The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

soon,” Lauren said to the strap of her backpack. “See you guys tomorrow.” She kept her head down as shewalked toward the stage exits. She heard Stitch yell “BYE, TED!” as he leapt into the orchestra pit.

 

After rehearsal, Stitch practiced skateboard tricks in the Bethune parking lot, which bordered the football, soccer, and baseballfields that spread out behind the school. The hollow hiccupping roar of the wheels on the asphalt followed Lauren as she approached the chain-link fence that dividedthe school grounds from the ranch houses on half acres lining Fox Hollow Lane, narrow and winding. A chunk of the fence peeledback to leave a child-sized opening that Lauren could stoop and maneuver through, into an undeveloped lot, dense with treesand undergrowth. She kept forgetting to ask Dad about that lot. To reach home, Lauren would walk through the lot, cross FoxHollow, and cut through the Reillys’ yard, next door to Mr. Smith’s house.

Centuries of tree growth shaded and blanketed the houses along this stretch. The Reillys’ wooden ranch nestled under maplesand pines. The unvarnished back deck was almost as big as the house. Mr. Reilly hunted deer. He aged the meat in coolers,placing them at the top of an old kiddie slide and opening the drain plug to let the bloodied ice trickle down the dingy yellowplastic.

Past the hedgerow behind the Reillys’ house was the outermost street of the wealthy subdivision, half of it still woods. StitchRosen’s house was one of those, on Sycamore Run. These backyards were where the auto mechanics and cosmetologists, the Reillysand Spizzotos, shared property lines with the physicians and attorneys, the Kumars and Epsteins and Kims.

“You never cut through the Rosens’ yard, do you?” Mom asked at breakfast, the last morning she was home.

“No, I don’t go that way,” Lauren said, although she usually did. The Rosens lived in a five-bedroom colonial on a doublelot, with a huge weeping willow out back. Half of their backyard was still woods, sprawling enough that Lauren liked to pretendshe was lost in them, like Gretel or Red Riding Hood, although becoming lost was never a real risk. When she reached the weepingwillow, Lauren could see them through their kitchen window: Mrs. Rosen washing dishes, one of Stitch’s brothers putting somethingin the microwave.

“Good, I’d rather you took another route home,” Mom said.

“Why?” Lauren asked, assuming the answer would be stupid before she heard it.

“Because Dr. Rosen is a baby killer!” PJ said.

“No, he’s not,” Lauren said, looking at Mom for an explanation.

“No, no,” Mom said, as Dad rapped his fist once on the table and pointed at PJ. “No, he’s a family man with children, religious,a good man. Or I can only assume he is a good man.”

“Religious but not Catholic,” Dad said.

“But he is misguided, yes—not because of his faith, it has nothing to do with that, don’t be so ridiculous—and I do pray for him,” Mom said.

“Good-lookin’ guy,” Dad said. “Fit. Served in the IDF.”

“What does any of this have to do with me cutting through his yard?” Lauren asked. All Stitch had ever said about his dadwas that he worked long hours.

“That is enough, Lauren,” Dad said.

“And how do you know he wants you to pray for him?” Lauren asked, and then Dad was yelling. Yelling on Mom’s last day.

Going home tonight, Lauren stopped under the weeping willow and saw Dr. Rosen through his kitchen window. Washing dishes, maybe. He was looking up and adjusting his glasses, focusing his attention on something Lauren couldn’t see. Then he lifted his hand. He was waving at her. She stumbled over the Rosens’ cat, slinky in the moonlit grass, and waved back.

The grass inhaled and exhaled, breathing her feet off the ground. The darkness was milky and changeable, like you could moveyour finger through the air and write a story. Silent armies of squirrels rappelling from the pines to assemble in tacticalformations. Other people’s parents having sex with each other in the Patels’ swimming pool. A baby crawling alone throughthe damp thick grass, gurgling with determination. The rules change at night, and so the baby stands, delivers a stern speechin baby language, pulls up the Rosens’ petunia beds, then creeps back into her house—Stitch’s house?—up the stairs, into hercrib. She wakes before dawn and cries out in shivering distress. Her mother rushes in, moving in a high-speed sleepwalk. Thesodden, freezing clothes could be blamed on a faulty diaper; some hazy failure of housekeeping could account for the blackbands of earth under her tiny fingernails. Whatever she had done was undisclosed to her now.

Lauren had reached home. She turned the knob of the back door and found it locked. She walked around the house, past her mother’s impatiens, pachysandra, the little pussy willow tree she’d planted when Laurenwas born, but the front door, too, was locked. No one in her house ever bothered locking the doors when they were at home.She fished around in the bottom of her backpack for her key.

The house was different as Lauren unlocked and opened the door. The light was yellower, more diffuse, bouncing off new surfaces.In the den, Sean was sobbing.

“But I don’t want to sleep in PJ’s room!” he wailed. “I want my own room!”

“Don’t cry, honey.” Nana Dee’s voice. Lauren hadn’t known she was coming over.

“It will be fun, like a sleepover,” Mom called to Sean from the kitchen. Mom! Mom was home. How long had it been since she heard Mom’s voice? Lauren had forgotten this strange, singsong delivery, like Mom was projecting from the Bethune auditorium stage.

Then, a nervous jolt of laughter from Dad. Had Lauren ever heard Dad laugh at all? The most he ever managed was a dry coughand a That’s funny.

“I can’t believe you kept this a secret all this time.” Aunt Marie’s voice.

“Well, we didn’t want to get anybody worked up until we knew it was a done deal,” Mom said. Who was “we”?

“Hello?” Lauren called as she closed the door behind her.

She heard the pounding of small feet against the parquet floor of the