Little Girls(9)

“All right, then,” said Dora. Then her icy eyes grew distant. She took a step back and gazed down the foyer and the corridors that came off it like spokes. “It’s your house now,” she said.

Once again, the notion chilled her.

Laurie opened the front door for the woman. “I apologize, but I’m a little unsure how all this works,” she said before Dora stepped out. “Did my father . . . owe you anything? What I mean is, are you taken care of? You and Ms. Larosche have both been paid in full through the service, correct?”

“Everything has been taken care of.”

“I feel silly,” Laurie confessed. “Again, it’s like I’m firing you from your job.”

“There will be more jobs like it,” Dora said. Her short stiff hair vibrated like sagebrush in the cool summer breeze. “I’ll find another.”

She watched Dora Lorton hobble down the porch and make her way to the passenger side of the Cadillac. He brother stood there waiting for her. He opened the door for her and she climbed slowly inside, moving with the lethargy of someone much older. Felix shut the door and walked around the rear of the car to the driver’s side. He paused only briefly beside the Cadillac’s rear bumper to acknowledge Laurie with a slight nod of his head, much as he had done earlier upon greeting her, then he folded himself into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. The Cadillac started with a shuddery growl. It backed up and Felix Lorton executed a point-turn in the driveway, just barely avoiding a collision with the Volvo. Laurie caught Dora Lorton’s white ghost-face in the tinted glass of the passenger window. The older woman was looking up at the house with an expression Laurie originally misinterpreted as desultory resignation. But then she realized what the look really was: fear.

A moment later, the dusty old Cadillac was rumbling down the driveway toward the road.





Chapter 3


Smiling to himself, Ted surveyed the property. The backyard was large and pastoral, heavily wooded beyond the property. Along the side of the house, a fence set the demarcation between this property and the neighboring one, where a shabby little house stood beyond a veil of thinner trees. A hard blue sky rose up beyond the tree line. He inhaled and thought he could smell the briny aroma of river water.

Why Laurie had never told him about the grandeur of her father’s home suddenly weighed on his mind. Particularly with all the money problems they had been having lately, exacerbated by Laurie’s reluctance to go back to work, it would have been nice to know there was a potential safety net out there. Even if Myles Brashear had no intention of sharing his fortune with his daughter while he was alive—a scenario Ted guessed had more to do with Laurie’s pride than her father’s unwillingness—it would have been nice to know that once the old fellow passed on, there would be financial spoils waiting for them in the wings.

Susan did a cartwheel across the lawn, her shadow exaggerated to hugeness on the grass. When she popped up, there was an ear-to-ear smile on her face.

“Pretty neat place, huh, pumpkin seed?” said Ted.

“It’s awesome!”

He pointed straight across the lawn to the trees. “I bet there’s water back there.”

“Like the beach?”

“Well, no, not the beach. Maybe a river or a lake or something. Want to go have a look?”

Susan pointed to a darkened niche in the tree line. “Can we go there first, Daddy? It looks like a path.”

“Indeed it does.”

“It can be an adventure!” she said, gathering up his hand and dragging him across the yard to the wooded path.

Awe caused the girl to slow her pace after they walked a few yards into the woods. Colorful wildflowers burst from the ground and the trees sighed softly in the early summer breeze. Tiny white petals fluttered down around them like snowflakes. A smorgasbord of smells met Ted’s nose. He inhaled the rich fecundity of the forest that, even as a teenage boy, had always reminded him—though not unpleasantly—of semen.

“Look,” Susan said, her voice a sudden whisper.

Ted crouched down so he was at eye level with her. She pointed through dense foliage where, at first, Ted saw nothing. But then the geometric shapes of the forest assembled into a pair of antlers, a tapered brown snout, and glossy tar-colored eyes. It was a seven-point buck, still several yards away but nonetheless massive, even at such a distance. It was staring straight at them, seeming to hold its breath, just as Ted and Susan were doing. He had never seen one out in the wild before, and its presence now was nearly transcendent.

“It sees us,” Susan whispered. So close to her face, he could smell candy on her breath.

“It does,” he whispered back.

“Can we go up to him? Pet him?”

“I think,” said Ted, “that if we take another step, the old boy will turn and run off through the woods.”

“But Daddy, we could try.”

“Go on,” he urged her. “Go ahead and try, sweet pea.”

Susan released her grip on her father’s hand. A strand of her hair had fallen in front of her face, and Ted watched as her exhalations caused it to swing like a metronome. She took one step toward the deer, her arms straight down at her side, as if to keep herself as unimposing a figure as possible. The deer’s eyes were still locked on them. Ted found himself holding his breath. Susan executed another step in the deer’s direction. He watched her profile. That loose strand of hair kept blowing back and forth, back and forth. A timorous smile tugged at one corner of Susan’s mouth.