Little Girls(61)

Ted kissed the side of her face. “You girls have fun,” he said. He leaned over the porch rail and shouted to Susan, “Have fun, pumpkin pie!”

Susan laughed and executed a fairly impressive cartwheel. Abigail just watched Susan from between the trees.

“Let’s go!” Liz called to the girls as she climbed down the porch steps. “The train’s movin’ out!”

The park was roughly a mile from the house on Annapolis Road. Back when Laurie had lived here it had just been woods, but it was now a sizeable clearing in which swings, seesaws, monkey bars, and tetherball poles had been erected. A paved parking lot shouldered the road and there were cars in a few of the spaces. Kids raced about while parents, perched on uncomfortable-looking benches, supervised from overtop the paperbacks and Kindles they were reading. In the distance beyond the park, the smooth green lawns of a cemetery rose up, the tombstones nothing but tiny specks behind a black wrought-iron fence.

“Neat!” Susan said as she surveyed the park grounds. Back home, the playgrounds were little more than concrete basketball courts sprayed with broken glass.

Abigail snatched up Susan’s hand. “Come on,” she said, and tugged Susan toward the monkey bars.

Panic rose up in Laurie. “Be careful, Susan!”

“They’ll be fine,” Liz assured her. She shook a cigarette out of its pack as they walked to an empty picnic table. “I’m glad you folks showed up this summer. Abigail was growing bored without someone to play with.” They sat together on the same bench at the picnic table. “It’s only been a few weeks, but it must seem like a lifetime to a little girl when you’re away from your friends. Susan must feel the same way.”

“Yes. She was upset when she found out we were coming down here,” Laurie said . . . though she was hardly thinking about it now. Instead, she was considering the coincidental time frame of Abigail’s arrival in town and her father’s sudden death.

“Have you and your husband decided what you’re going to do with the house?”

“Sell it, I suppose.”

“It’s a lousy market right now. I used to be a realtor. Are you working with anyone yet?”

“A realtor? No. We haven’t gotten that far.”

“Well, you let me know when you’re ready. I can put you in touch with someone who can help you out.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m happy to do it.” Liz puffed on her cigarette.

Across the playground, Susan and Abigail hopped down from the monkey bars and ran toward the only empty seesaw. Two other little girls made a move for the seesaw but they stopped, perhaps intimidated by Susan’s and Abigail’s fortitude. Susan claimed the downed seat, then shoved up off the ground so that the opposite end went low enough for Abigail to climb aboard.

“Had Abigail ever met my father?”

If Liz Rosewood found the question unusual, she didn’t show it. “Abigail? I don’t believe so. Derrick and I only spoke with him on a handful of occasions. He used to sit outside when the weather was nice, but I hadn’t seen him out there since summer started.” Liz sucked the cigarette down to the filter, then tossed it on the ground. “It was Alzheimer’s or something, wasn’t it?”

“Dementia.”

“I got to know Dora Lorton a little,” Liz said. “As well as you can know someone like her, I guess. She was a bit standoffish. Do you know her very well?”

“I just met her when we got here.”

“I’d sometimes pick up things at the supermarket for her if I was on my way, seeing how she never left your father unattended.”

“What about the other nurse?” Laurie asked. “Teresa Larosche. Did you know her as well?”

“The one and only time I saw her was the night your father. . . the night he had his accident. Derrick and I heard the sirens and Derrick went over to see what had happened. When Derrick didn’t come back right away, I went out myself, just as the ambulance was pulling up the driveway. The woman—Teresa, you said?—she was talking to police. She looked petrified.”

“Did you speak with her?”

“I think Derrick did, once the police left. Just checking to see if she was okay, if she needed anything, that sort of thing.”

Across the park, the two girls who had been making their way to the seesaw at the same time as Susan and Abigail now stood beside it, on Abigail’s side. Each time Abigail descended, one of the girls said something to her. Laurie could see the exchange even if she couldn’t hear what was said.

“Is your mother still alive?” Liz asked. Her voice sounded very far away now.

“No. She died a few years ago.”

One of the two girls who had wanted the seesaw picked something up off the ground. As Laurie watched, the girl cranked her arm back and chucked the object at Abigail. The thing—it looked like a pinecone—whizzed past Abigail’s head. The pinecone-chucker’s friend laughed and pointed.

“Ted seems very nice,” Liz said, perhaps desperate to change to a less morbid conversation. “We talked briefly about the John Fish novel he’s adapting. He seems like a very talented man.”

“Thank you.”

The seesaw stopped sawing. As Abigail’s feet planted on the ground, she leaned over and dug her own object out of the dirt. It was a rock roughly the size of a golf ball. The two girls backed away from the seesaw. Abigail hurled the rock at the pinecone-chucker. It struck the girl, who was a bit red-faced and chunky, high on the forearm.