Free Femme Fatale and other stories by Laura Lippman Page A

probably didn’t know it was valuable. But Sofia did and her mother did. It was only her father who didn’t value it, except as a way to cover his losses.
    â€œPlease don’t take it,” she said. She tried to make her face do whatever it had done the day he had backed down before, but it was dim in her room and her father was resolved. He pocketed the beautiful box and left.
    But he didn’t leave the house right away. He never did, not on the glum Saturdays that followed his bad nights, the ones that came and went without doughnuts. He went down to the breakfast table and wolfed down a plate of fried eggs. Sofia followed him down to the table, staring at him silently, but he refused to meet her gaze. Her mother might intervene if she told her, but Sofia didn’t feel that she had earned anyone’s help. She had sat by while the candlesticks left, turned her back when Brad cried over his bicycle. She was on her own.
    Her father took a long nap on the sofa, opening his eyes from time to time to comment on whatever television program was drifting by. “Super Bowl’s going to be a snorer this year.” “Wrestling’s fixed, everyone knows that.” It was going on three by the time he left the house and Sofia followed behind, shadowing him in the alleys that ran parallel to Brighton Avenue. She thought she might show up at the last minute, shaming her father, then remembered that hadn’t worked with Shemp. Instead, she crouched behind a row of yew bushes at the end of the property that bordered the vacant lot. She had retrieved many a mis-thrown football from these bushes, so she knew how thick and full they were. She also knew that the red berries were poison, a piece of vital information that had been passed from child to child as long as anyone in the neighborhood could remember.
Don’t eat them little red berries. They look like cherries, but one bite will kill you.
When she was little, when she was still okay with being Fee, she had gathered berries from the bushes and used them in her Hi Ho! Cherry-O game at home. For some reason it had been far more satisfying, watching these real-if-inedible berries tumble out of the little plastic bucket. She was always careful to make sure that Brad didn’t put any in his mouth, schooling him as she had been schooled.
    A man was waiting for her father behind Gordon’s place. He held himself as if he thought he was good looking, and maybe he was. He wore a leather jacket with the collar turned up and didn’t seem to notice that the day was too cold for such a light jacket. When he opened the velvet box, he nodded and pocketed it with a shrug. But he clearly didn’t appreciate the thing of beauty before him and that bothered Sofia more than anything. At least Shemp had gone to a man who thought he was a good dog deserving of a good home. This man wasn’t worthy of her necklace.
    She watched him get into a red car, a Corvette that Joe and the other boys had commented on enviously whenever it appeared in Gordon’s parking lot. He wasn’t an every-weeker, not like her dad, but he came around quite a bit. Now that she was paying attention, it seemed to her that she had seen the car all over the neighborhood—up and down Brighton Avenue, outside the snowball stand in spring and summer, in the parking lot over to Costas Inn, at the swim club. He came around a lot. Maybe Joe knew his name, or his people.
    Three months later. The clocks had been turned forward and the days were milder. There was another dance at school and Sofia was going this time. Things had changed. She had changed.
    â€œWhy isn’t Joe picking you up?” her mother asked.
    â€œWe’re meeting there,” Sofia said. “He’s not a
boyfriend
-boyfriend.”
    â€œI thought he was. You’ve been going to the movies together on weekends, almost every Saturday since St. Patrick’s Day.”
    â€œJust matinees.