A moment of silence.
"So you know," her mother said flatly.
Laurie nodded.
Her mother continued to chop ice. "I can't."
"What do you mean, 'you can't'?"
"I don't want to." Her mother faced her, not embarrassed but defiant, the expression giving her already too serious face an even grimmer cast.
"Jesus."
"She does for me what your father can't do anymore."
"The girl is evil," she told her mother.
Her mother looked away, continued chopping. "You don't think I know that?"
"Then why--"
"I am the mother here. You are the daughter. I do not want to talk about this with you."
Laurie pounded a fist on the counter. "We have to talk about it!"
Her mother looked up at her, surprised, apparently taken aback by the vehemence of her response.
"I don't know if you've noticed, Mother, but I'm not a child anymore. I'm an adult. Aren't you even a little curious why that is?"
Her mother said nothing.
Laurie reached out, grabbed her mother's hand. "Dawn will kill you," she said. "She wants us all out off the House, she wants to leave the House unattended, and she will do whatever it takes to make that happen."
"Billington won't let that happen."
"Billington is gone!" Laurie said. "He's probably dead! She probably killed him!"
There was silence between them.
Her mother coughed. "You don't understand."
"No, you don't understand! You think Dawn's doing this for her health? You think she cares about you? She wants you out of the House. And if that means she has to kill you, then so be it."
Her mother was already shaking her head.
"Father's seeing her, too."
At that, her mother stiffened. Laurie had not been intending to reveal that fact, had not planned to say anything about it, had been hoping she could talk to both parents individually and get them each to stop seeing the girl, and she instantly regretted spilling the beans. The horrible thought occurred to her that she was the one responsible for sending her mother after her father, for setting into motion the events that led to her parents' deaths.
Had she done Dawn's work for her?
"Mother," she said earnestly. "You have to put a stop to this. You can't let her run your life. You're just a pawn to her. She'll use you up and toss you aside."
"It's okay," her mother said, and patted her hand. "I
know you mean well, but you don't understand everything."
She put a finger over Laurie's lips before she could respond. "I know you think you do, but believe me, you don't."
She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do.
She wanted to cry from frustration.
"No matter what happens, I want you to always remember that I love you."
"I love you, too," Laurie said, although even as she spoke the words she was thinking that she loved her other mother more.
Love wasn't perfect, she realized. It didn't cure all ills and didn't solve all problems and wasn't always what was needed. It also wasn't equal. There was a hierarchy of love, some people you loved more than others, and it did make a difference. Sometimes just loving someone was not enough. Sometimes you had to love someone enough.
Would she have really traded her childhood and her new family for a life with this family in the House?
No.
Her father, her biological father, walked into the kitchen. "What's going on in here?" he asked. "What's taking so long? We're thirsty out there."
Her mother stared at him with a blank, unreadable expression, and whatever else he'd been intending to say died in his throat. "Go back out there with our guests,"
she said. "I'll bring the lemonade out in a minute."
He nodded.
"Father?" Laurie said.
"Yes?"
"Stop seeing her. Stop seeing Dawn."
His face reddened, tensed, and he was about to say something, to respond angrily, but he glanced over at her mother's face and closed his mouth.
"She's evil," Laurie said.
He nodded tiredly, started to turn away.
They were doomed, she saw now. There was no way she could change anything, no way any of their future could be avoided. Still, she was glad she'd talked to them, and she felt a little bit better knowing that she'd at least made an effort.
"Go out there with your father," her mother said. "I'll bring the drinks in a minute."
Laurie nodded, gave her mother's hand a small squeeze, and she and her father walked back into the dining room where her future family waited.
Daniel The Other Side.
It was not something he could have anticipated, not even from those views through the windows of the other House.
It was not like any afterlife he had ever imagined.
There were no blue skies or fields of green, no cloud palaces, no geographical distinctions at all. There were no hydras or unicorns or banshees, no gods or monsters, no recognizable beings. Occasional indistinct blobs of blackness flew by, shooting past him as though shot from a cannon, but for the most part this world was empty, barren, devoid of even the smallest sign of life or movement.
He was floating in nothingness.
Doneenkneed him in the midsection, trying to dislodge his grip, but he held tightly on to her, ignoring her shrieks and cries, her hideous yelps and growls, wrestling with her in the open air, clutching her close to his chest.
He felt no pain, but she was as strong or stronger than he was, and even if she could not hurt him, she could get away from him.
He had no idea what to do with her. He'd wanted only to get her as far away from Tony and Margot as possible, and the Other Side seemed perfect for that, but what was next? Was he supposed to fight with her forever, to wrestle here with her for years in order to keep her occupied and give Tony a chance to grow up? He had to admit that he felt no flagging of his energy, no decrease in strength, and he had no doubt that he could continue tangling with her through eternity without becoming fatigued. But he did not want to. He wanted to do something with her, to get rid of her, to imprison her or put her out of commission.
To kill her.
His anger had not flagged either, and he tried to think of some way he could stop her permanently. His mother had said that he could restrain her but not destroy her, and he tried to find some loophole in that, tried to come up with some means to do her in. That would solve not only his family problem but the problems of Laurie and Norton and Stormy and Mark. Doneen was the only real threat to the Houses, and if he could put a stop to her once and for all, everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.
She squirmed in his grasp, was able to bend her arm and twist her hand in front of his face. Sharp claws snapped out from the ends of her fingers, and his first instinct was to push her away from him, but instead he butted her forehead with his, and used all of his strength and weight and the leverage granted him by size to twist her arm around her back.
She screamed wildly.
He still seemed to be tethered to the House, and for that he was grateful. He could see a line of Houses, far in the distance, the only discernible shapes in this horribly empty universe. There were a lot more than five of them. They stretched infinitely across what passed for a horizon, and although they appeared to be identical, one House, his House, blinked periodically from the highest window in its highest gable, an attic window, and at each pulse of light he- felt a slight tug, as though it were pulling on some sort of invisible cord connecting him to it.
That connection was the only thing keeping him from defeatism and despair.
God, he wished Billings were still alive.
He could've used some help.
Doneen changed in his hands, her left arm transforming into a green snake, her head morphing into that of Tony's first doll. He was supposed to be scared, frightened away, but he wasn't. She was the only constant in the world floating by them, her transformations at least contextually understandable and recognizable, and he continued to hold on to her as tightly as he could, as the doll head became a goat's head and snapped at him.