Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

“Okay.”

“Okay... one more thing: If you’re tired or need to go to the bathroom, or need water — which I’ve brought” — pointing to several bottles in the corner — “be sure to let me know.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you are, but should that — never mind, Grace, I have a feeling you know how to take care of yourself.”

Some of the test was fun, some was boring. There were questions so easy Grace couldn’t believe there was anyone who couldn’t answer them, harder questions that she still thought she did okay on. One test was just vocabulary words like in school, another was putting together puzzles. There was math like in the curriculum, she got to tell stories with picture cards, make shapes out of colored plastic blocks.

As he’d promised, Malcolm Bluestone told her when he was going to use the stopwatch. Grace didn’t care, there was plenty of time for almost everything and when she didn’t get something she knew it was okay because he’d told her it would be like that. Also, she really didn’t care.

When he said, “That’s it,” Grace decided she’d had an okay time. He looked tired and when he offered her water and she said, “No, thank you,” he said, “Well, I’m feeling parched,” and drained two bottles quickly.

As he finished the second bottle, he put his hand over his mouth to cover a burp but a little croaky noise escaped anyway and Grace had to struggle not to laugh.

He laughed. “ ’Scuse me — any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Nothing at all, huh? Listen, I can score this in a few minutes and give you some feedback — tell you about the things you did especially well on. That interest you?”

“If it helps get me a better curriculum.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll bet you’re incredibly bored.”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ll bet nearly all the time.” His big bear eyes were aimed at Grace and looked extra eager, like he wanted her to agree with him.

She said, “Yes, sir, most of the time.”

“Okay, you can go outside, get some fresh air, and I’ll call you in.”

Instead of obeying him — because she didn’t feel like following any more instructions — Grace went into the kitchen where Bobby sat slumped in his special belted-in chair and Ramona was trying to feed Amber pieces of egg and Amber was shaking her head and whining, “No, no, no.”

“What’s up, Grace?”

“Can I have some juice, Mrs. Stage?”

“Help yourself.”

Bobby made a noise and resumed drinking one of those milk shakes Ramona poured for him into small cups because he wasn’t strong enough to hold a big cup.

“That’s right,” Ramona told him, as if she were talking to a baby, “it is delicious.”

Bobby slurped. Amber said, “No, no, no.”

Grace poured herself some juice and hung around near the sink and looked out at the desert but really didn’t focus on it.

Thinking, as she had a thousand times: Special needs, she’s like the others, gets more money for it.

Followed by the question that bothered her: What’s my special need?

Bobby snorted and sputtered and coughed and Ramona rushed over and slapped his back softly until he stopped. Amber started to cry and Ramona said, “One moment, darling.”

Grace had wondered for a while about what made Bobby weak and have trouble breathing but knew better than to ask Ramona about something that wasn’t her business. Instead, she snuck into his room one afternoon when Ramona was downstairs trying to feed him a snack milk shake and had a look at some of the medicine Ramona was giving him. The words on the labels didn’t tell her anything and she already knew about the oxygen tank next to his bed — a bed with side rails, so he wouldn’t fall out. But she did notice a piece of paper on the dresser and it had one of those snake symbols doctors used.

The first line read, County Dependent Medical Status Report: Robert Evan Canova.

The second line began, This twelve-year-old Caucasian with multiple congenital anomalies...

Grace heard Ramona coming up the stairs and scooted to her own room. Later that day, she opened the big dictionary and looked up “congenital” and “anomalies” and figured it out: Bobby had been born with problems. That really didn’t tell her much but she supposed that was all she’d be able to learn.

Malcolm Bluestone came into the kitchen. “There you are. Ready?”

Ramona looked at him, her eyebrows climbing, like she wanted to be in on the secret.

Dr. Bluestone didn’t notice, was looking only at Grace and holding his huge arm out, motioning her back to the living room.

Finishing her juice, she washed and dried the glass and followed him.

He said, “Vitamin C, good for you.”

Back at the testing table, he said, “First off, you did extremely well — amazingly well, actually.”

He waited. “ Astonishingly well.”

Grace said, “Good.”

“Put it this way, Grace, if we were testing a thousand kids, you’d probably get the highest score of anyone.”

Again, he waited.

Grace nodded.

“May I ask how you feel about that?”

“Fine.”

“Well, you should feel fine. You got an amazing — more than that, your abilities are uniform. That means you did great on everything. Sometimes people do very well on one part but not so well on another part. Nothing wrong with that. But you excelled on everything. I hope you feel proud of that.”

“Proud” was a word whose definition Grace understood. But it meant nothing to her.

She said, “Sure.”

Malcolm’s soft brown eyes narrowed. “Let me put this another way: You’re almost nine years old but on some of the subtests — on most of them, actually — you knew as much as a fourteen- or a fifteen-year-old. In some cases, even a seventeen-year-old. I mean your vocabulary is fabulous.”

He smiled. “I have a tendency to over-explain because most of the children I deal with need that. So I’m going to have to watch myself with you. Like defining ‘uniform’ when you know exactly what it means.”

Without thinking, Grace let the words shoot out. “Having the same form, manner, or degree.”

Malcolm smiled. “You read the dictionary.”

Grace felt her stomach tighten up. How had he figured her out so easily? Now he’d think she was weird, put that in a county status report.

Or maybe being weird would help her, keep her as a special-needs ward, so Mrs. Stage could keep getting extra money and Grace could stay here.

He said, “That’s fantastic, Grace, that’s a great way to build up vocabulary, learn the structure of language, philology, etymology — where words come from, how they’re built. I used to do the same thing myself. Back when I was a bored kid, and let me tell you, that was most of the time because let’s face it, for people like us — not that I’m as smart as you — life can get downright tedious if we’re forced to go slow. And that’s what I’m going to help you with. You’re a race car, not a bicycle.”

Grace felt her stomach loosen.

“I mean that, Grace. You deserve to be considered on your own terms.”

A week later he brought her new curriculum materials. A week after that, he said, “How’d you like it?”

“Good.”

“Listen, would you mind if I tested you again — just a few questions on the material in the packet. So I can know where we take things.”

“Okay.”

Ten questions later, he was grinning. “Well, it’s obviously time to move on.”

Five days later, Ramona brought a box into Grace’s room and said, “From the professor, looks like he thinks you’re pretty smart.”