Faith Chandler sat on her dead daughter's bed. Where had she been when Stephanie had smoothed the bedspread for the last time, creasing it beneath the pillow in her precise and dutiful way? What had she been doing when Stephanie had placed her menagerie of plush animals in a perfect row against the headboard?
She had been at work, as always, dogging the end of another shift, her daughter a constant, a given, an absolute.
Can you think of anyone who might have wanted hurt Stephanie?
She had known the moment she opened the door. The pretty young woman and the tall, confident-looking man in the dark suit. They had a look about them that said they did this often. Brought heartache to the door like carryout.
It was the young woman who told her. She had known it would be. Woman-to-woman. Eye-to-eye. It was the young woman who had cut her in two.
Faith Chandler glanced at the corkboard on her daughter's bedroom wall. Clear plastic pushpins prismed rainbows in the sun. Business cards, travel brochures, newspaper clippings. It was the calendar that hurt the most. Birthdays in blue. Anniversaries in red. Future past.
She had thought about slamming the door in their faces. Maybe that would have kept the pain from entering. Maybe that would have kept the heartache out there with the people in the papers, the people on the news, the people in the movies.
Police learned today that…
This just in…
An arrest has been made…
Always in the background as she made dinner. Always someone else. Flashing lights, white-sheeted gurneys, grim-faced spokesmen. Over at six thirty.
Oh, Stephie love.
She drained her glass, the whiskey in search of the sorrow within. She picked up the phone, waited.
They wanted her to come down to the morgue and identify the body. Would she know her own daughter in death? Wasn't it life that made her Stephanie?
Outside, the summer sun dazzled the sky. The flowers would never be brighter or more fragrant; the children, never happier. All the time in the world for hopscotch and grape drink and rubber pools.
She slipped the photograph out of the frame on the dresser, turned it over in her hands, the two girls in it forever frozen at life's threshold. What had been a secret all these years now demanded to be free.
She replaced the phone. She poured another drink.
There would be time, she thought. God willing.
There would be time.