A Castle for Us

Maisie believed every castle required a kitchen and a place for wolves to sleep.

“What about a bathroom?” I asked.

She frowned at the wooden blocks spread across the rug.

“That’s outside.”

“I see. A very old castle.”

“It’s new. I’m building it.”

I accepted the correction and handed her a red arch.

We had reached the fourth day of my trial. I knew that she liked the crusts left on her toast but not the hard corners, that she called thunder sky furniture, and that she checked the hall whenever footsteps passed the nursery.

Her former nanny, Joan, had retired to care for an ill sister. Maisie had been told why. Understanding had not prevented her from feeling left behind.

On my second evening she had hidden my slippers beneath her bed.

“Then you can’t go outside,” she explained when I found them.

I had sat on the floor rather than laughing.

“I’ll tell you when I’m going somewhere. And I’ll tell you when I’ll be back.”

“What if you forget?”

“Then you can remind me. But I’m going to try very hard.”

Now she leaned over her construction with her tongue caught between her teeth. Her curls kept falling forward. I gathered them gently with a ribbon Ruth had left on the table.

“Too tight?”

She shook her head without looking up.

The castle rose crookedly: two towers, one long room, a staircase assembled from flat blue pieces. Maisie insisted on balancing the final tower herself. I steadied the bottom while she stretched.

“Done!”

She flung her hands up, then lowered them in alarm when the tower trembled.

We both held our breath.

It stayed.

I bent to inspect it. “You even made a little staircase. Maisie, this is wonderful.”

Her face brightened from the inside. “Do you really think so?”

“I do. Especially this bridge. It’s wider than the first one, so your little wooden people won’t fall off.”

She picked up a figure and marched it across to prove the point.

Then she shuffled against my side and pointed to the largest room.

“That’s your room. Mine is right next to it.”

My hand paused above the blocks.

“And where does your daddy sleep?”

She considered the problem, selected a black block, and put it at the entrance.

“He can stay here and keep the monsters out.”

“Does he get a blanket?”

“He has fur.”

I laughed and kissed the top of her head before I remembered myself.

She looked up as though I had given her something precious.

Gold flickered through her eyes. Two small wolf ears pushed through her hair.

“You’ve got company up there,” I murmured.

She touched one ear, grinning. Then she wrapped both arms around my waist.

“I wish you were my mommy,” she said. “Then we could live here together.”

For a moment I could not answer.

The little girl in my lap shimmered. Her overalls and shirt vanished into the familiar folding light of a child’s shift, and a small gray-brown wolf landed against my stomach.

Her paws scrabbled at my forearm. She pushed her nose beneath my chin and wriggled until I caught her securely.

“Careful, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

Her tail beat against my skirt. I rubbed the soft fur between her ears. She made a pleased little rumble, turned over with complete confidence, and offered me her round belly.

I had soothed frightened cubs before. I had never felt this particular ache, this fierce, irrational wish to gather a child inside my own body and keep every sharp thing away.

“I’d like to live in your castle,” I whispered. “Very much.”

The door opened quietly.

Ronan stood on the threshold, a folder beneath his arm.

Maisie rolled off my lap, shook herself, and scampered over. He crouched to receive her. She placed both paws on his knee and looked back at me as though presenting evidence.

“I hear I’m sleeping outside,” he said.

Heat rose into my face. “Apparently you have fur.”

“A persuasive argument.”

He picked her up one-handed. She chewed gently on his shirt cuff until he offered a cloth toy from the basket instead.

“Did you hear all of that?” I asked.

“Enough.”

I started collecting blocks because I needed something to do.

“Children say things.”

“They do.” He waited until I looked up. “You don’t have to apologize for making her happy.”

It was so close to what I had needed to hear that tears threatened. I lowered my head again.

He did not mention them.

That evening Maisie shifted back during her bath, announcing that being a wolf made soap taste worse. She demanded to know whether my mother had washed my hair when I was little.

“Yes.”

“Did she pull?”

“Sometimes. Then she let me hold the comb so I could decide when we stopped.”

Maisie immediately requested the comb.

Later, with the picture book open across our knees, she traced the fox on the page.

“Do you have a baby?”

The question slid beneath every defense I had.

“I had a little girl.”

“Where is she?”

I kept my voice steady. “I’m trying to find her.”

Maisie studied me for a long moment. Then she put her hand on mine.

“Daddy finds things. He found my blue boot in the hedge.”

I smiled because she needed me to.

“That sounds very useful.”

She leaned against my side. “You can hold me until you find her.”

I closed the book carefully.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

After she slept, I stayed beside the bed until my breathing no longer hurt.