of being seen by neighbors.
Also out there in the dark lay Willard’s grave. City ordinances forbade the interment of animals on a residential lot unless they were cremated. An urn containing their beloved golden retriever’s ashes was buried under a black-granite plaque beyond the rose arbor.
The girls had suffered such grief at the loss that they remained reluctant to risk losing another. But perhaps the time had come to bring a new dog into their lives. Not a golden retriever who counted everyone his friend, but instead a breed with a greater reputation for aggressively protecting its family. Maybe a German shepherd.
At his desk, John switched on his computer and sat in thought for a minute before keying in the number for the state hospital. The voice-mail system offered options, although the reception desk and various offices were closed until eight in the morning. He pressed the number for psychiatric-ward security.
A man answered on the second ring.
John pictured the stark security vestibule on the third floor, where Coleman Hanes had taken
