Leah dropped the candlestick and found herself crouched on the floor. Her hands were black with dust as she brought them to her face, blinking, her head pounding. It was warm down here – she must have had a “turn”, as Grandma called it; though surely, she thought, she was too young and her legs were not nearly veined enough.
She rose to her feet and picked up the torch. At the top of the stairs, Grandma called down for Leah to get a move on and stop messing around.
So Leah reached for something else, this time a felt hat with a peacock feather, bent and faded, stuck to the fold. Again, it happened. Leah was not Leah – she was a woman, a mother of a three-year-old boy, afraid of something Leah could not quite understand. It was something to do with a special embrace the woman had shared w
