Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

away from me. She’d had enough, and who could blame her?
    Or was it something else? Was she thinking what had just occurred to me, that one of the bad things might indeed be her fault and what kind of a life she might have if she’d indeed killed Dr. Bechman?
    I suddenly felt terrified for her. Was that how Leon felt, too? I wanted to grab her and pull her close and make her listen to me. I wanted to tell her that if she didn’t kill Bechman, she better speak up fast, she better talk and keep talking until she was believed. But if she did it, if she did stab him in the heart with the Botox injection, she better not talk to anyone, not now and not for a very long time. Instead, I sat there quietly for another minute or so before getting up, Dashiell jumping off the bed and following me. I closed the door most of the way, leaving the light on in the hall, the way her mother might have done. Then I went into my office and turned on the computer.
    Luckily I hadn’t printed any of the letters I’d written or received via Classmates.com. I wouldn’t have wanted Madison to see letters I’d written pretending to be her mother, signing her mother’s name. What she’d seen was more than enough, too much for a young girl to have to deal with.
    I checked my mail to see if Jim had written back. “Your not Sally,” he’d written after my first post. “Who are you?”
    “You’re right,” I’d written back, “I’m not Sally. Sally went missing five years ago when her little girl was seven. Now her daughter is in trouble and needs her mother. I’ve been hired to try to find her but the trail’s ice cold—in fact, there is no trail. I was hoping to find someone who knew her before and might be able to tell me something about her, anything at all, that might give me a clue where she might have gone. I would be most grateful if you’d talk to me.” I’d given him my name and both phone numbers, landline and cell, but hadn’t heard back. Nor was there anything now.
    How interested could anyone be after all these years? Curious, maybe, but beyond that? After all, Sally had abandoned all her friends. According to Leon, they’d gone to Delaware and moved to Manhattan, without a word to anyone.
    There were two new letters to Sally, both from girls. I wrote back, but it was difficult to feel hopeful.
    I decided to let Dashiell out in the garden instead of walking him. When he ran to the gate, I called him back, sitting on the cold steps and waiting while he made his rounds, and left some notes that only he would get to read.
    Back inside, I opened the door to my bedroom enough that I could see Madison. Her glasses were on the nightstand and she’d turned onto her back, the covers pushed partway down, one leg sticking out on the side. Her face was smooth and calm in sleep. And with her eyes closed, you couldn’t tell that one lid drooped when they were open. She looked like a normal little girl, peacefully asleep.
    Lying in the bed in my office, Dashiell squeezed under the covers at the foot of the bed, I couldn’t sleep for wondering what would happen to Madison. I didn’t hear her at first, bare feet on the wooden floor, but the old boards in the hallway squeaked and then the door to the office opened, and she was silhouetted in the doorway, her dark glasses back on.
    I figured she was looking for Dashiell, so I held up the covers to show her where he was, to let her wake him and spirit him away, but she misunderstood my gesture, taking it as an invitation. She slipped into bed beside me, her cold feet touching me for a second and then coming to rest against Dashiell’s warm back. Then she rolled toward me, as if by accident, until she was leaning on me as well. I could smell the sweet almond scent of my shampoo in her hair. I let the cover drop, my arm with it so that both covered her. I felt her arm move as she reached for her glasses, slipping them off and letting them drop to the floor. And lying like that, nestled together, we fell asleep.

CHAPTER 17

    I woke up alone, to the smell of bacon. Or rather the smell of burnt bacon. When I got downstairs, there were two cans of Coke on the table, and Madison was making peanut butter and bacon sandwiches. There was an empty pan on the kitchen floor so I knew that Dashiell had been fed. And Emil/Emily was in the swimming bowl, which sat between the cans of Coke like a centerpiece, a rock in the bowl, meaning Madison and Dashiell had been out in the garden. She