Malorie cries. She can’t stop it from happening. As if, in her personal darkness, she is being lowered into the house at the moment when Don tore the drapes down. As if she never took the river to the Jane Tucker School for the Blind. As if she is falling, on her back, through the attic floor, into the hideous events below.

Tom the man died that day. The namesake of her son. Yet Malorie did not bear witness. She was removed, if such a word applies, safer in the attic than those below. But here, now, she hears the carnage up close, no floors between her and it; ordinary people turning. Once civil men and women now cracked, cursing, hurting each other and hurting themselves.

Something enormous crashes. Glass explodes.

Malorie wouldn’t be able to hear her daughter if she spoke. They are in the eye of it now.

Olympia’s grip tightens.

Someone thumps against Malorie, shin to shin. Then, bricks again, against her bad shoulder. She recognizes some of the voices. They’ve spent two years here. They know people. They’ve made friends.

Or have they?

As Malorie steps deeper into the madness, she hears a distant question, asked in her own voice, her own head, asking if she was righteous in her staunch safety precautions, the fact that she was often chided for wearing her blindfold indoors. Oh, how the people of this place were offended by her measures. Oh, how it made the others feel as if Malorie thought herself better than them.

“Tom,” Olympia says.

Or Malorie thinks she hears it. The same name of the man she most admired in this world, the optimist in a time of impossible despair. Yes, Tom the boy is much like Tom the man, though the man was not his father. Malorie can’t stop him from wanting to fashion stronger blindfolds, from covering the windows with layers of wood, from painting false windows on the room they’ve called their own for two years.

But she can stop him from doing it.

Someone hits Malorie on the side of the head. She swings out, tries to push the person away, but Olympia pulls her deeper into the derangement.

“Olympia,” she says. But she says no more. Cannot speak. As now bodies press against her, objects break above and behind her, words are sworn close to her ear.

It can sound like a celebration if she wants it to, the screams no longer of terror, but excitement. The heavy thuds only heavy feet upon a dance floor. No anguish, only cheer.

Is this how Tom the man chose to see this world? And if so…can she do it, too?

“Tom,” Olympia says. This time Malorie hears it clearly, and she understands they are on the other side of the violence.

“Where?”

“Here.”

Malorie reaches out, feels the doorjamb of an open classroom. It smells of people in here.

“Tom?” she says.