Spooky Little Girl Read online

  This was unbelievable. She let go of the suitcase, took a step back from the door again, closed her eyes, and tried to calm down.

  But Lucy knew she wasn’'t very good at calming down.

  She raised her hand and threw her useless key ring against the front door as she screamed.

  Suddenly, she heard barking. There, inside the house, standing at the window, was Tulip, Lucy’'s old, graying golden retriever mix.

  “"Hi, sugar,”" Lucy said, immediately feeling her blood pressure drop as she put her hand up to the window. “"How are you, sweetheart? Are you being a good girl? Are you? Did you miss me? I missed you. I really did. Do you know why the TV is next to the mailbox and why my panties are scattered all over the bed of my truck? Do you? Do you know what’'s going on? I wish you could tell me.”"

  Tulip licked her side of the glass where Lucy had put her hand, then sat, panting patiently. She barked again, moving her head almost in a nod, her eyes on Lucy the whole time. She had been Lucy’'s best friend for years, since the day Lucy had found her at the pound as a puppy. Flea-bitten, shivering, and scared, Tulip had come home with Lucy, and from that day on, they had slept in the same bed, watched the same television shows, and celebrated life’'s accomplishments together. Tulip was always there to cheer Lucy up, to comfort her when she needed it, and to be the one constant thing that Lucy always knew she could depend upon. Tulip made Lucy feel grounded and safe and always loved. Tulip was everything a dog should be to its person: a valued member of the family, a dear friend, a skilled secret keeper. And when Lucy met Martin three years ago, Tulip came along with the package, as did her basket of balls and hair-covered bed when Lucy eventually moved into his house. Now, standing on the other side of the glass, Tulip wagged her tail and pawed at the window, barking slightly in a very definitive way, as in, “"Don’'t just stand there, come in!”"

  From inside her purse, Lucy heard the ring of her phone. She grabbed it.

  “"Martin?”" she asked into the receiver, without so much as looking at who was calling.

  “"No,”" Lucy heard on the other end of the phone, followed by a quick little laugh. “"It’'s Jilly. I got a call from—--Wait, you mean Martin is still MIA? That boyfriend of yours is a workaholic.”"

  “"Well, I’'m at the place that apparently used to be my home,”" Lucy replied, as the severity of the situation started to sink in. “"Jilly everything I own is tossed out on the street and I have no idea why. I don’'t know what’'s going on. All of my clothes are in the bed of my truck, the furniture I inherited from my grandmother is in the yard, and I just fought a homeless woman for my wedding dress, which is now ripped to shreds. The locks to the house have been changed. I can’'t get in! Martin won’'t answer his phone, he won’'t call me back, and I can’'t even get inside to get Tulip. He wasn’'t at Safeway. I drove around the parking lot twice. I don’'t know what to do. I have no idea what to do. I think he has thrown me out.”"

  “"Just stay there,”" Jilly advised. “"Warren and I will be there in ten minutes.”"

  Lucy put the phone back into her purse and shook her head, then looked at her dog on the other side of the glass. Tulip didn’'t take her cocoa-colored eyes off Lucy for one second.

  Tulip panted. Lucy tried to smile for her, to make sure Tulip knew everything was going to be all right. She walked into the yard, grabbed the closest box—--full of several pairs of her favorite cowboy boots, including a treasured vintage pair from the forties—--and tossed it into the bed of the truck. Another box, brimming with purses and shoes, was the next to go. A stack of books from dental school. A pile of white and pastel-colored uniforms for work.

  A box of wedding invitations that Lucy had just gotten back from the discount printer and had decided to put off addressing until after she returned from Hawaii, even though the wedding date was only eight weeks away.

  She had thought she would have plenty of time.

  chapter two The Sinister Potential of Chicken Skin

  It wasn’'t going to be a big wedding, anyway, Lucy had rationalized when she’'d found herself daydreaming about her vacation instead of getting a pen and sitting down at the kitchen table. It didn’'t really even matter when she addressed the invitations. Just a few friends in the backyard with the reception catered by the barbecue place down the street, Martin’'s favorite. Martin didn’'t like big things, didn’'t like to make a fuss. He was a direct path kind of guy. If he was at point A and he needed to be at point B, he’'d go from A to B, and that would be it. No turns, no sidetracking, no pausing, no stops, just travel the most direct route. Their vacations or weekend trips were always like that. No plans for a detour to see fossilized dinosaur bones embedded in the side of a mountain, because he’'d say it all looked like rock, couldn’'t tell which was which, anyway; no point in stopping to take a picture of a dozen vintage Cadillacs, half buried nose first in the ground at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid, if you could already see them from the highway; and why would a grown woman want to stop and have lunch at Flintstones Bedrock City on the way back from the Grand Canyon when that cartoon wasn’'t even on the air anymore?

  Thus, when Lucy finally got her sliver of an inheritance check from the sale of the family farm after the death of her grandmother a year earlier, she knew exactly what she was going to do with it. With nonchalant disregard to her upcoming nuptials, she spent almost the last dime of her inheritance on the Hawaii trip, justifying the cost by categorizing the trip as her bachelorette party and something of a last hurrah. Martin had already informed her that any extended honeymoon was out of the question; work was too busy, as it was spring and this was his season to make his department shine. Maybe they could take a weekend and camp in Sedona, but nothing longer than that. When Lucy suggested going to Jerome, a former mining town turned artsy enclave, Martin gave her a long look.

  “"We’'d have to stay in a hotel up there,”" he reminded her. “"Why pay for a hotel if you have a tent?”"

  So when Lucy got her inheritance, she already had her mind made up. She didn’'t want to take any sort of vacation she would have to drive to, which were all the vacations she had taken with Martin. She wasn’'t going to camp in a tent, or sleep in a roadside motel with worn carpet and stiff polyester bedspreads and thin beige plastic buckets for ice. She had done all of that for him, and to be honest, she never had any longings about sleeping on the ground in a tent for a week without bathing, like a Joad. Wherever she went on her vacation, she was going to fly. She was going to go as far as she could imagine. She immediately decided on the most un-Martin place she could think of: Hawaii. It was that simple. Hawaii. She imagined herself laughing on the beach and sipping frivolous drinks under exotic trees with fringe. She wanted to stay at a fancy hotel, eat steak and shrimp and roasted boar, and wake up early to walk along the beach, even if she didn’'t have a point A or point B already in mind.

  So she called Jilly and proposed that they go. Warren was game. He was up for the girls having a good time for themselves, and then Marianne mentioned that she’'d always dreamed of going to Hawaii. Splitting the hotel room three ways sounded great. Lucy pitched it to Martin as sort of a “"last hurrah”" girls’' weekend before she and he tied the knot; Marianne found a great deal on a beachfront “"resort.”" Lucy bought her ticket. And while it turned out that it wasn’'t the most glamorous vacation on earth and she had spent the most memorable moments of it puking in some sleazeball’'s bathroom, getting away from home had given her time to think, time to laugh, and time to realize that maybe it wasn’'t such a sin that she hadn’'t quite gotten around to addressing those invitations just yet.

  Martin was a good man. He had good bones, a good heart, a kind voice. He was a quiet man with a gentle character. Typically on-the-dot dependable. So nice anyone could always count on him to help them move. And if there was anything Martin was, it was satisfied. Satisfied with his job managing the produce department at Safeway, waking up at three in the morning to make s
ure cabbage was in, unloaded, and stacked in the display cold case with just the right spacing. Satisfied with his thirteen-year-old red dented truck with a frozen driver’'s side window and a seat belt so tired of being wound that it could only give enough length to be fastened if he tugged hard at it twice and let it go gently a third time. Satisfied with the spring popping up on the left side of the brown plaid couch every time he’'d get up, satisfied with waiting for a movie to go to rental before he would see it, satisfied with basic cable. Satisfied with not complaining once when he would come down with a cold. And, by all accounts, he had been satisfied with Lucy.

  Martin had lived his life the way that good men do. Lucy knew that the moment she met him, and she also knew that as far as men went, she had never done any better. She felt safe with him, and taken care of. She knew she would never have to worry about anything as long as Martin was around. He wasn’'t a yahoo with an on-again, off-again job, a gaggle of kids stringing behind him, or a probation officer he had to visit once a week. He didn’'t start drinking beer at noon on a Wednesday, and there was not one crazy ex-girlfriend who would crank call him at midnight or drive by the house. He was a guy who washed cucumbers, smiled at every customer, and answered whatever question anyone might have about a radish. His nails were always clean, and his flattop was always neatly trimmed at a precise length. He wasn’'t unnecessarily tall; he simply rose to an average height. And he had a full, friendly face, ruddy cheeks, and light blue eyes that twinkled when he smiled, which was frequently. Looking at Martin, no one would ever say he was ruggedly handsome or of model pedigree, but he could have easily been an archetype for the nice, friendly guy.

  Although he was kind to Lucy—--he would always offer the popcorn bowl to her first on the Friday nights when he rented movies on his way home—--he wasn’'t fanatical about her. It sometimes seemed to her that Martin had figured one day that the time had come to find himself a companion, and instead of going to the pound, he’'d looked around the produce department and had seen an average-height lady with pretty brown eyes, in her late twenties and dressed in white scrubs with her regular everyday curly light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail with a plain rubber band, about to take down a display of Granny Smith apples by pulling at the ones on the bottom. And so he’'d smiled.

  Martin smiled often. He was a big smiler. But after some time, Lucy began to notice that he rarely grinned, never beamed, and hardly laughed the way she loved to laugh. He chuckled, might snicker at a silly joke, but Martin never seemed to let go with a hearty guffaw or even so much as a chortle.

  Sometimes in a moment of furious impatience, Lucy would look at Martin and wonder when he was going to start. When he might surprise her and go faster than thirty-five miles per hour. He never did. He coasted. A smooth, even coast, no bumps, no jolts, no sudden turns. It seemed as if there was a spark inside Martin that was never going to thrive into anything bigger; a spark that could just never go off, catch fire, and blaze madly. When he proposed to her, he simply came home from work, put his car keys on the hall table, held a ring out in the palm of his hand, and asked, “"What do you think about that?”"

  Lucy thought maybe it was her, maybe she was the one who was keeping that spark from roaring into a fire, but she wasn’'t sure what else she could do to fuel it, and besides, she already knew that Martin had never set a fire inside of her, either. She loved his sensibility, his kindness, his stability, but as far as electrical current went, the bathroom lightbulb burned brighter. Certainly, they weren’'t on fire, but they were warm enough. And there was Martin and Lucy, small sparks going off on either end of the couch, with a popcorn bowl between them. And Tulip snoring on her dog bed at their feet.

  Remarkably, they had really only been in one argument, very early in their relationship, for the whole three years they had been a couple. It was a ridiculous explosion about fried chicken; Martin had brought home original style, and Lucy liked the skinless extra crispy kind. She hated the flop and rubbery texture of chicken skin. She could barely stand to touch it, let alone pull a sheet of it off her dinner. In an instant, Lucy became angry, and when Martin simply shrugged, said he was sorry, and that he would make it a point to get skinless extra crispy next time, she became furious. As Martin looked at her blankly, Lucy fought the chicken skin fight alone, stoking her own fire that Martin refused to fan, building it into an inferno that led to her storming out of the house and hitting the Round About, the bar where she knew Jilly and Warren would be enjoying happy hour as it evolved into double-vision hour.

  She spent that night laughing and talking to people she hadn’'t seen in a while, old drinking buddies that had wondered where she’'d vanished to. When she made it back to Jilly and Warren’'s booth after another trip to the bar, Warren was laughing with an oily-looking guy Lucy had never met, and Jilly was rolling her eyes in disgust. “"Pay no attention to him,”" Jilly whispered. “"We call him Icky Ricky. I’'m just nice to him because I have to be, but you don’'t.”"

  “"And who is this fine young filly?”" the newcomer said as he turned his mustached face toward Lucy, shooting a wave of cigarette and beer breath at her. “"I’'d like to buy you a drink, miss!”"

  “"I’'d like to buy you a toothbrush,”" Lucy replied.

  Lucy did her fair share of ignoring Icky Ricky and danced, laughed, joked with old friends, forgetting about her fight with Martin. The next morning, before Lucy even opened her eyes, she smelled something terrible, the scent of stale beer, Taco Bell, neglected trash, and dirty socks. She knew right away that waking up with “"eau de single guy’'s apartment”" was not a positive sign by any means. She breathed a tremendous sign of relief when she swung her legs around the side of the futon she was on and saw her jeans still intact on her lower body. Even her boots were still on, but that was about all she knew.

  Beside her she saw the back of a head with shaggy brown hair that was clearly not Martin’'s neat flattop. The shaggy head rolled over, and in its place was a nasty, oily little mustache.

  Oh, my God! a little voice in her head gasped. Icky Ricky!

  “"Where’'s my stuff?”" Lucy demanded, kicking blankets and sheets patterned with a rainbow on them that were crumpled on the floor, not daring to pick them up with her hands to look under them.

  “"And a good morning to you, too, little lady,”" he said, seeming offended. “"All your stuff’'s in the living room—--on the couch, maybe, I dunno where you put it. Are you usually this nasty in the morning?”"

  “"Only on the mornings that I wreck my life,”" she replied. Lucy found her purse and jacket by the front door on a chair and immediately rifled through her purse to find her keys. She heard shuffling from the bedroom.

  “"Hey, how ’'bout we go grab something to eat?”" Icky Ricky said as he emerged from the bedroom, his hair homelessly askew.

  Lucy gave him a disgusted look. “"No. I’'m going home,”" she replied, finally finding her keys at the very bottom.

  “"Okay, then,”" Icky Ricky said, looking puzzled. “"We could do a drive-through at McDonald’'s, get a little breakfast burr-eeto?”"

  “"Are you kidding me?”" Lucy said as she turned and faced him. “"Don’'t read anything into anything, all right? Nothing happened here. Nothing. I don’'t know what I’'m doing here, but I am leaving and going home.”"

  “"Good luck with that, unless you know how to fly!”" he said with a laugh that came close to a snort as he reached across his chest and scratched his armpit. “"Your car ain’'t here. You car’'s still at the Round About. You got sorta liquored up, miss, so much you couldn’'t drive. You could barely walk all by yourself, so I put you in my car and started to take you home, but you passed out cold before I even hit the corner. I don’'t know where you live, so I brought you back here and put you to bed. Like a gentleman. That’'s what I am. A gentleman.”"

  Lucy felt a churning ball of sickness develop in her stomach. It suddenly hit her. She didn’'t remember anything past saying goodbye to Jill
y and Warren when the jukebox began playing one of her favorite songs. What had she done? A fight over chicken skin. And now here she was, waking up on a dirty rainbow, standing in the middle of Icky Ricky’'s stinky apartment, about to ask him for a ride back to the bar.

  “"Let me find my keys,”" he said, more than a little discouraged. “"Come on, not even just a quick run-through for a burrito? How about if just I get one?”"

  When Lucy pulled into the driveway, Martin was at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. He looked up to see her as she opened the door and walked into the house.

  “"I saw your car at the Round About this morning,”" Martin said plainly. “"You spend the night at Jilly’'s?”"

  Lucy shook her head.

  Martin paused for a moment and just looked at her.

  “"I made a mistake, Martin, but I swear to you nothing happened,”" she began. “"I woke up someplace I didn’'t plan on waking up, but nothing happened. I drank too much, and then I drank more and someone tried to take me home but didn’'t know where I lived, so …...”"

  “"This person, Lucy,”" he said quietly. “"This person was a man?”"

  Lucy nodded. “"I swear to you nothing happened, Martin. I promise. I would not lie to you. I made a mistake, I acted foolishly. But not one thing happened.”"

  Martin looked away and then looked back at her.

  “"All right,”" he said slowly. “"I’'m going to choose to trust you, Lucy. But if this happens again, I’'ll know I’'ve been made a fool of, and I won’'t ask any questions. I’'ll just call it a day. Do you understand?”"

  “"Completely,”" Lucy replied immediately. “"Absolutely.”"

  That was three years ago. It had been the biggest event in their relationship, and when it was over, it was almost forgotten. Since then, they had developed a full Lucy and Martin history: holidays, vacations, birthdays, favorite television shows, inside jokes, photo albums, their own side of the bed, who got which drawer in the dresser.