A moment before she drops them back into the tank, a pair of tiny eyes and a pink nose appear from a hole in the box that is smeared with muck. Calmly, Helen sets everything down on the carpet. She has never been the screaming kind, and it’s not an angry face, just a small, grey cone with crooked whiskers, like every mouse in every book she ever read to David when he was little. When she leans forward, the head drops back into the darkness of the box, which hadn’t been empty after all.
