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“Because telling her would have endangered both of you.” Oliver reaches toward his miniature, but I keep my hand inside the room.

“You put your hands on her to save him.” I tap the tiny silver bar on his doll’s chest. “You keep doing a lot for somebody who only cares about getting out.”

Oliver takes his doll from my hand and puts him back in the green bed. “There are moral positions between devotion and allowing someone to die.”

“You like that she hasn’t figured you out yet.” I lean against the edge of the dollhouse.

His thumb rests against the tiny Oliver’s chest without moving. “That’s an extraordinary interpretation,” he says. His thumb finally moves, smoothing the front of his doll’s shirt.

“She built that room around you before you knew she existed, and every time you fight her, she comes back with something worse.” I look toward the stairs. “Nobody has ever worked this hard to ruin you.”

Oliver places the doll precisely in the center of the green pillow. “You say that as though it recommends her.”

“I think you’re scared it does.” I reach for the tiny door, but Oliver closes the front of the green room himself.

“If Juney were standing outside that door, I would leave with her.” His hand remains on the little handle.

A car moves slowly along the street. Its tires hiss over the wet road and continue past without turning into the driveway.

Oliver waits until the sound disappears. Then he looks back at me. “Heather will notice what you did to the dollhouse,” he says. His hand leaves the green door without reopening it.

“That’s the point.” I glance toward the back hall. “She’ll notice the rest too.”

Oliver follows my attention to Heather’s bedroom. “You’re willing to risk her finding that, but not willing to open the closet.”

“One tells her I want in.” I touch the key. “The other tells her I want out.”

Headlights sweep across the playroom wall. I get to my feet.

Oliver reaches the dollhouse and opens the tiny kitchen. He lifts Simon away from the counter, carries him upstairs and lays him in the red bed. Simon’s left arm sits too far from his side, so Oliver moves it closer. He straightens the red sleep pants and adjusts the doll until he lies exactly where Heather left him.

“She would have known,” Oliver says. He closes the red bedroom and checks the little handle.

I turn off the kitchen light. “I know.”

The first deadbolt turns. Oliver looks at the empty blue bed. “Your room is still wrong.”

“She’ll know where I am.” I close the front of the dollhouse without replacing myself.

The second deadbolt turns. The third deadbolt turns.

We’re both standing where she expects to find us when Heather brings Simon home. The key rests against my throat, exactly where she left it.

CHAPTER 44

Simon

Heather opens the front door and gives me the groceries before she steps inside. Both canvas bags hang from my hands while she locks all three deadbolts behind us.

Jamie and Oliver are waiting in the hallway. Jamie looks at the bags first, then my face, searching for whatever Heather gave me outside that he didn’t get.

“Kitchen,” Heather says. She takes the eggs from the top of one.

I put everything on the counter and start unloading. The chicken goes into the refrigerator, and the olive oil replaces the bottle of yellow shit beside the stove.

“I was in the playroom,” Jamie says.

Little shit even rats on himself.