Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Every discussion sent Grace running to her dictionary and she figured she was learning more just being with them than from the homeschool curriculum.

When they asked her opinion, if she had one she offered it briefly and quietly. When she had no idea, she said so and more than once Malcolm nodded approvingly, saying, “If only my students knew enough to admit that.”

Sophie: “If only everyone did. Starting with pundits.”

Another word filed for future investigation.

Malcolm: “Pundits are nitwits, for the most part.”

Sophie: “Any self-designated expert is by nature fraudulent, Mal, no?” To Grace: “That applies even to this guy and myself. Just because we have fancy professorial titles doesn’t mean we know any more than anyone else.”

Malcolm: “Anyone including you, Grace.”

Grace shook her head. “Maybe I know more about being twelve but you know more about almost everything else.”

Laughter from across the dinner table.

Sophie: “Don’t be so sure, dear.”

Malcolm, chortling: “Looks like we fooled her.” He leaned over, as if to tousle Grace’s hair. Stopped himself. He never touched her. Grace was thirteen and in all the time she’d been living here, physical contact between her and Malcom had been limited to accidental brush-bys.

Sophie occasionally touched her hand, but not much else.

Fine with Grace.

Now Sophie put down her silver salad fork and said, “Honestly, dear, don’t sell yourself short, you know more than you think you do. Yes, experience is important. But you can gain that. All the experience in the world won’t help an idiot.”

“Amen,” said Malcolm, and he speared another lamb chop.

Sophie had served up a platter of chops along with tossed salad, thick fried potatoes, which Grace found delicious, and brussels sprouts, which smelled and tasted to her like something dying.

Sophie: “Don’t eat the sprouts. I’ve cooked them poorly, they’re bitter.”

Malcolm: “I think they’re fine.”

Sophie: “Darling, you think canned sardines are gourmet fare.”

“Hmmph.”

Grace ate another yummy piece of potato.

Especially with Sophie, Grace was careful not to overdo the good-manners stuff because Sophie was good at spotting fakes. Like with antiques in the magazines she subscribed to. Sometimes she’d look at a picture of furniture or a vase or a sculpture and nod approvingly. Other times, she’d say, “Who do they think they’re kidding? If this is Tang dynasty I’m Charlie Chaplin.”

In general, Grace was polite but normal about it. Following a rule she’d set for herself a long time ago.

If people like you, maybe they won’t hurt you.

Sometimes, mostly at night, alone in her big, soft, sweet-smelling bed, snuggling under a down comforter, sucking her thumb, Grace thought about Ramona.

The slimy-green pool.

That inevitably connected to Bobby in his bed, air tube hissing.

Terrible Sam. His brother and sister, scared as squirrels fleeing a hawk.

When those thoughts invaded Grace’s brain, she worked hard to throw them out — to evict them, a word from her vocabulary lesson that she liked because it sounded hard, mean, and final. Finally, she figured out that the best way of clearing her brain was to think of something nice.

A delicious dinner.

Recalling Malcolm saying she was brilliant.

Sophie’s smile.

Being here.

Two months after her thirteenth birthday — an event celebrated at the fanciest restaurant Grace had ever seen, in a hotel called the Bel-Air — she discovered something other than sucking her thumb that helped her feel peaceful: touching herself between her legs, where hairs were sprouting like grass. Feeling dizzy and nervous, at first, but afterward warm and soft in a way she’d never experienced.

And she could do it by herself!

Combine all those things and bad thoughts didn’t have a chance.

Soon, she stopped remembering anything that had happened before she lived on June Street.

Sophie could cook very well but, as she reminded Grace more than once, she didn’t like it.

“Then why do you do it?”

“Someone has to, dear, and Lord knows Malcolm’s a disaster in the kitchen.”

“I can learn.”

Swiveling from the big six-burner Wolf range, Sophie looked at Grace, sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book on the birds of North America. “You’d learn to cook?”

“If you want me to.”

“You’re offering to relieve me of culinary duties?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sophie’s eyes got a little wet. She put down her pot holder and came over to Grace, cupped Grace’s chin and bent, and for a moment Grace was worried Sophie was going to kiss her. No one had ever kissed her, not once.

Maybe Sophie could tell Grace was worried, because she just chucked Grace’s chin and said, “That is a gracious offer, my dear Ms. Blades. One day I may take you up on it, but please don’t ever feel you need to take care of us. We’re here to take care of you.”

It was the first time since Grace had moved in that someone had touched her nicely on purpose.

“Okay?” said Sophie.

“Okay.”

“Then it’s settled. We will cast off the shackles of domesticity tonight and the eminent but selectively inept Professor Bluestone will take us both out to dinner. Somewhere pricey and chichi. Sound good?”

“Sounds superb.” Another great word.

“Superb it is, dear. I’m thinking French because no one understands haute cuisine like the French.”

“Haute couture, as well,” said Grace.

“You know about haute couture?”

“From your magazines.”

“Do you know what “haute” means?”

“Fancy.”

“Strictly speaking it means ‘high.’ The French are all about dividing their world into highs and lows. With them, there aren’t just restaurants, there are cafés, bistros, brasseries, and so on.”

“Which one are we going to tonight?”

“Oh, definitely a restaurant. Malcolm must treat us like the haute gals we are.”

That evening, at a place called Chez Antoine, Grace had a complicated time. Wearing a stiff dress that scratched her, she was a little frightened of the dark, nearly silent room filled with fast-walking black-suited waiters who looked as if they were ready to find fault.

She said yes to everything, enjoyed the meat and the potatoes and some of the green vegetables. But she felt her stomach heave when one of the grumpy waiters brought out little iron skillets of — could it be, yes it was — oh, God, snails ! As if that wasn’t enough, another waiter brought plates of little bony things that looked like baby chicken legs and Grace thought how mean to kill tiny chicks but then Malcolm explained they were the sautéed limbs of frogs !

She tried not to watch as Malcolm and Sophie stuck tiny forks into the snail shells, pulled out gross clumpy lumps covered with parsley, chewed and smiled and swallowed. Tried not to listen as the frog legs crunched under the weight of Malcolm’s heavy jaws.

Look listen learn, look listen learn.

When Malcolm held out a frog leg to Grace and said, “Don’t feel obligated but you might surprise yourself and like it,” Grace sucked in her breath and took the smallest nibble and found the taste not great but okay.

Pretend it really is a baby chicken. No, not that, too gross. How about an adult chicken that just didn’t grow because it was sick or something.

A chicken with a problem in the pituitary gland. She’d learned about that in her biology lesson two weeks ago.

“Thank you, Malcolm.”

“Glad you like it.”

I like everything about this dream.