Jennifer Phoenix?
Laura was shocked. Jenny had changed her name and never told them. How many years had it been? And why?
Feeling a hum of uneasiness, Laura moved to the dim front foyer to call upstairs when she glanced into the living room. Her heart nearly stopped.
It was decorated for Christmas.
By the fireplace sat a large artificial tree fully decked with bulbs, icicles, and lights. Opened presents lay in boxes on the floor. By the fireplace sat a large pink doll-house, its rooms neatly laid out in miniature furniture and figures. It was a vague replica of Jenny's own house. The fireplace mantle was decorated in colored candles and artificial pine and big red Santas. Over the mantle hung a pastel portrait of Abigail as a young child.
Across the foyer, the dining room was decorated for a birthday party, but it must have been from a while ago because some of the colored streamers criss-crossing the ceiling had come loose and most of the balloons had deflated. A partially-eaten cake sat in the middle of the table around which were several chairs, all but two occupied by large stuffed bunnies, bears, and kangaroos.
A sick chill rippled through Laura.
From the second floor she heard a faint sound. A tinkling, barely audible.
She moved toward the stairs and froze. She had heard it before. The same high metallic plinkings, almost like windchimes.
Music. Background sounds in their last telephone conversation. "Frere Jacques." The tune was "Frere Jacques."
An irrational sense of dread gripped her as she began to climb the stairs. The music box Jenny had bought in Boston years ago.
"Her first Christmas present."
A few more steps, and she could hear Jenny singing softly.
"…Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, Dang, Dong. Ding, Dang, Dong."
She reached the door.
Inside Jenny said: "Now in French…"
"'Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez vous? Dormez vous?…'"
The door was decaled in cartoon animals. A porcelain plaque in big happy letters said ABIGAIL'S ROOM.
A second voice sent a shard of ice through Laura's heart. A voice small and thin and singing along with Jenny.
Laura swung open the door.
"'…Sonnez les matines. Sonnez les matines. Din, Don, Din. Din, Don, Din.'"
Jenny looked up, her face in a radiant smile. She was sitting in a rocking chair holding a small child.
In a telescoped moment of awareness, Laura registered the silky blond hair, the brown liquid eyes, the ruddy porcelain cheeks. The pink flowered dress from the photos.
"We're singing in French," Abigail proudly announced.
Horror surged through Laura. The room was a mausoleum of little girlhood: Bunny wallpaper, pink lace curtains, stuffed animals, dolls, a big pink toddler bed, pillows mounded with stuffed kittens and Raggedy Anns. A white decaled bureau with ballerina figurines and the big red music box that filled the room with its soulless ditty.
"Ooooo, look," Jenny sang out. "It's Auntie Wendy. How nice. And she brought you your medicine."
"Jenny!" Laura gasped.
"Oh, of course: And this is Abigail. I forgot how long it's been." Jenny beamed.
"Hi, Auntie Wendy. You look like your picture," the child said. She opened a small photo album from the shelf. "Your hair is different, but it's very flattering. I like it better." Her pronunciation was perfect.
"We have lots of pictures," Jenny piped in proudly.
"Do you know how to speak French?" Abigail asked.
Laura's mind scrambled to land on something that made sense: The girl was somebody else, not Jenny's daughter.
No, Jenny had adopted another child but had not told her for some reason.
No, it was Abigail, but she had some growth disorder-some awful disease that had stunted her limbs.
"Well, do you?"
Laura made an inarticulate sound and shook her head.
"Well, I do." And she rattled off a string of words, none of which registered. "And Spanish." And she said something in Spanish. "I haven't learned to read yet, but Mommy says that's for older children. Don't you think I'm old enough to read?"
"Now, let's not be silly," Jenny said. "You're always in such a hurry to do this and that."
There was nothing in Jenny's manner that betrayed the appearance that she was anything other than a sane, willful, and rational woman going through the motions of indulging her toddler daughter.
"You must forgive me," Jenny said. "We're not used to company, so we don't have extra chairs."
Laura's eyes fell to the table beside the bed and bit down on a scream. On it sat a syringe and an empty ampule of Elixir. Roger had said some were missing but had blamed it on faulty memory.
"Jenny, what did you do?" Laura whispered.
But Jenny paid no attention. "Just as well," she sang out. "We were just getting ready for our nap, weren't we?"
Her voice had the musical lilt of a woman at ease with her life.
Laura looked for signs that she was playacting for the child's sake, that beneath the conditioned facade of a mother's loving patience lay some awareness. That Jenny knew what she had done to her daughter.
There were none.
"Can't I stay up, Mommy? Please?"
Nothing was as it seemed. Jenny was out of her mind. Her daughter was a sixteen-year-old in a toddler's body. Roger was frozen at a half his age.
For a moment Laura felt as if her own mind would go, that without warning she would hear a sickening snap and all the freakshow horrors would be perfectly normal.
"It's already past your bedtime, Little Miss."
"But I want to stay up. I never get company."
"You have lots of company." Jenny waved at all the stuffed animals.
"I mean real company."
Abigail looked at the wall clock. "Oh, Mommy, it's time for my medicine."
The clock was a big plastic pocketwatch like what the White Rabbit toted to Wonderland. Except the numbers were reversed and the second hand was running backward.
Good God! The child had memorized positions of the hands without a clue.
"Now give Auntie Wendy a big kiss good night." Adoringly Jenny watched the child climb off her lap.
Abigail's body was tiny, like an anemic dwarf, with newborn skin and hair, but with older movements. She looked like some alien replica of a human child. She opened her arms, but Laura didn't want to touch her.
"How old are you?" Laura asked, her voice rasping.
Jenny tried to cut her off. "No more chit-chat, please. Time for bed."
"Six."
"Six?"
"Almost seven. Then I can go outside."
"Why can't you go out now?"
"Enough, enough, you two," Jenny sang out. "Time for good little girls to go bed."
"Because I'm sick," Abigail answered.
"What's wrong with you? How are you sick?"
"I'm sick, that's all. But Mommy says the medicine will make me better. And then I can go to Boston. Do they speak French in Boston?"
Jenny got up. "Now I'm getting cross." She picked Abigail up and lay her on the bed to change her diaper. "If you don't mind," Jenny said and shooed Laura out of the room.
The door closed, and Laura leaned up against it with her eyes pressed shut. All her instincts were keyed to be as far from here as she could possibly get.
"You fucking bitch!"
Laura's eyes snapped opened.
A man stood before her with a gun at her face.
"What the hell did you do to my daughter?"
"Ted?" She barely recognize him.