Free Darren Effect by Libby Creelman

worry.” He smiled unconvincingly.
    The pink slippers stopped by. She said something to Bill, and Heather looked up to see her swatting him with the back of her hand. The woman was hugely buxom and had tight red curls and a generous face. Bill rubbed his arm in an exaggerated manner. Something crashed in a nearby room and a short sausage-shaped dog trotted up to them and sniffed the untouched tub of water near Heather’s feet. Then he turned his rump to them, his ears folded back, and growled. The woman with the pink slippers kicked him and said, “Go on. Get out.”
    The dog bolted from the room. A door opened and cold air swept into the room and the dog began barking, but he was outside now and the sound came to them as though wrapped in a thick sweater.
    â€œWon’t talk to you,” the woman said. “But he’s a nuisance for barking.”
    Bill said to Heather, “My second cousin, Helen.”
    â€œPardon me?” Helen said, swatting Bill again. “Second cousin once removed.”
    They were flirting. Heather gazed up at the woman, liking her anyway.
    On the way back to St. John’s, Heather sat in the back bundled in blankets, her feet, which were becoming fiercely painful, resting on the seat. It grew so warm that Mandy, in the front, stripped off layer by layer, but never complained.
    â€œWhere’s your car, Heather?” Bill asked.
    â€œCape Broyle,” said Mandy.
    â€œWe’ll get it in the morning then. Mandy and I.”
    â€œI’m sleeping in,” Mandy said.
    â€œYou can sleep in.”
    It was snowing heavily now. It covered the windshield within seconds of the wipers clearing it. Bill was driving slowly. “Not the time of year I would have chosen for a hike up the Southern Shore.”
    Both women ignored him.
    â€œListen,” Mandy said. “I saw something weird out there. Like a white cross.”
    â€œIn the woods?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI saw that too” Heather said, only now realizing what it had been.
    â€œSo that’s where you were,” Bill said. “Way out there. Christ, the two of you. That was Suse’s Meadow.”
    â€œSuse who?” Heather asked.
    â€œThat’s right. At the edge of a meadow,” Mandy said. “I nearly walked right by it because of the fog. Creepy. That’s when I called you, Bill.”
    Heather wished her sister would be quiet. It was maddening. “Bill,” she said. “Suse who?”
    â€œSuse. She went cow hunting one day and was never seen again.”
    â€œHow old was she?”
    â€œWhen was this?”
    â€œThey looked for her but all they found was her sunbonnet, out on a bog. My guess is she was about thirteen, fourteen.”
    Heather tried to lean forward. “Suse
who
? Did she have a last name?”
    â€œShe was a servant girl. Her family was from Brigus South. Years later they found her bones. Suse Hayes.”
    â€œOh. My. God.”
    â€œWho found them?”
    â€œSome fellas out hunting. They thought at first it was a lost sheep. But the hair was still on her head.”
    â€œOh. My. God. Are you enjoying this, Bill?”
    â€œThey brought the bones back in a biscuit box. It was later they put the cross out in the woods where she’d been found.”
    â€œCow hunting?”
    â€œHer bones all fit in a biscuit box?”
    â€œThat’s the story I heard.”
    â€œI don’t believe that,” Heather said. “I don’t believe she just got
lost
.”
    â€œNeither do I,” Mandy said.
    â€œWhy not? You two got lost.”
    â€œWhat do you think, Mandy?”
    â€œMy first thought was rape and murder,” Mandy said quietly.
    â€œMe too,” Heather said, feeling close to tears. “My first thought.”
    â€œI wonder if this is some fundamental difference between men and women,” Bill said. “I thought it was an interesting