The hallway was wet and shiny, overwhelmingly green and blue, oceans and sky, just like the world. They could hear Rita below in the kitchen, laughing at Merle’s jokes. When she laughed again, Edmund touched both hands to his head, to his earaches, and together they walked to the end of the hall, to Papa and Dee’s door, and shut it behind them.

The bedroom was on the left, with open pocket doors, and a dressing table covered with Dee’s things was in the center room, under a window looking out on the green cloud of the dogwood tree. Papa’s study was to the right, behind another set of pocket doors. You could see a strip of the Sound but the real show was what lay on the sills, nothing glittery, but still strange: the bone whistle (be careful who you call, said Papa), tiny statues of round women, a sperm whale tooth, an aqua shot glass with red dots and the words Two Dot, a disintegrating piece of celluloid, and a curly lock of dark hair, dangling from his cantilevered desk lamp by a blue velvet ribbon.

Polly and Edmund were still woozy and weak. They flopped on the sofa and looked through Dee’s jewelry box, all the different drawers with pearls and earrings, baby teeth and stones; one tiny silk bag was filled with lumpy rough diamonds. They heard footsteps on the stairs, whispers and giggles, sliding furniture. The study door rattled and a minute later Rita’s door clicked shut. Edmund tried to push the door to the hall open, but it was blocked—they could see the blue wood of the dresser that held the towels.

“We could climb out the window,” said Polly, looking at the top of the dogwood.

Edmund shrugged. May, a glowing orange caution sign, looked back up at them from the grass and Dwight preened himself on a branch above her head.

“It doesn’t matter,” Edmund said. “Where would we go, anyway?”

The laughter from the hall ended, and the pins on the map in Papa’s study jumped to the rhythmic slam of Rita’s bed striking the other side of the wall. Polly and Edmund retreated with their books to the bedroom, where the bed was dented for two bodies, one heavier and longer. Edmund took Papa’s side, Polly took Dee’s, and they read and faded off into daydreams and other thoughts that weren’t as good, not so much about people who made walls rattle but about people who went to see doctors for tests. There were pill bottles all over Dee’s bedside table.

“I don’t want her to die,” said Edmund.