Chapter 2 - The Weight of a Blanket
The sound wasn't a quick step or a light patter. It was a rhythmic, stubborn friction. Scrape. Grunt. Scrape.
Daniel’s brow twitched under his closed eyelids. He kept his face blank, forcing his breathing to remain even, but his curiosity flared like a struck match.
The noise was coming from the reading alcove at the far end of the long corridor—a distance of at least thirty feet. Lily had gone all the way over there.
Scrape.
A tiny grunt of exertion echoed off the high ceilings.
Scrape.
"Almost," a small voice puffed out from the darkness near the library doors.
Daniel’s mind raced. What on earth was she dragging? The heavy cashmere throw from the reading nook? That blanket weighed nearly as much as she did. It was designed for shivering adults sitting by the winter hearth, not for a toddler whose entire body mass barely cleared thirty pounds.
Scrape. Pause. Scrape.
The sound grew louder, moving deliberately closer to the sofa. With every inch of fabric dragging across the marble, a strange, suffocating heat rose in Daniel’s throat. This wasn't convenience. This wasn't the instinctive flight of a child abandoning a motionless adult.
"Come on," Lily whispered fiercely, her voice strained with effort. "You're... too big."
Daniel had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from gasping. Too big. To a three-year-old, a grown man lying horizontally on a sofa must have looked like a mountain range. And yet, she was trying to climb that mountain with an avalanche of wool.
The scraping stopped right beside the sofa.
A small hand, clumsy and warm, brushed against Daniel’s shin. Then came the heavy, weighted slide of thick cashmere settling over his legs, creeping up his torso, and finally draping awkwardly across his chest.
It wasn't neatly folded. It was bunched up on one side, dragging heavily off the edge of the leather cushion, leaving his left shoulder slightly exposed. But as the last corner of the fabric settled over him, the ambient chill of the October rain seemed to back away.
Daniel waited, certain she would run off now that her task was complete.
May you like
Instead, the sofa dipped slightly.
Lily had climbed up.
