Rose Madder

“When You Wish Upon a Star,” Rosie took the cricket over to the open window, removed the circular, and held the bowl out into space. Insects could fall from much greater heights than this and walk away unhurt (hop away, her mind amended) when they landed. She was sure she had read that somewhere, or perhaps seen it on some TV nature program.

“Go on, Jiminy,” she said.

“Be a good boy and hop. See the park over there? Tall grass, plenty of dew to drink, lots of girl crick-” She broke off. The bug hadn’t come upstairs in Bill’s cuffs, because he’d been wearing jeans on Monday night, when he’d taken her out to di

“Have a nice day,” Rosie said. ’stop by anytime. Really.'

As she brought the bowl back inside, a minor gust of wind blew the Wal-Mart circular out from beneath her thumb and sent it seesawing lazily to the floor. She bent over to pick it up, then froze with her outstretched fingers still an inch away from it. Two more crickets, both dead, lay against the skirting board, one on its side and the other on its back with its little legs sticking up. One cricket she could understand and accept, but three? In a second-floor room? How, exactly, did you explain that? Now Rosie saw something else, something lying in the crack between two boards close to the dead crickets. She knelt, fished it out of the crack, and held it up to her eyes. It was a clover flower. A tiny pink clover flower. She looked down at the crack from which she had plucked it; she looked again at the pair of dead crickets; then she let her eyes climb slowly up the cream-colored wall… to her picture, hanging there by the window. To Rose Madder (it was as good a name as any) standing on her hill, with the newly discovered pony cropping grass behind her. Conscious of her heartbeat-a big slow muffled drum in her ears-Rosie leaned forward toward the picture, toward the pony’s muzzle, watching the image dissolve into layered shades of old paint, begi