Little Girls(58)

Ted shook his head. “I can’t imagine what that was like.”

“She was cut to ribbons, Ted.”

Ted said nothing. The sudden silence was like heavy wool draped around them both.

“So that’s what’s been going on with you?” Ted said after a while. He turned to her. Half his face was masked in shadow. “That’s why you’ve seemed so on edge? Because of what happened all those years ago, and having to come back here and relive it all over again in your head?”

“It haunts me,” she said.

“It’s in the past, Laurie. That all happened a long time ago.” He reached out and rubbed the back of her neck. She was surprised by his tenderness.

“My father was cut up by the glass when he fell through that window,” she said. “Just like Sadie had been. And just before it happened, he fouled the rug just like a scared little kid might do. Like someone had frightened him.”

“I noticed you said he fell as opposed to he jumped,” he said. “You want to tell me what that’s about?”

“I don’t know, Ted.”

“Do you want to hear what I think?”

“All right.”

“I think you’re overstressed and thinking about all this too much. You had a lot of unresolved issues with your father—and I’m sorry about that, I really am—but now you’re trying to find some understanding in the messy pieces of his death.” Gently, Ted squeezed the back of her neck.

“You’re right,” she said. “It makes sense.” Yet in her head, all she could hear was Teresa Larosche saying, Sometimes he called it the Hateful Beast. Other times, it was the Vengeance.

“First thing tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll pack some bags and grab a hotel in town. You don’t need to spend another day here in this place.”

“No. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to run from it.”

“It wouldn’t be running.”

“Of course, it would.” Gently, she touched his arm. “Thank you, but no. I need to stay until we’re done here.”

Ted leaned in and kissed the side of her face. “If you think that’s best.”

“I do.”

He opened his door. “You go on inside. I’ll grab the kiddo from next door.”

They got out of the car, Laurie going up the walk while Ted cut across the yard to the Rosewood house. Laurie watched him go, hugging herself in the chilly summer air. Then her gaze cut to one of the upstairs windows of the Rosewoods’ house, where a light shone brightly, bracketed by sheer curtains. The silhouette of a young girl stood there, both palms splayed against the glass.

Staring.





Chapter 18


Of course, there had been things about Sadie that she simply couldn’t tell her husband. Her dirty little hands all over me, tugging at my pants, pulling up my skirts. One afternoon while they were playing in the woods, completely out of the blue, Sadie hiked her own skirt up over her head and showed young Laurie Brashear her nakedness. The girl wore no panties and the sight of her smooth cleft between her legs caused Laurie to cry out. Sadie had laughed and called her a big sissy baby.

But Sadie Russ hadn’t always been that way. The change had come on gradually, manifesting itself at first in an introverted sullenness. She would become easily angered—perhaps if something didn’t go her way or she was reprimanded by a schoolteacher—and this anger would arrive on a sudden, shocking tide of obdurate cries. She began printing dirty words on her school papers; she whispered them to Laurie when they passed each other in the hallways or on the playground; she carved them in the trunks of trees. At recess, other kids stopped playing with Sadie. Some kids teased her mercilessly, and there had been one boy who seemed to enjoy firing phlegm onto her scuffed black Mary Janes. But Laurie knew that deep down they were scared of her, too. Sadie began to frighten a lot of people. Even some of the teachers.

Sadie the sadist. Sadie’s twisted wretchedness. She had grown gaunt. A thin blue vein descended from each corner of her mouth, making it appear as though her mouth worked on a hinge, much like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and might at any moment drop open. Those self-inflicted bruises, the gashed knees with their tortoiseshell scabs. The creases of Sadie’s palms had always been black with grit.

Look—see here? Let me touch you here. Then you do it. Do it to me. See that? You see? How do you like that? Moisture crowded the corners of Sadie’s small mouth.

And still— How much were genuine memories and how much had Laurie’s mind unconsciously altered after all these years?





Toward the end, I hated you, Sadie. I was afraid of you, yes, but I hated you even more. After I got over the initial shock of what I saw happen to you, I found that I was relieved. I was glad.





Chapter 19


Stephanie Canton called early Monday morning and advised Laurie that she had begun compiling a list of interested buyers to come to the house and look over the items. This would begin later that afternoon, as Stephanie had someone very interested in the office furniture in her father’s study. Laurie agreed to the time and hung up, feeling somewhat lightheaded from Stephanie Canton’s efficient and businesslike approach to conversation.

A few minutes later, as Laurie began making breakfast, she heard the shower turn on upstairs. A moment after that, a resounding clang reverberated down through the ceiling. Ted’s curses were muted, but the rage in his voice was not. In the upstairs hallway, Laurie found Susan standing in her sleepwear in the doorway of the master bedroom. Laurie moved past the girl, grazing her small shoulder with a soft hand, before rushing into the bathroom.