two

_C ome on, David,” Karen diMucci said, unbuckling her son and gathering him out of the back seat. She’d gotten lucky and found a parking space right in front of Frank’s, so she should have been in a better mood. It was always exhausting

to walk more than a block or two towing David and the groceries, especially in the June heat. Today she would get to avoid that.

Just like Lauren avoided my eyes as I passed.

She tried not to let the irritation she felt leak into her tone, but David heard the bite and looked up at her in that serious inquiring way that he had.

“Let’s get some sandwich stuff,” she said, deliberately injecting a hearty note. “And then we’ll get some ice cream at the Sweet Shoppe after, okay?”

“Okeh,” David said.

Lauren and Miranda would surely be gone from the shop by then, Karen thought. Not that she had to avoid her own daughter. But she knew if she saw Lauren now she would be annoyed and unable to keep herself from saying so, and then Lauren would give her the silent treatment all evening for embarrassing her in public.

Karen placed David on his feet and took his hand. He didn’t try to squirm away or run ahead the way most other four-year-olds did. Lauren had been like that—always trying to shake her off, even as a small child.

The air-conditioned cool of the deli was welcome after the stifling heat outside. The weather report in the Smiths Hollow Observer had said the temperature would reach the mid-eighties that day, but it already felt much hotter because there was absolutely no wind. The heat just seemed to settle in and stagnate, especially on Main Street. There were no trees to provide shade—the town fathers had decided some time ago that there were quite enough trees in the woods and no need for the town to spend money maintaining plant life along the sidewalks.

Karen got in line. There were three other people in front of her, all people she knew by sight but not well. In a small town like Smiths Hollow you knew almost everyone by sight. She was grateful not to be forced to accept sympathetic looks and awkward small talk from an acquaintance.

Lately she dreaded leaving the house for just this reason—that she might bump into someone she knew from the PTA or who used to have their car fixed at Joe’s garage. People who weren’t really close enough to be called friends but who felt compelled to stop and ask how she was doing and rub her shoulder and tell her that they hoped things would get better soon.

Karen always did everything she could to hurry along these encounters, checking her watch, saying she had pressing appointments—anything to make the other person just go. She hated the false sympathy, the way the conversations would trail off into sighs.

David waited patiently at her side while they stood in line. Really, he is the best kid in the world, Karen thought. He was good-natured and thoughtful and it never bothered him to wait anywhere. He would just stare around with his big brown eyes—the color and shape matching hers so exactly that everyone always exclaimed that he looked “just like his mommy”— and think his own little thoughts.

Then later when they were alone, when she was giving him his lunch or they were driving to the bank or playing in the sandbox in the backyard, he would tell her what he’d been thinking of, and it always amazed her that such deep thoughts emerged from the mind of her four-year-old.

“Mr. Adamcek likes for everyone to see his money,” David said one day.

Karen, who’d been balancing her checkbook and trying not to cry at the dwindling size of her checking account, had looked up. David was playing with Play-Doh on the kitchen floor. He had newspapers spread around so he wouldn’t get the floor dirty—his idea, not hers. He was that kind of kid.

“How do you know that?” Karen asked.

“He takes a long time to put his change back in his wallet, and sometimes he just stands there at the counter and holds his wallet open while he’s talking,” David said as he rolled the red Play-Doh into a new shape.

Earlier that day Karen had stopped in at the convenience store on her way home from the library because they were out of milk. She didn’t really like buying milk from there because it was usually ten or twenty cents more expensive than the grocery store, but the grocery was out of her way and she didn’t feel like driving all the way over there.

It was true that Paul Adamcek had been in line in front of her buying three packs of Marlboros, and now that she thought about it she realized he had been holding his wallet open the whole time so that it was impossible to miss the stack of $20s inside the billfold.

“He’s going to get robbed if he keeps doing that,” Karen muttered.

“He doesn’t think anyone will try,” David said. “Mr. Adamcek thinks he’s really tough.”

Karen wondered how David had inferred this. It was true that Paul thought he was a tough guy, but she wondered what David saw that made him realize it.

His preschool teacher had, at first, thought there was something wrong with David because he was so often silent. He liked to play with the other children and got along with everyone, but he didn’t talk very much. People often made that mistake, that kids who weren’t talkative were stupid. David wasn’t stupid. He just thought before he spoke, and he spent more time looking and listening than making noise.

“Hello, Karen,” Frank said when Karen finally reached the counter. He leaned out a little so he could see David. “And how are you today, young man?”

David waved up to Frank, and Frank winked at him.

“What can I get for you today?”

Karen read off her list. “Half pound of turkey, half pound of American cheese, and a quarter pound of roast beef.” When Joe was alive she’d have ordered three times the amount of everything, because Joe had eaten two sandwiches

for lunch every day and he didn’t like his sandwiches to be stingy with the meat. But Joe wasn’t alive and Lauren wouldn’t eat anything from Frank’s, so there wasn’t any point in ordering a lot when there was nobody there to eat it. She couldn’t afford to throw away food.

She looked at the premade salads that Frank had in the cooler while she waited. It would be easy to pick up some potato salad to have with lunch, but it would definitely be cheaper to make it herself, and she did have several potatoes in the pantry.

Frank handed Karen her order along with a Tootsie Pop for David. He kept the lollipops behind the counter for his “special customers,” as he called them.

“Thank you, Mr. Frank,” David said as Karen handed him the lollipop.

Karen flashed Frank a grateful smile.

“How’s that girl of yours?” Frank asked. There was no one waiting behind Karen.

Karen shrugged. “Oh, you know. A teenage girl.”

Frank had three grown daughters of his own, so he did know. “She’ll be human again in a few years. Just hang on.” “I’m hanging, all right,” Karen said ruefully. “By my fingernails.”

Frank laughed and waved at David. “Take care of your mama, okay, David?” He nodded gravely. “Okeh, Mr. Frank. I will.”

Karen and David pushed out into the hot June sunshine. “Ice cream sounds like a really good idea, doesn’t it, bud?” David carefully tucked his lollipop into the pocket of his shorts for later. “We haven’t had lunch yet.”

“I think we can have a little dessert before lunch today. What do you think?” He smiled up at her. “If you say so, Mommy.”

“I say so,” Karen said, tucking the bag of lunch meat under her elbow next to her purse. They would have to get their ice cream and eat it quickly. In this weather the meat would spoil before they got home.

They had gone only a few feet when David stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What’s the matter?” Karen asked.

David tilted his head to one side and then to the other, like he was listening to something coming from far away. “Mrs. Schneider,” David said. “She’s screaming.”

“What?” Karen said. She crouched down so she could look into his eyes. They were focused on something but it wasn’t Karen. “David, what’s going on?”

His eyes seemed to come back from wherever they’d gone. He looked right at Karen.

“I told you,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Schneider. She won’t stop screaming. There’s so much blood.”