Clark woke up to Mary screaming.

A terrible, wailing, nightmare scream.

He was instantly awake, but he was disoriented, unsure what was real. At the end of the hall, in shadows, Mary’s door flew open and banged against the wall. His daughter was silhouetted against the pale light in her room.

“Him him him him him!” she shouted.

Clark dove over the back edge of the sofa and pushed himself off his knees, shaking his head to drive the sleep from his brain. He spread his arms wide. Mary bolted for him and grabbed his body so hard he nearly spilled over onto the carpet. Her skin was wet with sweat and fear. Her blue eyes bulged, and her nose flared as she sucked air into her lungs. Clark felt her fingernails digging like knives into his back. She held him with such fierce strength he could hardly breathe.

“Mary, what is it? What’s wrong, baby?”

“Him him him him him him him him!”

“Oh, Mary, it’s okay, it’s okay, there’s no one there.”

“NO NO NO NO NO.”

Clark stroked her hair and sang to her under his breath. She trembled like a bird. This had happened the previous weekend, too. She had had a bad dream and imagined there was someone in her room and refused to go back in there for the rest of the night. Mary didn’t know what was real and what was not. When she imagined something, it was the same as if it were really there.

“Shhh,” he murmured over and over.

She cried into his shoulder. He grabbed a fleece blanket from the sofa and wrapped it around her skin, covering her. Her tears were damp on his neck.

“Come on, I’ll show you it’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll show you that no one’s there.”

“No, Daddy, no, him him him him.”

“Oh, I know, I know, but it was just a dream, honey, that’s all it was.”

Mary shook her head while it was buried against his chest, and then she looked up with a panicked face, put her mouth against his ear, and whispered so clearly it made him shiver: “Window.”

Clark felt chilled.

His fists clenched, and adrenaline made him alert. Clark’s eyes streaked to the living room windows, which he had left open. They looked out on dark squares of night. The curtains breathed with the wind. He smelled pine and rain. He didn’t understand what had happened, but Mary wouldn’t use a word like that unless it meant something important.

Clark lifted Mary off her feet. She was heavy, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and let herself be carried to the sofa. He laid her down among the cushions and kissed her and looked deeply into her eyes, trying to understand her, trying to make her communicate with him. He always cherished the idea that there was a place somewhere in both of their minds where they could come together and erase the canyon that her disability put between them. He just wished he could find it.