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All Fall Down Page 6
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“I’m sorry. I was dreaming. I had a nightmare. And then I woke up, and Peace was gone. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Peace burst into tears just as the patter of liquid on the tiles came from beneath the hem of her nightgown. Urine spread in a swiftly growing puddle around the little girl’s feet, then the soft plop of something worse.
“Oops,” Liesel said.
“What the—!” Christopher leaped across the room like he was going after a racquetball on the court to grab up a handful of paper towels. He tossed them onto the puddle, then took the entire roll and dropped to his knees. “Hey, kid, cut it out!”
That’s when Peace threw up on his head.
Chapter 6
“This is all you brought?” Liesel looked over what Sunny had laid out on the guest bed.
Heat settled in Sunny’s face again. It was bad enough that she’d embarrassed herself by screaming this morning when Peace had only been in the kitchen. Not stolen away by John Second to make sure Sunny understood how important it was to obey. It was worse that Peace had puked on Christopher and all over herself. The floor, too. Christopher was still in the shower, and Sunny had insisted on mopping the floor, but there wasn’t much to be done about Peace’s clothes.
Bliss was sleeping in a makeshift crib of pillows, and Happy had been sent downstairs to watch more television. Peace sat on the bed, hair still wet, tucked into a towel after the scrubbing Sunny had given her in a tub so big and shiny bright it had been intimidating. The nightgown she’d been wearing was in the laundry, and the clothes she’d been wearing the night before were filthy as well from the run through the woods. Liesel had put everything in the washer.
“I… We left in a hurry.” Sunny didn’t know what else to say. Liesel was blemished. Sunny shouldn’t talk about family things with her. Within the walls of Sanctuary it had seemed entirely normal that nobody had more than a change or two of clothes accessible to them at any time, but Sunny knew that out here in the blemished world things were different. Here, people indulged in excess and greed, the accumulation of material goods. Out here, people relied on things for comfort instead of listening with their hearts.
“Sunny, look at me.”
The zipper of Sunny’s sweatshirt was still stuck halfway. She tugged it over Peace’s head. The girl would swim in it, but it was better than nothing. She looked at Liesel…at her stepmother, she thought. Liesel was her father’s wife and therefore had an authority in this house that Sunny needed to respect.
“We can go to the store and buy you some new things for the kids. For you, too.”
At Liesel’s kind look, sharp and shameful tears pricked at Sunny’s eyelids. She took a deep breath to push them away. “Oh, no. I couldn’t have you do that.”
“Sunny, all of this—” Liesel gestured at the bed, where everything that had been stuffed into both their knapsacks had made only a tiny pile on the soft comforter “—I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but it’s worn-out. And dirty.”
Sunny nodded, biting her lip, and concentrated on tugging a borrowed comb through Peace’s curls. In Sanctuary, clothes were shared and then recycled when they became too worn to wear. But at least there they had other clothes to wear while dirty outfits were being washed.
“I have money,” Sunny said.
Liesel hesitated. “Of course, that’s fine. But if you don’t have enough, I’m sure your…dad…and I can cover it.”
Sunny smiled faintly at that. “I can’t think of him as my dad. I’m sorry. It just sounds funny.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
Liesel smiled. This time the warmth welling up inside Sunny wasn’t from embarrassment. She smiled back.
“You don’t have to call him Dad if you don’t feel comfortable,” Liesel said. “I think he feels strange about it, too.”
Sunny smoothed Peace’s hair through her fingers to get at a particularly bad tangle. Peace wriggled, complaining at the tugging. “Hush, my sweetheart. Just a bit more.”
Sunny looked up to see Liesel watching her closely, her head tilted a little. Liesel, caught, didn’t look away. She leaned against the dresser with a small smile.
“This is all a surprise to us. A good one,” Liesel added quickly. Sunny didn’t think she was telling the whole truth about that. “It’s just that we didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know, either.” Not that it would’ve mattered. The man who’d fathered her was blemished, not part of the family. Even if her mother had told her about him long ago, Sunny wouldn’t have considered him her father.
“She didn’t tell you about him? I mean, not ever?”
“Not until she told us it was time to go.” Sunny finished with Peace’s hair. “Do you have to use the toilet?”
“She doesn’t need a diaper?” Liesel sounded surprised.
Sunny looked up. “I know she had an accident in the kitchen, but she was just scared.”
“No, I mean… Never mind. It was an accident, I know that. I’m not upset.” Liesel laughed softly.
Liesel spent a lot of time saying things she didn’t mean, Sunny thought. Or thinking of things she meant to say but didn’t. Either way, it was clear she didn’t spend much time listening with her heart, because while Sunny might sometimes let her thoughts fly out of her mouth before she could restrain them, she always meant whatever it was she actually said. Liesel didn’t seem so certain of herself.
“Christopher might take some time to recover, though.”
Sunny winced, thinking of how he’d shouted and the disgust on his face when Peace had thrown up. Only a little had gotten on him, most had been on the floor or down her own front, but even so it had been bad, especially with the rest of the mess. “I’m sorry.”
Liesel shook her head. “I’m not upset about it. I’m just surprised that she’s not in diapers, that’s all. She’s so young.”
Sunny considered this. Peace was just over two years old. “She’s been using the toilet for a few months now.”
Clearly, this wasn’t something Liesel had expected. She shook her head slowly. “Wow. That’s some accomplishment.”
What did that mean?
Liesel must’ve seen her confusion. “None of my friend’s kids got out of diapers until they were over three years old.”
Sunny had been reprimanded many times for her inability to hold her tongue, and she was no better at it now. “That’s ridiculous!”
Liesel laughed and shrugged, though she did give both Peace and Sunny another curious look. “That’s what my friend Becka said about it when she was trying to get them out of diapers. But I think that’s normal, isn’t it? Never mind. That was a dumb thing to say.”
It was normal for the children in the family to be using the toilet by Peace’s age. Sunny’d already said too much. She found a rubber band in the pocket of one of the backpacks and slipped it onto her wrist while she quickly braided Peace’s hair into a smooth twist, then used the band to secure it tightly at the nape of her neck. She should do the same to her own hair. Leaving it unbound and uncovered this way made her feel more naked than if she’d taken off her dress, but the rubber band she’d been using had snapped this morning.
“Do you have another rubber band?”
Liesel put a hand to her own hair. She wore it short, cropped like a man’s. Like Bethany’s. “Oh, sorry. I don’t have any hair bands or anything like that. We can get some from the store. We can leave the kids here with Christopher while we go shopping. It’ll do him some good.”
Bliss was still sleeping, and Sunny paused, remembering his reaction to Peace’s accident. At home she’d have thought nothing of leaving her children in another’s care, just like nobody there would’ve blinked at leaving their children with Sunny. Everyone shared the responsibilities. But, as w