Madelyn carried in her rabbit and two pillows. Then she stopped at the entrance and looked at the nest of blankets spread across the hardwood.
For a moment, I saw November in her face.
I almost started to dismantle it.
Then she smiled.
“This floor is different.”
I sat beside her. “How?”
She tucked the blue restaurant crayon—she had kept it all those months—into the pocket of her pajamas.
“Because we chose it.”
She crawled into the fort.
I followed.
That night, the three of us slept on the living-room floor beneath a roof made of blankets, with two perfectly good beds waiting upstairs.
And for the first time in my life, sleeping on the floor did not feel like being told where I belonged.
It felt like home.
