Through the Door (2 page)

Cedar took the casserole off the table and put it in the fridge, alongside the leftovers of the other meals her mother had made for them. She opened the pizza box and handed Eden a slice on a paper plate before serving herself. “So, how was the art gallery?” Cedar asked.

“Good,” Eden answered, her mouth full. “Gran said you were a painter. Were you?”

Cedar’s mouth tightened. Why was Maeve telling Eden how things used to be?

“I was,” she said. “Sort of. It was just for fun, nothing serious. It was years ago. I had more time then.”
And I was happier too,
she added to herself. Unbidden memories came back to her: drop cloths splattered with bright colors, the mixed smell of strong coffee and paint as sunlight bounced off her canvas on a Sunday morning, walls crammed with art she had either created or been inspired by, Finn’s laughter as she tried to squeeze in just one more frame, his suggestion that she decorate the ceiling next.

Eden looked around at the apartment’s walls, which were bare save for the bookshelves and a couple black-and-white photos of Eden. “Can I see your paintings? Where are they?”

“No,” Cedar said, so forcefully that Eden swung back around to look at her. She tried to soften her voice. “They’re not here. I put them away.”

“Why?” came the inevitable question.

“I just did.” Cedar didn’t think she could explain the complexity of her decision to a six-year-old, and it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss, or even think about, for that
matter. How could she explain to Eden that those paintings had come out of the happiest time of her life, that her best, most creative work had been done in the years she’d shared with Eden’s father, when she had been so full of inspiration and passion that the paint had seemed to flow from her veins straight onto the canvas? How could she explain to her daughter that the only time in her life she had felt truly alive, truly at home, truly, deeply happy, had been before Eden was born?

She changed the subject. “So what did you like best at the gallery?” she asked.

Eden shrugged. “Dunno.” There was a pause while Cedar tried to think of a suitable follow-up question.

“How come I never see you painting?” Eden asked.

“Eden, forget about it, okay? I just don’t.”

There was another awkward pause, and Cedar found that she wasn’t very hungry anymore.

“Was my dad a painter too?” Eden asked.

Cedar stood up abruptly and started clearing the table.
He was more than a painter,
she thought, feeling tiny shoots of pain blossom inside her and wrap around her heart and lungs.
A true artist. He was happiness and beauty and excruciating pain.
She reached for Eden’s plate, but Eden grabbed it back, saying, “Hey! I’m not done!”

“Sorry,” Cedar said. “No, he wasn’t a painter. I’m going to the bathroom.” She dumped her own plate in the trash and headed through her bedroom into the en suite. She closed the door and leaned against it, pinching the bridge of her nose. She didn’t feel ready to have this conversation, although she knew the questions would only keep coming. The problem was that she didn’t have any answers, at least not the kind Eden would be looking for.
I don’t know why he left me. I don’t know
where he is. I don’t know if he’s ever coming back. I don’t know if he ever truly loved me.

“I’m done my dinner. Can I be excused?” Eden called through the bathroom door. Cedar opened it.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Do you want to watch a movie before bedtime? I’ve got some work to do tonight.”

Normally this would have induced a squeal of glee and a race for the sofa, but instead Eden just stood there, chewing on her lip.

“Hannah says she doesn’t believe I have a dad because I don’t know anything about him,” she said. “She says I’m a test-tube baby, and they’re going to put me in the zoo. Am I?”

Cedar stared at her, shocked. Were six-year-olds really that cruel? “Are you a test-tube baby? No, my heart, of course not. There are lots of kids who don’t really know their fathers. I didn’t know mine, remember?” Cedar’s father had died when she was just a baby. Maeve had never remarried, so it had always been just the two of them. She knelt down and wrapped Eden in her arms. As a child, Cedar, too, had been full of questions about her father, but it had never been a topic of conversation her mother had encouraged. There weren’t even any pictures of him in the house. After a while, she had stopped asking about him. She wondered when Eden would reach that same point. “Hannah’s just being mean, and you don’t need to listen to her. Of course you have a father. He’s just not part of our family. You and I are a family, and that’s all we need.”

Cedar could feel her daughter’s little body start to shake in her arms, and she tightened her hold. “But I want a dad,” Eden wailed. “Everyone else has a dad!”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Cedar said, rubbing Eden’s back. Tears were pricking at her own eyes, but she tried to hold them back. “Your father was a really good person. He loved music and books, and his favorite pizza was ham and pineapple, just like yours. And you look a lot like him.”

“But why isn’t he here?” Eden sniffed.

Cedar took a deep breath to steady her voice. “I don’t know, to be honest. I wish I did. He went away before he knew I was pregnant. He didn’t leave because of you, Eden. That’s really important for you to understand. I know it’s hard, but he probably doesn’t even know about you. He left before I could tell him. When you came along, I tried to find him. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

Eden pulled away, her face twisted. “It’s not fair!” Cedar tried to hug her again, but she yanked herself free and stormed down the hall. Cedar stood and watched her disappear around the corner. She’d give her a few minutes of alone time, and then go talk to her again. She listened for the inevitable slamming of Eden’s door. It didn’t come. Instead, Eden’s screams died off as suddenly as if she had run out of air. The apartment fell silent, a sharp contrast to the storm of six-year-old anger that had been raging only moments before.

“Eden?” Cedar called out. Nothing. “Eden?” she tried again, starting to walk down the hall.

“Mummy?
Mummy
!” came Eden’s voice.

Cedar quickly rounded the corner and saw Eden standing in the hallway outside her bedroom, staring open-mouthed through the gaping doorway. There was some sort of light reflecting on her face. It glimmered and shifted and created strange shapes and lines on her skin, casting her in an otherworldly glow. A slight breeze was lifting the edges of her
sundress, brushing it against her legs. A small trail of fine sand crept through the doorway and was starting to collect around her feet.

“What is it, Eden?” Cedar asked as she moved to stand beside her daughter. Then her jaw dropped. “What the…?”

The two of them stood in shocked silence, looking into the room. The air in the open doorway was sparkling with a thousand points of light, like the surface of a pond catching the mid-afternoon sun. Strangely, the sight reminded Cedar of looking through the windows in her old apartment. She and Finn had covered them with clear plastic to help keep the cold out. They could still see what was on the other side, but through a film. In this case, the film glittered and moved. Even more remarkable than the way the air had changed in the doorway was what was on the other side.

“Pyramids?” Cedar whispered. No longer could she see Eden’s room, with its pink walls and bright, flowered bedspread. Instead, she was looking at the unmistakable form of two giant pyramids. The sky around them was black, but they were lit by huge spotlights and were glowing like fallen stars embedded in the desert. Cedar glanced at her bare feet, where she could feel the breeze swirling around her ankles. She slowly bent, picked up a few grains of white sand and rolled them between her fingers. Eden reached over and took hold of her hand.

Cedar tore her eyes away from the spectacle in front of them and asked the first question that came to mind. “Can you see them too?”

Eden nodded.

“What did you do?” Cedar asked.

“I didn’t do anything! It was just like this when I opened the door!” Eden said, still holding onto Cedar’s hand. “It’s like magic! Is our house magic?”

“No,” answered Cedar automatically, thinking of what Finn had said about magic.
You just need to open your mind a wee bit more.
“I mean, of course not. That’s impossible. There’s got to be some logical explanation.” But even as she said it, she felt something shift deep inside her, like the tectonic plates of reality were being realigned.

Still, she considered the options. She was pretty sure she was awake, but she grabbed a fold of skin on her arm and gave it a hard pinch. Ouch. Maybe they were sharing some sort of collective hallucination. Maybe they both had a brain tumor. Or maybe there was some sort of toxic gas in the air that was causing them to see this. But the sand felt real, and a few grains were still stuck to her fingers.

“I’m going to close the door,” Cedar said.

“What if it goes away?” Eden protested. She let go of Cedar’s hand and stretched her arms across the door as if to guard it.

“Yes, well, let’s just see what happens,” Cedar said.

She reached out a hand toward the doorknob, but in order to take hold of it she would have to move her arm through that glittering…whatever it was. She pulled her hand back. “Did you touch this?”

“I went through it. Just, like, one step,” Eden said. “But I came right back out.”

“I think we should test it,” Cedar said. “I want to see what happens.”

Looking around, she spotted Eden’s favorite stuffed animal lying on the floor of the hallway and picked it up.

“Is Baby Bunny very brave?” she asked. Eden nodded, eyes wide. Cedar gently lobbed Baby Bunny through the shimmering doorway. The pink and brown rabbit landed in the sand on the other side, raising a small poof of dust in the air. Cedar leaned forward as far as she dared and peered at the rabbit. “She looks all right, just the same as usual,” she said. She took a deep breath and slowly stretched her hand through the air and toward the doorknob. She expected to feel something, a tingling sensation maybe, but there was nothing. It was like passing through ordinary empty air, except that the air on the other side felt slightly warmer. She grabbed hold of the doorknob and quickly swung the door toward her.

The click of the latch echoed in the hallway as she and Eden stared at the closed door. There was still a small mound of sand on the carpet, and Eden bent down and poked her fingers into it. Then she stretched out on her stomach to look under the door.

“I think it’s still there,” she said.

Cedar opened the door a crack before pushing it more forcefully. The same eerie scene met their eyes: Egyptian pyramids surrounded by an inky black sky. It was undeniably there.

“Why Egypt?” Cedar whispered.

“I like Egypt. I watched a show about the pyramids with Gran. Can I go in?” Eden asked.

“No!” Cedar said. “It’s not safe! It’s not…normal. We have to get your bedroom back. Maybe if I go through, I can figure out a way to fix this from the inside.” She gave Eden a stern look. “You stay here; I’m going to get a rope or something to hang on to, okay?” Eden nodded. Cedar ran down the hall and started rummaging through her closet. After a minute
she came back, armed with a bike lock, two of Eden’s toy dog leashes, and a skipping rope.

Eden was nowhere to be seen.

“Eden?” Cedar dropped her makeshift ropes, her heart pounding. “Eden!” she screamed. Through the shimmering veil she could see Eden standing ankle-deep in the sand, looking around with wonder. “Eden! Get back here right now!” Cedar yelled. Eden was smiling and waving at her, but she didn’t seem to hear her. Cedar swore and stepped through the doorway after her daughter.

It was incredible. The air was only slightly warmer than it had been in the apartment, but the way it smelled, the way it felt on her skin and tasted in her mouth, these were all different. The sand was cool beneath her feet. She was standing about half a mile from the base of one of the pyramids. The other loomed even farther in the distance, and a massive pile of rubble lay a few hundred yards to her left. There was a fringe of trees, or maybe buildings, in the distance, silhouetted by yellow streetlights. Cedar had never been to Egypt, but she had seen her share of
National Geographic
magazines, and this looked like the real thing. Other than the two of them, there was no one nearby. It was so quiet Cedar felt as if they had walked in on something private, some secret vigil the pyramids were having with the night sky.

“What are you doing?” she said in a hushed voice to Eden, who had picked up Baby Bunny and was brushing the sand off her. “I told you to stay put! We have no idea what’s going on!”

Eden looked slightly abashed. “I just wanted to get Baby Bunny. It seemed okay when I stepped in the first time, so I figured it would be safe.”

“You thought
this
would be safe?” Cedar waved her hands around them, feeling slightly hysterical. She breathed out slowly. “It’s okay,” she told Eden, who was looking at her with worried eyes. “I’m just a little freaked out.” She took her daughter’s hand, holding it more tightly than necessary, then turned and looked behind them.

The bedroom door stood open in the sand. The same shimmering, luminescent air danced in the doorframe. Cedar walked around to the other side of the door. Behind it was more sand. It was as if someone had stood a freestanding door, complete with a frame, in the middle of the desert. Cedar went back around to the front side. She was tempted to close the door from this side to see what would happen, but stopped herself. What if it disappeared? What if they became trapped in Egypt or wherever this place was? She panicked slightly at that thought. “We’re going to go back now,” she told Eden.

“Nooo!” Eden moaned. “I want to stay here!”

Cedar stepped through the doorway and into the hallway, pulling Eden with her. The familiar air of the apartment hit her in the face, and she shivered.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” Eden whispered, turning around and staring back through the door of what used to be her bedroom at their footprints in the sand.