As she placed them in his suit pocket, she turned to Laura and said that it would provide comfort to them, their inability to unlock the door in the basement, in the long, sorrowful days to come. It would be, her mother said, as though he was still with them: out of sight, forever entombed within his workshop, enforcing and reinforcing that which he called Law.
Laura could not dig up the keys from his grave. She already knew this fact about herself. She used to get carsick on rides across the bridge in the middle of town, so digging up a grave, the repetitive thrust and swing of a shovel, the thud of dirt falling and breaking on the ground behind her back— it was unfeasible, it was out of the question.
There will be a golden axe and with it the lonely daughter will scour the poisonous light from the hearth, the dolls said.
“Well, sure, when you put it like that," Laura responded. She stood back up.
~
When Laura was a child she was best friends with a girl until she disappeared walking home from a playdate at their house. The girl’s name was Isa, short for Isadora, and like the dancer, she preferred to wear gauzy, ephemeral scarves around her neck when they played dress-up. Laura and Isa played together often, every week for an entire year when she was six, and then Isadora stopped coming over and Laura met another girl down the block who liked costumes and stealing her mother’s high-heeled shoes to stomp in.
Her name was Ariel and she had light brown hair, almost blonde, which came alive in the sunlight. Her father had approved of Ariel more than Isadora. He let her come over often, and he allowed them to play in the basement, but only when he wasn’t already down there.
~
Laura and her mother sat across from one another at the kitchen table. There was a teapot and place settings in between them. Clear metallic sunlight filtered in through the windows.
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