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aren watched Lauren scrubbing the glass dish that had held the baked chicken legs they’d eaten for dinner. She felt the criticism rise up in her throat—Lauren wasn’t cleaning the corners very well, and if you didn’t get that off, there was
buildup—but she swallowed it down again. Lauren was barely speaking to her as it was, after Karen’s outburst that afternoon.
The thing was, Karen knew when she was being ridiculous. She knew that half of what she said to Lauren was just nitpicking, that Lauren was basically a good kid and that every time Karen gave her a hard time for no particular reason, she was driving her daughter further and further away.
But she would see Lauren doing something that was just a little bit off, or thoughtless—like leaving the water on the fl
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Night of shades 11
Miranda toyed with the French fries Tad had left on the table and swallowed the tears that she felt building in her throat. She was not going to cry in a public place, especially not with those bitches looking over at her every fewminutes.She didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Tad ditched Billy at the pizza place, just like Miranda hoped, and when they got in the Camaro he’d kissed her and even did a quick grope of her breasts before grinning and starting the engine.When they arrived at the mall they’d discovered that the next showing of Rambo wasn’t for an hour, so they decided to walk around for a while. Tad had put his hand in the back pocket of Miranda’s jeans while they did so and she did not object, letting him squeeze her ass whenever the impulse oc
Night of shades 12
Lauren didn’t expect to hear from Miranda the next day at all. She assumed her friend would be so irritated at Lauren for ditching her at the Dream Machine that Miranda wouldn’t call for at least a week. So she was surprised when thephone rang right after breakfast and Miranda’s voice said, “Meet me by the old ghost tree.”“I can’t,” Lauren said, which was true. “Mom went shopping in Silver Lake and I’m watching David.” “Lame.” Miranda huffed out an annoyed breath. “After lunch?”“Probably,” Lauren said, although she didn’t particularly want to meet Miranda. She had no desire to get dragged off to the arcade again. “She should be back by then. Listen, we’re not going to the Dream Machine, are we?
Night of shades 13
Alex Lopez sat at his desk and forced himself to think of the girls. Specifically, the girls’ heads talking to him.Because it was a very strange thing. He found that if he didn’t think of that exact moment, didn’t hear their voices and see their mouths moving, his brain would slide away from the memory of the crime scene.Like it was trying to forget that it ever happened.Like something was trying to make Alex forget it ever happened.And when he mentioned the fruitless search that he’d done yesterday for the girls’ car to Van Christie, it had taken the chief a minute to remember what Alex was even talking about.“Oh, right,” Christie said. “The mayor wants us to keep this as quiet as we can. He’s worried about the summer fair.&rdqu
Night of shades 14
Lauren and David’s grandmother called just after their mom got home from her shopping expedition. Lauren put four cans of store-brand green beans on the floor (she was transporting them to the pantry) and picked up the phone. “Hello, Lauren?” Their grandmother didn’t sound like a frail, fluffy old lady. She had the kind of commanding voice thatmade everyone in the vicinity stand at attention and obey whether they meant to or not. She never bossed Lauren around, but Lauren bet it wasn’t easy for her mom growing up.“Hi, Nana,” she said.Her mom looked up from the paper bag she was unloading and gestured for the phone. “Do you want to talk to Mom?”“No, not right now,” Nana said. “Lauren, do you think you could come and visit me this afte
Night of shades 15
There was a hill just off the center of town, a lonely and inexplicable hill: a hill that should not be, for it blighted an otherwise perfectly flat and reasonable landscape.The hill—and the house that sat upon it—watched over the people and buildings below, though it was the kind of gaze that left the back of one’s neck prickly and uncomfortable.Without this hill it was just an ordinary Midwestern burg, a town that appeared almost magically when coal was discovered nearby and the rich barons from Chicago needed men to dig it up.But the vein ran dry faster than in other parts of Illinois, and many of the men who came to dig went elsewhere to do their work, and the town became nothing but a dirt strip in between empty storefronts. The few people that remained spoke hopefully of one
Night of shades 16
It was a good story, and it was well told. But when Nana got to the end bit, the bit about the man being found in the woods, Lauren felt like her grandmother had struck her. How could Nana use Lauren’s father’s death in this story, like itwas just a dramatic plot point? How could she so callously throw that out there without any regard for Lauren’s feelings?Lauren had been buying it all up until the end. The story of the witch and the man who loved her had struck the perfect tragic note, like an old-fashioned legend. And the notion of a creepy presence in the forest didn’t even seem that farfetched. She liked the idea of a local story that explained so many of the funny things about Smiths Hollow, even if it wasn’t really true.Of course it couldn’t be true. It was just a story
Night of shades 17
Miranda walked around the ghost tree for about the billionth time, checked her watch, and found that it was only thirty seconds after the last time she checked. Where was Lauren? She was never this late.Maybe her mom was still out.But if so, then why hadn’t Lauren called before one? They’d set a time. They’d agreed.And Miranda was going to burst open if she didn’t tell somebody about Him. Of course, she couldn’t tell Lauren His real name, because He was technically an adult and if anybody found out about Him and Miranda then He could get in a lot of trouble because she was jailbait.Not that anything had happened last night. But Miranda knew something was going to happen, could just tell from the way He
Night of shades 18
George Riley had noticed the cop—some people sitting near Riley had called him “Officer Lopez”—giving him the evil eye at the dump where he’d stopped for a burger. How could he not notice? It was Riley’s job to notice such things. Agood journalist noticed everything. You never knew what might be important.Riley wondered what a Hispanic cop was doing in white-bread Smiths Hollow. The census data indicated that less than five percent of the town’s population was not white and/or descended from Irish, German, or Polish immigrants. It was not unlike most of Chicago in that respect. Riley had learned to speak Polish early in his career because there were still parts of the city that had more Polish than English speakers.The Hispanic cop had assessed Riley, drawn
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