Jonah stepped behind the trunk to see if she had hidden there. She hadn’t.
He went to the window.
It was shut. She couldn’t have just left the room without him hearing her.
But the room was empty, and there was no place to hide. Except.
Jonah threw open the trunk lid.
Clothes. Only clothes.
She had to be here. Had to.
She’d be suffocated if she was. Dead.
He tossed clothes behind him, crazed, the trunk seeming bottomless. How could she not be here? Had he dreamed her? Had she been a manifestation conjured in some fever fit when he’d been bitten by a spider, and time had been confused?
How—
There. He thought he sensed movement beneath the clothes and flung more of them out of the trunk. There. On the bottom. Hunkered. Hiding.
Curled up fetal and unmoving.
“Sally,” he said.
What had he done, leaving her here alone?
She didn’t move.
He shook her. Hard.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey.”
Slowly, she turned her face up at him and smiled.
“I went away,” she said. “I was far away.”
“You were here. Hiding,” he said.
She shook her head. “I went away.”