Kathleen Creighton - Memory of Murder

“What can I say?” she said with a small shrug, amusement glittering in her eyes. “I’m a girl. I liked dolls.”

“I’d say so.” He’d moved past her, and his fascinated gaze was taking in what seemed to him like a museum of little-girlhood. Although he had to admit that, even with its very feminine pink, cream and pale green color scheme, it was in good taste, not too overwhelmingly frilly. The walls were pale green, the furniture painted cream, window curtains, bedspread and rugs all in various shades of pink. Dolls, along with a stuffed animal or two, sprawled on the bed amongst an assortment of pillows in those three colors, and filled most of the space in a rocking chair upholstered in pink, green and cream stripes. A low table in one corner of the room held a large Victorian-style dollhouse that looked both custom-made and expensive. A shelf ran all the way around the room, up high near the ceiling, and every inch of it was occupied by more dolls-most, he was pretty sure from being the father of a daughter, were Barbies. Bookshelves held books, but there were a few dolls and a couple of teddy bears tucked in here and there, as well. The only departure from the doll theme, as far as Alan could see, were the framed and matted black-and-white photographs of children playing on beaches hanging on the walls, and a collection of framed youth soccer team photos arranged above a small study desk.

“It didn’t look like this when I went away to college, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lindsey said dryly. She was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, watching him, and her smile was crooked and unreadable. “My decorating scheme at the time was probably best described as late Springsteen-casual. My mom did this after I got pregnant and she found out I was having a girl. I was kind of amazed to discover she’d saved all this stuff.”

Alan nodded, but discovered he didn’t have anything to say in response. Because he knew, now, what that little bit of a smile on her face was trying to disguise. I was having a girl. Susan Merrill had created this room for her granddaughter, the baby who had died. Lindsey’s baby.

“Careful,” he said to Chelse, who was trying to peer into the open back of the dollhouse, and found his voice was filled with gravel.

Lindsey’s was firm and unemotional. “No, no-she’s welcome to play with anything in here. It’s time someone did.” To Chelsea she added with a smile, “Feel free, dear.”

“Cool,” said Chelsea, but she was moving on, pausing now to study the soccer team pictures. In each of them Alan noticed, a younger, slimmer, darker-haired Richard Merrill, obviously one of the coaches, stood behind or a little to one side of the double row of little girls in their team jerseys.

Chelsea leaned closer, then touched one of the photos, pointing to a slender, long-legged girl with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Is this you?”

Lindsey nodded. “That’s me. We were the Red Devils. We won the championship that year.”

“You were pretty.” Chelsea’s voice had a wistful note, and Alan felt his stomach clench.

“Geez, Chelse,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “Were?”

Then he felt like a real jerk when he saw both Lindsey’s and his daughter’s cheeks turn pink. The latter threw him a look, a little grimace of embarrassment. “Dad, I didn’t mean…”

Lindsey laughed and said, “It’s okay, I know what you meant.”

But Chelsea stumbled on, frowning and earnest. “I mean, you were pretty when you were a kid . Now, I think you’re beautiful.”

Oh, boy. Nice save, Chelse. Alan couldn’t think of a thing to say to that, either. Then Lindsey threw him a look, and he thought the shine in her eyes might be tears. Just keeps getting better and better, he thought.

“Why,” she said softly, touching Chelsea’s shoulder, “what a sweet thing to say.”

And while Alan watched in agonized silence, his daughter got even pinker, then said, “I really like your hair.”

“Thank you,” Lindsey said, looking genuinely touched.

“I want to get mine cut,” Chelsea went on, “but my mom won’t let me. She says not until I’m older. And my dad says I have to do what she says.” She cut her eyes at Alan, who could only lift his hands in mute wonderment. He was thinking he hadn’t heard that many words come out of his daughter’s mouth all at once in months.

Lindsey gave him a quick, uncertain look, as if she realized the path she now found herself on might be leading her into a place she had no business going. She cleared her throat, then said gently, “Oh, Chelsea. Your mom just doesn’t want you to grow up too fast.”

“But I’m already almost ten . I should be able to get my hair cut if I want to.”

This time, Lindsey didn’t even look at Alan. She reached out and touched Chelsea’s hair, then let the ponytail slither through her fingers. “Trust me, you’ll have lots and lots of chances to decide what you want to do with your hair. And you can also trust me when I tell you, you’re probably going to regret a lot of those decisions.”

“I know.” Chelsea moaned, clearly unconvinced.

Lindsey smiled. “I know how you feel-I do. When I was ten, I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. Then when I was thirteen, I couldn’t wait to be fifteen, so I could get my learner’s permit.” She threw a glance at Alan, who had been unable to stifle a groan, then went on, speaking only to Chelsea, and softly, now, as if the two of them were alone in the room. Her smile had changed in some subtle way he couldn’t name, but that made his throat ache anyway. “I always wanted to be…whatever was out there ahead of me. Now, I kind of wish I’d paid more attention to how much fun it was to be ten.”

Chelsea tilted her head quizzically, and didn’t reply.

“What the hell was that about?”

They were on their way down the stairs, having left Chelsea in the pink, green and cream room, now thoroughly engrossed in the dollhouse.

Lindsey glanced at him in surprise. “What was what about?”

“You…Chelsea.” He tried to make his voice light, casual. “What were you two doing, bonding?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just talking to her, that’s all.”

“Yeah, and she was talking to you, probably more words strung together in complete sentences than she’s spoken to me in a whole day, lately.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was a bad thing.” She spoke quietly, but her voice sounded strained. Edgy.

Ashamed of himself, Alan tried to backpedal. “It’s not, just…unexpected.”

He’d begun to understand that he’d wandered into territory that was unfamiliar to him; these emotional, mother-child interactions weren’t something he encountered much in his line of work. He didn’t know why watching Lindsey communicate with his child had stirred him so. It had seemed to come so naturally to her, and he wondered if what he felt was as simple a thing as jealousy, because lately he’d been feeling his relationship with his daughter slipping and communication a challenge, at best. Fear clutched at his belly when he thought of losing his little girl, watching her turn into an uncommunicative stranger, and after that, what next? Drugs? Everything that went with that? He’d seen too much not to know the dangers that lurked outside his protective embrace.

He wanted to say something to her, to Lindsey, to make it right, but everything he thought of seemed to bump up against the fact that she was a woman who had lost a child. He didn’t know what to say to a woman under those circumstances, outside the standard phrases he was trained to use in his job, the phrases that came from habit, from a barricaded place where emotions could not encroach on the job he had to do.