I looked at Maddox.
“Jake’s okay with you?” I asked happily.
She smiled that sweet smile of hers. “Sure” was all she said.
The subway was only a few blocks away. We walked to it amid the usual Times Square crowd, at that time a curious mixture of vaguely criminal low-life and dazzled tourists.
On the train, I sat with Maddox on one side and Lana on the other, a formation that continued as we exited the train and made our way to the restaurant. During the meal, Lana spoke in a very animated way about Beauty and the Beast, while Maddox remained quiet, eating her slice of pizza slowly, sipping her drink slowly, her gaze curiously inward and intense, like one hatching a plot.
We were done within half an hour. The restaurant was near Washington Square, and so, before returning home, we strolled briefly in the park. Lana glanced up as we passed under the arch, but Maddox stared straight ahead in the same inward and intense way I’d noticed at the restaurant.
“You okay?” I asked as we left the park and headed for the subway.
Again, she offered me her sweet smile. “I’m fine,” she said.
We descended the stairs, then one by one we each went through the turnstiles and headed down the long ramp that led to the uptown trains. We were about halfway down when I heard the distant rumble of our train heading into the station. “Come on, girls,” I said and instinctively bolted ahead, moving more quickly than I thought, as I realized when I turned to look behind me.
The train had not yet reached the station, but I could see its light as it emerged from the dark tunnel. On the platform, perhaps ten yards behind me, both Lana and Maddox were running. Lana was skirting the edge of the platform, with Maddox to her left, though only by a few inches. I looked at the train, then back at the girls, and suddenly I saw Maddox glance over her shoulder. She must have seen the train barreling out of the tunnel, for then she faced forward again and, at that instant, leaned to her left, bumping her shoulder against Lana’s so that Lana briefly stumbled toward the pit before regaining her footing, as if by miracle.
I heard Maddox’s voice in my mind: to be an only child.
The little girl who’d been the object of Maddox’s murderous intent was now a grown woman with children of her own, and I had only to look across the table to reassure myself that I’d done the right thing in sending Maddox away. To have done otherwise would have put Lana at risk. Other children had done dreadful things, after all, and that searing episode in the subway station convinced me that Maddox was capable of such evil, too. She had declared what she’d wanted most in life and then ruthlessly attempted to achieve it. I had no way of knowing if she would make another attempt, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take, especially since the intended victim was my own daughter.
“Maddox had to go,” I repeated now.
Lana didn’t argue the point. “I remember the day you took her to the airport,” she said. “It was raining, and she was wearing that sad little raincoat she’d brought with her from the South.” She looked at me. “Remember? The one with the hood.”
I nodded. “That coat made her look even more sinister,” I said dryly.
Lana looked at me quizzically. “Sinister? That’s not a word I would use to describe Maddox.”
“What word would you use?” I asked.
“Damaged,” Lana answered. “I would say that Maddox was damaged by life.”
“Perhaps so,” I said, “but Maddox had done some damage of her own.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that she stole an answer sheet at Falcon Academy,” I said. “One of her classmates saw her.”
“You mean Jesse Traylor?” Lana laughed. “He just got caught himself. Cheating on his taxes.” She took a sip from her cup. “Jesse was the school apple-polisher, a tattletale who would have done anything to ingratiate himself with the headmaster.”
Cautiously, I said, “Even lie about Maddox?”
“He’d have lied about anyone,” Lana said. She saw the disturbance her answer caused me. “What’s the matter, Dad?”
I leaned forward. “Did he lie about Maddox?”
Lana shrugged. “I don’t know.” She glanced toward the street where two little girls stood outside a theater. “She apologized, by the way,” she said. “Maddox, I mean. For slapping me. Not a spoken apology.” She looked as if she were enjoying a sweet memory. “But I knew what she meant when she did it.”