The house is very big and smells like old books and the soap my dad uses. I like the carpets because they are white and fluffy, like the clouds in my picture book. My dad is a doctor, which means he knows why people's tummies hurt, but he doesn't know how to find his socks. I usually find them for him.

Then came the Lady. Her name is Miss Clara. She has a smile that looks like it's made of paper—very neat, but if you touch it too hard, it might rip.

At first, she was funny. She tried to be my "big friend," which is weird because she's just a grown-up who doesn't know how to play Minecraft. She tells me things like, "Don't open the door for strangers, Julian." I think that's silly because I have a camera by the door. I saw her on the camera for a whole minute before I let her in. She looked like she was trying to remember if she had turned off the stove.

But then, the Lady started to change.

She doesn't smile with her eyes anymore. Sometimes, I see her standing in the hallway, just staring at the wall. She looks like she's waiting for something to happen, or maybe she's waiting for something to stop happening. She cries in the bathroom, but she does it very quietly, like a mouse. I know because I can hear the water running and the tiny, shaky sounds she makes.

One day, my dad came home and hugged her. He did it in a way that made her go very still, like a statue. He whispered things in her ear, and she looked at me. Her eyes were very big and sad, like the dog we had last year before it went to the "farm."

"Are you okay, Miss Clara?" I asked.

She blinked, and the paper smile came back. "I'm wonderful, Julian. Just a bit tired."

I don't think she's tired. I think she's haunted. Not by ghosts—I don't believe in ghosts—but by something that lives inside her head. I can see it when she looks at the phone. The phone rings, and she jumps, as if it's a snake. Then she looks at the screen and her face goes white, like the carpets.

I tried to give her my favorite dinosaur, the T-Rex with the missing toe. I thought maybe the dinosaur could protect her from the snake-phone. She took it and smiled, but her hand was shaking.

"Thank you, Julian," she said.

I wondered why adults are so complicated. They spend all their time talking about things they don't mean. My dad says the Lady is "healing," but healing is what happens when you put a bandage on a scraped knee. The Lady doesn't have a scraped knee. She has a hole in her heart, and no matter how many books my dad gives her, or how many times he tells her she's safe, the hole just stays there.

I decided to stop calling her "Lady" and just call her "Clara." I think people feel better when you use their real names. But when I said it, she started to cry again, and my dad came and took me to my room. He told me that adults have "private grief."

I don't like private grief. It seems very lonely. I wish I could just give her my dinosaur and tell her that it's okay to be sad, as long as you don't have to do it in the dark.

*** Objective Tensor Code: OTMES_v2: [M1:5.0, M4:6.0, N2:0.6, K1:0.9, I:0.5, R:0.4, theta:60] Hash: v-05-childs-eyes-3321