Part Two: The Hallway
He heard Lily first.
Her voice was coming from the direction of the nursery — down the hallway, past the room that had been turned into a playroom, past the bathroom. It was not the voice of a child in normal conversation. It was the voice of a child who is frightened and who is using the specific quality of voice that frightened children use when they are trying to manage something too large for them: very careful, very contained, the voice of someone who has learned that the wrong tone produces worse outcomes.
“Please,” she said. “Please leave us alone.”
Daniel’s hand was already on the hallway wall.
He moved toward the voice with the specific quality of movement that the body produces when the mind has not yet formulated a complete understanding of the situation but the body has already understood something. He was not running — he was moving with the compressed urgency of someone who has decided that the distance between where they are and where they need to be must be covered immediately.
The nursery door was not fully closed.
He stopped outside it. He pushed it open.
