Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(48)

Sadie wipes a tear from her eye, wishing she didn’t care about anything in the boxes. But she does. She can’t help it. She can’t help but feel like it’s a part of Daddy and now it’s leaving, just like he did.

Maybe Mommy feels the same way. She keeps looking around like she’s nervous about something, and she doesn’t seem to want to go.

Ryan does, though. Even from here, Sadie can see that he’s antsy to get moving. And he keeps shaking his head at whatever Mommy is telling him.

Sadie wishes she could hear what they’re saying. Her window is open, but someone is mowing a neighboring lawn and the noise drowns out their voices. For all she knows, they’re talking about how they’re going to make her give away all her toys and clothes.

Finally, Mommy backs out of the driveway.

As soon as the car is safely out of sight, Sadie gets up and goes over to her toy box.

She pulls out the length of fishing line she stole from Ryan’s tackle box yesterday while he was at Ian’s. He doesn’t like anyone in his room while he’s gone—in fact, that’s why she got the idea.

Last winter, when Ryan thought someone was stealing his Archie comics, he secretly taped a strand of fishing line across the doorway to his room so that he’d be able to tell if anyone went in there while he was gone.

No one did…until cleaning day.

It turned out the maid service had a new lady who kept finding the comics on the floor and dumping them into the trash. Mommy and Daddy said that was what Ryan got for being careless.

Sadie never leaves her things around the way Ryan does. Lucy, too, and even Mommy sometimes. But Sadie knows where everything is.

Everything except Fred.

She wipes away another tear.

Daddy said he’d get Fred back for her. She really wants—needs—to believe that.

Meanwhile, it will be easier for her to keep track of the rest of her belongings, in case anything else goes missing.

She opens the desk drawer where she keeps her art supplies and takes out a roll of Scotch tape.

It takes her a few minutes to rig the fishing line across the doorway at shoulder height for herself—and leg height for everyone else in the house.

There.

It’s impossible to see the fishing line unless you’re looking for it…and no one will.

Sadie looks around her room, memorizing exactly where everything is—which doesn’t take long, because everything is right where it should be. Then she ducks under the fishing line and walks across the hall to Lucy’s room.

The door is open. Sadie overheard Mommy telling Lucy to get up a few minutes ago, before she went down to load up the car with Ryan.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Lucy assured Mommy. She even went down the hall to the bathroom, as if to prove the point before Mommy, satisfied, went back downstairs.

Now, however, Lucy is back in bed, lying on her back, eyes closed. There’s a hardcover book lying open on her bed.

“Lucy?”

No reply.

“Lucy?” Sadie repeats. “Why do you think Daddy didn’t come yesterday?”

Her sister doesn’t say anything.

She must be sleeping.

Sadie turns away.

“I don’t know, Sades.”

Startled, she looks back at her sister.

Now Lucy’s eyes are wide open—and her expression tells Sadie that her big sister is even more worried about Daddy than she is.



Stepping from her car onto the sunlit parking lot at Tide-water Animal Rescue, Elsa inhales the briny breeze off the nearby Long Island Sound.

Remember to appreciate the tiniest pleasures, Joan told her before she left the therapist’s office after her last appointment.

Tiny pleasures. Yes. Sunshine, salt air…puppies.

A trucker found a newborn mixed-breed litter yesterday, abandoned in a plastic laundry basket left along I–95. According to an e-mail Elsa received early this morning from Karyn, the director of the privately funded shelter, only three of the puppies had made it through the night.

Hurrying across the pavement toward the low, cedar-shingled building, she hopes the trio is still hanging in there.

She opens the door to an encouraging sign: Karyn seated at her desk, bottle-feeding a tiny bundle of black fur.

“Morning, Elsa,” she says softly—which is completely out of character for a vivacious motor mouth like Karyn. Obviously, she’s trying not to jar the puppy.

“Good morning. Who do you have there?”

“This is Zuko.”

“Zuko?”

Karyn nods enthusiastically. She gives a temporary name to every animal, believing an identity is important even for the shelter’s transient residents. A major film buff, she tends to choose characters or elements from her favorite movies, based on her perception of the creature’s temperament or appearance.

“Remember John Travolta in Grease? Black hair, black leather, very cool…Danny Zuko.”

Elsa grins. It could be worse. Much. Just last week, they took in a Rottweiler Karyn dubbed Hannibal—as in Lecter—whose owner mercifully surfaced a few days later to reclaim him.

Elsa peers into the cardboard box on the floor beneath a strategically placed warming bulb. Curled together on a blanket are two more puppies. Unlike their brother, they have russet-colored fur.

“I suppose these are the Pink Ladies?”