Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

Author:Karen Joy Fowler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

(2)

Rima read her fortune again and more carefully. This second time through, she was struck by the images of sand and water, by the part about the little actions and thoughts. This second time through, the message seemed clear.

She had been making a special effort to be the one taking delivery when Kenny Sullivan dropped off the mail. This was made more complicated by wild variations day to day in the time the mail was delivered. Rima had never seen a postman so unpredictable.

Today she had forgotten. It would be just her luck if today was the day Maxwell’s letter came back. It was probably already sitting on the entryway table, in front of the Missing Pieces dollhouse (woman strangled, tiny pieces from a jigsaw puzzle of the Egyptian pyramids scattered over her body).

Rima should go right home and get that letter before someone else did. Find her wallet. Find and pay those dog tickets. Stop feeling sorry for herself. Get things under control.

As she pulled into the driveway at Wit’s End, a woman approached the car. “I know who you are,” the woman said. She was pale and thin, with a mole on her upper lip. Light brown hair, small, sharp incisors like a rat’s. Stoned little eyes. Rima hadn’t been a middle school teacher for nothing. The woman was maybe forty years old, but in California, who could tell? Might be fifty. It was the woman from the beach; there was no doubt in Rima’s mind. I know who you are, Rima thought.

She locked the doors and raised the windows. “You need to return the doll you took, or I’ll call the police,” she said. She pretended to be searching through the car for her cell phone. Rima hadn’t had a cell phone since she lost her fourth one two years ago. There was just no point.

Not that sometimes you didn’t really need one.

The woman didn’t appear to notice her pantomime. She put her palm on the window by Rima’s head. “You’re Bim Lanisell’s kid,” she said.

Now that Rima could see the woman’s neck she revised her estimate of the woman’s age. Definitely older than forty. “And you are?”

“Pamela Price. I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Give the doll back.”

And the woman smiled in a way that suggested her complete and enthusiastic cooperation. Then she walked off, down the slope of the drive toward the Pacific Coast Highway. By the time Rima made it inside, the woman was long out of sight.

Tilda was at the stove, stirring a pot of something or other. Her hair was pulled off her face by a black band, and she was flushed from the steam of whatever she was cooking. Rima could have identified it by smell as onion soup and red wine if her mind hadn’t been on other things.

“Where’s Addison?” Rima asked. “Are we still not calling the police? Because the woman who took Thomas Grand was just outside on the driveway.”

“Did she have red hair?”

“No.”

“Could her hair have been colored?”

“Who’s Thomas Grand?” someone asked.

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