Little Girls(104)

“Laurie? Susan?” His voice echoed through the kitchen and out into the parlor. The house was dark and silent.

He raced out into the front hall and paused again, this time certain he had heard Susan screaming for him.

Upstairs, he realized.

He took the stairs two at a time, then froze at the top of them. The bedroom doors all stood open . . . yet Susan, whose screams he could still hear, sounded impossibly far away. Then his eyes fell on the door to the belvedere. It was closed and locked with the padlock.

“I’m here, Susan! I’m here!”

He rammed his shoulder against the door four times before the frame split. He kicked it the rest of the way off its hinges just as Susan came streaming down a set of narrow stairs. She dove into his arms, sobbing hysterically.

“Okay, okay,” he said, smoothing her hair and kissing her hot cheeks. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

She shrieked, “Mommy!”

“Where is she? Where’s Mommy?”

“She went into the woods! I saw her! She went into—” She buried her face against him.

Ted scooped her up and carried her downstairs. He set her down in the kitchen.

“Daddy, no—”

“Call nine-one-one, pumpkin. Can you do that?” He touched the side of her face.

“Where—”

“I’m going to get your mom.”

Susan’s chest hitched. Before he could leave, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. He kissed the side of her face, then reluctantly broke the embrace.

“Do it now,” he told her. “Do it now, Susan.”

He didn’t have the key to unlock the side door, so he climbed back out the window. He hadn’t realized he’d cut himself until he was jogging down the wooded path and saw that the front of his shirt was soaked in blood. A sharp pain radiated from his left side.

When he reached the clearing, he saw the door of the greenhouse standing open. He rushed inside and was quickly attracted to a dull cone of light issuing from the floor. It was a flashlight. A second later, he saw Laurie. She was sprawled out seemingly dead on the floor surrounded by a black jungle of dripping, stinking plants. Both her wrists had been cut open and she lay there with the bloodied, jagged piece of glass pressed to her throat.

Ted rushed to her side, shoving the broken shard of glass away. He listened to her chest and felt for a pulse. Counted. For a minute, he couldn’t differentiate his heartbeat from hers. But then he could. She was still alive.

He gathered her up in his arms and ran back to the house.





Chapter 32


When Ted came back from the bathroom, Detective Freeling was seated in one of the molded plastic chairs in the waiting room of the hospital. Ted didn’t recognize him at first. Freeling spotted him and rose quickly. They were in the middle of shaking hands before Ted recognized him.

“I’m sorry to hear about this,” Detective Freeling said. He looked haggard and deflated, though Ted was fairly certain he looked even worse. “Will she be all right?”

“She’s stable. The doctors said she passed out after doing her wrists, but that she didn’t lose too much blood.”

“Thankfully.”

“Had she not passed out and got to her throat . . .” He didn’t complete the thought.

“How about you? You holding up okay?”

“Sure.”

“And . . . Susan, was it?”

“She’s fine. She’s with the neighbors. I didn’t want her to see her mother like this.”

All pertinent questions dispatched, Detective Freeling looked suddenly at a loss for words. He sawed an index finger back and forth beneath his lower lip while his eyes darted fervently around the hospital waiting room.

“They’ve been keeping her pretty sedated,” Ted said, offering the man a lifeline. “I haven’t actually spoken to her yet.”

“I see.”

“I can’t imagine what . . . what state she’ll be in when she comes around. I’m almost afraid for her to wake up.”

Detective Freeling put a hand on his shoulder. It was a firm grip and a genuine gesture, but there was little comfort in it.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said the detective. “Was there anything you needed? Anything I can do?”

“No. I’ve got it all taken care of.”

Detective Freeling nodded. His hand slipped off Ted’s shoulder and sought solace in the pocket of his trousers. The detective looked like he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he settled for a meager little smile that made him look no older than a frat boy. When he left, he did so silently.





The man who woke him up had stale breath and large gray eyes behind thick lenses. He wore a white lab coat.

“She’s awake, Mr. Genarro.”





They had her hooked up to machines through a series of tubes and brightly colored wires. Electronics beeped and pulsed on the rack beside her bed. She was propped up on several pillows, her body shrunken beneath the white cloth gown she wore. Her complexion was ashen and her eyes looked too big for her face. She stared despondently at him as he came into the room. Both her wrists were heavily bandaged.

“How are you feeling?”