Little Girls(73)

“You did what?”

“They want to sit down and talk about it. Right after we’re done with Fish’s bloated ass, we’re heading to their office for a meeting about it.”

Ted’s head felt light and fuzzy. “Are you shitting me?”

“I shit you not, good sir. But let’s not start jerking off about this yet, Ted. It’s a meeting, that’s all. But we’ve got their ear, so let’s make it something more.”

“Count on it,” Ted said.

At the bottom of the well, the pump began making gurgling, belching sounds. Ted peered down and saw the pump propped up on a mound of tarry black muck. The water had finished draining.

“What in the name of Christ is that noise?”

Ted laughed. “It’s my career coming back up the toilet. I’ll see you Friday, Steve. Thanks.”





Laurie and Susan watched as Ted hauled the pump up out of the well. It dripped water and there was black muck stuck to it. Ted set it down in the grass. The black muck smelled incriminatingly like raw sewage. Together, the three of them peered down into the well at the soupy black sludge on the bottom. Laurie handed him a flashlight, which he pointed down into the hole. The shallow beam illuminated the crenellations in the sludge and glistened off clusters of brownish suds.

“Snake!” Susan shrieked. She thrust an arm down into the hole and pointed. “Daddy, snake! Snake!”

Indeed, he caught the smooth black slither wending through the muck. “There’s probably more than one down there.”

“That old man said so,” Susan reminded him. “Remember that day we got here and he said there were snakes in the well? And you said he was lying, that he was pulling on my legs, and that there were no snakes in the well, Daddy—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what I said.”

“What’s that?” Laurie said.

He saw it, too—a quick twinkle as the flashlight’s beam fell upon a particularly nasty-looking mound of sludge. Some plant-life sprouted from the sludge like slick, wet hair, and Ted had to pass the flashlight’s beam back and forth over it a few times before he caught the twinkle again. When he did, he held the beam on it. Something sparkled up at them from the darkness.

“I have no idea what that is,” he said.

“Wishes,” Laurie said.

“Ooh,” said Susan. “Go get ’em, Daddy.”

He clicked the flashlight off. “Why don’t you go get ’em, Snoozin?”

“I’m not afraid of snakes,” she countered.

“Yeah, well,” he began, but said no more. He wasn’t all that crazy about snakes himself. Nor was he keen on the idea of somehow climbing down into that stinking pit. It looked like those Vietnamese prisons they showed in the movies. He’d probably break his neck trying.

“It’s a diamond,” Laurie said.

Ted snorted. “Yeah, right. It’s probably a piece of glass or tinfoil or something.”

“No,” Laurie said. “It’s a diamond. One of my mother’s diamond earrings.”

Ted blinked at her. “You . . . threw your mother’s diamond earrings into the well?”

“Not me.”

He opened his mouth to ask for clarification, but then remembered everything she had told him about the girl named Sadie from her childhood. She had told him about the time Sadie had wanted her to steal her mother’s diamond earrings. She had threatened Laurie with a used tampon the girl kept in a shoe box. The story had been too incredible not to be true and, anyway, what reason would Laurie have for making up such a horrific tale? He realized now that he hadn’t heard how that story had ended, though he could piece it together now—she had stolen the earrings, given them to Sadie, and Sadie had chucked them down the old wishing well. What kind of little girl does something like that?

“There’s a ladder in the basement,” Laurie said.

“Hold on.” Ted grabbed her wrist as she turned to head back to the house. “What are you saying?”

“I’ll go down there if you don’t want to. It’s okay.” The smile she offered him was so innocent and pretty, it nearly shattered his heart.

“You’re out of your mind wanting to go down there. You’ll break your neck.”

“And snaaa-aakes,” Susan caroled, wagging an index finger as if to reprimand someone’s naughtiness.

“Those earrings are worth a lot of money,” Laurie said. She didn’t try to pry her wrist free of his grasp. “Not to mention that they belonged to my mother. There’s a lot of other stuff down there, too. I’m sure of it. Ted, I just want to see.”

What is going on with her? This isn’t my wife. This isn’t the woman I married. I don’t understand any of it.

Gradually, his fingers opened up around her wrist. “You’ve got some air of obsession about you,” he told her. “I wish I understood it.”

That sweet smile still lit up her face. “It’s my healing process,” she told him. “Let’s call it that, okay?”

Good, he thought. Because “obsession” makes me too uncomfortable.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go get the ladder.”