Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

“Yeah, it’s weird. I stopped getting my periods—”

“Yuck,” said Daniel.

“—and Maya didn’t even know what that was . I only had it once, then it stopped. Thank God.”

Daniel sat up straight. “Annie said that the closer you get to the moment of balance , the tougher your body becomes. She said she didn’t know why.”

“That’s just the way it works,” said Lydia.

“Like you get… fierce ,” he said. “Like Rhonda did , right?”

“Yeah, whoa!” said Lydia. “That was crazy . Rhonda was totally like the Terminator.”

“Who’s Rhonda?”

“Just a guy who used to come to the Meeting,” she said.

They told him about the events at Jacobs Prairie and for the thousandth time that night he was pole-axed. The detective in him (or was it the Porter?) wanted to know if they’d left any prints or evidence behind. They said they’d been careful about that because the Guide stressed the importance of not leaving clues at the scene of a moment of balance .

He excused himself to the men’s room.

Willow splashed water on his face and stared at the haggard, blown-out man in the mirror. He went into the stall, sat on the toilet and phoned Dixie. She was expecting him but there was no way he was in any shape to go home. He told her that he was “into it” at work and that she shouldn’t wait up. Dixie said okay but that she probably wasn’t going to sleep until whenever, and if he saw her light on he should just come over.

When he returned, they were tucking into cheeseburgers and milkshakes—like hungry kids, he thought.

“I think I’m gonna take off,” said Willow.

“Okay,” said Daniel. “And thank you.”

“Thank me for what?”

“For helping us,” said Lydia. “Annie said that you’re really, really special. We need help, sir! We’ve been having a lot of—problems.”

“Give the man a moment,” said Daniel to his partner. “Let him integrate.”

“See you at work tomorrow,” said Willow, standing to leave. The humdrum remark was meant to mimic normalcy. “Oh: I did want to ask you about Honeychile. What was that all about? Why did you try to go see her?”

They suddenly realized he had no idea that Honeychile was a landlord, just like them. The only person who could have provided him with that information was Annie—and apparently, she hadn’t. Lydia and Daniel were seized by the same troublesome thought: What if Annie didn’t know that Honeychile had stopped coming to the Meeting because she’d been arrested for murder? Could it even be possible that Annie wouldn’t know? Because didn’t she know everything? Another thought followed: Why hadn’t they shared with her what they knew about the crime? ( Both of them were aware something had gone wrong—that the death of the football player had nothing to do with “Winston’s” moment of balance .) It was a strange and unaccountable oversight on their part, indeed, and each felt a shiver of guilt at the omission—made somehow worse by their clandestine visit to Dabba Doo’s.

Lydia decided to blurt the whole thing out. But as she began, Daniel gave her an elbow, forcing her to amend. “Uhm, I don’t know—it was just a feeling I had,” she said, improvising a dumbed-down version. “Like when we flew to St. Cloud to look for Rhonda.”

“Right—just a feeling,” said Daniel. “We got it into our heads that Honeychile might know something about how Troy and Maya died.”

Only a short while ago they were crying in Willow’s arms, so it felt odd to still be lying to him about certain things. The detective was too beat-up to explore any further.

“I understand you wore your old uniforms when you stopped by at the hospital.”

“Sorry about the boner,” said Daniel, snickering at the word in spite of himself.

Willow’s irritation at their antics gave him a second wind. “Well, do you think she knows something? About who killed you—I mean, your tenants ?” The one who was asking was half detective, half Porter, and Willow was startled by his commitment to the new reality that lay behind his words.

“ Mayyy -beee,” said Lydia. “I think maybe she does.”

“ Oh yeah,” said Daniel. “There’s something there, mos’ def. We can feel it.”

“The sheriff’s interviewing the girl tomorrow,” said Willow.

He had nothing more to add. Shattered by the night’s events, he was only able to spit out a bullet point.

“It’d be really good if we could talk to her. I mean if that’s at all possible.” Lydia said it offhandedly, not wanting to press her luck. “Because we’ve kind of been chasing our tails. But Annie said that was going to change, now that you’re here.”

“You said you had a ‘feeling,’” said Willow. “Did you even know that girl? I checked with the family and that story of yours about the veterans’ group was complete bullshit.”

Their hand had been forced. So be it—they would have told him tomorrow anyway. Probably.

“I guess Annie isn’t all that well,” said Daniel, speaking more to Lydia than to Willow. “She’s been really sick. Maybe that’s why she didn’t know about Honeychile’s arrest. Because it’s definitely something the Porter should have already known about—she’d have felt it.”

“What are you talking about?” said the detective.

“What I mean is that it would have been up to her to tell you, not to us.”

“We were just being respectful,” said Lydia. “By not telling you. Respectful to Annie.”

“Tell me what ?” It was maddening.

“Honeychile is a landlord,” said Daniel. “She used to come to our Meeting.”

“Only for a few times,” said Lydia. “That’s how we know her.”

“Do you mean,” said Willow, “that killing the boy at school was part of her moment of balance ?”

“Nope,” said Daniel. “And that’s the problem.”

“We think she killed the wrong one,” said Lydia.

“Yup. I kinda think that when she took out Mr. Letter Jacket Asshole, she made a total raging boner.”

He started giggling again.

“But we didn’t call her Honeychile,” said Lydia. “I knew that was her name from when she tried to break into the Meeting that time—but it’s not what we called her. You never use landlord names in a Meeting.”

“That’s a total no-no,” said Daniel.

“Everyone called her Winston.”

3.

Eleven P.M. now.

He was drinking.

The bar on North Avenue had an unfortunate name:

Dickweeds.

It was empty—just him, the barkeep and some other drunk in a booth. He was on his fourth Tom Collins but didn’t feel it. There was a phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous that applied to the experience of someone who tried boozing again after being exposed to 12-Step work: “AA ruined my drinking.”

Willow thought that’s what had happened to him, but with a caveat: Dead children ruined my drinking.

The bombshell that Renée “Honeychile” Devonshire was a player in Annie’s permanent floating ghost dance was disturbing but presented itself (to the part of him that was a detective) as a puzzle—perhaps the puzzle that needed to be solved. The old, familiar feeling of being “in the zone,” that smell of cracking a stubborn case, had returned with a delicious vengeance. Under the radical new circumstances, Willow wasn’t really sure what that feeling meant, he didn’t know what anything meant, yet the rookies’ revelation reflexively stirred the thing that had always protected and served him: the sleeping giant called Hope.