Girl in Snow(12)

“Takes one to know one.”

“Go.”



Chris Thornton comes to the door in a T-shirt and jeans. I’ve only ever seen him wearing a suit and tie (he works a fancy job in downtown Denver). His wife, Eve, isn’t home—she’s usually at the hospital, or in Longmont with her parents, or locked upstairs with the curtains shut. About a year and a half ago, right after the baby was born, Eve Thornton was diagnosed with something serious. Cancer, I think, though people always whisper when they talk about it.

“Thanks so much for doing this, Jade,” Mr. Thornton says, and he gestures at the back door, toward the playground. “Ollie’s daytime sitter canceled, and I haven’t gotten any work done.”

He hands Ollie—short for Olivia—over casually, like a jug of water, and mumbles about putting her to bed at seven; he’ll be back later. He slings a gym bag over his shoulder and rushes to shut the door.

Ollie is not a pretty baby. Her face is a soft tomato, red and wrinkled like a newborn alien’s, even though she is nearly eighteen months old now. When Chris Thornton’s car is safely out of the driveway, I carry the baby upstairs, where the hall is still stacked with half-unpacked boxes from their move here two years ago. Puddles, their gray, loping terrier, nips at my heels all the way up the stairs. Puddles’s eyebrows are so long she can barely see, and she’s probably older than me. I can’t imagine why you’d name a dog Puddles—especially a dog as depressing as this one. I sit in the rocking chair by the nursery window, and Ollie cries, bucking and squirming and mumbling. She toddles around the room, while Puddles stays folded at my feet. The window is cracked open; biting fresh air streams through the screen, blowing the baby-pink curtains into the room like a skirt.

Across the Thorntons’ lawn, over the fence, and past an ancient oak tree, the playground sits like it always has. Now, three police officers stand by the carousel.

Zap and I used to sit in the center of that carousel. I’d wrap my legs around the red-painted pole and flatten my back against the bumpy metal surface. We’d start slow. Zap’s sneakers would slap against mulch and the sky would swirl, a ceiling fan of blue and white. When we gained enough speed, Zap would jump on beside me—he didn’t like to lie down. He would lean against the middle bar, his scarecrow arms stretched out to the sides, captain of his own spinning ship.

Ollie peers up at me with a saliva-slick jumbo Lego in her hand, finally calm. Her brown eyes bulge, wet and cowlike, feather eyelashes protruding from their lids.

Go on, I think. Tell them how awful I am.

She opens her gummy mouth and lets out another screech.



Around the time everything started to fall apart with Zap—over a year ago—I found a book called Modern Witchcraft: A Guide for Mortals. It’s based in the history of pagan witchcraft, compiled by a group of reputable researchers. Now, I can’t set foot in the Broomsville Public Library because the book has racked up hundreds of dollars in overdue fines. I don’t have any intention of returning it.

It happened in May. Lucinda was the whole reason I had to take the hotel job, the reason the Thorntons stopped calling me to babysit. This was almost a year after everything went to shit—and still, I spent my nights combing through childhood photos, drawing Sharpie moustaches on me and Zap so I wouldn’t get so sad. It was useless, I know. You can’t change people. You can’t stop them from growing. You can’t make them look how they used to: like a gangly kid with bottle-thick glasses and an idiotic bowl cut.

The week I checked out the book, I was supposed to babysit. A ten-hour shift, and Eve Thornton was going to pay me a hundred dollars—she rarely coordinated babysitting, but she would be out of the hospital for a few days and could use the extra hands. I was happy to spend a Saturday out of the house, where Ma was on a tirade about the electricity bill. That morning, she’d shattered a plate against the mantel.

While I was walking to the Thorntons’, the family cell phone Ma lets me use for work buzzed. A text message from Eve Thornton: “NVRMND. DOUBLE BKED. U DONT NEED 2 COME 2DAY. THX.”

As I turned to leave, I crossed Lucinda coming up the Thorntons’ driveway. She smiled as we passed each other, all straight teeth. Lucinda had one dimple, on the left side of her face. Even when her smile was fake, it dotted her cheek. A button. Of course the Thorntons preferred Lucinda Hayes—she probably knew how to put Ollie to sleep without a fit. I bet she was certified in CPR.

“Hey,” she said, the way you talk to an old acquaintance you know you should remember but don’t.

The air she floated through smelled like strawberry shampoo. I rounded the corner, stomach rolling like I’d eaten something bad. It was like that night all over again, like I was standing in that narrow hallway, listening to fireworks pop over the lake and letting Lucinda Hayes take everything from me.

Later that night, I set the whole thing up, just like it said in “The Art of the Ritual,” the sixth chapter of Modern Witchcraft: A Guide for Mortals. Step by step. The candles, the herbs, the altar.

I don’t regret the ritual, not even now that Lucinda is actually dead.

I wished her away.



Mr. Thornton pays me in cash, a fat wad with two extra twenties thick at the heart of it. This is probably accidental—the only thing I’ve done tonight is put Ollie to sleep and eat the raw cookie dough from his refrigerator. I couldn’t find the leash to walk Puddles, so I carried her to the corner of the back fence and stood guard while she peed, ready to scoop her up if she tried to make a break for it. I leave before Mr. Thornton notices the overpayment.