One Door From Heaven

tolerate a thankless child. When forced into this hateful game,…she proceeded with grim determination and without comment, aware that either a harsh word or refusal to play would bring down upon her the shrillest, most accusative, and most unrelenting of her mother's upbraidings. And in the end, she would have to find the brace anyway.
        Now her open window admitted the sound of Preston at the front door. The jingle of keys. The clack as the dead-bolt lock disengaged. The quiet scrape of metal weatherstripping against the threshold as he gently closed the door behind him.
        Perhaps he would visit the kitchen for a glass of water or a late-night snack.
        Drawn by the red light spilling into the hall, perhaps he would go directly to the master bedroom.
        What would he make of the dead snake, the discarded closet pole, and Sinsemilla's bandaged hand?
        Most likely he wouldn't stop in Leilani's room. He would respect her privacy and her need for rest.
        On a daily basis, Preston treated her with the same kindness that always he exhibited toward neighbors and waitresses and animals. On the eve of her tenth birthday, next February, if she had not yet escaped him or devised an effective defense, he would kill her with the selfsame regret and sadness that he had shown when euthanizing the crippled cat. He might even weep for her.
        He traveled silently on the matted orange shag, and she didn't hear him coming through the house until he opened her door. No stop for water or a snack. No curiosity about the red glow in the master bedroom. Directly to Leilani.
        Because her back was to him, she hadn't closed her eyes. A pale rectangle of hall light projected on the wall opposite the entrance, and in that image of the door stood the effigy of Preston Maddoc.
        "Leilani?" he whispered. "Are you awake?"
        She remained dead-cat still and didn't reply.
        As considerate as ever, lest the hallway lamp wake her, Preston entered. He soundlessly closed the door behind him.
        In addition to the bed, the room contained little furniture. One nightstand. A dresser. A cane chair.
        Leilani knew that Preston had moved the chair close to the bed when she heard him sit on it. The interlaced strips of cane protested when they received his weight.
        For a while he was mum. The cane, which would creak and rasp with the slightest shift of his body, produced no faintest noise. He remained perfectly motionless for a minute, two minutes, three.
        He must be meditating, for it was too much to hope that he had been turned to stone by one of the gods in whom he didn't believe.
        Although Leilani could see nothing in the darkness and though Preston was behind her, she kept her eyes open.
        She hoped he couldn't hear her thudding heart, which seemed to clump up and down and up the staircase of her ribs.
        "We did a fine thing tonight," he said at last.
        Preston Maddoc’s voice, an instrument of smoke and steel, could ring with conviction or express steadfast belief equally well in a murmur. Like the finest actor, he was able to project a whisper to the back wall of a theater. His voice flowed as molten and as rich as hot caramel but not as sweet, and Leilani was reminded of one of those caramel-dipped tart green apples that you could sometimes buy at a carnival. In his university classes, students had surely sat in rapt attention; and if he had ever been inclined to prey upon naive coeds, his soft yet reverberant voice would have been one of his principal tools of seduction.
        He spoke now in a hushed tone, although not exactly a whisper: "Her name was Tetsy, an unfortunate variant of Elizabeth. Her parents were well meaning. But I can't imagine what they were thinking. Not that they seem to think all that much. Both are somewhat dense, if you ask me. Tetsy wasn't a diminutive, but her legal name. Tetsy-it sounds more like a little lap dog or a cat. She must have been teased mercilessly. Oh, perhaps the name might have worked if she'd been sprightly, cute, and elfin. But of course, she wasn't any of that, poor girl."
        In Leilani's vital coils, a chill arose. She prayed that she wouldn't shiver and, by shivering, alert Preston to the fact that she was awake.
        "Tetsy was twenty-four, and she'd had some good years. The world is full of people who've never known a good year."
        Starvation, disease,