Chapter 1 - 12:14 A.M.
The first person who nearly cured my insomnia was three years old.
The first person she made me suspect was my own sister.
At 12:14 a.m., Lily Carter stood in my bedroom doorway, barefoot in yellow lion pajamas, carrying a gray rabbit with half an ear missing.
“Mr. Moretti?”
I looked up from my laptop.
“Does your mother know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Then go back to bed.”
“Mama’s sleeping.”
“That doesn’t change what I said.”
“I heard you.”
“Mrs. Ricci said doctors couldn’t make you sleep.”
“Mrs. Ricci talks too much.”
“Medicine didn’t work?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“What tea?”
“I don’t know. But it didn’t work.”
I reached for my phone.
She hurried over and climbed onto the bed before I could call her mother.
A picture book appeared from behind the rabbit.
“Mama reads when I can’t sleep.”
“I’m not three.”
“I know.”
“Why would that help?”
She studied me with painful seriousness.
“Maybe nobody reads you the right stories.”
My hand stopped.
“Sit back,” Lily said.
For no sensible reason, I obeyed.
She read from memory, confidently inventing words she couldn’t pronounce.
My laptop went dark.
My untouched coffee cooled.
My shoulders loosened, and the familiar dread at the edge of sleep failed to arrive.
Then she stopped.
“What?”
She stared into the hallway.
“The person who comes when you’re sleeping.”
“I don’t sleep.”
“Sometimes you almost do.”
Every trace of exhaustion vanished.
“What person?”
“The lady with the shiny bird.”
My sister Vivian wore a silver swallow pinned to her collar.
It had belonged to our mother.
She never went anywhere without it.
“What does she do?” I asked carefully.
Lily pressed the rabbit against her chest.
“She touches your water. Then she says you need to stay good.”
I looked at the glass beside my bed.
Vivian had brought it upstairs herself.
“Does she see you?”
Lily shook her head.
“I’m little behind the chair.”
Footsteps sounded beyond the doorway.
The little girl pulled the blanket over her rabbit.
May you like
“That’s her,” she whispered.
A silver bird caught the hall light before my sister’s face appeared.
