4. An Explanation

Langston pushed a chair over to the door and stood on it, feeling the ledge on the top of the door frame and finding a generic skeleton key that could have unlocked any door in the house but was long since forgotten about. She grinned excitedly back at the bedroom door, flashing it to everyone.

Viki held her hand up as if to say "no" and shook her head. "Please don't do it, Langston," she whispered.

Starr looked up at her aunt questioningly. "Why not?"

Langston looked down at the key and then at the door questioningly. She looked back over at the group and watched intently as Viki answered the question.

"Whatever Dorian is doing on the other side of that door, she needs to work through it before she deals with what is out here."

"What is out here," Ray disagreed with her tone, "is a family who loves her and would do anything to protect her."

"Oh, but don't you see?" Viki argued. "That is exactly what Dorian doesn't understand right now. She's somehow got all the people in her life jumbled up in her head and she can't tell where they all fit."

Langston dropped the key to her side and leaned on the bathroom door. "I have a key," she told her adoptive mother.

"Oh, Langston, don't," Dorian protested. "I'd rather you broke the door down than simply unlock the door and let me out."

"What??? That doesn't make any sense!"

"Langston," Dorian swallowed. "Please. Don't open the door."

"What are you afraid of?"

This questioned stumped Dorian to the point that she couldn't even answer it with a false statement. "Can I have the key?" she asked.

"How can I give you the key unless you open up?" Langston asked, worried.

Dorian pushed her fingers against the crack under the door. "Slide it under. Give it to me."

Langston looked back at the group behind her and hesitantly and carefully slid the key under the door. "Sure, um.... Listen, you know that big old oak tree down the street?"

"Oh. Yes," Dorian answered, grasping the tiny key tightly in her damp palm as if it symbolized her very relationship with Langston – with everyone in her life – itself.

"It fell over into the road. Ray had to meet us on the other side and drive us here."

"Oh, I loved that tree," Dorian sighed regretfully.

"Yeah, I know," Langston acknowledged. There was a long silence. Langston ran her hand over the wooden door, not turning to look at the others standing just outside the room. "Dorian?" she asked quietly, knowing that her mother was close enough to the door to hear her.

"Yes, Langston?"

"Please let me come in?" she asked pleadingly. "You're scaring me...."

Dorian began to cry silently on the other side of the door, careful that no one further away than Langston could hear her. When she finally gathered herself, she spoke. "Of course you can come in, darling, but ... no one else. Promise me no one else is out there with you."

Langston shot a glance at the group gathered in the doorway. "I'm the only one here."

Langston waited for so long for Dorian to unlock the door that she was convinced that the woman had changed her mind about letting her inside.

Dorian's eyes had to adjust to what little light there was in the powerless house as it spilled through the crack she opened in the door, peeking out just enough to make sure Langston was alone. The girl did, indeed, look scared - or perhaps concerned. Dorian stepped back from the door to let her in.

Langston cast another glance at the group in the hallway before stepping inside and locking both herself and Dorian back into the pitch-black room.

"God, she looked frightened," Viki observed, stepping back into Dorian's bedroom just far enough to see the door more closely.

No one could be sure if she was talking about Langston or Dorian.

The uncirculated air in the closed room smelled damp, the faint scent of perfume lingering with it in an odd combination. "Where did you go?" Langston asked, feeling the smooth top of the sink as she edged further into the room, unable to see.

"I'm right here, darling."

Dorian's voice came from the floor. Langston accidentally kicked the previously discarded clock and it slid across the floor. "What was that?" she gasped, alarmed.

"The clock," Dorian answered matter-of-factly. "I stopped it."

Langston crouched at her side, leaning against the wall with her. She put her arm around Dorian's shoulder and laid her head against her. "Was it bothering you?"

"It reminded me...." Dorian swallowed, using two fingers to pull her collar out from her neck. "It sounded like my mother's metronome."

Langston felt Dorian tense and sensed that she did not want to talk about her mother. "Uck. How can you breathe in here?"

"I can't," Dorian managed to answer, half-amused.

The young woman gave her a squeeze of confidence. "Now," Langston demanded. "Are you going to tell me why you're in here? You always say we're strong if we stick together, and honestly, you don't seem quite so strong right now. So?"

Dorian spoke slowly and carefully. "You know I ... I don't ever ... ever ... want to be considered a weak person." She reached up and lovingly caressed her daughter's cheek. "I just ... I can't face the world right now, you understand?"

Langston sighed as the two held each other quietly for a while. She thought carefully about what she was going to say to Dorian. "You know, after my parents died, I was alone in the world, and I just ... I just wanted to crawl into a hole and cover it up." She spoke slowly so that her words could sink in. "I didn't want to be alone, but at the same time, I didn't want anyone to know I was alone. I knew that in order to survive, I had to be strong. I had to stand up."

Dorian took a deep breath and nodded understandingly. "Yes. Yes, you did."

"I stood up, all by myself for a long time, but then ... you know what happened." She smiled in the dark as she hugged Dorian's shoulders. "I met the Cramer women. Your family." She continued to smile as she felt Dorian's hand reach up and take her own. "I didn't have to be alone anymore. I learned that I could be strong, but still trust in other people ... who cared about me."

"I wish I was half as strong as you," Dorian confided in a whisper, hugging Langston, smiling back through her fears.

"Whoa, wait-a-minute," Langston corrected. "I haven't been through half the things you've been through in your life. I don't even have children yet."

"Oh, you just wait," Dorian agreed.

"You see? You're stronger than anyone. And we depend on it. Everyone in this family takes a piece of your strength with them every day."

Dorian shook her head. "I just don't have any to give right now."

"But that's the thing, silly." Langston felt Dorian's slightly dampened hair, smoothing it with her fingers, feeling a bit regretful that she had just called the woman "silly." "Right now, we've all got plenty of strength to give you, if you'll just let us."

Dorian let the thought sink in for a moment, understanding just how tough even the younger girls of the family were, and already felt a bit stronger.

"Now, will you please come out of the bathroom?"

It took a minute, but Dorian finally nodded fearfully.

"I'll be with you," Langston promised, suddenly feeling more the mother figure than her older counterpart.

Dorian pushed herself back up to her feet with Langston's support and took a deep breath, entwining her arm in Langston's. She knew she had to show her daughter, her family, and Viki that she could stand up.

Outside, Viki nodded to Ray and the girls quietly, having been picking up bits and pieces of the conversation from outside. The lock in the doorknob rattled, and it slowly turned. Dorian squinted for a moment, or perhaps cringed, looking out as the door swung wide.

The group at the bedroom door rushed forward, surrounding Dorian. She fell into Starr's arms as Ray wrapped one of his around Dorian's back, and Viki comfortingly touched her shoulder.

"I'm going to be alright," Dorian assured them.

***

A short while later, Viki met Ray on the staircase as he returned from surveying the damage outside. She was going downstairs with an empty tray, and he was headed up. "How is she?" he asked.

Viki smiled. "She wants to see you. Have they cleared the street yet?"

"No, not yet, but there are lots of flashing lights so I think it won't be much longer."

She smiled and nodded to him, continuing downstairs toward the sounds of girlish giggles. "Good. I'd like to get home by nightfall."

Ray slowly opened Dorian's bedroom door and peeked inside. She was sitting up on her bed, still fully dressed, trying to fix her hair and face with a hand mirror and no lighting. She set it aside upon noticing him and smiled. "Come in, please?"

He sat down carefully on the edge of her bed. "I never meant to...."

"Shh shh shh," she silenced him. "You saved my life. I thank you."

"What happened?"

It was a very simple question with a very complicated answer. "I don't know if I can explain the things that go on in my mind most of the time," she admitted.

"Try."

She nodded, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to formulate an explanation. "You see, when I was young, I got into trouble a lot -- because I was pretty strong-willed."

"I can't imagine," he smiled teasingly.

She nodded to him. "Oh, yes. Sometimes, I would get into so much trouble that ... they had to ... remove me ... from the situation."

"Like today," he nodded, understanding that Dorian was putting her own nice twist on the situations in her past.

She nodded slowly, pursing her lips to hold back her emotions as she held herself together. "If I knew that I was going to be screamed at or thrown into a dark place and locked away.... Well, sometimes I'd spare them the trouble." She paused in thought. "No, that isn't right. Sometimes I would try to ... deny them the opportunity to lock me away. And I did that by hiding from them."

He nodded slowly, listening, trying to take in the depth of what she was revealing to him.

"Sometimes, I would hide under the bed or in the pantry, and inevitably I would be caught and punished for being so defiant and troublesome; but there was one place that they never found me. It was this smelly old closet which was much deeper than my mother realized, and as a small girl I could crawl into the back - behind the coats and boxes - and crouch down very low; and if I held my breath and remained perfectly still when my mother opened the closet door, she couldn't see me. I always took pride in the idea that she could come so close to finding me, and then miss something so obvious." She paused, thinking. "But you know, now I wonder if she knew I was there all along, and she knew that as long as I was hiding, I wasn't causing her any trouble. …Because, one day, I remember…." She looked Ray in the eyes and he looked back, encouraging her to continue. "Well, one day I was hiding, and someone locked the door. I just pretended that I wanted it to be … locked … and then at dinner time I heard the key rattle in the door, and I could get out again."

"You couldn't have been that bad," Ray observed, "to deserve that."

"We were all very sweet little girls once upon a time - my sisters and I. When...." She sighed, looking down at her hands. "When my mother figured out that beating me didn't work, she started locking me away. I was locked up in many a dark, airless place by my mother and nanny. And today, somehow, I just got you mixed up in my mind. There you were, trying to help me, and all I could feel was my mother trying to suffocate me." She closed her eyes and shook her head, taking a deep breath. "I think it is funny - ironic...." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "...That the one place I felt safe back then ended up being the place I am most terrified of now. And, not only that, but ... this house - this town - these are the places I take comfort in, and the places where so many tragedies have befallen me."

"But not today," Ray observed.

She reached out to him and took his hand. "No, not today."

"You say it as if you expect...."

"Oh, no no no," she interrupted. "It is just that... everyone I've ever cared for has left me in some way or another."

"Not Langston," he argued.

She smiled knowingly. "Not yet." She twisted her lips up in the corner.

Ray lifted her hand up to his own lips and kissed it. He leaned forward when she smiled at him, stroking the hair on her neck with the back of his hand softly.

She tensed, but continued to smile. "Ray," she whispered.

"Yes?" he whispered back.

"I'm not ready yet - for you to touch me like this. I still," she tossed her head right and left, thinking of how to tell him, "I still feel you holding me back." She swallowed hard.

He withdrew his touch. "Dorian, I will only ever treat you with the utmost respect."

She nodded. "I know. Just ... give me some time?"

"I will honor that." He nodded understandingly, backing away from her toward the door, nodding at her reassuringly with a warm smile in his eyes.