It was the obvious thing to do. Why should she stay? Why should she make herself remain in this house, with a mother who seemed to be a different person every day and a man who wanted so badly to be frightening, and a thing that came in the night to whisper into her ear? Why not walk out the front door and never return? None of this was worth the fight, none of it. Her mother didn’t deserve an easy death, and Duvall didn’t deserve her fear, and the thing under her bed didn’t deserve the bites it was taking out of Vera’s sanity.
