Little Girls(69)

Ted looked at the photo and smiled offhandedly. “Look at you. You’re a little cutie,” he said.

“Do you recognize the other girl?”

Ted brought the photograph closer to his face. “No,” he said eventually. “Should I? Who is it?”

“It’s her,” she said, meaning Abigail.

“Her,” Ted repeated, still staring at the photo. Then he said, “Oh. That girl Sadie. The one who did all those . . . those horrible things.”

“You don’t think she looks like the girl next door?”

“Abigail?” He scrutinized the photo again. Slowly, his head began to shake. “No. Not really.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, I mean, they’ve both got dark hair and fair complexions, I guess, but I don’t think they look too similar beyond that. Why?”

She took the picture from him and looked at it more closely herself. Similarities or not, there was no denying what Abigail had said to her in her bedroom that had brought on her trance. Haven’t you missed me, Laurie? After all these years, haven’t you missed me? There was no denying it . . . unless she allowed herself to believe that she had imagined the whole thing, that she had already been slipping out of consciousness and had dreamed it.

“Maybe you should go back upstairs and lie down,” Ted recommended.

Instead, she got herself a glass of water from the tap. She decided she wouldn’t say anything more about this to Ted. She didn’t like the way he had been looking at her lately, and didn’t want to add fuel to that fire. “Really, Ted, I’m fine. I just got dehydrated the other night. I’m feeling much better now.”

He cleaned his hands on a dishtowel as she went to the kitchen table and sat down.

“I think I just needed the rest,” she added, thinking she sounded false to her own ears.

“Good to hear.” He folded his arms as he watched her from across the room.

“What?” she said. “What is it?”

“Steve Markham called this morning. Looks like I’m going to get that face-to-face with John Fish after all.”

“That’s great. That’s what you’ve wanted from the beginning.”

“It means I have to be in the city for the meeting.”

“New York?”

“It’ll just be for the day. I could drive up in the morning and come back that evening.”

“That’s a lot of driving all in one day.”

“I don’t like the idea of leaving you and Susan here alone.”

“We’ll be fine.” When she saw his eyes slide sideways, she knew there was something else. “Tell me,” she said. “Spit it out, bub.”

“I don’t think being in this house is good for you.”

“That’s silly.”

“Is it?”

“It was your idea in the first place, remember? It was what you wanted.”

“Yeah, well, I was wrong.”

“When do you have to go to New York?”

“Steve said he’d get back to me once they finalize a time. Most likely it’ll be sometime in the next couple of days.” He pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, but didn’t sit in it. “Why don’t you and Susan come to the city with me? I could drop you back in Hartford and you can stay at the house. Susan can see her friends.”

As much as she liked the idea of taking Susan away from Abigail, Laurie now had something else she felt she needed to do, something she couldn’t do back in Hartford. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Yes. Please do. I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” she told him. “I promise.”

“Good.” He clapped his hands together, then ran them both through his hair. “I’m going to try and get some work done.”

“I’m going to get a shower, then maybe go for a walk.”

“Okay, but don’t go too far from the house.”

“Okay, boss.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah,” he said, playfully wrinkling his nose. “Take that shower.”





Before heading to the bathroom for a shower, she found herself back in her father’s study, the dead man’s photo album opened before her while she sat cross-legged on the floor. She progressed slowly through each of the photos. She took her time, studying the alien faces of the people in the photos, the unfamiliar locales. When she came to the last few pages with the empty panels, she slipped the photograph she had found in her father’s Bible into one of them. When she was done, she looked down at the line of white flesh on her ring finger. The absence of her ring made her whole hand look naked. She thought of Sadie Russ, making evil wishes by throwing things down into the well. Things that belonged to other people.





After her shower, she walked north along Annapolis Road. The day was cool and the sun felt good on her face and shoulders. She heard the shouts and laughter of children before she actually saw them, crossing the street and standing in the parking lot which overlooked the park grounds. Little girls hung upside-down from the monkey bars. A young boy rolled toy cars through the patchy grass. There were some women talking by one of the picnic tables, but they looked old enough to be grandmothers.