Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

No way to dismiss him, now. Ever.

He laid eyes on her and seemed to shrink. Then he loomed in Grace’s visual field.

Him. Oh God. Neurons popped as Grace’s brain worked to make sense of what was happening. All that mental activity produced... nothing.

Roger/Andrew was doing no better. Still seated, a magazine in his lap, his jaw had dropped and he’d turned ghostly pallid and Grace felt her own mandible sag uncontrollably.

Aping a patient? She’d never been suggestible. What was happening ?

The authoritative smile she’d entered with lingered, unwanted, idiotic. Grace forced her lips shut, wasn’t sure what expression was squatting on her face.

She felt stiff, inanimate, a waxwork dummy. Had no idea what to say. Even if she’d managed to come up with words, they’d have remained trapped by her strangulated larynx.

Roger/Andrew kept staring at her, finally moved his lips. Out came a mouse-squeak of humiliation.

Grace turned hot. Cold. Frozen.

Andrew and Grace.

Roger and Helen.

He’d lied about his name, too.

No comfort, there. Grace’s limbs were permafrost.

Sound filtered through a window. A car with a faulty muffler rumbling by.

Thankful for the distraction, Grace prayed for more noise. None followed. She remained rooted. Paralyzed.

This was new, different, this was dreadfully different.

Sweat pooled in Grace’s armpits. Trickled down her rib cage. Pores opened, she felt herself bathed in perspiration.

She never sweated.

And now her chest was tight and breathing had become a challenge. As if a huge animal had settled on her diaphragm.

Andrew Toner stared. Grace stared. Two helpless... offenders?

No, no, no, she was stronger than that, there was always a solution.

None came to her.

Stupid girl.

redredredredred.

Grace remained standing in the doorway. Andrew Toner remained seated.

Both of them encased in an aspic of shame.

Again, he was the first to find his voice. Dry-croaking: “My God.”

Grace thought: If there is a God, He’s laughing His deified head off.

Her brilliant response: “Well...”

Why had she said that?

What could she say?

Stupid girl. No no no I’m smart.

And I haven’t done anything willfully wrong.

Miles from actually believing that, she dredged up enough rationalization to look straight in the pretty blue eyes of Andrew from San Antonio, Texas. A man who’d traveled to see her because she had something valuable to say about... wearing the same tweed sport coat and rumpled khakis as last night.

Different shirt.

So his hygiene is decent. Who gives a fuck!

Grace forced air into cement lungs. Thought about how to phrase her apology.

Yet again, he beat her to it. “I’m so sorry.”

What did he have to apologize for?

Grace said, “You’d better come in.”

He didn’t budge.

“Really,” said Grace. “This isn’t the end of the world. We need to work it out.”

With nothing more than hope and bluster to propel her, she headed back toward the therapy room.

Hearing footsteps behind her.

There he was. Following instructions.

Just as he had last night.

Five-and-a-half-year-old Grace was an expert at hiding.

With no alcoves or nooks in the single-wide and only one door in and out, the key was to stay close to walls. As far as she could from the strangers.

Out of arm’s reach, when possible.

She didn’t have a word for the concept but had learned about arm’s reach by accumulating bruises and sore spots, a couple of bloody noses, the loss of one tooth. A baby tooth, but when Ardis’s hand shot out to slap Dodie’s face and the combination of weed, whiskey, and anger shoved him off course and his knuckles collided with Grace’s mouth, it hurt a lot.

She didn’t cry. Crying didn’t come naturally to her and besides, she didn’t want to be noticed. She’d been eating a Fudgsicle and dropped it and stooped to pick it up.

The blow hurt Ardis, too. He kept shaking his hand and screaming in pain.

Dodie laughed and that made Ardis even more mad and the second time he went for her, he punched her in the forehead and it was her turn to scream, calling him filthy names.

That made him laugh and he lunged for her again. She feinted out of the way and tried to outlaugh him, which enraged him further and he wound up to deliver one of his roundhouses, the blows that left Dodie’s face swollen and, the next day, all black-and-blue.

But Ardis’s rhythm was off and he ended up on the floor and Dodie got off with a fingernail graze.

Grace thought: Now he’s using his fist all the time. They’re both so stupid.

Throughout the melee, neither of them noticed her, backed into the farthest spot she could find, blood mixing with chocolate from the Fudgsicle, creating a sweet, repellent mud that streamed down her face.

Her mouth hurt really bad but, of course, she kept quiet about her pain because when you complained it got worse; they — especially Dodie — could get mad at you.

Instead, she thought of nice things, anything that wasn’t pain.

Sometimes that meant shows she’d seen on TV or books she’d read at preschool. Sometimes it meant imagining the strangers gone. Like tonight.

She tried to eat more Fudgsicle. That’s when her tooth crunched and bent and she reached inside her mouth and it came right out and she could feel air whistling through the space.

More blood than chocolate now and the Fudgsicle was tasting like liver and she didn’t want it anymore.

It had been her entire dinner but she wasn’t hungry.

Across the cramped trailer, Ardis was sitting on his butt, dazed, and Dodie was laughing at him. And then both of them were laughing and Dodie was pulling him up and he was touching her booby and she was touching his zipper.

The two of them drunk-waltzed toward their sleeping space, Dodie yanking at the curtain as she giggled and got dragged along by Ardis. The curtain only closed part of the way and if Grace had wanted to, she could’ve seen everything.

Wiping her face with a piece from one of the toilet paper rolls Ardis stole from the McDonald’s, she left the single-wide and walked into the night.

Not even having to do it quietly; no one was interested in her.

She covered a few feet, found a spot in the dry dirt where she could sit, and swabbed away blood with paper napkins until all that was left was a copper-penny taste in her mouth.

The air was cold. Sounds came from other trailers, most of them electronic. Grace shivered. Opened her mouth and created her own little breeze whistling through the new space in her mouth.

After that fight, Ardis wasn’t around much and sometimes Dodie muttered complaints about him to Grace, because no one else was around to listen. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Know what that means?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?” Dodie demanded. She’d just fooled with the trailer’s chemical toilet and everything smelled bad and Dodie had got stuff on her hands and cussed like crazy. All that made her super grumpy and when she got like that she always demanded Grace say what she wanted her to say.

“What?” she repeated. “You tell me right now what that means.”

“You’re happy he’s not here.”

“Yeah,” Dodie conceded. “But it’s more than that, you’re a kid, you don’t get it.”

“Get what?” said a voice from the door and there was Ardis, carrying a bucket of fried chicken. He shot a quick glance at Grace and raised his eyebrows, as if surprised she was still around. Then he gave Dodie a long look and did that wiggly thing with his hips and swung the bucket.