Twenty-Seven Bones

8

As always, Holly waited until after the kids were in bed to break out the chronic. She closed her bedroom door, stuffed a towel under the crack, twisted up a nail-thin doobie, fired it up sitting naked and cross-legged on her bed listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof.

It’s okay, she told herself as she filled her lungs. It’s all over. Machete Man’s a deadah, as Detective Hamilton so quaintly put it. You can relax now.

Only she couldn’t. Couldn’t relax worth a damn. And the weed wasn’t helping-the more she smoked, the more paranoid she got. FFA: free-floating anxiety. But when you have kids, anxiety never floats free for long before attaching itself to them. She stubbed out the joint, dropped the roach into her Sucrets tin, slipped on her bathrobe, and opened the door to check on the children.

Their bedroom door was open. She peeked in, expecting to get that little heart rush she always got, seeing the two of them asleep. Instead, it was a rush of panic-Dawn’s bed was empty.

“Marley, where’s Dawn?” Good luck trying to wake Marley from a sound sleep. “MARLEY, WHERE’S YOUR SISTER?”

He was lying on his side, head propped on a fat pillow-a marvelously comfortable-looking position, without arms to get in the way. He opened one eye, saw Dawn’s empty bed, his auntie in the doorway. “Gone potty?”

Holly turned in the bedroom doorway, saw that Dawn’s slicker and umbrella were gone, as well as one of the two flashlights they always kept by the front door. Of course. “Sorry-go back to sleep.”

She felt like an idiot. Getting stoned, freaking out. Must be why they call it dope, she told herself, not for the first time. Then the munchies struck. She pulled one of the kitchen/living room chairs over to the counter, stood on it to retrieve her Oreo stash from the back of the top shelf, then turned on the propane cooker to boil water for tea.

When it came to Oreos, Holly was a twister-and-separator. Open the cookie, eat the bare half, lick the creme off the other half, then eat that. Slooowly, while keeping an ear out for Dawn’s return. Sound of the first footfall on the step, she’d hide the cookies. Sharing was one thing, sugar-rushing a six-year-old at ten-thirty on a school night was another.

But the water boiled, the tea steeped, half a dozen cookies disappeared, and still no Dawn. Holly took her olive green poncho down from the peg, tugged her clear plastic rain booties over her slippers, splashed across the hillside and down the path toward the Crapaud.

Dawn’s flashlight lay broken on the ground, not far from the door. Holly shined her flashlight around, saw Dawn’s umbrella lying upside down a few feet away. Like someone in a dream, she opened the door to the Crapaud knowing it would be empty, and called Dawn’s name anyway, louder and louder and louder, until the hollow, tin-roofed building echoed with her screams.