AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You said your mom was a history teacher. What did your stepdad do?” Marisa asked.
“He was a reporter. He wrote for a Burlington newspaper.”
“What did he write?”
“He covered politics, so he was in Montpelier a lot. At the capitol. But I was pretty young when he”—and here she hesitated—“died.”
“Can I read his stories online?”
“I doubt it. Not sure the paper’s online catalog goes back that far.”
“Do you have any copies?”
She hid her disdain. “No,” she said. “If I had found some when I was cleaning out the house after my mom died, I would have kept them. But I didn’t,” she lied. The falsehood was the idea she would have saved some, because she had discovered folders of clips in a filing cabinet in the attic. She started to read one, but it was a column and there was a headshot beside his byline, and so despite the histrionics of the gesture, she burned it. She burned them all.
“You were in fifth grade when he died. That’s not so young.”
“I was a lot younger at ten than you were.” She considered saying that she had been more innocent, but she wasn’t sure that was true. Memory was mist.
“How did he die?” she asked.
“Heart attack.” Another lie. She regretted it, because someday Marisa would google the man and learn the truth. She googled everything. Perhaps when Marisa was older and the two of them were settled, she would reveal more of the story. And as the lie settled, her regret dissipated, because today was certainly not the right day to exhume the Dowling corpses.
Meanwhile, Marisa seemed to think about everything Betsy had just told her, chewing a second cookie deliberately. “Do you miss this place?” she asked.
“No.”
“Will you miss Vermont when we move?”
“A little. I’ve only lived here, except for when I was in college in Massachusetts.”
“I’ve only lived here.”
Betsy turned to her. “Are you worried about Las Vegas?”
The girl stared at the ground. “No. Maybe if Frankie was going to live with us. But he won’t be. And—”
“Whoa, you don’t need to worry about Frankie. I know you had at least one super creepy foster father, but—”
“Two,” she said, holding up a pair of fingers in what most people would have mistaken for a peace sign.
“Two,” Betsy agreed, “but Frankie isn’t like that. He’s a wonderful father to his own children, and—”
“One of them was one of your patients.”
She shrugged. “Clients. Not patients. And things happen.”
Marisa licked some of the sugar off her fingertips.
“Why do you worry about Frankie?” Betsy pressed. “Has he ever said or done anything that made you feel uncomfortable or unsafe?”
“Nope. And I don’t worry about Frankie. Why would I? I just like the idea it’s just you and me.”
“Good. I like that idea, too.” Then she surprised herself by asking, “What do you think of him? Frankie?” She didn’t need the girl’s approval, but suddenly she was curious.
“He’s nice. He’s funny. His kids probably aren’t wild about him right now. I mean, he’s leaving them and moving to Las Vegas. But he takes good care of us.”
“You might be right about his own children,” she agreed. Of course, she was deserting kids, too. So many teens, she thought, some who were thriving now as young adults and some who weren’t going to make it. If anyone had ever asked, she could have named them all, and it was a long list. “Sometimes you have to move for work,” she said, acquitting Frankie and, in her mind, convicting herself. “People change jobs. And soon his kids will be going to college. They’d be leaving home anyway. I wouldn’t call it desertion.”
