Little Girls(68)

Ted went to the door, a grim expression on his face. Out in the hall, Susan hovered like a shadow.

“Yes, you are,” he told her, and turned out the light.





She lay in the dark, accompanied by night sounds. A muted thump above the bedroom ceiling. A muffled sliding sound, like bare feet gliding against hardwood floors. She came fully awake, a scream caught in her throat, and realized she had been dreaming.





Chapter 22


She spent the next day and a half in bed, resigned to have Susan or Ted bring her food and water. Of course, she insisted that she was perfectly fine and that there was no need to wait on her, but she would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t like the attention. Ted even brought up his laptop so she could watch DVDs. For dinner, Ted went out and picked up Chinese food, and the three of them ate in the big bed in the master bedroom while they watched a Jim Carrey movie on Ted’s computer.

She was aware that at one point Liz Rosewood came over, presumably to ask about her condition. Laurie had heard Ted speaking with Liz downstairs in the parlor, their voices carrying up the stairwell and into the bedroom. Though she couldn’t make out what was said, she could sense a conspiratorial undercurrent to their hushed tone. Was Liz suggesting she see a doctor, much as she had suggested the realtor to help sell the house? It seemed likely. It was only a matter of time before Ted would suggest she see a doctor, just as he had after the highway incident last year. That horrid little intermission. One of the doctors whom she had seen had stated concisely, When you’re dealing with the brain, even the smallest thing could be a reason for concern. Imaginary odors, seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, unprovoked blackouts—these are all things that might seem harmless but could actually be a symptom of something quite dangerous. But he hadn’t found anything dangerous. He hadn’t found anything at all. None of the doctors had found anything. At the time, she had joked that it was probably nothing more than plain old crazy . . . but now, in the wake of this second incident—another horrid intermission—it didn’t seem so funny. Probably because she was starting to wonder if it wasn’t actually the case....

That night, when Ted came to bed, she feigned ignorance and asked if someone had stopped by the house earlier that day because she had thought she had heard him talking with someone.

“Liz came by to see how you were feeling,” he said. “She dropped off her friend’s business card, too. You know—the realtor? Harmony somebody. We should give her a call when you’re feeling better.”

Laurie said nothing, just continuing to stare at the ceiling.

“Despite how crummy the housing market is, I think we should put the house up,” he went on. “Do you feel okay about that?” He cleared his throat. “Laurie?”

“I guess so.”

“This place is haunting you,” he told her.

You just want the money, she thought.

“I think maybe it’s haunting me, too.” It was easy to tell he was smiling to himself in the darkness. “Isn’t that funny?”

Laurie made a hmmm sound, rolled over, and went to sleep.





On the second day, she realized her wedding band was no longer on her finger. She tried to remember the last time she saw it, but she had never been consciously aware of it and couldn’t remember. She tore the sheets off the bed, the pillow cases from the pillows, and looked under the bed itself. The ring wasn’t there. She checked the bathroom—the sink, the tub, the toilet. A friend of hers back in Hartford had once set her wedding ring down in a Kleenex after cleaning it, then accidentally chucked the Kleenex along with some other trash into the toilet. She hadn’t realized what she’d done until she had already depressed the flusher. Laurie thought of that now. Had she carelessly dropped it in the toilet and flushed it down into the sewers, out into the bay? No, she didn’t think that was possible. . . although she had taken it off a few times while cleaning up around the house. Had she mistakenly left it somewhere else? It seemed likely, and she had been similarly careless in the past. Once, she had lost it for a whole week—never telling Ted—until she finally found it in her purse, in the little nylon case that held her sunglasses. So yes, it was most likely in the house somewhere. Yet panic shook her. She felt like she was underwater, breathing through a tube.





At one point, she went downstairs to find Abigail standing in the parlor. For a moment, Laurie believed she was actually still in bed and dreaming. It was all one big dream—the missing wedding band and Abigail Evans standing in her childhood home. Abigail smiled at her and Laurie felt her entire body surge with an icy numbness. The girl was dressed in an adult’s chambray shirt, the sleeves coming down past her fingertips, and a pair of faded jean shorts tasseled with string at the hemline. Brown sandals were on her feet. And then the girl blinked out of existence and Laurie realized she had been dreaming.





Ted was in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch. When he looked up and found her in the kitchen doorway, he toyed with a crooked smile, though she could tell he wasn’t completely happy to see her out of bed. She was determined to buck any suggestion from him that she consult a doctor.

“Can I get you something to eat?” he asked.

“I want to show you something,” she said, and handed him the photo of her and Sadie.