Little Girls E-Book

Ronald Malfi

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 520

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A woman returns to her childhood home to face up to the ghosts of her past in this chilling and unsettling novel from the bestselling author of Come With Me "It's your house now." Following the horrific death of her father, Laurie Genarro returns to her childhood home along with her husband Ted, and their daughter Susan. Her father was always a cold and distant man, and as dementia took hold of him in final months of his life he grew more and more paranoid. Laurie soon discovers that he has left the house in a terrible state: pages are torn from books on the shelves, floorboards have been cracked and gouged and holes punched in the walls. The belvedere at the top of the house, the place from which her father leapt to his death, is locked, and the imposing greenhouse in the woods—the one that sends a shiver through her when she sees it again—is somehow still standing. And then her daughter introduces her to her new friend Abigail, a friend who seems to remind Laurie so much of another little girl, one who should be dead. Because the house has long held secrets for Laurie, things she has tried to bury ever since she was young and now it seems they are coming to the surface.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for Ronald Malfi

Also by Ronald Malfi and Available from Titan Books

Copyright

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Dedication

All Kids Are Creepy: An Introduction To Little Girls

Part One: Homecoming: Laurie

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two: Sparrows Point: Abigail

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part Three: In The House of Many Windows: Sadie

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

About the Author

PRAISE FOR RONALD MALFI

“Ronald Malfi is the real deal—you don’t read this book, you live it.” JOSH WINNING, author of Burn the Negative and Heads Will Roll

“To read Ronald Malfi is to find yourself in your favorite bar, drink in hand, music you love coming out of the speakers, the comforting babble of the crowd around you. An intriguing stranger sidles up to you and begins to tell you a story. Before you know it, all those other noises fall away and you’re enrapt. You barely even notice the glint of the blade as it slides into your gut. Malfi is just that bewitching, just that sneaky, just that brutal, just that good at what he does.” NAT CASSIDY, author of Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home

“Malfi is a master of shadowy noir, nerve-wracking suspense and balls-out horror, drawing the reader deep into a winding web of terror from which there is no escape.” DAVID DEMCHUK, author of The Butcher’s Daughter and RED X

“Heavyweight horror, a total knockout.” DANIEL KRAUS, New York Times bestseller and author of Whalefall

“Malfi does what he does best: He creates fully fleshed-out characters and pitches them into uncomfortable and very realistic situations.” Esquire

ALSO BY RONALD MALFIAND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Come with MeBlack MouthGhostwrittenThey LurkThe NarrowsSmall Town HorrorSenselessWe Should Have LeftWell Enough Alone:Short StoriesThe Hive(coming soon)

ALSO BY RONALD MALFI

Bone WhiteThe Night ParadeDecember ParkFloating StaircaseCradle LakeThe AscentSnowShamrock AlleyPassengerVia DolorosaThe Nature of MonstersThe Fall of NeverThe Space Between

NOVELLAS

BorealisThe StrangerThe SeparationSkullbellyAfter the FadeThe Mourning HouseA Shrill KeeningMr. Cables

Little Girls

Print edition ISBN: 9781835410493

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835410509

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: October 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Ronald Malfi 2025

Ronald Malfi asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

Waterstones,

or your preferred retailer.

For Sam, who holds the key...

Dear, you should not stay so late,Twilight is not good for maidens;Should not loiter in the glenIn the haunts of goblin men.

—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI,GOBLIN MARKET

ALL KIDS ARE CREEPY:AN INTRODUCTIONTO LITTLE GIRLS

This novel came at an interesting time in my life. My second daughter was born at some point during the writing of it, and I was by then firmly seated in the jostling, turbulent cockpit of fatherhood. My previous novel, December Park, had just been published, and not only was that story something near and dear to my heart, but its road to publication began with nothing shy of a miracle: resurrection. Namely, the resurrection of an old manuscript I’d written back when I was in high school. There was a measure of warmth to it, because it primarily dealt with a group of friends, and possessed a touch of nostalgia, too, seeing as it takes place in the early 1990s. There was also decidedly nothing supernatural about that novel, which was a bit of a departure for me at the time. (The novel that had been published prior to December Park had been The Narrows, which, while serving as a metaphor for the decay of small-town life, saw literal monsters run rampant over the course of its 400-odd pages.)

At this point in my life, I started pondering the curious and often disconcerting nature of little children, and more specifically, little girls, seeing as I was now the father of two. The way their eyes sometimes look past you, as if seeing someone—or something—that isn’t there; the way they seem to intuit certain things, their tiny brows furrowing as if to dissect the cosmically implausible; the way, one evening, my older daughter, maybe just three or four years old at the time, commented that there was a package on the front porch, and although she had no rationale for knowing this, sure enough she was right. (This same daughter claimed to spy my dead grandfather standing in the bathroom, although she didn’t say that was who he was at the time—just an old man with white hair, later identified from a photograph.) I’ve since been around other family members’ children, watched them hatch and grow and bumble about their single-minded business, leaving me to arrive at one simple and unwavering conclusion: all kids are creepy.

I am less interested in writing about literal ghosts than I am in writing about people who believe in them. I realized this once I began thinking about the storyline for what would become Little Girls. I wanted it to be a book about a family, and the secrets families sometimes keep, pinned against the backdrop of a modern gothic ghost story. I wanted it to concern people who were not wholly good or wholly bad, but people who were wholly real. There is a motif of indeterminacy running through the novel, and not just when it comes to plot or, arguably, resolution, but in the characters themselves. If you don’t know how to feel about Ted and Laurie Genarro, well, that’s kind of the point. If you find you don’t even much care for them, then that’s even better: we often feel this way about real people in real life, and so I started wondering why fiction had to be any different.

Agents and editors (and, I suppose, some writers) will readily wave that “likeability” banner high above their heads. Characters, they posit, must be likeable for a story to connect with its audience. But is that true? Is American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman particularly likeable? Is Patricia Highsmith’s serial-killing con artist, Tom Ripley, the kind of guy with whom you’d play a round of golf? See, I don’t believe characters need to be likeable, nor do I really believe likeability is what these agents, editors, and whoever else mean when they say this. I think what they mean is a character must be relatable, so that we understand and commiserate with their plight. That was what I wanted to portray with the Genarro family in this novel: the father is self-absorbed, the daughter is spoiled and woefully immature for her age, and the mother, Laurie, is saddled with so much personal baggage that even she has blocked much of it out. The fun here would be in exploring Hemingway’s iceberg theory of fiction, keeping secrets buried for as long as I could, then ultimately employing all manner of tactical analepsis and literary acrobatics to arrive at the revelations near the end of the book. To speak more like a human being, I’d get to muck around in these characters’ heads while keeping many of their woes from the reader until I wanted to drop them like bombs.

I had all these lofty aspirations for this novel, and thought my intentions for writing it were equally as lofty. However, once I’d completed the first draft, I realized exactly what I’d done. You see, December Park, the previous novel, was about me saying goodbye to my childhood. I knew that as I was writing it, and it’s a bit sentimental because of this fact. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Little Girls was the next step on the evolutionary ladder not just as a writer but as a human being. I had put my childhood to rest, and now I was exploring the next stage of my life in writing about parenthood and the concerns and fears and joys and tribulations that come with that territory. If December Park is my ode to childhood, then Little Girls is me embracing the responsibilities and fears of parenthood.

An anecdote: when the book was being prepped for its initial publication, the publisher sent me samples of various covers to choose from. They were all equally creepy and I didn’t necessarily have a preference, so I showed all three to my young daughter, who ultimately chose the artwork that depicted a pair of rotting doll arms reaching toward the reader. That was the cover that was chosen for the first trade paperback edition of Little Girls, originally published in 2015 by Kensington Books.

Later, when I told my daughter that the publisher had agreed with her selection and those creepy doll arms would, indeed, be on the cover of the book, she looked me dead in the eye from her booster seat and, with a Cheerio pinched between her tiny thumb and forefinger, said: “I know.”

RONALD MALFIAnnapolis, MarylandJune 9, 2025

PART ONE

HOMECOMING:LAURIE

CHAPTER 1

They had been expecting a woman, Dora Lorton, to greet them upon their arrival, but as Ted finessed the Volvo station wagon up the long driveway toward the house, they could see there was a man on the porch. Tall and gaunt, he had a face like a withered apple core and wore a long black overcoat that looked incongruous in the stirrings of an early summer. The man watched them as Ted pulled the station wagon up beside a dusty gray Cadillac that was parked in front of the porch. For one perplexing instant, Laurie Genarro thought the man on the porch was her father, so newly dead that his orphaned spirit still lingered at the house on Annapolis Road.

“Glad to see Lurch from The Addams Family has found work,” Ted commented as he shut off the car.

“It looks like a haunted house,” Susan spoke up from the backseat, a comment that seemed to underscore Laurie’s initial impression of the ghostlike man who stood beneath the partial shade of the porch alcove. Susan was ten and had just begun vocalizing her critical observations to anyone within earshot. “And who’s Lurch?”

“Ah,” said Ted. “When did popular culture cease being popular?”

“I’m only ten,” Susan reminded him, closing the Harry Potter book she had been reading for much of the drive down from Connecticut. She had been brooding and sullen for the majority of the trip, having already pitched a fit back in Hartford about having to spend summer vacation away from her friends and in a strange city, all of it because of a grandfather she had never known.

Who could blame her? Laurie thought now, still staring out the passenger window at the man on the porch. I’d pitch a fit, too. In fact, I just might do it yet.

Ted cupped his hands around his mouth. “Thank you for flying Genarro Airlines! Please make sure your tray tables are up before debarking.”

Susan giggled, her mood having changed for the better somewhere along Interstate 95. “Barking!” she cried happily, misinterpreting her father’s comment, then proceeded to bark like a dog. Ted wasted no time barking right along with her.

Laurie got out of the car and shivered despite the afternoon’s mild temperature. In the wake of her father’s passing, and for no grounded reason, she had expected her old childhood home to look different—empty, perhaps, like the molted skin of a reptile left behind in the dirt, as if the old house had nothing left to do but wither and die just as its master had done. But no, it was still the same house it had always been: the redbrick frame beneath a slouching mansard roof; Italianate cornices of a design suggestive of great pinwheels cleaved in half; a trio of arched windows on either side of the buckling front porch; all of which was capped by a functional belvedere that stood up against the cloudy June sky like the turret of a tiny castle. That’s where it happened, Laurie thought with a chill as her eyes clung to the belvedere. It looked like a tiny bell tower sans bell, but was really a little room with windows on all four sides. Her parents had used it mostly for storage back when they had all still lived here together, before her parents’ separation. Laurie had been forbidden to go up there as a child.

Trees crowded close to the house and intermittent slashes of sunlight came through the branches and danced along the east wall. The lawn was unruly and thick cords of ivy climbed the brickwork. Many windows on the ground floor stood open, perhaps to air out the old house, and the darkness inside looked cold and bottomless.

Laurie waved timidly at the man on the porch. She thought she saw his head bow to her. Images of old gothic horrors bombarded her head. Then she looked over her shoulder to where Ted and Susan stood at the edge of a small stone well that rose up nearly a foot from a wild patch of grass and early summer flowers on the front lawn. Yes, I remember the well. Back when she had been a child, the well had been housed beneath a wooden portico where, in the springtime, sparrows nested. She recalled tossing stones into its murky depths and how it sometimes smelled funny in the dead heat of late summer. Now, the wooden portico was gone and the well was nothing but a crumbling stone pit in the earth, covered by a large plank of wood.

Without waiting for Ted and Susan to catch up, Laurie climbed the creaky steps of the porch, a firm smile already on her face. The ride down to Maryland from Connecticut had exhausted her and the prospect of all that lay ahead in the house and with the lawyer left her empty and unfeeling. She extended one hand to the man in the black overcoat and tried not to let her emotions show. “Hello. I’m Laurie Genarro.”

A pale hand with very long fingers withdrew from one of the pockets of the overcoat. The hand was cold and smooth in Laurie’s own. “The daughter,” the man said. His face was narrow but large, with a great prognathous jaw, a jutting chin, and the rheumy, downturned eyes of a basset hound. With the exception of a wispy sweep of colorless hair across the forehead, his scalp was bald. Laurie thought him to be in his late sixties.

“Yes,” Laurie said. “Mr. Brashear was my father.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” She withdrew her hand from his, thankful to be rid of the cold, bloodless grasp. “I was expecting Ms. Lorton . . .”

“I’m Dora’s brother, Felix Lorton. Dora’s inside, straightening up the place for you and your family. She was uncomfortable returning here alone after . . . well, after what happened. My sister can be foolishly superstitious. I apologize if I’ve frightened you.”

“Not at all. Don’t be silly.” But he had frightened her, if just a little.

Across the front yard, Susan squealed with pleasure. Ted had lifted the corner of the plank of wood covering the well, and they were both peering down into it. Susan said something inaudible and Ted put back his head and laughed.

“My husband and daughter,” Laurie said. She recognized a curious hint of apology in her tone and was quickly embarrassed by it.

“Splendid,” Felix Lorton said with little emotion. Then he held out a brass key for her.

“I have my own.” David Cushing, her father’s lawyer, had mailed her a copy of the key along with the paperwork last week.

“The locks have been changed recently,” said Felix Lorton.

“Oh.” She extended her hand and opened it, allowing Lorton to drop the key onto her palm. She was silently thankful she didn’t have to touch the older man’s flesh again. It had been like touching the flesh of a corpse.

“Hi, there!” It was Ted, peering up at them through the slats in the porch railing while sliding his hands into the pockets of his linen trousers. There was the old heartiness in Ted’s voice now. It was something he affected when in the company of a stranger whom he’d had scarce little time to assess. Ted was two years past his fortieth birthday but could pass for nearly a full decade younger. His teeth were white and straight, his skin unblemished and healthy-looking, and his eyes were both youthful and soulful at the same time, a combination many would have deemed otherwise incompatible. He kept himself in good shape, running a few miles every morning before retiring to his home office for the bulk of the afternoon where he worked. He could work for hours upon end in that home office back in Hartford without becoming fidgety or agitated, classical music issuing from the Bose speakers his only companion. Laurie envied his discipline.

“That’s my husband, Ted,” Laurie said, “and our daughter, Susan.”

Susan sidled up beside her father, her sneakers crunching over loose gravel. Her big hearty smile was eerily similar to his. She had on a long-sleeved cotton jersey and lacrosse shorts. At ten, her legs were already slim and bronze, and she liked to run and play sports and had many friends back in Hartford. She was certainly her father’s daughter.

“Nice to meet you folks. I’m Felix Lorton.”

“There are frogs in the well,” Susan said excitedly.

Lorton smiled. It was like watching a cadaver come alive on an autopsy table, and the sight of that smile chilled Laurie’s bones. “I suppose there are,” Lorton said to Susan. He leaned over the railing to address the girl, his profile stark and angular and suggestive of some predatory bird peering down from a tree branch at some blissfully unaware prey. “Snakes, sometimes, too.”

Susan’s eyes widened. “Snakes?”

“Oh, yes. After a heavy rain, and if it’s not covered properly, that well fills up and it’s possible to see all sorts of critters moving about down there.”

“Neat!” Susan chirped. “Do they bite?”

“Only if you bite first.” Lorton chomped his teeth hollowly. Then he turned his cadaverous grin onto Laurie. “I suppose I should take you folks inside now and introduce you to Dora.”

“Yes, please,” Laurie said, and they followed Felix Lorton into the house.

She had grown up here, though the time spent within these shadowed rooms and narrow hallways seemed so long ago that it was now as foreign to her as some childhood nightmare, or perhaps a threaded segment of some other person’s life. Her parents had divorced when she was not much older than Susan, and she and her mother had left this house and Maryland altogether to live with her mother’s family in Norfolk, Virginia. Subsequent visits to the house were sporadic at best, dictated by the whim of a father who had been distant and cold even when they had lived beneath the same roof. Her mother had never accompanied her on those visits, and when they stopped altogether, Laurie felt a warm relief wash over her. In her adult life, Laurie had chosen to maintain her distance, and she had never returned to this unwelcoming, tomblike place. Why should she force a relationship on a father who clearly had no interest in one? Even now, despite the horrors that had allegedly befallen her father, Laurie felt little guilt about her prolonged absence from his life.

“This place could be a stunner if it was renovated properly,” Ted commented as Lorton led them through a grand entranceway. “I didn’t realize the house was so big.”

“Is it a mansion?” Susan asked no one in particular.

“No,” Ted answered, a wry grin on his face now, “but it’s close.”

The foyer itself was large and circular, from which various hallways speared off like spokes on a wheel. There was an immense crystal chandelier directly above the entranceway and a set of stairs against one wall leading to the second story. The floors were scuffed and dulled mahogany, with some noticeable gashes dug into the dark wood. Some of the floorboards creaked.

Laurie paused at the foot of the stairs. She felt Lorton hovering close behind her. A cool sweat rose to the surface of her skin and the nape of her neck prickled hotly. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out and grasping the decorative head of the newel post for support. “I just need a minute.”

Ted asked if she was okay.

“It’s just a bit overwhelming, that’s all.”

Frightened, Susan said, “Mommy?”

Laurie offered the girl a tepid smile, which Susan returned wholeheartedly. “Mommy’s okay, sweetheart,” she said, and was glad when her voice did not waver.

Ted came up behind Laurie and squeezed her shoulder with one firm hand.

“It has been a while since you were last here, Mrs. Genarro?” Felix Lorton asked.

“It has, yes,” she confirmed. “I spent my childhood here but haven’t been back in many years.”

Felix Lorton nodded. “Understandable.”

After Laurie regained her composure, Felix Lorton led them into the parlor. The walls were drab, the paint cracked and peeling. A comfortable sofa and loveseat sat corralled on a threadbare oriental carpet before a dark stone hearth. A few books stood on a bookshelf, while an ancient Victrola cabinet squatted in one corner, its lacquered hood raised. Beside the phonograph was a small upright piano, shiny and black. A tarnished candelabrum stood on the piano’s hood. At the opposite end of the room, a liquor cabinet with a mesh screen for a door displayed a collection of antediluvian bottles. The windows in this part of the house faced a green yard and, beyond, a wooden fence that separated the side of the house and backyard from the neighboring property which, from what Laurie was able to glimpse, looked overgrown with heavy trees and unkempt shrubbery. The whole room smelled unsparingly of Pine-Sol.

“Strange,” commented Ted. He was staring at a large gilded frame on one wall. The frame held no lithograph, no portrait, though bits of it still clung to the inside of the frame. Aside from that, it framed nothing but the blank wall on which it sat. “What happened to the picture?”

Felix Lorton cleared his throat and said, “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“Did you work for my father as well, Mr. Lorton?” Laurie asked as she walked slowly around the room. Beneath the cloying smell of Pine-Sol, she could detect the stale odor of cigar smoke, and for a brief moment she was suddenly ushered back to her youth. Her father had often smoked the horrid things. The parlor had been arranged differently back then, her mother having brought to it a domestic femininity it now sorely lacked. Cigar smoking had not been permitted in the house, and Laurie recalled a sudden image of her father standing just beyond the windows of this room, firmly planted in the strip of lawn that ran alongside the fence while he puffed away on one of his cigars. The vision was so distant, Laurie wondered if it was a real memory or some nonsense she had just conjured from thin air.

“No, ma’am, I did not. My sister was assigned to take care of your father from the service. When things got . . . more difficult . . . the service brought on another girl to assist with the caretaking responsibilities. A night nurse. You’re aware of this, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“I had been coming around on occasion in the past few months, Mrs. Genarro, mostly to do minor repairs. Old houses like these . . .” There was no need for him to complete the thought. “When Dora said the locks needed to be changed, I came and changed them. That sort of thing.”

“Why were the locks changed?” she asked.

“You’ll have to speak with Dora about that.”

Laurie frowned. “If it was necessary to have someone maintain the property, I wish the service would have told me. I don’t like the idea of you having to take care of my father’s things for free.”

“It wasn’t like that at all, ma’am. My sister had simply requested I come with her so she wouldn’t have to be here alone.”

“What about the other girl?” Laurie asked. “The night nurse?”

“They were never here at the same time. They worked in shifts. Toward the end, your father required around-the-clock care, as I’ve been told. I presume you were kept up to date on all of this?”

“Yes. I was aware of my father’s condition.” Then she frowned. “Why wouldn’t Dora want to be here alone?”

“You’ll have to ask her, ma’am,” said Lorton. It was becoming his automatic response. “If you don’t mind my asking, where do you folks currently reside?”

“Hartford, Connecticut,” Laurie said. She feigned interest in the crumbling mortar of the fireplace mantel. As a child, there had been framed photographs and various other items on the mantelpiece. Now, it was barren. “It took us longer to get here than we thought,” she added, as if the distance excused her absence from this place and her father’s life.

What do I have to feel guilty about? she wondered. He was never there for me; why should I have been there for him? Anyway, what business is it of Felix Lorton’s?

“Understandable. Please have a seat and I’ll go fetch my sister,” Lorton said, extending a hand toward the sofa and loveseat. “Would any of you like something to drink?”

“Ice water would be great,” Ted said. He was examining the spines of the few books on the bookshelf.

“Do you have any grape juice, please?” Susan asked.

The question caused Felix Lorton to suck on his lower lip while his eyes narrowed to slits. A sound like a frog’s croak rumbled at the back of the man’s throat.

“Water will be fine for her, too,” Laurie assured him.

“Very well,” Lorton said, then disappeared down the hall that led to the kitchen.

“All these books have pages torn out of them,” Ted said, replacing one of the leather-bound editions back on the shelf. “How strange.”

Laurie went to one of the windows and looked out onto the side yard. The lawn was spangled with sunlight and the wooden fence was green and furry with mildew. Tree branches drooped over the fence from the neighboring yard, the trees themselves all but blotting out the house next door. She could make out shuttered windows and dark, peeling siding. A green car of indeterminable make and model was parked in the neighbor’s driveway and there was another vehicle with some sort of emblem on the door parked on the street. The Russ family had lived there when she was a girl. Laurie wondered who lived there now.

“This house smells funny,” Susan said. She was crouching down to peer into the black, sooty maw of the hearth. “It reminds me of Miss Tannis’s house back home.” Bertha Tannis was the elderly widow who lived two houses down from the Genarros in Hartford. When she was younger, Susan would sometimes go there after school if both Laurie and Ted weren’t home to greet her.

Ted went over and sat on the loveseat. He sighed dramatically as he draped an arm over the high back. “I should have asked the old galantuomo for a scotch and soda.”

“Is this where bats live?” Susan asked, still peering into the fireplace. She was trying to look up into the chimney, but there was a tri-panel screen in the way blocking her view.

“It’s a fireplace, Snoozin,” Ted said, using their daughter’s much hated nickname. “You know what that is.”

“I know what it is,” she retorted, “but there’s animals out here. Not like we have at home. Didn’t you hear what the man said about the snakes in the well?”

“There are no snakes in the well,” Ted assured her. He sounded bored, tired. It had been a long drive down from Connecticut for him, too. “He was just pulling your leg.”

“What does ‘pulling your leg’ mean?”

“It means he was joking.”

“I know it means that, Daddy, but why does it mean that?”

“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Felix Lorton returned with two tall glasses of ice water. He set them on the coffee table between the sofa and the loveseat. Laurie caught Lorton eyeing Ted ruefully, as if he did not approve of the man lounging on the loveseat in such a casual fashion.

“Thank you,” Ted said, picking up his glass and taking a healthy drink from it.

“Why does someone say ‘pulling your leg’ when they’re telling you a joke?” Susan asked Felix Lorton.

The man straightened his back and lifted his head just enough so that the bands of loose flesh beneath his neck hung like a dewlap. He cleared his throat. “To pull one’s leg is to make a fool of them, as in to trip them up and make them fall down.” Felix Lorton spoke with an authority Laurie found comical, particularly when addressing a ten-year-old girl. Laurie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Neat,” Susan said.

“Yeah, neat,” Ted added. “I didn’t know that, either.”

“My sister will be with you folks shortly. If you’ll excuse me, there are some things I need to attend to before we leave.”

Laurie thanked him and Lorton effected a slight bow. His black coat flared out around his ankles as he shuffled quickly down the hallway. Blood thinners, it occurred to Laurie. That’s why he’s wearing the coat and that’s why his hand was so cold. He must be on blood thinners for medical reasons. A moment later, Laurie heard a door far off in the house squeal open and then close again. With little carpeting to dull the noise, the sound echoed throughout the house.

Susan skipped over to the coffee table and scooped up her glass of water. She hummed a soft melody under her breath.

“Don’t spill it,” warned her father.

Susan scowled and, for a moment, she looked to Laurie like a grown woman. Those dark eyes, that lustrous black hair, the copper-colored skin and long, coltish legs . . . at times, the girl looked so much like her father that Laurie felt like an outsider among them, an interloper in some other family’s life. Laurie was the fair-skinned freckled one with a plain face and eyes that were maybe a hair too far apart. Summertime, while her husband and daughter tanned with the luxuriance of Roman gods, Laurie burned a fiery red, then shed semitransparent sheets of peeled skin for the next several days.

“How come you didn’t tell me it was such a nice house, Laurie?” Ted asked from the loveseat.

“Didn’t I?”

“A house like this could go for top dollar, even in this lousy economy. I’ll bet it’s worth a fortune. It just needs a little TLC, that’s all.”

“I guess we’ll find out when we speak to the lawyer.”

“What’s ‘TLC’?” Susan asked.

“You’re dripping water on the rug,” Ted told the girl.

Susan set her drink down on the coffee table, then went over to the piano.

“B flat,” Ted said.

Susan pecked out the correct key. It rang in the stillness of the otherwise silent room.

“D sharp,” Ted said.

Susan said, “Oh,” and her index finger moved up and down the keyboard like a dowsing rod, counting the keys silently, but with her mouth moving. She tapped another key, lower on the fingerboard.

“Yuck,” Ted said from the loveseat. “Are you sure? D sharp? Try again.”

Under her breath, Susan mumbled, “Sharp is . . . up . . .” Her lithe fingers walked up a series of notes until she rested on one. She hammered the note a few times, smiling to herself.

Ted stuck his tongue out between his lips and produced a sound that approximated flatulence. This set Susan to giggling. She turned around, her face red, her eyes squinting in her laughter. Laurie watched her daughter, smiling a little herself now. She was glad to have Susan back to her old cheerful self again, after the sullenness of the long car ride down from Connecticut. Then Susan’s laughter died and the girl’s smile quickly faded from her face. Laurie followed her daughter’s gaze to the alcove that led out into the main hall. A woman stood in the doorway. Her face was sharp and white, her iron-colored hair cropped short like a boy’s. She wore a paisley-patterned frock and was in the process of wiping her hands on a dishtowel when Laurie spotted her and offered the woman a somewhat conciliatory smile.

“You must be Dora,” Laurie said, moving swiftly across the room with her hand extended.

“That’s right,” said the woman. She had a clipped, parochial voice. She stuffed the dishtowel partway into a pocket of her frock and shook Laurie’s hand with just the tips of her fingers. She looked to be in her early fifties. There were faint lines bracketing her mouth and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. The eyes themselves were an icy gray.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Laurie Genarro. That’s my husband, Ted, and my daughter, Susan.”

“I’m sorry we must meet under these circumstances,” Dora Lorton said as she nodded her head at each of them curtly. “My condolences, Mrs. Genarro.”

“Thank you.”

“If you’ve got bags with you, Felix can help bring them in from the car.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Laurie told her. “We haven’t decided whether we’re staying here or not.”

“Why wouldn’t you stay? It’s your house now.”

The thought chilled her.

Ted stood from the sofa, straightening the creases in his linen pants. “There’s supposed to be an historic inn downtown. It sounded interesting.”

“George Washington stayed there!” Susan chimed in.

Dora’s brow furrowed. “Downtown?”

“Annapolis,” clarified Ted.

“Well, it’s your house now,” Dora Lorton repeated, and not without a hint of exasperation. “I suppose you folks can do as you like.”

Ted shot Laurie a look, one that she interpreted as, Cheerful old coot, isn’t she? Once again, Laurie had to fight off spontaneous laughter.

“The house is clean and everything in it is functional,” Dora went on in her parochial tone. “Your father was not a man of excesses, Mrs. Genarro, as I’m sure you can see, so you’ll find very little items of a frivolous nature in the house. There are no televisions, no radios, nothing like that. What items there are—Mr. Brashear’s personal items, as opposed to house items, I mean—have been relocated to his study. When was the last time you were here at the house, Mrs. Genarro?”

“Not since I was a teenager, and that was just for a brief visit. I can hardly remember. And, please, call me Laurie.”

“Do you recall where the study is?”

Laurie considered and then pointed down one of the corridors that branched off the main hall. It had been a small library when she had been a child, and she could easily imagine it as a study now. “Is it the room just at the end of that hall?”

“Yes. Do you require a rundown of the rest of the house?”

“A rundown?”

“A tour of it, in other words. Seeing how it’s been such a long time.”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. I remember it well enough. And what I don’t remember, I can figure out.”

“Nonetheless, there are a few things I feel I should show you.” Dora’s chilly gray eyes volleyed between Laurie and Ted. “Which one of you does the cooking?”

“Mostly, it’s me,” Laurie said.

“Laurie’s a splendid cook,” Ted added. His smile was charming, but Laurie could see that it held no influence over Dora. “I can hardly microwave a salad.”

“I figured I would ask nonetheless, just so my assumptions wouldn’t offend anyone,” Dora said, marching right past Ted’s attempt at humor.

“Oh,” Laurie said, “not at all.”

“Very well,” said Dora, those cold eyes settling back on Laurie. “You’ll come with me then?”

“Of course.”

“Can I go play outside?” Susan chirped to her mother.

“Not just yet, Susan.”

“But I’m bored!”

“I’ll go with her,” Ted said, taking up Susan’s hand.

“All right,” Laurie said. She shared a look with her husband then . . . and wondered if he could decipher the clutter of emotions behind her eyes. Not that she could decipher them herself. She was weak, tired, troubled, overwhelmed. There was a darkness here in this house, she knew—something cold and widespread, like black water gradually filling up behind the walls—and she thought it might have been the residual ghost of her parents’ divorce and Laurie’s subsequent extraction from this place. Extraction, she thought, summoning the image of a diseased tooth being liberated from purpling gums. That’s good.

Laurie followed Dora into the kitchen. It was a spacious room with brick walls and stainless-steel appliances. A small circular table stood before a bay window that looked out on the backyard and the moldy green fence that separated the property from the house next door. There were plenty of windows and the room was generously bright.

“You lived here as a child?” Dora said. She led Laurie over to the stovetop.

“I did, yes.”

“It’s a gas range. The appliances are in fair working order, though I can’t be certain how old they are. You’ve cooked on a gas range before?”

“We have a gas range back home.”

“Let me show you, anyway,” said Dora. She turned the knob and let the burner tick until a blue flame ignited. The smell of gas rose up to greet them. Dora turned the stove off and moved to the refrigerator. She opened the refrigerator door. It was stocked, but not obnoxiously so. Laurie could see many of the items within hadn’t yet been opened, and it occurred to her that either Dora or Felix Lorton had recently gone to the supermarket in anticipation of their arrival. “You’ll find it is stocked with milk, cheese, bread, juices, and plenty of condiments. There are frozen meats and poultry in the freezer as well, Mrs. Genarro, and the pantry is sufficiently stocked with cereals, pastas, and canned goods. I didn’t bother getting any fruits or vegetables or other perishables from the market, as they tend to go bad quickly in the summer if not eaten right away. I wasn’t sure how long you folks planned to stay.”

“I’m not sure we know yet, either.”

“It’s understandable,” Dora intoned, sounding just then like her brother. Next, Dora led her over to the dishwasher. “Standard functions, quite easy to use. There is detergent beneath the sink.”

Beyond the curved bay windows, Laurie saw Ted and Susan galloping across the green lawn. They raced along the fence and up the lawn’s slight incline to where the trees grew denser and wild blackberry bushes and honeysuckle exploded like fireworks from the ground. The tree limbs that overhung the fence waved sleepily in the breeze, throwing moving shadows against the mossy pickets.

“There’s a list of emergency numbers beside the telephone,” Dora went on. “For your convenience I’ve included the number for Mr. Brashear’s lawyer, a Mr. Cushing, I believe, though I presume you already have his contact information.”

“Yes, but thank you.”

“I’ve left my home number for you as well, in the event you have any further need of me.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.” It seemed all she was capable of saying to the woman. Also, it occurred to Laurie that Dora Lorton hadn’t looked at her a single time since they’d entered the kitchen. “Have you been working here the whole time, since I called the care service?”

“Yes. It had just been me for a while, until Mr. Brashear’s condition worsened and we had to bring on more help. I was assisted by a younger woman named Ms. Larosche. Do you know of her?”

“No, I don’t. I mean, I was aware the service had added a second caretaker because of the need for twenty-four-hour care, but I’d never spoken to her.”

“Nor will you need to. She only worked nights. I handled the household chores. Any questions you might have can be answered by me.”

“And Felix, your brother? He had been helping out around here, too?”

At last, Dora’s eyes ticked up in Laurie’s direction. “That’s just been recently.”

“Did my father get terribly out of hand? I haven’t heard the extent of it. I mean, given the way things ended, I could only imagine what it must have been like.”

“You’ve spoken with Mr. Claiborne?”

“Yes,” said Laurie. Mr. Claiborne was the managing director of Mid-Atlantic Homecare Services. Their conversations on the phone had been strained but polite. The last call she had received from him had been to inform her that her father had killed himself. While he had offered his sympathy, Laurie could tell Mr. Claiborne’s primary concern was toward any potential lawsuit his company might be facing in the wake of such tragedy. Laurie had assured him she would take no legal action against him or his employees. “He explained the situation as best he could,” Laurie continued. “Nonetheless, Ms. Lorton, I feel I owe you some sense of gratitude for looking after my father.”

“It was my job.”

“I just wanted to thank you. And Ms. Larosche, too.”

“What’s done is done.” As if to brush away crumbs, Dora swept a hand across the Formica countertop, though Laurie hadn’t seen anything there. “Come along and I’ll show you the rest,” said Dora.

CHAPTER 2

They went to the laundry room off the kitchen and Dora showed her where the detergents and fabric softeners were kept. “The lint trap in the dryer builds up very quickly. Mind you, keep an eye on it. It’s a fire hazard, you know.”

“Ours is the same way at home.” Laurie could care less about the dryer. “I’m sorry if this sounds rude,” she went on quickly, “but I can’t help but wonder if you’ve got a place to go.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was a fulltime job being my father’s caretaker for the last couple of years. Now that he’s dead, I hope you’ve got other work.” She laughed nervously. “I feel like I’m firing you.”

“Don’t be silly.” Dora pulled the lint trap out, showed Laurie that the screen had recently been purged of lint, and then snapped it back into place.

“I could tell the dementia had gotten much worse the last time I called him,” Laurie confessed. “That was maybe six months ago. Was the dementia really bad toward the end?”

“Wasn’t the dementia that killed him, of course. Not directly, anyway.”

“Of course,” Laurie said. Mr. Claiborne had told her what had killed him. Her father’s lawyer had told her as well. She wondered if she would be able to summon enough courage to go up into the belvedere. Despite her lack of empathy for her dead father, she found thinking about it disturbing nonetheless.

“I’ve readied the bedrooms for you and your family, Mrs. Genarro, and it’s up to you if you want to stay here or someplace else. I suppose I’d understand if you wanted to stay away from the house, given what happened. No hard feelings.”

“I appreciate all your work,” Laurie said. “Were you here when it happened?”

Once again, Dora Lorton’s steely eyes settled on Laurie. The question had just found its way out of Laurie’s mouth—she hadn’t even realized she’d meant to speak it. The heartbeat of silence that resonated now in its wake was as profound as a gunshot.

“No, I wasn’t,” Dora said evenly. “It happened in the evening, while poor Ms. Larosche was on shift. She didn’t know anything had happened until she began one of her periodic checks on Mr. Brashear, only to find the door leading up to that strange little room standing open. The room at the top of the house.”

“My father called it the belvedere,” Laurie said.

“The door was usually locked, but it wasn’t on this night for some reason,” Dora went on as if Laurie hadn’t said a word. “When Ms. Larosche went up, she found the room . . . the belvedere . . . empty, but then she spotted him on the ground below. His neck was broken and his death had been instantaneous.”

“It must have been awful for her. I’m so sorry.”

Perhaps Dora Lorton was uncomfortable being the sounding board for Laurie’s continual apologies, for she actively ignored the comment with a discomfort that was quite palpable. “There are no television sets and no radios in the house, as I’ve mentioned,” she went on. “There are no computers, either. With the exception of the telephone, contact with the outside world, you will find, is quite limited.”

“We’ve got our cell phones. My husband brought his laptop, too, and we can watch TV shows and movies on that. He’s a playwright. He’s working on a theatrical adaptation of a John Fish novel at the moment. Have you read any work by him?”

Dora looked unimpressed. “Your husband?”

“No, I meant John Fish, the author. Are you familiar with his books? He writes these sweeping epic dramas. He’s quite popular.”

“I only read nonfiction,” Dora said. “What is it you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well, I’m a stay-at-home mom at the moment,” Laurie said, feeling a distant chill, “though I used to teach classes at the college by our house. I’m also a painter.”

“A house painter or an artist painter?”

“An artist painter, I suppose.”

“Do you make money doing it?”

It seemed a rather intrusive question. Nevertheless, Laurie said, “Sometimes. I used to have paintings for sale in some bookstores and art galleries in Hartford, and once I even had a painting in a gallery in Manhattan. But I haven’t painted anything new in a long time.”

“Well, maybe you’re in need of inspiration,” Dora said. “With no televisions or radios, you’ll find it hard to be pestered by distraction.”

“Well, there’s always my daughter.” And husband, she considered adding, and probably would have had Dora Lorton been a more accessible person, but she decided against it in the end.

“Yes, I’m sure she keeps you quite busy.” Dora cleared her throat and said, “You’ll also notice that some of the floors have been disturbed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gouges in the flooring in places, some carpeting pulled up in some of the rooms, molding stripped away from the walls. Mr. Brashear never made it as far as to actually pry up the floorboards, though I suspect that was on his agenda.”

Laurie recalled the damaged look of the floor in the foyer, the gouges and scrapes in the hardwood. “I don’t understand. Why would he do that?”

“Wasn’t my business to ask him. It wouldn’t have done any good near the end, anyway. Mr. Brashear was quite troubled by the end. I just wanted to set the record straight so you know it was your father who did that to the floors and not me or Ms. Larosche. Things may need to be repaired before you can sell the place, and I wouldn’t want you to think we had been irresponsible.”

“I wouldn’t have assumed you were responsible for any of it.” Laurie coughed into one fist, somewhat embarrassed, though she couldn’t quite pinpoint why. For some reason, Dora Lorton made her nervous. “How did you know we were going to sell the place?”

“You’re uncomfortable just spending the night here, why would I think you’d move in for good?” Dora said, moving past Laurie and out of the laundry room.

Lastly, they went back into the foyer where Dora retrieved a lightweight coat and a handbag from the hall closet. The coat was tan canvas with large brown plastic buttons and a fabric belt, like the kind of coat Peter Sellers wore in all the Pink Panther movies. “Did Felix tell you about the rug?”

“What rug?”

“An old Persian rug that had been upstairs in that odd little room. On the night of Mr. Brashear’s death, the rug had been . . . damaged . . . I suppose you could say,” Dora said, tugging on her detective coat. Behind her, out one of the arched windows, Laurie could see Felix Lorton standing by the dusty Cadillac having a cigarette.

“Damaged how?”

“Stained by fluid.”

“Blood?”

Dora’s mouth went tight. “Not just blood.”

“Oh,” Laurie said after she realized what the woman meant. “Was that something that happened often?”

“No. Just that once.”

“I’m so embarrassed.”

“I cleaned it as best I could and then I had Felix roll it up and tuck it away in a corner downstairs. I considered getting rid of it—it’s unsalvageable, to speak openly, Mrs. Genarro—but it is also your property now and I didn’t want to take liberties throwing things away. It looked like it might have been a fairly expensive rug.”

“I understand. Thank you for thinking of it. And again, I’m so sorry you had to deal with it. I’m sorry you got wrapped up in the middle of it all.”

“It’s my job,” she repeated. The woman shouldered the strap of her handbag. “Or so it once was, anyway.”

Laurie walked her to the front door, their footfalls echoing in the empty circular foyer. “Oh!” Laurie said quickly. “There was one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Was there a reason the locks had been changed recently?”

“Reason?” Dora pulled her flimsy coat more tightly about herself. “How often did you say you spoke with your father by telephone, Mrs. Genarro?”

“Not very often, I’m afraid. Six months ago would have been the last time.”

“He grew quite paranoid in the final weeks of his life.”

“I didn’t know.”

“He was a frightened man. It seemed his thoughts turned on him, as evidenced by his suicide. He would walk around the house as if he were a young boy lost in the woods.”

“So the locks were changed to prevent him from getting out?”

“No, Mrs. Genarro. The locks were changed at your father’s insistence to prevent people from getting in.”

Laurie tasted acid at the back of her throat. Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t understand. What people? Who was trying to get in?”

Dora’s lips thinned. “Have you spent any time around people with dementia, Mrs. Genarro?”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” She was becoming annoyed at the woman’s tone.

“Quite often they become paranoid. Their fears are irrational and based outside of reality. I once took care of an elderly woman who was terrified of kitchen utensils—knives, forks, spoons. Pure silliness to you and me, but abject horror to her. You’ve seen the empty picture frame on the wall?”

Laurie recalled the empty frame on the wall in the parlor, the one Ted had remarked upon. She said, “Yes, I did. I was wondering what that was about. Did he remove the picture from the frame?”

“He broke the glass and tore it right out. I took the frame down afterward, but in his dementia, the poor man insisted I hang it back up with no picture in it.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“Far be it from me to comprehend the things that went through your father’s head, Mrs. Genarro. His dementia had gotten the best of him by that point, I’m sorry to say.” The older woman glanced quickly down the hall and then back at Laurie. “I had considered taking the frame down before you got here—it is certainly a disturbing sight—but Mr. Claiborne, he insisted I leave things as they had been prior to your father’s death. He claimed it would be disrespectful to start moving items around, but I think it was because he feared a lawsuit and wanted you to see just what it had been like taking care of your father.”

“I understand.”

“I hope that doesn’t sound harsh.”

“No, not at all.”

“Will there be one? A lawsuit, I mean.”

“No,” said Laurie. “No one’s getting sued.” On top of everything else, she couldn’t think about filing a lawsuit, too . . . even though Ted had brought it up on more than one occasion since they had received Claiborne’s telephone call. They should have been watching him, Ted had insisted, and it wasn’t as if Laurie necessarily disagreed with him. That’s what twenty-four-hour care is for! That’s the goddamn definition! Someone should have been keeping an eye on him twenty-four hours a goddamn day, Laurie!

“All right, then,” said Dora. Then her icy eyes grew distant. She took a step back and gazed down the foyer and the corridors that came off it like spokes. “It’s your house now,” she said.

Once again, the notion chilled her.

Laurie opened the front door for the woman. “I apologize, but I’m a little unsure how all this works,” she said before Dora stepped out. “Did my father . . . owe you anything? What I mean is, are you taken care of? You and Ms. Larosche have both been paid in full through the service, correct?”

“Everything has been taken care of.”

“I feel silly,” Laurie confessed. “Again, it’s like I’m firing you from your job.”

“There will be more jobs like it,” Dora said. Her short stiff hair vibrated like sagebrush in the cool summer breeze. “I’ll find another.”

She watched Dora Lorton hobble down the porch and make her way to the passenger side of the Cadillac. Her brother stood there waiting for her. He opened the door for her and she climbed slowly inside, moving with the lethargy of someone much older. Felix shut the door and walked around the rear of the car to the driver’s side. He paused only briefly beside the Cadillac’s rear bumper to acknowledge Laurie with a slight nod of his head, much as he had done earlier upon greeting her, then he folded himself into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. The Cadillac started with a shuddery growl. It backed up and Felix Lorton executed a point-turn in the driveway, just barely avoiding a collision with the Volvo. Laurie caught Dora Lorton’s white ghost-face in the tinted glass of the passenger window. The older woman was looking up at the house with an expression Laurie originally misinterpreted as desultory resignation. But then she realized what the look really was: fear.

A moment later, the dusty old Cadillac was rumbling down the driveway toward the road.

CHAPTER 3

Smiling to himself, Ted surveyed the property. The backyard was large and pastoral, heavily wooded beyond the property. Along the side of the house, a fence set the demarcation between this property and the neighboring one, where a shabby little house stood beyond a veil of thinner trees. A hard blue sky rose up beyond the tree line. He inhaled and thought he could smell the briny aroma of river water.

Why Laurie had never told him about the grandeur of her father’s home suddenly weighed on his mind. Particularly with all the money problems they had been having lately, exacerbated by Laurie’s reluctance to go back to work, it would have been nice to know there was a potential safety net out there. Even if Myles Brashear had no intention of sharing his fortune with his daughter while he was alive—a scenario Ted guessed had more to do with Laurie’s pride than her father’s unwillingness—it would have been nice to know that once the old fellow passed on, there would be financial spoils waiting for them in the wings.

Susan did a cartwheel across the lawn, her shadow exaggerated to hugeness on the grass. When she popped up, there was an ear-to-ear smile on her face.

“Pretty neat place, huh, pumpkin seed?” said Ted.

“It’s awesome!”

He pointed straight across the lawn to the trees. “I bet there’s water back there.”

“Like the beach?”

“Well, no, not the beach. Maybe a river or a lake or something. Want to go have a look?”

Susan pointed to a darkened niche in the tree line. “Can we go there first, Daddy? It looks like a path.”

“Indeed it does.”

“It can be an adventure!” she said, gathering up his hand and dragging him across the yard to the wooded path.

Awe caused the girl to slow her pace after they walked a few yards into the woods. Colorful wildflowers burst from the ground and the trees sighed softly in the early summer breeze. Tiny white petals fluttered down around them like snowflakes. A smorgasbord of smells met Ted’s nose. He inhaled the rich fecundity of the forest that, even as a teenage boy, had always reminded him—though not unpleasantly—of semen.

“Look,” Susan said, her voice a sudden whisper.

Ted crouched down so he was at eye level with her. She pointed through dense foliage where, at first, Ted saw nothing. But then the geometric shapes of the forest assembled into a pair of antlers, a tapered brown snout, and glossy tar- colored eyes. It was a seven-point buck, still several yards away but nonetheless massive, even at such a distance. It was staring straight at them, seeming to hold its breath, just as Ted and Susan were doing. He had never seen one out in the wild before, and its presence now was nearly transcendent.

“It sees us,” Susan whispered. So close to her face, he could smell candy on her breath.

“It does,” he whispered back.

“Can we go up to him? Pet him?”

“I think,” said Ted, “that if we take another step, the old boy will turn and run off through the woods.”

“But Daddy, we could try.”

“Go on,” he urged her. “Go ahead and try, sweet pea.”