Little Girls(105)

“How did you find me?” Her voice was hardly a wheeze. “How did I get here? I don’t remember.”

“I came home. Susan saw you go off into the woods. I found you in that greenhouse. You’d cut . . . you’d hurt yourself pretty badly. You were unconscious when I got there.”

“Susan?”

“She’s fine.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s fine. She’s safe. Babe, relax. Your heart monitor’s racing.” He took one of her hands in his. Hers was cold. “Laurie, what happened? Why’d you do this to yourself?”

“It was Sadie.”

“Who?”

“The little girl who lived next door to me when I was a kid,” she rasped. “The one who fell through the greenhouse—”

“And died,” he finished. “Yes.”

“She came back. She was going to hurt Susan if I didn’t . . .” Her eyes went distant. She tried to struggle up off the bed but it took little effort for Ted to keep her down.

“You need to relax, Laurie. You need to lie here and get better. Do you understand?”

“You and Susan have to get out of that house.”

“We will. As soon as they let you out of this place, we’ll all leave together.”

“No,” she croaked at him. “You have to do it now.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “Okay, okay. We will.” “Promise me.”

“I promise. Scout’s honor.”

“Ted, that girl was in the house. My father wasn’t just hearing noises—she was really there.”

“That’s not true, Laurie. Sadie is dead.”

“No. Sadie is Abigail. She’s been in our house while we were there, too.”

“No, she hasn’t.”

“You don’t know, Ted. Remember the cuff link? My father’s cuff link? Susan hadn’t been lying—it was Abigail who’d come into the house and taken them. She had my mother’s diamond earring and she was digging it out of the same hole where she and Susan had been burying—”

“Susan took the cuff link.”

Laurie’s lower lip quivered. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you. I spoke with her like I said I would and she admitted that she had taken the cuff links from your father’s study. She was too ashamed to tell you so she told me. So, you see, no one was in the house. No one but Susan took those cuff links. You see?”

Even as her facial muscles relaxed, the terror in Laurie’s eyes did not abate.

“What?” he said. “What is it?”

“That’s true? What you just told me?”

“Yes.”

“Then . . .”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m crazy. I’m crazy, Ted. If none of it is real, that means I imagined it all. It means I’m out of my—”

“It means you’re stressed. Your father just passed away and you’ve had unresolved issues with that. Then you made that discovery—you remember it, right? The girls—”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Laurie, your father was a very bad man. You were lucky to have been taken from him when you were a kid.”

She opened her eyes and just stared at him.

He leaned in and kissed the side of her face. It was like kissing a wax sculpture. “Then there’s you and me. Mostly me. I’m no good. We can talk about that once you’re better. I just want to tell you that I’m sorry. Incredibly sorry.”

“I know you are. It’s okay. We can work through it, can’t we?”

He felt something lurch forward in his chest. “God, yes. Yes, we really can, Laurie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I want to work it out. I want us all to be happy—you, me, and Susan.”

“That’s all I want,” he said.

She smiled thinly at him, then turned away. He could see her eyes welling up with tears, and once again she looked very fearful.

“You’re not crazy,” he told her. “You’re going to be okay.”

She whispered, “Okay.” Then she smiled at him, which caused her cheeks to come to points. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Can I get you anything before I leave?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Good. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He turned and went to the door but she called him back.

“When I get out of here,” she said, “I’ve got something to tell you. It’s something that happened a long time ago—something I did—but I feel the need to tell you. And maybe this way you won’t ever let me forget it. Maybe this way it’ll set things right.”

He nodded.

“It was a terrible thing,” she said. “I’m my father’s daughter, after all.”

He was surprised to find himself close to tears.





It was almost midnight by the time he arrived back at the house on Annapolis Road. The storm still raged and there were downed trees blocking the driveway. He parked as close to the house as he could, then raced across the yard with the collar of his sport coat tugged over his head.