Once you’ve got a something you have to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it. That’s what Henri's father would have said. Henri thought about that as he sat in his room, feet dangle from his bed, the summer sun shining through the window.

Right now, Henri's task was to stay as far away as the kitchen as possible.

Because that's what Papa told him to do. Henri had been through it time and time again. He knew that Mom had stopped acting right and that she was going to the doctor, but that was as far as Papa would say.

Of course, 'not acting right' meant a lot of things. For one, it meant that Henri would have trouble going to sleep because Mom would end up waking the whole house up in the middle of the night screaming about something being in her bedroom closet. And if if wasn't the closet, it was under the bed. And if it wasn't under the bed, then it was outside the window. This would inevitably lead to Mom forbidding Henri to go outside for a period of time, causing him to miss several days of school. After a period of time, the regret and the worry would come and Mom would eventually apologize to Henri for all of this.

While thinking about these thoughts, Henri heard a scratch at the window...