Free Little Girls by Ronald Malfi

not a vase at all.
    In the adjoining bathroom, the shower turned off. Ted’s melodic whistling sounded from behind the bathroom door. When he stepped out amidst a billow of steam, he had a towel wrapped around his waist like a sarong and his hair slicked back. His reddened body was beaded with water.
    Laurie was still staring at the urn. She hadn’t moved.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Please,” she told him in a small voice. “Please get this out of the bedroom.”
    “What?”
    She continued to stare at the urn.
    “What is . . .” he began, moving around the bed to the nightstand. He stopped when he realized what she was looking at.
    “It hadn’t occurred to me to ask what happened to his ashes,” Laurie said. She drew her bare knees up under her chin. “That was stupid of me.”
    “No,” said Ted. “It was stupid for someone to put this in here. It was probably one of those two from earlier today. That Felix Lorton, most likely. Stupid son of a bitch.”
    “It’s not their fault. Just please take it away.”
    “Where should I—”
    “I don’t care, Edward.” It was his real name, and he hated it. She knew to use it only when she was deadly serious about something and wanted to show it. “Just put it downstairs for now. It makes me uncomfortable.”
    He scooped it off the nightstand. Still clutching his towel to his hip with his other hand, he went quickly out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She heard him fumbling around down there. In agitation, he mumbled something to himself, though his words were unintelligible. It was a big house. The echo was terrible.
    She was asleep by the time Ted came back upstairs.

Chapter 6
    S he saw what she believed to be a ghost the next morning.
    Laurie rose from bed before Ted and Susan were awake. Early morning sunlight streamed through the bedroom windows. She looked around, momentarily disoriented. Then it all came back to her in a solid wave. She sat up and climbed out of bed, careful not to wake up Ted. He was snoring soundly and looked very peaceful. She was almost envious of his apparent tranquility. He never had trouble sleeping. At the foot of the bed, Laurie rooted through her suitcase in silence, opting for a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved cotton jersey. She dressed quickly and, without stopping in the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, she went downstairs.
    Her father’s urn was in the parlor, on the mantel of the fireplace. She paused slightly as she walked through to the kitchen, her gaze lingering on the veined ceramic jar.
    With its large bay windows that faced east, the kitchen was bright. Peeking in the cupboards, Laurie found them stocked with various flavors of coffee. She selected a hazelnut blend, then spent the next several moments searching around the countertop for the coffee machine. There was none. It wasn’t until she located an old pitted percolator among the pots and pans did the prospect of coffee look feasible again. A wry grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. She filled the percolator at the sink, then dumped in several spoonsful of coffee into the basket. She set the whole contraption on the stove, cranked the dial until the click-click-click of the gas gave way to a substantive whump! as the gas ignited into blue flame.
    When she turned around, she saw a girl of about ten or eleven—Susan’s age—run across the yard beyond the bay windows. The girl darted up the incline of the yard and disappeared behind the rippling tendrils of a willow tree. She had long, wavy hair the color of the hazelnut coffee and wore a knee-length dress of a breezy, light blue fabric. Before she disappeared behind the willow tree, the girl had cast a look over at Laurie through the bay windows, as if able to see Laurie standing there through the darkened glass.
    Laurie’s heart seized. It took her several moments before she was able to regain her composure. There was a door that led from the kitchen out onto a series of cement slabs