Even inside the store it was warm, the heat radiating off the large sunlit windows that lined the front wall. Every now and then, a puff of cool air would blow over from the refrigerated cases of ice cream.
Kris felt her uneasiness fade away with each lick of ice cream. Gone was the happy couple spending a carefree day at the park with their son. Gone was Deputy B. Montgomery knocking on her car window. Gone was the red-rimmed doorway leading up to the talking doctor’s office. This place—the ice cream shop—was, by its very nature, a place to escape troubles.
We came here, Kris realized. Mommy and Daddy and me. We sat at this very counter and we ate ice cream and Mommy made a joke about Daddy’s tummy and Daddy said it wasn’t ice cream he was worried about, it was beer, and we all laughed because we were happy. Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was really happening. But they did. They …
She pinched her eyes shut and pushed away the thought.
Not here. Not in the ice cream shop.
She looked over at Sadie. Unlike her disinterested nibbles of burger at the Pig Stand, Sadie was eagerly lapping at the top mound of chocolate fudge. If this was her lunch, then so be it.
“Good?” Kris asked.
Sadie nodded between licks. A line of cookie dough cream coursed over her knuckles. A second later, the same thing was happening to Kris, white streams of butter pecan slipping from the glistening ball atop the cone like floodwaters over a dam.
“Hurry!” Kris cried. “Lick! Lick! We can’t let the ice cream win!”
They tried to eat quickly, but the ice cream melted quicker, running down the sides of the cones and between their fingers. By the time they were done, both Kris and Sadie were a mess, their hands smudged with sticky cream, Sadie’s mouth covered in brown chocolate from her lips all the way to the middle of both cheeks.
Kris wet a napkin on her tongue and threatened to wipe Sadie’s face with it, an act that had always elicited a frightened giggle from the girl. Now it barely got a smile, but the hint was there, tugging as always at the edge of her lips. The hint would do, Kris decided. The hint meant the possibility of smiles down the road.
She took the wet, mushy paper that had been wrapped around Sadie’s cone and nodded toward a hallway at the back of the store. “Why don’t you go wash up?”
With the brown smudges beginning to dry on her fair skin, Sadie slipped off her stool and trotted away down the hall. A moment later came the click of a bathroom door opening and closing.
Kris stayed at the counter, nibbling at the last of her sugar cone.
“She’s a beautiful girl.”
Behind the counter was a young woman of nineteen or twenty. She wore chunky black glasses with lenses so thick, her eyes looked like blue pails lowered to the bottoms of deep, dark wells. Her plump cheeks were marred by clusters of pimples, not nearly as bad as the kid at the supermarket, but her greasy flesh still begged for a good, soapy scrubbing. Pulled down to the top of her eyeglass frames was a tan cap embroidered with the business’s name in the same amateurish script as the sign out front.
The name of every store in this town is a ridiculous pun, Kris thought, and then she scolded herself. It was supposed to be cute. It was supposed to hearken back to a simpler, less cynical time. A happier time.
When everything was swept under the rug.
“Are you visiting or …” The young woman let her words drift into the warm air as if there were no second option.
This was not the same person who had waited on them when they arrived, Kris realized. That had been a rail-thin girl of high-school age with her hair pulled into a sloppy side ponytail and bangs cut an inch too high on her forehead.
“Visiting,” Kris said, trying to hide her confusion. “For the summer.”
The young woman did not reply. For a few moments, Kris sat in silence while the young woman rinsed the ice cream from used metal scoopers, the hot water from the faucet billowing steam around her face.
“You know, you ought to keep an eye on a little girl like that in this town.” The young woman was facing Kris. She held a scooper in her hand, seemingly forgotten. Milky white water dripped from its tip.
“What?”
The woman cocked her head, those tiny, faraway eyes staring off in the direction of the restrooms.
“She’s been in there a long time,” the woman said.
Invisible fingers traced the back of Kris’s neck. She began to get up from her stool, the toes of her shoes just touching the ground, when down the hall one of the restroom doors opened and Sadie reappeared. She obediently crossed the empty store, the skin around her mouth red from being wiped clean with a rough paper towel.
“Better?” she asked, lifting her face to show off her clean skin.
Kris nodded. “Much.” She stood and tightly gripped Sadie’s hand. “Ready to go?”
Sadie pushed the front door open, the bell giving a pleasant ding, thanking them for their visit.
Over her shoulder, Kris called back, “Have a nice day.”
Behind the counter, the young woman smiled, but to Kris, it looked more like a grimace, as if she were trying to ignore a pain eating away at her gut.
The words continued to ring in Kris’s head as they stepped into the sunlight:
In this town.
She was just trying to be helpful, the timid voice scolded.
Kris couldn’t recall exactly when she realized she thought in different voices. One day her thoughts had simply taken on distinct tones. They sounded like different versions of her. There was the timid voice that pestered her, lecturing her in its passive-aggressive tone. This voice always tried to see the bright side. It was the one she had listened to for much of her life, the one that had told her everything was fine with Jonah, that his late nights and foul attitude meant he was working hard, nothing more. This voice made her feel like a child. She hated it most.
And then there was the dark voice, the shadow voice that echoed from a great distance. It was the voice behind the door. This one made her skin prickle and the muscles in her neck and shoulders tingle. This voice spoke the truth, even when she didn’t want to hear it. Especially when she didn’t want to hear it. It said things like He doesn’t love you anymore, and Your daughter hates you, and Your mommy is turning into a monster.
Kris did not hate this voice. She feared it. She feared it most when she didn’t understand it, when it seemed to know more than she did. This voice was more like her than the other voice. Sarcastic. Sometimes profane. Full of attitude.
She’s not trying to be helpful, this voice said now. That asshole is trying to scare you.
“Can we go back to the house now?” Sadie asked. She had already started down the sidewalk, toward where the Jeep was parked across the next street.
This town, Kris heard the young woman in the thick glasses say again.
She hurried to catch up to her daughter.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY NEEDED TO have some fun. No more cleaning. No more worrying about the dirt and the weeds and the spiderwebs. The minute they got home, Kris led Sadie straight to the back doors and out onto the deck.
“Where are we going?” Sadie asked, her voice barely a murmur through tight lips.
“On an adventure,” Kris told her.
They reached the top of the slope behind the lake house, and Kris peered down, her eyes falling upon a black mound rising from the rocky ground a few yards from the water’s edge. It was a plastic tarp, and she knew that beneath it was—