Chapter 1: Threshold of Fear
The brass knocker was still warm.
Lily-Anne pulled her hand back, her fingers tingling. It was shaped like a tiny, crooked shoe, and the metal held the heat of the last person who’d touched it. The air out here on the porch of the big, rambling community house was thick with the smell of sugar from the fair two blocks over, a sticky-sweet cloud that did nothing to calm her rolling stomach.
Through the faded pastel wood of the doorway, she heard it. Not music, not talking. A hum. The low, quiet thrum of a space being used exactly as intended.
Her floral sundress, which had felt like a safe choice—not too childish, not too trying—now felt like a flag she was waving, announcing herself as a fraud. The leather strap of her satchel dug into her shoulder. Inside, beneath her notebook and a pen, Mr. Bubbles waited. Her stuffed bunny, white fur worn to a nubbly grey in places, was a secret so heavy it felt like a stone. Bringing him had been non-negotiable. A talisman. Proof, to herself, that this part of her was real, even if she had to hide it.
She’d never been allowed to just be little. Not without a sigh, an eye-roll, a later comment about being “a bit much.” Past relationships had sanded down her edges until she felt smooth, featureless, and deeply ashamed of the shape she was meant to be.
A Daddy. The word felt dangerous and beautiful in her mind. Someone who would see Mr. Bubbles and not laugh. Someone who would let her put her head on their shoulder when the world got too loud. Someone who would call her brave when she did something like… knock on a door.
Her palms were slick. She wiped them on her dress.
Just look. One look. Then you can go home and say you tried.
She leaned forward, just enough to peer through the crack where the door didn’t quite meet the frame.
The room was awash in soft, buttery light. There were oversized floor pillows in mint green and pale yellow. A low bookshelf spilled over with picture books. In the corner, a woman with dark hair in high pigtails was coloring with intense concentration, the tip of her tongue poking out. She was wearing overalls with a dinosaur patch.
And by the window, a man. He was big, broad-shouldered, wearing soft-looking grey sweatpants and a faded t-shirt. He was holding a sippy cup. He took a slow, deliberate sip, his eyes half-closed, perfectly at peace.
Lily-Anne’s breath hitched. It was one thing to read about it online, in the safety of her bedroom. It was another to see it. Real. Tangible. The ordinary, gentle reality of it unraveled something tight in her chest.
And then it spun it back up again, tighter. Because they all looked like they knew what they were doing. They had a script she’d never read.
She took a wobbly step back, her heel scuffing the porch floor. This was a mistake. She didn’t belong here. She was just a weird girl with a stupid stuffed rabbit—
“You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna come in?”
The voice came from her left, from a wicker rocking chair she hadn’t even noticed. A person was curled up in it, wrapped in a giant knitted blanket. All Lily-Anne could see was a mess of auburn curls and a pair of sharp, kind eyes.
“I… I was just…” Lily-Anne’s voice was a mouse-squeak. Her face flamed.
“First time?” the curly-haired person asked, their voice softer now.
Lily-Anne managed a nod. Her throat was too tight for words.
“The door’s not locked. It’s never locked. You just have to decide to open it.” They pulled the blanket up higher, snuggling down. “It’s quiet in there tonight. Good night to just… be.”
Be.
Lily-Anne looked at the crooked-shoe knocker. She looked at her own hand, trembling slightly. She didn’t reach for the brass. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around the cool, smooth porcelain of the doorknob.
She turned it.
The hum inside wasn’t silence. It was the sound of crayons on paper. The rustle of a plush tail being nervously stroked. The tiny, liquid glug from the sippy cup.
She stepped over the threshold.
The pigtailed woman glanced up, offered a small, fleeting smile, and went back to her coloring. The man by the window opened his eyes, saw her, and gave a slow, easy nod before looking back out at the gathering dusk. No one stared. No one asked for her credentials.
It was the lack of demand that felt most shocking.
Her satchel felt impossibly heavy. She shuffled to an empty spot near a bookshelf, away from direct light, and sank onto a large, corduroy floor cushion. The weight of her secret was crushing now, a screaming pressure against her ribs. She was here, in the room, and she was still hiding.
Her fingers, clumsy with nerves, fumbled with the brass buckle of her bag. She unsnapped it. She peered inside.
The familiar, lopsided ear, the one she’d chewed on as a child, poked out from under her notebook. Her heart hammered against her breastbone. What if someone saw? What if they pointed? What if that kind-looking man with the sippy cup thought she was ridiculous?
But the voice from the porch echoed in her head. A good night to just… be.
With a movement so swift it felt like stealing something, she hooked a finger around Mr. Bubbles’s arm and pulled him out, tucking him swiftly into the hollow between her bent knees and her chest. She kept her head down, her blonde waves curtaining her face, her whole body coiled around the small, soft shape.
She waited for the laugh. The comment. The silence to curdle.
It didn’t.
The crayoning continued. The sippy cup glugged. The person in the rocking chair on the porch began to hum a tuneless little song.
Slowly, inch by inch, the rigidity bled out of Lily-Anne’s shoulders. The frantic drumming in her chest eased into a softer, quicker rhythm. Not calm, but not terror. She adjusted Mr. Bubbles in her lap, so his black button eyes could see the room. She dared a glance around, her large green eyes taking in the details from this new, lower vantage point. The shelves were closer. The ceiling seemed higher.
She saw a stray box of crayons, spilled and forgotten, near the leg of the coloring table. Without thinking about the mechanics of it, she found herself scooting across the floor on her bottom, Mr. Bubbles clutched to her chest, until she reached the spilled wax sticks. Carefully, she began picking them up. Forest Green. Cerulean. She lined them up neatly beside the box, one by one.
It was a small, useless task. No one asked her to do it. No one thanked her for it.
But as she placed the last crayon, a stubby Burnt Sienna, back in the box, she felt it. A tiny, fragile shoot of something green and quiet pushing up through the hard-packed soil of her shame.
She sat back on her heels, Mr. Bubbles soft against her cheek. She looked at the man by the window. He was watching the first stars appear, his sippy cup empty in his lap. He looked… content.
Lily-Anne took a deep, shuddery breath. The air in the room smelled like pencil shavings and vanilla-scented cleaner. She let the breath out, and with it, a whisper so quiet it was only for the worn fur of a bunny’s ear.
“We’re here, Bubbles,” she breathed. “We did it.”