Alexandra Burt - The Good Daughter - A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

The papers on the floor get mixed up. Short of stapling them there’s no way to keep them in order. I collect them into a stack, and with thumbtacks I pin them to the wall. I run out of room; I have covered the entire wall behind the couch with papers.

I tuck the composite underneath the mirror frame. The woman looks to be about twenty years old. Her eyelashes are long, her eyes slightly bulgy between prominent cheekbones. Her face is gaunt. Her picture floats to the ground but I am out of tacks and nothing would irritate me more than the wall not being complete. I stick it back under the mirror and this time it remains.

I step back and take in my wall. The pattern of the pages—aligned with perfect angles and grouped by person, sequenced by date and positioned in a star-shaped design in the center of the wall—seems to shift, appears to close in, yet the pages remain, as if all my senses are tuned in to this design I just created. A strong emotion overcomes me—I feel afraid of what’s happening but all my senses kick in at the same time—I see the composite face, the wind outside plays with the leaves, a sprinkler hisses somewhere down the street, I smell the dank soil of my neighbor’s lawn. Fusion. That’s what it feels like. A fusion of all my senses. It must mean something. I just have to figure out what. There is a feeling of anticipation and my senses seem to battle with one another, not to dominate but to achieve equality. It is overwhelming, as if some thing makes itself known, telling me not to be afraid. The images of the two women jumble, like dice in a cup, just to emerge again, tumble out on a table that is my wall.

There is a hunch, a premonition of some sort.

A spark of the whitest light I have ever seen sears into my eyes like a camera flash. The ground shifts as if someone is picking me up. I am on my back, looking up at the ceiling fan blades wop-wop like helicopter blades. They slice the air, disturb the light, turn it into snow.

I’m in a blizzard yet again, the same blizzard I keep seeing over and over. I can’t escape it—can’t hide from it either.

Like a monster, it just won’t go away.

Roswell, New Mexico, 1988

Camelot Mobile Home Park

I read the sign. I don’t know what the word Camelot means. But I know what a mobile home park is. It’s where I live now. Small paved walkways lead to similar houses just like ours. They are not really houses, I don’t think they are—they shake and hum when it rains and strong winds come through the cracks in the wall. Mobile homes are what they’re called.

Outside my window I see a long driveway with occasional weeds peeking out from cracks in the concrete. Sometimes I can see mom through the window as she walks from door to door. She collects the rent, she tells me. I watch children play through the window. They must be smarter than me, must be because they get to go to school and I don’t, and so I study more, study harder, force my mind to make connections, do my math even though I have to imagine things like balloons or pizzas to understand the concept of multiplication and subtraction. And one day, once I catch up with those children, then I’ll get to go to school too.

The coffee table is covered in books. Most of them have torn pages and crayon marks but I don’t care. I love books. I read anything I can get my hands on.

I have many questions when mom comes home for lunch: Do airplanes fall out of the sky and what’s the meaning of “Lockerbie”? What are the rules of tennis? Most of those questions I can’t ask because she’d know that I changed the channel from the only one I’m allowed to watch. Mom only stays for a little while and when I tell her I have more to ask about she tells me she’ll get me a book that will answer all my questions.

“All of them?”

“Yes. All the words in the world are in it,” she says and hugs me. I hang on to her shirt, I don’t want her to leave, and I need to know about that book.

“When?” I ask and don’t really believe her. There’s no such thing as an answer to all questions.

“Soon.”

I want to cry. Soon is like saying never. Like soon I’ll be going to school. Soon we’ll have friends over, soon , everything that never happens is soon . I cling to the thought of owning such a book, vow that the first words I’ll look up are Camelot , then Lockerbie , then tennis game rules .

I have a schedule. Reading Rainbow after mom leaves. I write down all the words I learn as I watch and then The Jetsons comes on. After The Jetsons I read until mom comes to make lunch and checks my workbooks. I have so many questions: Why can’t I get on the bus with the other kids in Camelot? Why am I not allowed to play outside?

I did sneak out that one time. The girl’s name who was playing outside I never asked as if I knew I wasn’t going to see her again. We stole chalk from the bucket by the community board and we drew squares on the concrete, picked the biggest rock we could find—there were plenty in between the patchy grass and the crumbling road—and we played as the sun was beating down on us. When mom pulled up in her car, I ran back to the trailer and locked the door behind me, pretending to be studying. As if I could trick her, make her believe that she had seen another girl looking just like me outside while I was inside practicing my upper- and lowercase letters. She was mad, but not that mad. But I can’t do that again. Ever.

As I learn to read and draw, as I begin to prefer the news channel to The Berenstain Bears , as my mind expands, the road leading to the trailers crumbles a bit more with each passing day. And then we leave.

The stolen chalk, the stones, and the memory of the nameless girl are all I take with me from Camelot the night we pack up the powder blue car and drive farther west.

West , is what mom says, We are going west , as if it is going to be the end of all our troubles.

Quinn

Quinn was awakened by the sound of slapping wings intensifying in the trees around her. Morning faded in like a scene on a stage accompanied by a screeching murder of crows. She gathered the colorful woven fringed rectangle of a blanket and tucked the wet, reddish stain into the innermost fold. She wasn’t sure what to do with the blanket and even though Sigrid didn’t care where she was and when she returned home, walking in through the back door with a sapphire blue-and-maroon-striped Mexican blanket might cause her to ask questions.

Quinn decided on the route through the woods instead of the dirt road, even though it would take longer, but there was no rush, Sigrid didn’t rise before noon on any day of the week. In the soft morning light, the trees were no longer menacing with their long and dark shadows, and sun rays fell through the branches, warming her skin. She stopped in her tracks when a sound pierced the air like the whip on the back of an unruly horse. There was a voice, then two, maybe even three? They multiplied, projected toward her.

Quinn found herself standing in front of a man who fixed his eyes on her rumpled dress and tousled hair. His thick lips and his unkempt beard made her uneasy.

“Who we have here?” he asked and turned a bottle of beer upside down, his lips sucking every drop out of it.

Quinn clutched the blanket closer to her chest, suddenly remembering the way her body had left an imprint on the earth after she had gathered it up off the ground. If she had left one hour earlier or one hour later, they would have never met. Strange how life is. I should have gone down the dirt road, Quinn thought, shuddering as she became aware of more voices around her. She caught a glimpse of three other men in camouflage pants and shirts approaching them.