Free The Chalk Girl by Carol O'Connell

for she was a woman who prided herself on good horse sense.
    ‘I can assure you,’ said Charles, ‘Williams children are blood relations to their parents. It’s a problem of two missing chromosomes, not magic. She’s merely a little girl, and they never would’ve found her if not for you. I hear you also saved Coco from a pedophile.’ He leaned forward to cover her hand with his. ‘You did a wonderful thing today.’
    This did nothing to brighten her mood. She turned in her chair to stare in the direction of the child’s room down the hall, as if she could see what lay beyond walls and a wooden door. ‘You gotta wonder if fairy stories began with kids like that one.’
    ‘An interesting idea.’ And now Charles Butler was newly intrigued with all things regarding fairies – or that was the excuse he offered when he invited her to stay with him until she felt right with the world. And did she see through this ruse? Well, of course – yet she stayed. The hour was late when Mrs Ortega told him thefinal fairy tale handed down through the Irish side of her family, and then a car service was summoned to take the lady home.
    Charles never heard the door open and close. It was thirst that had awakened him in the small hours. He came to the end of the hallway and came fully awake, surprised to see that a wingback chair had been moved into the foyer, where it now faced the only entry to his apartment. By the dim light from the hall, he approached to find Mallory asleep in the chair.
    Though he had known her for years, he could not set eyes on her without loosing a flock of crazed butterflies in his chest cavity. And this happiness of the moment coexisted with pain, the concomitant symptoms of a one-sided love affair. He was a realist on this matter. In the aftermath of Mrs Ortega’s night of fairy tales, he borrowed one from his own days in the nursery, and he substituted young Beauty’s Beast with himself, a hapless man with the face of a clown.
    He reached out to pull the chain of a nearby floor lamp. It came to light in bright-colored stains of Tiffany glass, and now he saw the revolver that lay across Mallory’s lap. According to Riker, the rest of the force carried clip-loaded Glocks, and it was the detective’s theory that his partner favored the old .357 Smith and Wesson because it was scary in a way that a semi-automatic never could be. It was a damn cannon of a gun, so Riker said, and Charles agreed.
    Her fingers were loosely closed around it so that she might shoot the first person through the door. He listened to her steady breathing, the sound of deepest sleep, and he thought to gently lift the weapon from her hand – just as a safety precaution. Her grip tightened, and he promptly gave up on this idea, so startled was he to be looking down the barrel of the gun.
    And
then
her eyes opened.
    She lowered the revolver and fell back into sleep. And Charles thought to breathe once more.
    Miles away, another woman was awakening, but she could not open her eyes. They were taped shut, as was her mouth. Wilhelmina Fallon could hear nothing, not the rumbling of her empty stomach or any sounds that might help to identify her place in the world. And how long had she slept? Was it day or night? She ceased to strain against the bonds of hands and feet. The only other tactile sensation was the feel of rough material against her naked skin. Her body’s lack of hard support fueled an idea that she was suspended in space – that she might drop to earth at any moment, and this image chained back to an old memory of Ernest Nadler.
    Oh, no. Oh, please no
.
    If she could have screamed, she would have.
    This is the Ramble! The Ramble! The Ramble!

SIX
     
    On the way home from school, I quote Phoebe a line from a comic book. ‘If I can defeat my demons, I can be the hero of my own life.’
    And my father will love me again.
    Phoebe thinks my comic-book philosophy will be the death of me. She says, ‘Remember Poor