One Door From Heaven

girl had managed to sneak out of the house, after all, but she hadn't knocked, which meant that she'd given up all hope of help and that she was reluctant to risk focusing Maddoc's wrath on Micky and Geneva more than she'd already done.
        These three roses, each a perfect specimen and obviously chosen with care, were more than a gift: They were a message. In their white sun-kissed splendor, they said goodbye.
        Feeling as though she'd been pierced by every thorn on the bush, Micky turned away from a message that she was emotionally unable to accept, and stared at the house trailer next door. The place appeared to be deserted.
        She had crossed the lawn to the fallen fence between properties before she quite realized that she'd begun to move. She was running by the time she reached the neighbors' back door.
        Impetuously, even though she hadn't composed an excuse for the visit if Maddoc or Sinsemilla responded, Micky knocked with an urgency that she couldn't quell. She rapped too long, too hard, and when she paused to rub her stinging knuckles against the palm of her other hand, the silence in the house abided as though she had never knocked at all.
        As before, drapes shrouded the windows. Micky looked left and right, hoping to see a fold of fabric stir, any indication that she was being watched, that someone still resided here.
        When she pounded on the door again and failed once more to draw a response, she tried the knob. Unlocked. The door opened.
        Morning hadn't fully arrived in the Maddoc kitchen, where heavy curtains filtered the early daylight. Even with the door open and sunshine streaming past Micky, shadows dominated.
        The illuminated clock, brightest point in the room, seemed to float supernaturally upon the wall, as if it were the clock of fate counting down to death. She could hear nothing but the purr of its cat-quiet mechanism.
        She shouted into the house: "Hello? Is anyone here? Is anyone home? Hello?"
        Unanswered, she crossed the threshold.
        The possibility of a trap occurred to her. She didn't think that Maddoc would scheme to lure her farther by silence, and then bludgeon her with a hammer. She was undeniably a trespasser, however; and she could be easily framed for theft if, in answer to Maddoc's call, the police suddenly arrived and found her here. With her prison record, any trumped-up charge might stick.
        Dropping all pretense that she was looking for anyone but the girl, she called only Leilani's name as, nervously, she moved deeper into the narrow house. The greasy drapes, the sagging furniture, the matted shag carpet absorbed her voice as effectively as would have the draped walls and the plush surfaces of a funeral home, and step by step she found herself in the steadily constricting embrace of claustrophobia.
        As furnished rentals went, this was at the desperation end of the financial spectrum, leased by the week to tenants who more often than not were still scrambling to put together every Friday's rent payment even after Friday had dawned. The contents, aside from being worn to the point of collapse, were utterly impersonal: no souvenirs or knickknacks, no family photographs, not even any ten-dollar artworks on the walls.
        In the kitchen and living room, Micky saw no possession that hadn't come with the house, no indication that the Maddocs were in residence. Born to wealth, raised with fine things, the doom doctor could have paid for the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and surely would have preferred those accommodations. The fact that he had rented this place for the week, using the name Jordan Banks, seemed to prove that he not only wanted to keep a low profile these days but that, when eventually he was finished with Leilani and with her mother, he intended to have left behind little or no proof that he had ever traveled in their company.
        The depressing nature of these digs and the lack of concern about his bride's comfort, when better could so easily have been afforded, argued that Preston Maddoc's reasons for marrying had nothing to do with love and affection, or with the desire to have a family of his own. Some mysterious need drove him, and not even all of Leilani's colorful observations and bizarre speculations had come close to casting light upon his scabrous motives.
        Venturing into the bedrooms and the bathroom required a greater degree of