Little Mountain (27 page)

         “Yes. I want to bring Courtney.”

        
“No, honey.
Home is very messy right now. I’ll go and buy you a new doll.”

         “Daddy, don’t leave me!” Trish began to cry, and Sam’s heart sunk to his shoes.

         Would he regret what he did next?

         After thanking his mother-in-law, he strapped Trish in with her seatbelt and drove home. Trish brightened at the prospect of hugging her best friend Courtney the way her father hugged her on the way up the apartment steps.

         “Sweetheart, I don’t want you to look at the mess, okay? Promise me you’ll close your eyes.”

         “I promise.” She held her palms flat against her eyes.

         The landlord was inside, cleaning up as well as he could. The living room carpet was rolled up to the couch, where there was no Courtney. “I’m looking for Patricia’s doll, Mr. Lassiter.”

         “You mean the one on the couch? It’s in the trash, what’s left of it.” Trish gasped. Sam felt her body tense in his arms, and she tried to turn and look.

         “Remember your promise,” he said. “It’s very important.” Trish shook in his arms as he emptied a shoebox full of rent receipts on the kitchen table and pulled Courtney out of the wastebasket.

         Then she turned her head and screamed. He placed Courtney inside the shoebox and taped it shut,
then
stroked Trish’s hair.

         The telephone rang. Sam let it ring.

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the park along the Merrimack River. They avoided the asphalt path and walked together in the grass, her hand wrapped around his little finger. In her other arm, she held the shoebox. He inhaled the scent of newly-mown grass under his feet. Nearby was the Sampas Pavilion, where crowds had celebrated the Fourth of July a few weeks before, listening to live music and eating ice cream and enjoying the glory of a summer evening. Trish had dozed on Sam’s shoulder while Sam and Julie watched the moonlight reflecting off the river.

         Today was quiet. In the middle of the river, two crews of rowers tried to muscle past each other, oars dipping in unison. Nearby, a young mother with a baby carriage rested on a park bench.

         “Is Courtney dead, Daddy?”

         “The man came and ruined her. I’m sorry.”

         “Courtney’s dead!” Trish began to sob.

         Sam ached for Trish as he ran his fingers through her hair. “I’ll buy you a brand new doll,” he said.

         “I don’t
want
a new doll. I want
Courtney
back!” She pulled away and ran toward a maple tree. He caught up with her and they sat together.

         “We’ll go to K-Mart and get you one just like her.”

         She shook the shoebox in his face. “No! I want Courtney back!”

         He felt stupid. If he and Julie had lost Trish, would they be able to replace
her
at K-Mart? Then why should dealing with a child’s loss be any easier?

         He held her in his arms. “She’s not coming back,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Trish sat at a picnic table and poked at her hot fudge sundae lunch while Sam watched her from the pay phone. On the other end of the line, Fitchie explained that his wife Ellen was sinking. “By the way, you were right,” Fitchie said.
“About the guy in the cement, name of Dith Chang.
Wilkins has people tracking down who poured the step. What I hear, they’re talking to Mister Nawath Lac.”

         “I think I know what that one’s about.”

         “You think they’ve got their man?”

         “Nawath could be
involved,
he has the calluses for that kind of work.”

         “Building tombstones, yeah, but why?”

         “Stop working,” Sam said. “Your family needs you.”

         “Me stop working, what the hell are you doing?”

Sam and Trish went to see Julie that afternoon, walking hand in hand down the hospital corridor. At the door to Julie’s room, Trish pulled away from Sam and ran to kiss her mother. “You look awful, Mommy,” she said.

         “I know, sweetheart. Mommy is a sorry sight right now.”

         “Are you going to die?”

        
“No, honey.
I’ll get better before you know it.” She looked at Sam, her eyes betraying pain. “Kids
do
get right to the point, don’t they?”

         He bent down and kissed her. “She wants you back, just as I do. How do you feel?”

        
“Like they sandblasted my leg.”

         A hospital aide brought a coloring book and some crayons to keep Trish busy. In the other bed, the cancer patient moaned. “Sam, I’m so scared,” Julie said. “Why was that man after us?”

         “We think he may have killed Bin Chea.”

         “Yes?
And?”

        
“And wants to get rid of the investigator.”

        
“Namely you.
They catch him?”

         “They went to his house and to several friends’ houses. No one’s found him yet.”

         Her face turned from dour to somber. “Now the whole family is fair game.
Even Trish.”

         Sam sat quietly next to her bed. His family had been fair game before.
First for
Angka
, and now for a punk across town.
Or maybe they were
Angka’s
target again.

         “Don’t keep Trish in here too long,” Julie finally said. “A hospital’s too depressing for a little girl.”

When they left, Sam found himself driving past the ramshackle property of Bin Chea. That he saw Nawath walking down the street hardly mattered now. His eyes blurred a little at thoughts of what he had lost and gained over the years. How could he ever weigh the events one against another, the good against the bad? If he had never met Bin Chea, would his father have lived? Would Sam have met Julie, fathered Trish? The joys and the sorrows of life were painfully intertwined. Sam glanced in the rear-view mirror as if glimpsing his past, and saw Nawath entering the old building.

A short while later, Sam and Trish arrived at the Nordstroms’. “I didn’t tell Mommy Courtney died. She’d be too sad.” Trish sniffled, and he hugged her.

         “You’re a big, brave girl,” he said.

         “Is Courtney in heaven, Daddy?”

         Courtney’s remains lay in a coffin with a Thom McAn label on it. “I have a sister in heaven,” he said. “Maybe they’ll be together. It might help to have a funeral so that you can say goodbye. I’ll have to ask grandma and grandpa if it’s okay to bury Courtney in their yard.”

         “You have a sister? What’s her name?”

        
“Sarapon.”

         “Why is she in heaven?”

         Sam took a deep breath. “We should go to the beach tomorrow,” he said.

         “
Why is she in heaven, Daddy?
”

         “Terrible people came and took her away.”

         “Like the man who came for Mommy?”

         “Very much like him, yes.”

         “Why didn’t you
stop
them, Daddy?”

         The question stabbed at his heart. “They had guns. I only had my hands.”
A hollow excuse, nothing more.

         “Will they come for me, too?”

         He pressed his cheek against her head. “I’ll never let them do that.”

         That evening Eric told Sam that a burial was stupid, but looked at Trish’s tears and told her yes. Dottie suggested a spot at the edge of her flower garden. When Sam saw the place, he surprised himself with a smile. “Dottie, I need to go out by myself for a while. Would you mind watching Trish?”

         In the morning, Sam and Trish went out to the back yard shed and found a spade.

         Inside the stone border of Dottie’s flower garden was a small patch that she had not filled with Shasta daisies, dahlias, phlox, and alyssum in mounds of red and white. A pair of bumblebees danced from blossom to blossom. Trish sat cross-legged, her eyes dripping tears onto the coffin that rested in her lap.

         After Courtney’s burial, Sam plucked a pair of daisies and handed one to Trish. “Let’s lay them on top,” he said. They did,
then
sat arm-in-arm on the grass.

         “Courtney was a wonderful dancer,” Sam said. “In Cambodia we have a story about dancers. Would you like to hear it?”

         Trish nodded.

         “They are called
apsaras
,” he began. “They are beautiful ladies who live in heaven.

         “One day a long time ago, they came down to earth for a visit. The king of Cambodia had a most wonderful garden, and they wanted to see it. The
apsaras
wore gold crowns with jewels that shimmered like all the stars in the sky. The fabrics in their dresses were yellow like gold, green like emeralds, and red like the finest rose petals.

         “But when they saw the king’s garden--Wow! There were so many kinds of flowers, just like in grandma’s garden.
Brilliant blues.
Soft, lovely greens.
Shades of red and yellow you couldn’t even imagine! And the
apsaras
said to themselves, ‘This is more beautiful than
anything
in heaven,’ so they stayed and danced in the garden for as long as they could. They had long, beautiful fingers, and when they danced they bent them back like this--only a lot more.”

         She brushed her palm across his fingertips. “Did the aspirins have to die to get to heaven?”

        
“
Apsaras
.
No, I don’t think so, honey. That’s just where they live.”

         “Will Courtney see them?”

         “Yes, I expect that she lives with them. Let’s walk back to the house. I want to show you something.” On the deck, Sam reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a doll that looked exactly like Courtney. Thank God for K-Mart. “She can dance in your garden anytime you want,” he said.

         Trish hugged her new doll. “Courtney Aspirin,” she said. Courtney had been granted a new life as a dancer, her reward for all the pleasure she’d given Trish in her previous life.

         “You know what, Daddy? Courtney isn’t really dead.” She pointed out toward the fresh grave. “That was a different doll. I switched.”

         In front of them, a dragonfly settled on a daisy. If it were true, then what about the other doll? Should you spare one by sacrificing another? What kind of outcome was that for a girl to accept? Of course Trish hadn’t switched dolls, and she was entitled to the comfort of her fantasy.

Later in the afternoon, Sam and Willie helped Mr. Lassiter replace the doors and the carpet while Willie’s wife Tamara entertained Trish. The couch and the shattered dresser went out to the sidewalk for a trash pickup. How could Julie have moved it so quickly the other day, given her pain and terror?