Little Girls

by Ronald Malfi

  It was still here. After all that had happened and all the time that had passed, the goddamn thing was still here.

  Laurie’s mouth went dry. Beside the forgotten greenhouse, the immense oak tree still stood, its massive leafy boughs stretching out over the shattered and covered roof of the greenhouse.

  What does it look like on the inside? She couldn’t help but wonder. After all these years, would there still be blood?

  She went around to the front of the structure. Beneath the rumpled and weather-ruined canvas tent, the greenhouse looked smaller than she had remembered it. But of course, the last time she had seen it she had just been a little girl. The front of the greenhouse was covered by two heavy-looking flaps of canvas. A thick rope had been wound through an eyelet at the corner of each flap and tied in a sturdy-looking knot. Frayed and colorless, even the rope looked ancient. Laurie was able to peel back one of the flaps a few inches and peer underneath without untying the rope. A smell like rotting vegetation accosted her. Behind the flap, she could make out the rectangle of the greenhouse door. The door was comprised of several panels of glass, but the glass had blackened with mold over the years, making it impossible to see beyond. With her free hand, she reached out and pressed two fingers against the door. She felt it give, as if the framework was made of sponge. Her eyes traced down to the handle, expecting to find a lock on the door. There was no lock. There was no handle, either—only a sheared metal bolt, burnt orange with rust, protruding from where the handle had once been.

  She had suffered many nightmares about this little glass house, all of them immediately after Sadie Russ had died. And while those nightmares faded over time and with age and maturity, the sense of dread and terror that had come from them rushed over her now as if they had never left her. And perhaps they never had, that they had simply lain dormant and in wait for just this moment.

  With a series of tugs, she undid the rope. It took some effort, but it eventually fell away and coiled in the dirt at her feet. She parted the canvas flaps like a stage actress parting a curtain for her encore, tucking each flap behind the lengths of chain that secured the canvas covering to the ground. The entire glass front was black. Things grew against the inside of the panes, dark green and furry. The smell coming from the structure was rank enough to transcend olfaction; it was as if all of her five senses were capable of being brutalized by the horrific odor of rotting vegetation. Regardless, she reached out and slipped fingers between the narrow space between the door and the spongy frame, and pulled it open.

  The hinges didn’t so much whine as growl. Hunks of black, springy mildew pattered to the ground. She managed to get the door open just a few inches when the smell from within breathed out into her face, warm and fetid, and no less potent than a punch to the stomach. With the canvas covering overtop the structure, the inside of the greenhouse was absolute darkness. Only hesitant milky light could be seen through some of the glass panels lower to the ground. Squinting against the darkness, she thought she could see dark, immobile shapes huddled within.

  Is there still blood in there somewhere? she wondered yet again. Has the blood seeped into the soil? Are there parts of Sadie Russ still hidden in there? The black, sightless tomb of a dead girl . . .

  Startled by the sound of someone crunching along a carpet of dead leaves, Laurie spun around and scanned the dense foliage at her back. At first she saw nothing. Then a shape parted from behind a tree and crossed hesitantly behind a scrim of saplings. Laurie glimpsed a cascade of dark hair and a dress that looked bleached from the sun. It was the girl she had seen running across the lawn just moments ago.

  “Hello,” Laurie called to the girl. Her voice frightened tiny birds, causing them to burst out of the trees and take to the sky. A squirrel that had been loping from branch to branch in a nearby tree froze. Through the trees, the young girl said nothing. She was perhaps twenty or thirty yards away, too far and too well hidden behind the foliage for Laurie to make out her face.

  Laurie called to the girl again, this time trying to sound more pleasant. The girl took a step back toward the tree and then looked as though she wanted to crouch down and hide behind the screen of spindly saplings. When Laurie raised her hand and, smiling, waved to the girl, the girl turned around and ran off into the woods. Laurie heard her timid little footfalls trampling dead leaves, which confirmed for Laurie that the girl was not a ghost or some figment of her overworked imagination after all.

  Feeling strangely unwelcome, Laurie walked back through the woods toward the house.

  Before they left for David Cushing’s law office, Ted and Susan went out to the backyard with the little cigar box with the holes punched into the lid. As Laurie predicted, Ted dug a shallow grave beside the moldy fence. With a doleful expression on her face that made her look eerily mature, Susan opened the lid of the cigar box and dumped its contents into the freshly dug grave. Ted rubbed the back of Susan’s head and Susan laced a thin arm around her father’s waist. Laurie watched from the kitchen windows.

  Chapter 7

  David Cushing’s office was on the second floor of a two-story brick colonial on Duke of Gloucester Street in downtown Annapolis. There was ample parking in the rear and a cherubic-faced receptionist seated at a cluttered desk outside Cushing’s office. The woman beamed a smile at the Genarro family as they came into the office and she told them Mr. Cushing would be with them shortly. Susan quickly grew agitated and began to pilfer candy from the little crystal bowl on the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist smiled dully at Susan, but Laurie could tell she was growing increasingly annoyed. When Susan began talking playfully to the fish in the tank, the receptionist picked up her phone and spoke in a low voice into the receiver, muffling much of what she said with one meaty hand over her mouth. After she hung up, she told them that Mr. Cushing could see them now.

  Cushing’s office looked more like that of a high school gym teacher’s than an attorney’s. There were baseball and football trophies on shelves and framed print articles from local magazines and newspapers on the walls. The articles spoke not of David Cushing’s lawyerly achievements but of his love of sport fishing, bicycling, and his frequent involvement in charity marathons. The screen saver on his computer was of two monkeys in boxing gloves exchanging punches in a ring with swollen red asterisks in place of eyeballs. Among the files and printouts on his desk, there were several Lego race cars and photos of small children with hair so blond it was nearly white.

  David Cushing himself was surprisingly young. He possessed the keen eyes of a hawk, and he sported a short haircut that was perfectly styled. His shirt was crisp and white and his tie looked expensive. A pinstriped suit jacket hung from a coatrack in one corner of the office. David Cushing showed them his perfect teeth and shook their hands while a nice watch glittered on his wrist.

  Laurie and Ted sat in comfortable chairs that faced Cushing’s desk. Susan lingered behind them, finally resigning herself to sit on an ottoman outfitted in a Navajo design.

  “The will is straightforward,” Cushing said. He spoke with the charisma of a frat boy, with one corner of his mouth turned up into a sardonic grin. “Being the only living relative, Mrs. Genarro, he left pretty much everything to you. You’ve got the house and the property, the items inside the house, and the remaining money in his bank account.”

  Cushing slid a stack of paper across his desk to Laurie. She took it and looked at it. The numbers on the printout made her dizzy.

  “There were no outstanding debts in your father’s name at the time of his death, although there is still some money owed to the Mid-Atlantic Homecare Services. It isn’t much—it’s all there in the paperwork—and that will be taken off the top.” Cushing reclined in his chair. “As you probably know, the house had been paid off years ago. The only real bills he had, aside from the monthly payments to his homecare service, were for food, utilities, insurance premiums, property tax, and the like. There’s ten thousand dollars in his savings account after the payout to
the homecare provider and another two thousand or so in checking. Some of that will go toward covering some of the medical bills when they come in, but your father had Medicare, so it shouldn’t be too much.”

  “What medical bills?” Ted asked. “I thought he died instantly in the fall.”

  “Well, sure . . . but there were paramedics, an ambulance, and all the stuff that goes along with it. The police report details all of that.”

  Laurie blinked. “There was a police report, too?”

  “Of course,” said Cushing. “As well as a coroner’s report. You never received it?”

  In unison, both Laurie and Ted said, “No.”

  “I apologize. My assistant should have told you,” Cushing said, playing with his sparkly gold watch.

  “I never spoke with your assistant,” Laurie told him. She rolled the papers into a cone and held it in her lap. “I just didn’t realize there had been police involved. I guess it should have occurred to me. . . .”

  “I don’t understand. We were told it was a suicide,” Ted cut in. “What’s the purpose of a coroner’s report? He broke his neck in the fall, didn’t he?”

  Cushing displayed the palms of his hands in a lazy shrug. “It isn’t unusual in cases where there is an untimely death.”

  Untimely, Laurie thought. Her feet felt cold in her shoes. My father jumped out a window.

  “Please don’t be concerned about any medical costs. They will be minimal, as I’ve said.” Cushing looked at a printout he had on his ink blotter. “Besides,” he went on, “the real worth is in the house itself. I had my secretary run some comps on houses in the area. Your father’s place has been assessed at seven hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Wait,” Ted said, leaning forward in his chair. “What?”

  “Seven hundred thousand dollars,” Cushing repeated. His dark, sculpted eyebrows arched. “Back before the housing market crashed you could have put it on the block for closer to eight, but what with the status of the economy at the moment. . .” Cushing seesawed one hand to illustrate the instability of the current housing market.

  Ted gaped at the man. Then he turned his ridiculous gaze onto Laurie. She smiled at him without much emotion, then looked back down at the rolled up papers in her lap. She feared she would burst out laughing if she kept staring at the flabbergasted look on Ted’s face.

  “I’ve already filed the will with the probate court on your behalf,” Cushing said.

  “Thank you,” Laurie said. She glanced at Ted again and saw him smiling as he looked out one of the office windows.

  “You mentioned your desire to liquidate your father’s remaining assets,” Cushing said. “The items in the house, for example.”

  Laurie nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’ve contacted a liquidator I’ve worked with a number of times in the past. She’s quite good.”

  “That’s good,” Laurie said, although she had no idea what was involved in being “quite good” at selling a dead man’s things. Was it any different than having a yard sale? When Laurie’s mother had died, her aunts had taken care of the details. This was all new to her.

  “She’ll take thirty percent of the proceeds, which you’ll find is standard. Of course, you’re more than welcome to find someone else if you want to. Or to sell the stuff yourself, if that’s more amenable to you. However, given the circumstances, most family members don’t have the wherewithal to oversee such an undertaking, so I usually assist.”

  Ted nodded. “Okay. We’ve never done this before.”

  “I can have the liquidator contact you folks directly. Or, if you prefer, you can contact her.” Cushing flipped through a rolodex, then presented Ted with a business card. “Her name is Stephanie Canton.”

  “All right,” Ted said, looking at the card.

  “Bored,” Susan said from the back of the office.

  “Hush down,” Laurie told her from over one shoulder.

  The corner of David Cushing’s mouth tugged up a bit higher. “Cute kid,” he said. Then he pointed at the business card in Ted’s hand. Laurie could see that Cushing’s fingernails had been recently manicured. “Stephanie’s a peach. She’ll be able to answer any of the questions you good folks might have. I’m sure you’ve got quite a few.”

  “Spectacular,” said Ted as he tucked the business card into the pocket of his Izod polo shirt.

  “Now,” Cushing said, leaning back in his chair again, “there was that other issue we spoke about over the phone, I believe.” Cushing was looking at Ted. “A claim against the health-care provider.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said. He folded his legs.

  Laurie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was just something I had mentioned to Mr. Cushing, Laurie. We went over this back in Hartford.”

  “You’re talking about a lawsuit,” she said. She glanced at Cushing and, for the first time, saw that prideful little grin slide off his face.

  “I just thought it would be beneficial to hear what our options are before you slam the door, Laurie,” Ted said.

  “I told you I had no interest in a lawsuit.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to hear the man out.”

  “Mrs. Genarro,” Cushing cut in. “Your husband and I merely discussed the possibility of holding Mid-Atlantic Homecare Services accountable for what happened to your father. Their negligence—”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Cushing, my father suffered from horrible dementia and was undoubtedly a handful for the two women who looked after him. The only thing I want to do is hurry up and put this whole mess behind me, not drag it through the courts and relive it every minute of every day.”

  “Of course,” Cushing said.

  Laurie looked at Ted. “We’ve talked about this already. I just don’t have it in me to prolong this any more than it needs to be. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Ted said, placing a hand on her knee. “Okay.”

  Behind the desk, David Cushing stood up. He tried the smile again but it seemed even phonier than before. “Well, then. There are just a few papers for you to sign, Mrs. Genarro, and then I can get you nice folks on your way. . . .”

  Afterward, they walked down Main Street and had lunch at an outdoor bistro that overlooked the inlet. Boats pulled circles around the inlet and Susan cheered when one of them unleashed two resounding bleats from an air horn. Halfway down Main Street, a small white door in an alley between two shops had a sign on it that read PALM READINGS and there was a neon hand glowing in the door’s window. Susan rushed up to the window and placed her palm against the neon hand. “Ooh. It’s warm,” she commented.

  Ted was in high spirits. Every time Laurie looked at him she thought she saw dollar signs in his eyes, like some cartoon character. Several times over a lunch of steamed mussels, crusty bread, some crab dip, and quite a few mojitos, Ted commented on how stupefied he was at the assessed value of the house.

  “Why the hell had you never told me your father had so much money?”

  “I wasn’t exactly sure how much he had,” Laurie responded. Instead of a mojito, she had a glass of ice water in front of her. She ran one finger around the rim now. “I had no reason to think he’d leave me anything at all, anyway.”

  “Who else would he leave it to?”

  “It just wasn’t something I sat around and thought about. Like I said back at the lawyer’s office, I just want this stuff over and done with.”

  Ted glanced at a busty woman who jogged by in a Lycra top and spandex running shorts. “I didn’t mean to go behind your back and talk with Cushing about the lawsuit,” he said. “I apologize. It was wrong of me. I was just worried you weren’t thinking clearly at the time. I was only trying to look out for you.”

  For one second, she recalled the way Ted had whispered about her to Susan while tucking her into bed last night. He had done a lot of whispering about her after the incident on the highway last year. She knew it was only Ted looking out for her, and she felt a sudden pang of compassion
for him.

  “An old man in the throes of senility wanders up to the roof of his house and jumps off while Dora Lorton is being paid good money to keep an eye on him,” Ted went on, just as she was getting ready to offer him a truce. “Cushing is exactly right. It’s negligence. I just wish you’d listen to reason, that’s all.”

  “You know as well as I do that Claiborne called us a number of times to inform us about my father’s worsening condition,” she countered. “He even suggested we send him to a home. But we both agreed we didn’t have the money for that. So we’re just as much to blame as anyone else. And besides,” she added, knocking around a few ice cubes in her glass with a straw, “it wasn’t Dora Lorton at the house that night. It was the other girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl they brought on for the night shift. Don’t you remember approving a second caretaker?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. Who’s this girl?”

  “Her last name’s Larosche.”

  “What is that? French?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Have you spoken to her?”

  “No. Dora Lorton mentioned her to me.”

  “Okay, whatever. So then this Larosche woman is to blame.”

  Laurie pushed her ice water aside. “Does it really matter? Do we really need the hassle of a lawsuit? We’ve got the house. Even if it sells for half the assessed value—”

  He held up one hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s the principle, Laurie. You get it?”

  “Mr. Ryan, my principal, lost his hair during an assembly,” Susan piped up. She had half a cheeseburger on the plate in front of her, though she had been spending most of her time cramming her mouth full of fries sprinkled with Old Bay seasoning. “He sneezed and it, like, flopped off. Did you know hair could do that?”