“Yes. They should have.”
She hugged him, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m sorry you had to be there,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing her head. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Then he pawed at his eyes, cleared his throat, and smiled down at his daughter. “We’ll be okay,” he promised.
“Okay,” Ellie said.
“Let’s go lie down.”
They returned to their little campsite in the middle of the store. Ellie pulled off her shoes, then crawled into the tent, carrying the shoe box of bird eggs with her.
David felt grimy, but his exhaustion made the little door with the word RESTROOM on it at the back of the store seem a million miles away. He stripped off his own shoes and pants, already feeling the chill in the air prick his bare thighs. After a moment of consideration, he wrapped the Glock in his jeans and tucked it beneath his sleeping bag. He bent down and parted the tent flaps. Ellie sniffled quietly in the gloom inside the tent.
“How ’bout a bedtime story?”
She sniffed again and said, “Okay. What story?”
He undid the clasps of the little pink suitcase and rifled through the items he’d taken from the Langstrom house. Without thinking, he had dumped a few books in there; looking at them now, he saw that many of them were probably too immature for Ellie. But then he saw the crinkled dust jacket and recognized a book from his own youth—a hardcover edition of Where the Sidewalk Ends.
“This,” he said, climbing into the tent to join his daughter, “is a great book. I had a copy when I was about your age.”
“Where’d you get this copy?”
“Just someplace. Hey, do you want me to read or what?”
“What’s it about?” She snuggled closer to him as he turned on the electric lantern. Their shadows bloomed like great arching beasts on the walls and ceiling of the tent.
“Poems. Do you like poems?”
He felt her shrug against him. “Some, I guess.”
“Well, you’ll like these. They’re pretty clever.”
He opened the cover, and before he could turn to the title page, Ellie’s hand was up, her fingers splayed across the book.
“Wait,” she said. “What’s that say?”
It was a handwritten inscription on the blank white page. David adjusted the book so that she could read it for herself in the lamplight.
To our little Moon-Bird,
Wishing you the happiest of birthdays!
Love, Mom & Dad
“Who wrote that?”
David had an idea, but he pretended like he didn’t.
“Who’s Moon-Bird?”
“Just someone’s name, I guess,” he said. His exhaustion was like a physical weight pressing down on him now. It was a struggle just to keep his eyelids open.
“Strange name,” Ellie said.
“Probably a nickname. Like how I call you Little Spoon.”
“But not anymore, remember?”
“That’s right. I remember. Not anymore. So can we read a bit so we can get some sleep?”
She curled up against him. He could smell her sweet-sour breath, the odor of her unwashed hair, the heat radiating from her body. Again, Kathy’s face flashed before his eyes, and it was all he could do not to groan in utter grief at the thought of her.
When his heartbeat slowed and the jitteriness of the day seemed to evaporate from him, he realized Ellie was touching his arm with both hands.
“Are you doing it now?” he asked.
“Yes. Is that okay?”
It was a level of peace, of comfort, that he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. Yet something else invaded his thoughts. “What is it doing to you?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“How does it happen?”
“I don’t know. I’m just taking the badness out of you.”
“So where does that badness go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s doing something bad to you,” he said.
“I don’t think it is.”
“But you don’t know, do you?” he said. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Do you, El?”
“No.”
“Let’s maybe not do it until we understand it better,” he said. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Her palms lifted from him. She encircled his arm in an embrace. A moment later, he felt a tremor of anxiety pulse through him. The heaviness of it all was back, just as quickly as Ellie had chased it away.
“Okay,” he said, turning to the first poem. “Let’s read.”
So they read, and David was halfway through the third poem when Ellie’s breathing softened and she began to snore quietly against him. He paused in midverse and said her name aloud. When she didn’t respond, he closed the book, turned off the lantern, and shut his eyes.
For a time, the whole world was comprised of the whooshing sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He focused on Ellie’s gentle snoring, but after a while, it seemed that her snores grew more and more distant, as if some great expanse of space had gradually begun to separate them. He dreamt. And at some point, his dreams segued into a nightmare, which concluded when men in dark suits stuffed Ellie into a nondescript white van and drove her away.
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