Little Girls(57)

“It made me feel bad, and I would sometimes dig a hole and bury the dead animals that she killed. But Sadie, she would dig them up just to spite me, leaving all these little holes in the yard. It was all part of her twisted game.”

Ted said nothing; he stared straight ahead at the darkened house, his mouth firm.

“There were times when I would come downstairs to breakfast to find Sadie already in the house, waiting for me. My parents had let her in. She was good at fooling parents. She put on a mask, a different face. Lots of people do that, sure, but Sadie was different than other people. My father used to grow these harmless-looking flowers that were actually poisonous, and Sadie was like that. By the time she died, she had become a monster.”

“Died?”

“Hold on. I’m getting there.”

He squeezed her knee, urging her to go on.

“She made me steal stuff from my parents,” Laurie said. “She would see a wristwatch my father wore or some jewelry my mother had on, and she would tell me to steal it and bring it to her. And if I didn’t bring it to her, she would be . . . well, she would be just horrible to me. There were times when I refused to do the things she asked, and she would hurt me. Other times she would make me eat dirt, bugs, other things.

“One afternoon, after I had refused to steal a pair of my mother’s diamond earrings, Sadie approached me in the yard with a shoe box tucked under one arm. Sadie always wore hand-me-down dresses that were too big for her, and this day was no different—one bare shoulder poked up from the wide neckline of an ugly pleated sundress. God, I remember it so clearly. I told her to go away, that we weren’t friends anymore, but she refused.”

“Why didn’t you just tell your parents?”

“Because by that point I had already stolen some stuff for her and she threatened to tell my parents what I’d done if I stopped being her friend and told on her.”

“How old was this kid?”

“Susan’s age.”

“Jesus. What was in the shoe box?”

“When she opened the shoe box, I didn’t know what I was looking at, and I wouldn’t truly know until I was older and had my first period. To me, it was just some cylindrical cotton tube that had been saturated in a dark clotted fluid. But I knew what that fluid was, even then, and the idea of it horrified me.”

“God,” Ted said. “You mean . . . was it . . . ?”

“A tampon. Used. Her mother’s, I suppose, fished out of the bathroom trash or wherever. I don’t think Sadie had started having periods by that point.” Laurie swallowed and her throat felt raw and abraded. “She made me put it in my mouth. Suck on it.”

Ted said nothing; he stared blankly out the black windshield.

“If I didn’t do it, she’d hurt me. She kept threatening to tell my parents about all the stuff I stole from them, the stuff she told me to take. Somehow she got me believing that I was the one who’d done wrong.” Laurie placed her hand atop Ted’s own. “I know it’s uncomfortable for you to hear, but I feel I have to say it,” she said.

“Then say it.”

“She was eleven years old when she died,” Laurie said. “I was there. I saw it happen.”

“Jesus.”

“You and Susan saw the remains of that old greenhouse in the woods?”

“Yes, we saw it,” Ted said. “It was the first day we got here. There’s a path that leads to it.”

“It was my father’s. When I was a little girl, he would spend hours in that greenhouse tending to his flowers, his plants. Sometimes it seemed like his plants were the only thing he truly loved. He had taken me in there on a few occasions, and even now I can remember the great bursts of flowers and the thick, rubbery leaves of the plants. The air was always humid and rich with the scent of vegetation and soil. I remember the black soil in little heaps on the floor, dotted with white foamy specks, and the terracotta pottery stacked underneath tables. Vines crisscrossed the glass ceiling. There is something wondrous and transcendent about a structure made entirely of glass and filled with flowers.

“There were shades that hung from the windows, similar to the kinds of plastic pull-down shades you see in classrooms. When my father wasn’t working in there, he would pull the shades down. The only way you could see inside was by climbing a nearby tree, crawling out on a limb, and peering down through the greenhouse’s glass ceiling.

“One afternoon, Sadie wanted to see inside. She climbed up into the tree and crawled out on the limb that extended over the roof of the greenhouse. I climbed the tree, too, but Sadie lost her balance and fell before I crawled out onto the branch.”

“She fell through the roof?” Ted whispered.

“Yes.”

And she could see it even now: the girl’s oversized dress billowing out as she dropped . . . the crashing glass as she went through the peaked roof . . . the shower of crystal shards that rained down, both inside and outside the greenhouse . . . the awful, bone-crunching thump as Sadie struck the ground.

“I ran to my house and told my parents. My mother called for an ambulance while my father ran out to the greenhouse to see what had happened. I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t take me.”

“Of course, he wouldn’t.”

“I sat in the backyard and waited for him to come back. The next thing I remember was Mrs. Russ screaming and running through the yard toward the woods. Sadie’s father ran with her, his face ghostly white and expressionless as he hurried along the fence and ran down the wooded path to the greenhouse. Then I heard sirens coming up the block.” She blinked and found her eyes wet with tears. “I don’t remember much of what happened after that. It’s all jumbled in my head.”