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“From Paris,” Larysa said.
“I thought you sounded French.”
“Sometime people say I talk like Eastern European, but people with good taste always know I am French.”
“Je parle un peut!” Mrs. Bre
“Oh, very nice,” Larysa said. “You are a very good French speaker!”
“Merci.” The kettle boiled, and Mrs. Bre
“Law,” said Larysa.
“Law?” said Mrs. Bre
“Law of averages,” said Larysa.
“Oh, math! That’s not law.”
“Law of jungle.”
“Oh, ho,” said Mrs. Bre
“I like a cheese toastie,” Larysa said. Mrs. Bre
“Oh my, what a rude little baby!” she cried. “Filling his diaper in front of a guest!” The baby had smelled neutral, even nice. But Mrs. Bre
“What the heck are you doing here? How’d you even get here?”
She wrenched her arm away from him. “Tell her come back, Terry. Baby can stay in the other room. But she should be here for this, no?”
“I don’t know what you want, but whatever it is, it can be dealt with the next time I see you.”
“Sure. You think you ever see me again after today? You’re very not smart, Terry.” She showed him the folded hunting knife. “Tell her come in, or I put this into your eye right now and cut it out. Then I go find the baby. Cut baby up.”
“Hey, Colleen! Come back in here.”
“I’m just settling the baby!”
“The baby better wait.”
Colleen crept back into the room. “Whatever this is, I don’t need to be any part of it.”
“It’s nothing,” said Terry. “She just wants a refund because I’m not, I guess I’m not the best tutor for her specialty. How much is the refund, Kitty?”
Then Colleen saw the folding knife in Larysa’s hand. She took a moment to categorize it and put her hand over her mouth.
“She’s going to hurt little Stephen!”
“No, she’s not,” said Terry Bre
His wife stood there on one side of the kitchen counter, trapped in her terror. Larysa said, “Terry have something which belongs to me.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Just remind me again what the figure is?”
“Oh, Terry,” Larysa said, laughing brightly. Of course he didn’t have it. But she wasn’t done. She was here now. She said, “Are you sure? Don’t you pick up something of mine?”
“Ah! Ha ha!” Terry Bre
The blade came out with a metallic whack and instantly she had the point at the side of his neck. Mrs. Bre
“I have whatever you need,” he said.
“Terry?” said the wife quietly. “Who is she?”
“She’s from the special needs group, Colleen. It’s go
“Yes, absolutely we talk,” she said. Bre
“Please, Kitty.”
“Tell her what it is. Then you take me to it, and this is over. I go.”
“Terry, you can tell me,” Mrs. Bre
“Your wife is beautiful,” said Larysa, “she has good thought. You should listen to her.”
The baby began squalling in another room.
“Stay,” Larysa said when Mrs. Bre
The eye that faced her, in the side of Terry Bre
“I know,” she said, “I know you don’t have it.”
“Good.”
“And I know you will tell her everything.”
“I will! I will!”
“Tell me what, Terry?” said the wife, and Larysa pulled him up off the counter, and then, her hand still on his shoulder, she extended him backwards and drove the knife deep into the middle of his back. This was a knife for quartering game. Bre
“How do you know if a man is telling you the truth?” Larysa asked her.
Colleen Bre
Terry Bre
“No, no, no –” the wife gibbered, and Larysa put the tip of the knife into her husband’s throat and pulled it across.
“Answer is: you don’t.”
] 18 [
Mid-afternoon
Hazel sent a text to Wingate – she figured a text might buy him a few more minutes of vacation than a call would – and put her phone back in her pocket as she went through the door to the sound of wailing. It was almost too raw to be human, and she realized it was a baby. The man’s wife was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to calm the infant, but there’d been too much sudden activity all around him and there would be no settling the baby down.
Mrs. Bre
The girl had been here. This was all Hazel knew. But she had a name now: Kitty. The man had called her Kitty. She’d appeared at the house around three in the afternoon and half an hour later, she was gone, and Terry Bre
The baby had settled a little now, his snuffles coming spasmodically, and Mrs. Bre
“Mrs. Bre
“I thought she was going to … kill Stephen.”
“How do you think your husband knew this Kitty?” Mrs. Bre
“When is the hospital going to call?”
“Soon. They’re doing what they can. Was Terry involved in anything unusual you know of?” she asked, moving deftly over her omissions. “Or was he absent from the home a lot for unexplained reasons?”
“No … no. Terry taught math at Gilchrist Middle. She said she was a student of his. That he tutored her.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“No,” she said quietly, wonderingly.
“Mrs. Bre