The Heart of a Child Quotes

“I’m still scared,” I admitted suddenly, startling even myself. The old couple came back in, turning on the night light beside my bed to see my face by its glow, and sat beside me comfortably on the edge of the bed. I looked around the room and then at the elderly couple with eager eyes, as if they held the power to change the whole world. “What if the monster comes back?” I asked with big eyes.
Elsie snuggled against me, pushing the covers up underneath my chin and tucking them in tightly around my whole body, wrapping me in a cocoon of soft and downy comfort.
As she smoothed back my hair tenderly, her touch felt like a fresh piece of heaven, a momentary brush with an angel. “Monsters aren’t real, honey,” she soothed, trying to comfort me. I imagined his threatening, glassy eyes flickering at me in that moment, peering over the bright flowers of the window boxes, ready to take my life instantaneously. My heart closed in on itself like the clanging, steel doors of a cage, feeling two sizes too small to hold all the pain within it. “Oh Elsie,” I whispered in hushed undertones, leaning closer to her face, sure he was out there, still listening just beyond my view, “Yes, they are.”
― Emily Nelson, The Heart of a Child