potless. He did it anyway.
When he reached the pair of sliding glass doors in the family room, he
switched on the outdoor patio lights to augment the low landscape
lighting. The backyard was now bright enough for him to see most of it
although someone could have been crouched among the shrubs along the
rear fence. He stood at the doors, waiting for one of the shadows along
the perimeter of the property to shift.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the guy would never come after them. In
which case, in a month or two or three, Hatch would most likely be
certifiably mad from the tension of waiting. He almost thought it would
be better if the creep came now and got it over with.
He moved on to the breakfast nook and examined those windows. They were
still locked.
Regina returned to her bedroom and prepared her corner desk for home
work. She put her books to one side of the blotter, pens and felt-tip
Hi-Liter to the other side, and her notebook in the middle, everything
squared-up and neat.
As she got her desk set up, she worried about the Harrisons. Something
was wrong with them.
Well, not wrong in the sense that they were thieves or enemy spies or
counterfeiters or murderers or child-eating cannibals. For a while
she’d had an idea for a novel in which this absolute screwup girl is
adopted by a couple who are child-eating cannibals, and she finds a pile
of child bones in the basement, and a recipe file in the kitchen with
cards that say things like Roast Girl-and Girl soup, with instructions
like one tender young girl, unsalted, one onion, chopped; one pound
carrots, diced In the story the girl goes to the authorities, but they
will not believe her because she’s widely known as a screwup and a
teller of tall tales.
Well, that was fiction, and this was real liiie, and the Harrisons
seemed perfectly happy eating pizza and pasta and hamburgers.
She clicked on the fluorescent desk lamp.
Though there was nothing wrong with the Harrisons themselves, they
definitely had problems, because they were tense and trying hard to hide
it. Maybe they weren’t able to make their mortgage payments, and the
bank was going to take the house, and all three of them would have to
move back into her old room at the orphanage. Maybe they had discovered
that Mrs. Harrison had a sister. she’d never heard about before, an
evil twin like all those people on television shows were always
discovering they had. Or maybe they owed money to the Mafia and
couldn’t pay it and were going to get their legs broken.
Regina withdrew a dictionary from the bookshelves and put it on the
desk.
If they had a bad problem, Regina hoped it was the Mafia thing, because
she could handle that pretty well. The Harrisons’ legs would get better
eventually, and they’d learn an important lesson about not borrowing
money from loansharks. Meanwhile, she could take care of them, make
sure they got their medicine, check their temperatures now and then, I’d
bring them dishes of ice cream with a little animal cookie stuck in the
top of each one, and even empty their bedpans (Gross!) if it came to
that. She knew a lot about nursing, having been on the receiving end of
so much of it at various times over the years.
(DearGod, if their big problem is life, could have a miracle here and
get the problem changed to the Mafia, so they’ll keep me and we’ll be
happy? In exchange for the miracle, I’d even be willing to have my legs
broken, too. At least talk it over with the guys at the Mafia and see
what they say.) When the desk was fully prepared for homework, Regina
decide that she needed to be more comfortable in order to study.
Having changed out of her parochial-school uniform when she had gotten
home, she was wearing gray corduroy pants and a lime-green, long-sleeve
cotton sweater. Pajamas and a robe were much better for studying.
Besides, her leg brace was making her itch in a couple of places, and