“You’ll be quiet today,” she said. “I have errands.”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
Carol looked at her for a long second, then disappeared behind the furnace and returned with an old paint bucket and a roll of paper towels.
The humiliation hit Lily harder than fear for a moment.
Carol saw it and seemed almost satisfied.
“You should have considered that before your tantrum.”
“It wasn’t a tantrum.”
Carol leaned close to the bars. “Listen to me carefully. If you make me regret showing you any kindness, I can leave you with nothing. Do you understand?”
Lily’s hands shook around the blanket.
Carol smiled with that same half-face smile. “Good girl.”
The lock clicked again when she checked it.
Then she left.
Saturday passed in slices of light shifting across the floor. Lily measured time by the sun through the window, by the rumble of the garage door, by how often footsteps crossed the kitchen overhead. She tried yelling again around noon when she heard a mower outside somewhere nearby, but Carol must have heard her because music suddenly blasted through the basement vent—loud enough to swallow her voice.
The heat got worse by afternoon. The mudroom had no air vent of its own, and the basement seemed to trap whatever weather the day decided on. Sweat stuck Lily’s hair to the back of her neck. Her stomach cramped with hunger. Her legs throbbed from remaining bent too long. She tried sitting cross-legged, tried kneeling, tried lying curled on the cracked tray, but no position lasted.
At one point she pressed her forehead to the bars and thought, wildly, that if she pushed hard enough the metal would give.
It did not.
