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Chapter Seventeen
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Little Dead Red Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEENOfficer Will took the call with sorrow. Grim Marie had taken her own life. She was found in the bath with expensive-smelling bubbles and a candle. She had used a razor.He wished this hadn’t surprised him.His heart felt heavy, but he tried to convince himself that at least she was at peace now, enfolded in the arms of her mother and her daughter. A third little urn lined up on the shelf, perhaps. At least the pain and misery of her hunt for The Wolf was over.He sighed.“I’m responsible,” he said aloud, and the words pierced. They twisted up inside of him like a jangle of knives and sharpened bones and Dead Marie’s razor blades.He had sent her after the man she believed to be her daughter’s killer. Told her to keep an eye out for any DNA he might drop. He hadn’t believed this man was The Wolf, but it didn’t matter. It gave her something to do. Gave her something to throw her heart and soul into, since she had little heart and no soul left. Picking up a littered
Little Dead Red Prologue
PROLOGUEOnce upon a time, long long ago, somewhere before her second divorce, Marie had smiled. She had simply been Marie then, and occasionally even Happy Marie, and that was a kind and gracious thing. Marie knew of the dangers of the world, but Marie also knew of love and laughter. Marie knew of her tiny little girl, Aleta, who used to hop around on one foot to see if she could keep her balance, and stuck her naughty fingers into Marie’s jam, and would ask for a bedtime story even when it was nowhere near bedtime.“It doesn’t have to be a bedtime story, dear,” Marie would say, and her eyes would twinkle. Smiling Marie. Happy Marie. “A story told at any other time is simply a story.”Aleta, who had dark eyes like her mother, and dark hair like her mother, and it refused to be tamed and combed, also like her mother’s, would say, “But bedtime stories are the best. Won’t you please tell me one, Mama?” Marie often had things to do. There were dishes to be put away and dinner to be c
Little Dead Red Chapter One
CHAPTER ONEGrim Marie’s mother was dying. She had been dying for several years now, off and on, but this time seemed like it might actually be THE TIME.“I’m not ready for you to go, Mama,” Marie whispered to nobody in particular. She was putting together a basket for her mother, full of treats and homemade breads and jams. Grim Marie liked to cook. It set things right in her mind. She spent the morning pressing flour, salt, eggs, and water together to form noodles. She rolled them into dough. Cut them into strings. Let them dry around the tiny apartment like Christmas tinsel made of carbohydrates. Spider webs of love.“Talking to yourself again?” Aleta appeared in the doorway. Her dark eyes were lined in black. She’d pierced her nose and lip and dimple. She had tried her tongue but regretted it almost immediately.Marie tried to smile at her, but her lips didn’t quite work right. She felt them twist and shape themselves into something almost eerie. She let the attempted smile f
Little Dead Red Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWOMarie did, indeed, take a bath. Such a luxury, time spent on herself when she should have been cleaning, or catching up on that night’s batch of work, or taking the soup to her mother with Aleta. But she didn’t. She did neither of those things. She pinned her dark hair up. It was thick and streaked with gray, but sometimes it still managed beauty. She liked to think so, anyway, when she caught unexpected glimpses of herself in mirrors and store windows.“I don’t look half bad,” she sometimes mused, and very nearly tossed her head. If she did so, perhaps her hair would fall over one eye. Perhaps it would hide the heavy circles under it, the weariness that peered out of her irises. Perhaps somebody’s eyes would be drawn to that rather foppish section of hair instead of the worry lines around her mouth.Worry lines. Not laugh lines. Grim Marie knew this, knew there was a difference. She knew she wore her station and her sorrows on her face like other ladies wore fine hats
Little Dead Red Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREEMarie arrived at her mother’s hospital room with her hair slightly damp from the rejuvenating-bath-that-wasn’t.“Hi, Mom.”Her mother’s gentle face lit up. It was like opening the window and leaning outside into the morning air. Marie fairly breathed her in.“Darling! What a nice surprise!”“Surprise? Didn’t Aleta tell you I was right behind her?”“Who?”Marie sighed.“They’re giving you too many medications, Mom. Where is Aleta? Did she run to the restroom?” The old woman reached out and grasped Marie’s fingers.“I love when you come to visit, darling. Brightens up my day.”“I love coming, too. So tell me how you’re feeling.”Marie leaned back in her too-stiff hospital chair and listened to her mother chatter on about things like the life cycle of Painted Lady butterflies and who was doing who wrong on her latest soap opera. It killed her to hear this . . . this prattle, because this wasn’t who her mother was. Talk on international travel politics, sure. Dis
Little Dead Red Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOURThat night seemed unusually cold. If Grim Marie had friends, they could have come to stay with her while she worried and fretted over Aleta’s disappearance. They would have discussed how the thermos came out of her pack. Was it torn open? Did she open it herself? Was she perhaps willing to share the soup, which meant that perhaps the person was kindly? Was this just a misunderstanding? Perhaps she took the wrong bus. Or got off and wandered away to something a little more exciting than a sick grandmother. Maybe there was a boy.Marie desperately, desperately hoped there was a boy.The friends she didn’t have would have surrounded her and offered their assurances. “It’ll be fine,” they would have said. “She’ll come home. Oh, how you’ll tan her hide when she does!”But there were no friends. Nobody to help and comfort, guide and muse. Nobody to tuck Marie in when it became too much. Nobody to brush her hair and make sure she took something to calm her nerves. Nobody to
Little Dead Red Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVEThe second she saw the policeman, the look in his dark eyes, her hand flew to her mouth.“Ma’am, we believe we found your daughter.”Two months had passed. Two months of looking out the window and doors and standing on the front porch in the wind and rain and sunshine, just in case Aleta forgot what home looked like. If her little girl happened to wander by, confused, looking at houses and front porches and trying to remember which apartment had been hers, why, there would be her mother! To love and hold and greet her. To smooth her hair back from her eyes and promise she’d love her always, no matter what had happened, no matter what she had been forced to do. There was Grim Marie, who would become Benevolent and Joyful Marie, and her little Aleta would be safe.But the eyes of this man, of the way he held her gaze far too carefully while his partner couldn’t manage to hold her gaze at all, told her she had no need to stand in that doorway ever again.“Oh,” she said.
Little Dead Red Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIXThey held a funeral for the bits and pieces of Aleta they could find. It wasn’t much. Marie chose to have her cremated and then there was even less.She kept her in a jar in the living room. She had always believed in burial, but had dreams of wolves digging Aleta’s bones up at night, gnawing on them and taking them away off to some dark magical forest. Night after night. So in the jar she went, and the jar was placed high, and when her mother died she cremated her as well and set them side-by-side.“Hello, family,” she greeted them once, and then she was unable to get out of bed for three days straight.“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said again, once she was standing in front of the jars again. “You died because I wanted the selfish luxury of a bath.”She was in bed for six days after that, unable to move or speak or sit, and when the young second officer couldn’t get a hold of her, he managed to break down her door.“We don’t need all of you lined up in a neat little row
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