She flailed out with her hands, grabbed at the walls. The arch her father had built was too wide and she shouldn’t have been able to get purchase, but the Crowder House reached out a hand from the bed as if to catch Vera, and the frame of the passage flexed inward with a soft groan and a flurry of plaster dust. Vera dug her fingers in hard and held fast, letting her nails sink into the thick, gummy layer of white paint that frosted the trim around the doorframe.
