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The curtains were pulled across the window so that everything was dim and gray except for one sharp slit of sunshine that broke across the bed where a woman lay, inexorably moving closer and closer to her face as the sun moved across the afternoon sky.
“Nathaniel,” her soft voice said. “Draw the curtains, if you please.”
The boy got up and went to the window. He did not look out to the sunny day with yearning, even though he had stayed inside on so many afternoons and missed untold numbers of games with the neighborhood children. He decided himself not to go out, because he was sure that if he did, if he relaxed his vigilance even for one afternoon, one hour—his mother would die.
With some difficulty he managed to get both sections of curtain pulled to the center, and the slice
