Late Breaking

by K. D. Miller

  “Keep all that for your little girl,” she says, smiling gently at him. She knows him so well. And he knows her too, but in a way he can’t place. He senses a huge sadness at the bottom of his knowing and his yearning, and it frightens him.

  “Be afraid for her.” The young woman is suddenly intent and serious.

  A wave of sorrow washes over Leo. He feels the threat of tears. “Your poor father,” he chokes out.

  “Yes. It was awful for him. He found me. He took me in his arms.”

  Leo puts his hands over his face. No. Never. Never. His life would be over if such a thing ever happened to Leonora, if—

  “It won’t,” the young woman says. “As long as you believe what your little girl is telling you. She’s very, very special. They know that. They’re drawn to her because of it. But they hate her for it too.”

  Leo has no idea what she is talking about. But he understands her perfectly. And it fills him with dread.

  “You have everything you need. You can do what needs to be done. Just believe her. Believe what she is telling you. Believe her. Believe her. Believe—”

  “Where is she!”

  Leo jerks awake. Fiona is on the dock in front of him. Panting and sweaty. “Who?”

  “Our daughter!”

  “She’s with you.”

  “No she is not! I left her here with you!”

  “No you didn’t! You took her with you for a walk in the woods! I saw you both go!”

  In the few seconds before they somehow agree to split up and search—Leo the woods, Fiona the grounds and the house—they are mesmerized by the hate in each other’s eyes.

  Leonora is crying. It is a deep, despairing wail, strangely old, completely at odds with her usual high-pitched little-girl fussing.

  “Moyra said! She said I had to stay with the Stump Figs now! Because you don’t want me any more!”

  Her parents are with her in her bed, up in the nursery. When Fiona came tearing into the house, Charles was still at the dining room table. Jennifer emerged from the bedroom and greeted her with, “Oh, there you are. Can we talk?”

  “Have you seen Leonora?”

  “Yeah, she’s upstairs. But look—”

  “She’s upstairs?”

  “Yeah, taking a nap or whatever. But what I wanted to say—”

  Fiona ran past her up the stairs into the nursery and found a lump under the covers of the bed. When she coaxed the little girl out from under, the expression of grief on the child’s face made her gasp.

  She heard Leo downstairs, panting out the same question she had asked, getting the same answer. He sounded hoarse, probably from shouting his daughter’s name while running along the trail. He pounded up the stairs, found the two of them, and sagged in the doorway of the nursery, looking close to tears.

  Instinctively, he and Fiona lay down on either side of their wailing daughter. It took them several minutes to quiet her, to reassure her that they would never leave her, and to watch her drop finally into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  Now they look at each other silently. Ease themselves up off the little girl’s bed. Tiptoe hand-in-hand down the stairs.

  Jennifer greets them with, “Look, what I was trying to say. I mean, I don’t mind looking after your kid for a while if you two want some time alone together. But I’d appreciate being asked, okay?”

  “So neither of us asked you to look after Leonora.” Leo. Just getting the facts.

  “No. She just wandered in here all by herself and said she was supposed to stay with us.” At the table, Charles nods.

  The parents exchange a look. Then Leo says, “We’re sorry. There was some kind of misunderstanding. It won’t happen again. Now, could we ask you and Charles to give us a few minutes’ privacy?” The cool, firm tone he is taking with Jennifer makes Fiona secretly glad.

  “Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Charles! We’re going for a walk!” Charles drops his pen, gets up, and stumbles after Jennifer out the door.

  “Okay, Moyra. I don’t know who you are or where you came from. And I don’t care. All I care about is my little girl. You are telling her things that are not true. And you are getting her all upset. And that. Is going. To stop.”

  Leo is making himself as big as possible—legs spread, shoulders back, chest thrust out. He is speaking—booming—from deep in his diaphragm, sending his voice into every corner of the nursery. Leonora is huddled in her mother’s arms on the bed, looking up at her father with huge, dry eyes.

  “So you are going to leave my little girl alone. Is that clear? You are not going to talk to her. You are not going to make her sad or scared. Ever again. Because if you do—” He cocks a thumb at his chest. “You’re going to have to deal with me.”

  He falls silent for a moment. Scanning the room. Listening. Then he nods his head as if satisfied, drops to one knee and looks seriously into Leonora’s eyes. “Think that did the trick?”

  Once the Stumpfigges were out the door, Leo and Fiona sat down across from each other at the dining room table. There was something formal, almost legalistic, in the air between them.

  “All right,” Fiona began. “What’s going on?”

  Leo took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “I was convinced she was with you. You were convinced she was with me. And she was convinced neither of us wanted her.”

  Fiona shook her head. “Could we all have sunstroke? Could there be something in the water?”

  “The Stumpfigges are drinking the water too. And they’re no weirder than they ever are.”

  “I read a magazine article a while ago,” Fiona said, “about parents who forget that their toddler is strapped into a car seat. And they walk away and leave them in the back of the car in the hot sun and—”

  “Shit.” Leo runs a hand down over his face.

  “The thing is, they’re not necessarily neglectful parents that do this. Most of them are as conscientious as we are. But there’s been some change in their routine. Say, the one who usually drops the kid at daycare has a dental appointment, so the other one has to do it. And some glitch makes them forget the kid is in the car. Something about the way our brains are wired. So maybe that’s what’s going on with us. Because we’ve had a change. We’re in a different place. Our routines are different. Right? So maybe—”

  They were silent. Then Leo said, “What we have to deal with right away is this Moyra thing. Leonora has to understand that Moyra, whatever she is, is not in charge. We are.”

  “Think it’s time for another monster eviction?”

  When she was three, Leonora had a spate of nightmares about a big green monster with long hair and sharp teeth that was living under her bed. Leo listened seriously to her description, then pulled a thick book down from a shelf in his study. He called it the Daddy Manual. “Right,” he said, opening it to the middle and running his finger down the page. “Monsters. Green. Hairy. Sharp teeth.” He read silently for several seconds, then said, “Okay. I know what to do.” He stuck out his index finger for Leonora to hold and the two of them went to her bedroom, where he proceeded to read the riot act to the monster under the bed.

  Now he is waiting for Leonora to tell him that Moyra is gone, too.

  “Moyra is sad,” the little girl says at length. “She got lost and her mummy and daddy could never find her.”

  The parents look at each other. Fiona hugs her daughter. “You’re not lost. You’re right here with Mummy and Daddy. And we will never let you get lost.” She meets Leo’s eyes. “Because from now on we’re going to be with you. All the time. The two of us.”

  Leo nods. He is trying to tell himself he did not see the expression on his four-year-old’s face when he asked her if the bad thing had gone away. The child seemed to be struggling. Hesitating to answer. When she did, it was with a look of profound pity. For him.

  On their last full day toget
her, Fiona suggests a picnic to use up some leftovers. And clear the air, she thinks. Leonora has not mentioned Moyra since Leo did his thing up in the nursery. But Fiona can’t help wondering if she has merely learned to keep her hidden.

  Behind her, Jennifer slouches in the kitchen doorway. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” she says with a reluctance so palpable that Fiona almost laughs out loud. Sure, Jen. You could slice cheese. You could mix lemonade. You could wash apples. You could carry plates and glasses and napkins out to the picnic table. You could get off your skinny butt, open your eyes, use your head, and take and do for a change.

  “Thanks,” she says, smiling over her shoulder. “I think I’ve got it all under control.”

  It is so warm outside, more like a day in August, that the men carry the picnic table into the shade of a big old oak tree and Leonora demands a swim in the lake.

  “Tell you what,” Fiona says. “After lunch we’ll get you into your shorts and you can go in the water up to your knees. How would that be?” She had thought it would be cooler, so didn’t pack her daughter’s bathing suit.

  “Well,” the child says, sounding comically adult. “All right. I guess.”

  Into the adults’ laughter, Leo says, “Sometimes I think she was born thirty-five with a martini in her hand.”

  Up in the nursery, when Fiona is helping Leonora out of her overalls and holding her shorts out for her to step into, the little girl says, “Daddies have things.” She taps her fist against her crotch. “Here.”

  “Yes,” Fiona says. “That’s right.” She and Leo have occasionally let her see them naked, without making a big deal of it. “Honey, please lift your foot so we can—”

  “And they put them inside mummies. Here.” She pulls down her tiny underpants and points to her pubis.

  Right. Here we go, Fiona thinks. Sooner than we thought. Calmly, she says, “Yes. Mummies and daddies who love each other sometimes do that. Okay. Let’s pull these underpants up. And let’s get these shorts on. And now let’s go stick our feet in that lake! Okay?”

  “And little girls too?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Do daddies put their things inside little girls?”

  Fiona can feel her heart knocking. Calm down, she tells herself. All she wants to know is what goes where. And what the rules are. It’s a simple question. An innocent question. “No,” she says, hoping her voice does not sound as sticky as her mouth feels. “That is not for little girls. That is for grown-ups. Just grown-ups.”

  Leonora gives her a long look. Is it—sly? Oh please. Not sly. Not cunning.

  “Like the brown stuff that’s in Daddy’s glass sometimes?”

  “Yes! What a smart little girl you are! That’s exactly right. It’s one of those things that are just for grown-ups. Now let’s get you down to that lake.”

  “Remember that sick fuck of a caretaker I told you about? The guy I met up with in the woods?”

  Fiona is showing Leo a drawing Leonora made with her crayons once she got tired of paddling in the lake. She is upstairs now, having her nap. The Stumpfigges are sequestered in their own bedroom, unusually silent. Leo and Fiona have just loaded the dishwasher and are at the table, finishing off the wine from the picnic.

  Leo looks at the crayon drawing. “You’re not saying—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m still creeped out by what happened to all of us the other day. Reading stuff into stuff. But look at the hat. And doesn’t that look like a vest?”

  “Is the man in the picture somebody you know?” Fiona asked, watching the drawing grow under Leonora’s hand.

  “Kind of.”

  Kind of was her newest phrase, and she was applying it to everything. I’m kind of thirsty. I’m kind of tired of that story.

  “Is it Grandpa Van de Veld?”

  “No.”

  “Is it Grandpa McFee?”

  “No!”

  Okay. Back off, Mummy. All Fiona could do was watch as the crayon in her daughter’s fist outlined something she hoped she was not seeing.

  “And what’s this?” Now she’s pointing out a second figure to Leo.

  “Looks like a little girl to me.”

  “I asked Leonora if the man was the little girl’s daddy, and she said—”

  “Kind of,” Leo finishes for her, grinning.

  “But look at her. What is she doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Leo says firmly. Kneeling down in front of the man. That’s what it looks like she’s doing. “Look. Let’s not read too much into this. Except for that one time, Leonora has not been out of our sight. She’s stopped talking about Moyra. She had a great day today. And tomorrow she’ll be home.”

  After a moment, Fiona nods. They finish their wine, not talking about the crayon drawing, but unable to keep their eyes away from it for long.

  Charles emerges from the Stumpfigge’s bedroom, all flushed and with his hair standing up in spikes.

  “Charles,” Leo asks. “Have you had any dealings with this caretaker who’s supposed to show up once a week?”

  “Oh yes. She was by to check on us the other day when you two were out and about.”

  “She?”

  “Yes. Very nice young woman. Math major at McGill. Working here is her summer job, and she’s just wrapping up. We had a lovely talk about polynomials.”

  “Did she mention anything about anybody else staying in the vicinity?”

  “Actually, she said we were her only charges. The summer people are all gone. Once we leave, she’s going to batten down the hatches for winter.”

  “Mummy!” Leonora, calling down from the nursery.

  “Her Majesty awakens,” Fiona says, pushing her chair back and heading upstairs.

  Once the two men are alone, Leo says, “This young woman. Was she by any chance blonde? With freckles?” He has been strangely disinclined to tell his wife about the dream he had on the dock.

  “No, actually. She looked to be Japanese. Why?”

  The Stumpfigges pack and leave for Montreal shortly after dinner. They’re going to touch down in Toronto, then catch the red-eye west to visit Jennifer’s family in Alberta. “Say hello to Lurch and Thing and Cousin It for us,” Fiona calls as she and Leo wave to the departing car.

  They put Leonora to bed early, then turn in themselves not long after. They’re going to pack in the morning in time to get to Montreal and take the noon flight home. It is past midnight when Leonora’s wails wake both of them.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Oh, honey, that’s okay. Everybody does that sometimes. Were you scared? Did you have a bad dream?” Fiona gathers the little girl up and away from her sodden sheets. Leo is standing behind her in the nursery doorway. “We’ll get these wet pyjamas off you and put you in one of Daddy’s big old T-shirts. Won’t that be funny? You in one of Daddy’s big old—”

  “They told me I have to go out to them! I have to go out in the woods and be with them!”

  “Who?” Leo. Fiona turns and shakes her head at him. He ignores her. “Who told you that?”

  “It was just a dream,” Fiona says, holding her daughter tight and glaring at Leo. “You’re not going anywhere. You’ll sleep with Mummy and Daddy tonight, all warm and safe.”

  “No! They’ll come inside me! If I don’t go where they are, they’ll come inside me! And they’ll stay inside me! For ever and ever and ever and ever and—” The child clutches her groin and twists in her mother’s arms, her voice rising in a wordless scream.

  Leo has no idea what he’s doing. Or where he’s going. Or why. Fiona, to judge from the look she threw at him over their shrieking daughter’s head when he turned and left the nursery, thinks he’s copping out. Making himself scarce just when things get tough. And maybe she’s right.

  He’s thrown on some jeans
and a sweatshirt. Thrust his bare feet into his running shoes. Now he’s walking the path into the woods. Armed with a flashlight he found in a drawer in the kitchen and—what? A dream?

  Believe her. Believe her. Believe her.

  It’s pitch black. He shines the light in front of his feet. Sees a dark mass. Bends down to look. The mangled remains of a small animal.

  To the right, the land slopes sharply down to the lake. Fiona would have gone to the left, looking for a flat stone.

  He steps carefully through the undergrowth. Not too far in, he stops. Stands perfectly still. Listening. Feeling the cool night wind on his face.

  Leo is gone long enough for some of Fiona’s anger to change to worry. Then, when she hears the door opening and his step on the stair, she hardens up again. Turns carefully in bed so as not to wake Leonora. Keeps her back to her husband when he enters the bedroom. Says nothing.

  It had taken half an hour of rocking and crooning, a warm bath and a children’s aspirin crushed in orange juice just to get Leonora settled down. Then it was ages before she fell asleep. And all that time Fiona was as mad as hell, thinking she might as well be a single mother. The worst thing about it was how close she came to taking it out on Leonora, when the kid just would not shut up. How close she was to losing it. For the first time in four years.

  Leo is taking his clothes off. Now he’s sitting carefully on the bed so as not to wake Leonora. “I’m sorry,” he says. Fiona keeps her back turned. Says nothing. “I wimped out. I left you here to deal with her because I couldn’t take it. You know I can’t stand it when she’s really upset the way she was. But I’m sorry.” A pause. Then, “Do you want me to sleep in the other room?”

  They’ve never done that—slept apart after a fight. His suggestion strikes her as absurd, like something out of a situation comedy. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she mutters. “Just get into bed.” She gives it a few more minutes before turning and putting her arm around him.

  “Leo. You’re shaking.”