“Sorry, but it wasn’t prophetic.”
“Daddy, don’t be a writer using big words.”
“I meant, your dream isn’t going to come true.”
“Well, I know that, ” she said. “You and Mommy would blow a basket if
we had candy for breakfast.”
“Gasket. Not basket.”
She wrinkled her face. “Does it really matter?”
“No, I guess not. Basket, gasket, whatever you say.”
Emily squirmed out of his arms and jumped down from the bed.
“I’m going to the potty,” she announced.
“That’s a start. Then take a shower, brush your teeth, and get
dressed.”
Charlotte was, as usual, slower to come fully awake. By the time Emily
was closing the bathroom door, Charlotte had only managed to push back
the blankets and sit on the edge of her bed. She was scowling down at
her bare feet.
Marty sat beside her. “They’re called ‘toes.”
“Mmmm,” she said.
“You need them to fill out the ends of your socks.”
She yawned.
Marty said, “You’ll need them a lot more if you’re going to be a ballet
dancer. But for most other professions, however, they’re not essential.
So if you aren’t going to be a ballet dancer, then you could have them
surgically removed, just the biggest ones or all ten, that’s entirely up
to you.”
She cocked her head and gave him a Daddy’s-being-cute-so-let’s humor-him
look. “I think I’ll keep them.
“Whatever you want,” he said, and kissed her forehead.
“My teeth feel furry,” she complained. “So does my tongue.”
“Maybe during the night you ate a cat.”
She was awake enough to giggle.
In the bathroom the toilet flushed, and a second later the door opened.
Emily said, “Charlotte, you want privacy for the potty, or can I shower
now?”
“Go ahead and shower,” Charlotte said. “You smell.”
“Yeah? Well, you stink.”
“You reek.”
“That’s because I want to,” Emily said, probably because she couldn’t
think of a comeback word for “reek.”
“My gracious young daughters, such little ladies.”
As Emily disappeared back into the bathroom and began to fiddle with the
shower controls, Charlotte said, “Gotta get this fuzz off my teeth.” She
got up and went to the open door. At the threshold she turned to Marty.
“Daddy, do we have to go to school today?”
“Not today.”
“I didn’t think so.” She hesitated. “Tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, honey. Probably not.”
Another hesitation. “Will we be going to school again ever?”
“Well, sure, of course.”
She stared at him for too long, then nodded and went into the bathroom.
Her question rattled Marty. He wasn’t sure if she was merely
fantasizing about a life without school, as most kids did now and then,
or whether she was expressing a more genuine concern about the depth of
the trouble that had rolled over them.
He had heard the television come on in the other room while he had been
sitting on the edge of the bed with Charlotte, so he knew Paige was
awake. He got up to go say good morning to her.
As he was approaching the connecting door, Paige called to him.
“Marty, quick, look at this.”
When he hurried into the other room, he saw her standing in front of the
TV. She was watching an early-morning news program.
“It’s about us,” she said.
He recognized their own home on the screen. A woman reporter was
standing in the street, her back to the house, facing the camera.
Marty squatted in front of the television and turned up the sound.
“. . . so the mystery remains, and the police would very much like to
talk to Martin Stillwater this morning . . .”
“Oh, this morning they want to talk,” he said disgustedly.
Paige shushed him.
“. . . an irresponsible hoax by a writer too eager to advance his
career, or something far more sinister? Now that the police laboratory
has confirmed the large amount of blood in the Stillwater house is
indeed of human origin, the need for the authorities to answer that
question has overnight become more urgent.”
That was the end of the piece. As the reporter gave her name and
location, Marty registered the word
“LIVE” in the upper left-hand corner