“Mark told me he likes apples,” Emma said.
“He does.”
The kitchen held no evidence that a violent and deadly struggle had taken place there. The dishes on the table were spotted with dried egg yolk, butter, and crumbs of toast. The clock-radio produced soft instrumental music, an orchestrated version of a pop tune. The new issue of the weekly newspaper, distributed that morning, was folded in half and propped against two empty juice glasses and the sugar bowl. A cup of steaming coffee stood beside the paper. If she had watched her husband murder a child, could Emma have sat down to read less than an hour after the killing? Improbable. Impossible. There was no blood on the wall behind the electric range, no blood on the range itself, and no blood, not even one thin smear, on the tile floor.
“Did you come to get Buster?” Emma asked. She was clearly perplexed by their behavior.
“No,” Paul said. “But we’ll take him off your hands. Actually, I’m ashamed to tell you why we did come.”
“They cleaned it up,” Rya said. “I don’t want to hear-”
“They cleaned up the blood,” she said excitedly.
Paul pointed one finger at her. “You have caused quite enough trouble for one day, young lady. You keep quiet. I’ll talk to you later.”
Ignoring his warning, she said, “They cleaned up the blood and hid his body.”
“Body?” Emma looked confused. “What body?”
“It’s a misunderstanding, a hoax, or-” Paul began.
Rya interrupted him. To Emma she said, “Mr. Thorp killed Mark. You know he did. Don’t lie! You stood at that chair and watched him beat Mark to death. You were naked and-”
“Rya!” Paul said sharply.
“It’s true!”
“I told you to be quiet.”
“She was naked and-”
In eleven years he had never been required to deal out any punishment more severe than a twenty-four-hour suspension of some of her privileges. But now, angry, he started toward her. Rya pushed past Jenny, threw open the kitchen door, and ran. Shocked by her defiance, angry and yet worried about her, Paul went after her. When he set foot on the stoop, she was already out of sight. She. couldn’t have had time to run to the garage or to the station wagon; therefore, she must have slipped around the corner of the house, either left or right. He decided she would most likely head for Union Road, and he went that way. When he reached the sidewalk he saw her and called to her.
She was nearly a block away, on the far side of the street, still running. If she heard him, she didn’t respond; she disappeared between two houses.
He crossed the street and followed her. But when he reached the rear lawns of those houses, she wasn’t there.
“Rya!”
She didn’t answer him. She might have been too far away to hear-but he suspected that she was hiding nearby.
“Rya, I just want to talk to you!”
Nothing. Silence.
Already his anger had largely given way to concern for her. What in the name of God had possessed the girl? Why had she concocted such a grisly story? And how had she managed to tell it with such passion? He hadn’t really believed any of it, not from the start-yet he’d been so impressed by her sincerity that he’d come to the Thorp house to see for himself. She wasn’t a liar by nature. She wasn’t that good an actress. At least not in his experience. And when her story was shown to be a lie, why had she defended it so ardently? How had she defended it so ardently, knowing it was a lie? Did she believe, perhaps, that it wasn’t a fabrication? Did she think that she actually had seen her brother killed? But if that was the case, she was-mentally disturbed. Rya? Mentally disturbed? Rya was tough. Rya knew how to cope. Rya was a rock. Even an hour ago he would have staked his life on her soundness of mind. Was there any psychological disorder that could strike a child so suddenly, without warning, without any symptoms beforehand?
Deeply worried, he went back across the Street to apologize to Emma Thorp.