Dead Ringer

She walked into the living room, where the scene was the same. The cushion on the sofa had been upended, novels had been torn from the bookshelves, and magazines and newspapers lay scattered on the coffee table. It would take hours to put the place back together, and she hadn’t been upstairs yet. Her bedroom. Her bathroom. She even had a tube of Clearasil in her medicine chest. At her age, it was humiliating. Bear bounded obliviously over the debris, a hundred pounds of fur carrying a denuded te

“Good boy, good dog,” she said, scratching the dog’s soft ci

“You got it, handsome.” Be

Once she got outside onto the street, Be

She gave him a pat, feeling herself almost relax in the process. Lights were already glowing through the windows of the rowhouses, and the cooking aromas wafted down the block. “Chicken,” she decided, and Bear looked back in agreement as he tugged her along.

The Lame Dog Park was just a few blocks away, so named not because it was for lame dogs, but it was such a lame park. It contained not a single blade of grass, but was simply an abandoned square of rubble and trash leftover where a few houses had been torn down and reconstruction had yet to begin. The dog owners in the neighborhood had picked out all of the glass and dangerous trash, and had taken to using the open lot to run the dogs because it was so convenient and secluded. Be

Bear came cantering back with the ball, his gait rocking back and forth, his tail wagging. His round eyes were like brown marbles, bright and alert, and he smiled broadly, panting up at her. Be

She threw the ball, preoccupied. She couldn’t live her life looking over her shoulder. She wanted to know where Alice was. She knew that Alice wouldn’t be found if she didn’t want to be, not by conventional methods. There was one way she could track her down, but she hadn’t wanted to find her enough before to resort to it. But as distasteful as it was, the time was now. It was the night of last resorts, after all.

Half an hour later, Be

The Saab whizzed past exits for the Philly airport, then the Red Roof I

Be

“Ready or not, here I come,” she said aloud, not terribly surprised at the anger underlining her tone. She probably should have gone to therapy about her feelings, but she’d been too busy, then too broke. She’d read self-help books about dysfunctional families, but she wasn’t self-helped.

Her fingers tensed around the hard steering wheel, and she noticed her speedometer jitterbugging at eighty miles an hour. She passed a red Miata, then a long McDonald’s truck with a mile-high hamburger on the side. She was feeling more nervous the closer she got to her father. She accelerated, ignoring the speedometer and the other cars. She felt as if she were a bullet streaking toward a target, the trajectory flat, straight, and true. She would see her father and go right through to Alice.

She checked the Saab’s clock: 8:22. She’d be at his house in half an hour. She whipped past strip mall after strip mall, their neon signs glowing in the dark, the way she had remembered it. Soon the landscape would change to the lovely countryside right outside Wilmington. The estate her father lived on was in the middle of gorgeous horse country, with acres of rolling hills and rustic split-rail fences. Be

God rest her soul. Be

Go, a voice said, and Be