≠ Three
They purchase the house already furnished and leave everything behind except for their clothing and the important documents. There are pleasant, decent-sized rooms for Cassandra and Alexander, and the sunlight pours in the windows like a pale waterfall. It's around five in the morning when they get there, and the kids disappear into two of the bedrooms. They're tired and scared, which only comes through as a solemn, wide-eyed quietness that is not all that unlike their usual demeanors.
Bella wanders through the kitchen and the living room in the dress she put on yesterday for the party. The house is so inviting and clean. She doesn't know what to do with wooden floors and furniture that isn't made of satin.
She enters the small bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom and closes the door quietly behind her. It feels like she's in a public space; somewhere open and unsafe. She closes the plastic lid of the toilet and sits down on it. It warps under her weight, making a popping sound.
Bella puts her head in her hands and cries.
Sleep is strange and fitful, pulling her deep into dark, suffocating spaces full of cold walls and guttural, frightening sounds. She wakes up a few times, distinctly wondering once why she's in a hotel, wondering another time who exactly she is.
A small hand and a familiar, warm smell wake her.
"I'm hungry," Alexander says meekly. He's dressed in a sweater vest and dark pants which don't quite match. "Cassandra is in the shower."
She climbs out of bed and balks at the feeling in her head, like there's a thick clump of lead shoved into her skull. Her phone is on the nightstand (when did she take it out of her pocket?) and a blur of missed calls lights up when she pushes the home button. Her vision is too blurry to read the senders' names. She's grateful for it.
"I'll order groceries," she mumbles to him. He nods awkwardly and walks out into the hall.
When she finds no one in the small sitting room near the entrance, the woman wanders to the family room-area to find her daughter reading something. It strikes her as odd that there was a full bookshelf left in the house, but she remembers the broker mentioning one when she called to see how soon she could move in. Her daughter glances up at her, smiling briefly in greeting. Without the buffer of extravagant decorations and Mortimer's benevolent smile, she's not sure what to say.
Alexander pads in and sits on the sofa across from his sister and kicks his feet absentmindedly. The clock above the television reads 11:40 AM.
She sits down next to Cassandra and asks, "Do you still want to cut your hair short?"