The thing—baby—twitched in its casing. It was afraid. I knew what it was afraid of and I glared again at that panting black-eyed dog. Not yet, I told it. The force of the thought made it cower in its corner. Someday, someday. But not yet.
The creature turned once on the floor. Then it slipped, smoke-like, through the world’s loosened weave. When it was gone I spoke again to my child. Come. I’ll keep you safe. If you’ll come.
Ivy came. With a rooster-red comb-over and the scathing eyes of someone looking to lodge a complaint about all this, everything, the big and the bright and the cold. She couldn’t cry right away, the cord looped around her throat like a two-strand necklace, but I knew we would live.
When they finally put her in my arms I thought of wishbone halves and walnut shells. Loosen your grip, I told myself, on reflex—never wanting Hank to feel smothered, never wanting Rob to worry I’d die of it if he got fed up and left me—but she was so new she couldn’t even see me. I held on as tightly as I wished.
* * *
It came to me at night. In those endless early days, in those fragile starlit hours. When I nursed before dawn, the only person awake in the world, the fear of what I might have done rolled over me. That I could have altered Ivy somehow, her nature or chemistry. That, in reaching out to her with love and will and magic, I’d woken in her something that should have stayed asleep.
I considered it with terror, I imagined it with pride. Across the years the anxiety dimmed but it never blinked out. And when she was six, Ivy proved my suspicions correct.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The suburbs
Back then
Ivy Chase was six years old. She loved ducks and drawing and butterscotch pie and, lately, the purple bounce house she’d jumped in at her friend Shawna’s birthday party.
Every night since then she’d fallen asleep fast, so she could spend more time in the bounce house dream. She’d been perfecting it for a week and tonight it was glorious. The house was as sheer and daunting as a ship. The air smelled like funnel cake. The grass was so plush she bent to run her palms over the rubbery-soft blades. If her mom could just see how awesome this was, she would understand Ivy’s birthday party needed a bounce house, too.
Still inside the dream, Ivy’s body pulsed with a thrilling realization. There was no reason Mom couldn’t see this. She was right across the hall.
Ivy had begun to suspect that her dreamlife—vast, lucid, entirely moldable, though she wouldn’t have used any of those words—was unusual. It was Aunt Fee who tipped her off. Ivy was going on and on about a dream she’d made, and auntie’s face was going stiller and stiller. When Ivy broke off, uneasy, her aunt smiled.
“That’s awesome,” she’d said. “Tell me about another one.” But Ivy said she couldn’t remember any more.
She wasn’t thinking about that right now. Within her dreamworld she was queen. She could, if she wished to, turn the grass blue or make the cloudless sky rain Dippin’ Dots, or have a puppy run right out of the bounce house and into her arms. There was no reason she shouldn’t be able to reach her mother, too.
She could, when she concentrated, feel her mom across the hall. That was one of the nicest things about dreaming: even though they weren’t with her, Ivy could feel Mom, Dad, and Hank asleep. They were three different kinds of warmth.
Standing in the velvet shadow of the bounce house, she closed her eyes and felt for the blue, bottom-of-the-fire heat that was her sleeping mother.
There. Ivy got hold of her. She tugged, and she didn’t even have to tug that hard. Her mother stepped into the dream.
Her face was vacant. She stood on the grass, eyes clicking emptily from one thing to the next, squinting away from the sun. Then they clicked onto Ivy.
“Hi, Mom.”
Her mother’s pupils spread like ink spots. She opened her mouth and Ivy heard two sutured screams: one in the dream and one out of it, across the hall.
The shock woke her up. Also the noise. A breath, two, then her mom flew in wearing a tank top and underpants, her hair streaming like a Valkyrie’s. Ivy’s eyes were open but Mom still put a hand to her heart, like she wouldn’t believe her daughter was okay until she felt it beating. Then she scooped Ivy into her arms.
“How did you do that?” she asked in a fierce whisper.
“I don’t know,” Ivy whispered back. Then, defensively, “Do what?”
Mom pulled away, sliding the backs of her fingers over her wet cheeks. Ivy could see her thinking.
Then, slowly, Mom’s eyelids shut. Her mouth was loose and her head drifted on her neck like seaweed. Ivy watched her, heart running like a rabbit. At least a full minute passed, then Mom opened her eyes.