The Fourth Child, Jessica Winter [fantasy novels to read txt] 📗

“Man, do you guys remember all that time she used to spend at Dead Babies Club?” Sean asked after a moment. “Whatever happenedto all those people?”

“She told me that she knew people in Dead Babies Club who were capable of something like—like this,” Lauren said.

“What?!” Sean exclaimed. “Like who?”

Lauren felt an immediate, panicked remorse. “Or she said—she said they would have liked to think they could—”

“Jesus Christ,” PJ said.

“I mean, I doubt it,” Lauren said.

They drove in silence, the air inside the dragon wagon clearer and thinner.

“I think there’s a Tops coming up on Transit, on the left, before you get to North French,” Lauren said when the time came. “We can pick up a deli platter there.”

The first familiar face inside the crowded foyer was Rajiv, who swept Lauren up in a silent, swaying hug. He’d developed anamnesiac courtliness toward her immediately after Grease that held firm throughout high school and beyond, and that now reminded her of Stu. Deeper into the house, still clutchingthe deli platter, the cling film starting to slip underneath her fingers, Lauren found Abby, who had a junior reporting gigat the Buffalo News and an internship at WGRZ.

“We’ve got hundreds of hours of footage of the Spring of Life, both professional and amateur,” Abby was telling Lauren andSean. “We’ve been watching all of it in shifts, trying to find even a single frame of a guy who might match the suspect’sdescription, the police sketch—they think it’s the same guy who’s been killing doctors in Canada.”

“Right, yeah, we read about that,” Lauren said, Sean nodding beside her.

“They’re really all over this. I don’t think it’s going to take long to nail somebody. But I was wondering, like—sorry ifthis is awkward—but if we found anything—it might be helpful for your mom to take a look? See if it jogs her memory?” Abbyasked.

Lauren and Sean murmured yeahs and of courses and definitelys.

It’s Paula you should ask, Lauren thought, waving across the room at Paula as she came through the front door. It was Paula who told her that Mr. Smithenrolled in law school; it was Paula who found out he was in the Bay Area, doing something low-paid and virtuous—indigentdefendants, maybe, or civil liberties. Lauren told her she didn’t want to know more, not to mention him again.

“I’ll give you my number,” Abby was saying. “It’s a cell phone—I know it’s obnoxious, I just need it for work.” Abby handed Sean her business card, eased the deli plate out of Lauren’s hands, and turned to carry it into the kitchen.

“Excuse me—is your name Lauren?” another woman asked. She had a baby on her hip and was somehow unplaceable, older than Stitch’sfriends but younger than their parents and teachers.

“Yes, I’m Lauren, how do you do.”

The woman beamed. “My goodness, you look exactly like your mother. I’m sorry—I’m Elise. I’m a friend of your mom’s from longago.” She offered Lauren her left hand because her right was slung around the baby. “God, I—I knew you when you were tiny,brand-new. Before you were born, even.”

“Oh, how about that,” Lauren said, smiling as they shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you.” She struggled to register Mom andElise as peers. She couldn’t picture Mom with a baby now, or wearing this black suit, anonymous yet ineffably fancy, its supplelines and textures foreign to the T.J.Maxx racks that Mom relied on.

“Your mom and I went to school together, kindergarten straight through high school. Is she here?”

“It’s just me and my little brothers here today,” Lauren said. She gestured across the room at them. “Or not so little. Mymom would have liked to come, but she’s got her hands full with my little sister.”

“Oh, I see, too bad,” Elise said. “Wow, Jane has four kids now?”

“You should give her a call,” Lauren said. “I bet she’d love to see an old friend. Same phone number we’ve had since I wasa baby,” she added.

“I will—I’m in town for a few days,” Elise said. An awkward, smiling lull. They broke the silence at the same time.

“I’m just gonna go get a—” Lauren started.

“Did you know the—oh, sorry, I was just going to ask how you knew Dr. Rosen.” Elise shook her head. “So awful. No words.”

“Oh—” Lauren started.

We used to wave through the window, she thought.

This wasn’t the right answer, because it cast her as an ogler, an owl, a stickup artist. Placed her behind the scope of a rifle. And besides, back then she’d been waving from common land—backyards were more akin to trails than enclosures. The fences had started to go up her last year of high school, in the spring. The news had been dominated, perhaps more than usual, by men with violent grievances. The O. J. Simpson case had been going almost a year. (Dad was fixated for a while with the missing pockets of time surrounding the murders, as O.J. dashed through yards and alleys in his prowler’s knit cap. Dad even drew a map of the ground O.J. had had to cover and in how much time, hypothesizing different routes, tracking them in corresponding shades of Sharpie.) A Gulf War veteran used fertilizer and race-car fluid to blow up a building with a day care in it, in Oklahoma City, and the Buffalo News spent several days trying to determine what it meant, precisely, that the terrorist was from Lockport. Rajiv got a week’sdetention for using the then-ubiquitous police sketch of the Unabomber on posters promoting his band’s upcoming show at MohawkPlace. Gary Wisniak’s dad accidentally shot him in the head in their living room—there was some scuffle; it was alleged thatGary had threatened his mom—and, shattered with remorse over his dead son, Mr. Wisniak immediately turned the gun on himself,fatally. But Gary was fine: the bullet only grazed him, enough to knock him cold and produce some blood, and he was back atschool within two weeks, the white rectangle shaved into his hair crossed diagonally with a row of inflamed, bulging sutures.Gary came to Rajiv’s