“Thomas,” Catherine said, the little sister’s voice high and quick, spilling like a secret. “He didn’t have a last name. He said we’d call him Father. He said—” She stopped and hugged herself, shuddering. “We had to stay quiet. If we made noise he locked us in the little room. I don’t like to think about it.”
Later, in the medical ward, a doctor asked questions from a list that had been made years earlier in some university office: How many houses? How many rooms? What did the food taste like? Did anyone touch you? The Dalton girls answered what they could. They remembered a house — but the house did not sit on any lot anyone could find. They remembered a front room the color of old bone, a kitchen with a big iron stove, a cellar that smelled like apples and coal. They remembered prayers said in a voice that was not their own. They remembered rule after rule: Do not look at the window. Do not ask about the world. Do not speak of your mother.
