Free The Moon Around Sarah by Paul Lederer Page B

slept there, quiet and being very good, but just too tiny for the world.
    ‘Are you OK, girl?’
    A big fisherman with a gray beard and concerned eyes was standing over her, watching. ‘You OK?’
    Sarah stood and the bird dropped from her hands. The man kicked it off the pier with a big boot and went away.
    Sarah walked on.

    Raymond Tucker had given it up. Wherever his two asshole sons had gone, he wasn’t going to find them. The blond kid, whoever he was, was nowhere to be seen.
    That meant there was nothing for it but to go see Ellen, as strongly as he disliked the idea. Edward couldn’t know where his mother was. The papers had to be signed so that each of them could be free of the dark tentacles of the old house, the past that haunted them, each in his own way. Yeah, pick Ellen up, drive her back to Dennison’s office. In dead silence. Make her sit in the back seat by herself and just keep her mouth shut all the way – unless she did know where Sarah had got to…. His little girl wandering aroundalone.… Raymond’s fury began to slowly build again. He fought it down, knowing that it limited his ability to function reasonably. Just now he had felt like buying a bottle of whisky and getting half-smashed to get him through the day more calmly. Yet the booze didn’t always work that way on him either. One too many drinks and his temper came back with unpredictable variants.
    No, the thing to do was to get his check from Dennison, find a motel room, lock himself in and get staggering drunk. Maybe bring some young whore in to listen to his sad laments. Raymond smiled in self-deprecation. He supposed he had not been a good father, a good husband. It was self-delusional to pretend otherwise. But deep down he believed he had tried his best with the tools he had. Maybe it had been just too difficult for him, trying to be everything to everyone in the family. He set his goals lower for today. Get Ellen back to the lawyer’s office, sign the papers. Get a check cut. Find Sarah.
    He had to stop and yell out to a half-deaf old man to find the right route to the hospital. It had been a long time since he had been back in town. And since he’d been to the hospital? Jesus, not since Sarah was born. Twenty-one years ago! His entire life was flickering past so rapidly. Like pages in a long, boring novel he simply rifled through. How short now seemed the years they had constructed and destroyed. He could think of so few things he was proud to have done, so many he regretted. Screw it. It was done. There was no changing it now.
    He swung onto the coast road as the old man haddirected and buzzed along with the soft-riding Buick beneath him.

    Ellen knew that something was wrong, but only gradually did she realize what it was. She was undressed for one thing. It was not her own bed with its thick crimson comforter where she lay. The lights around her were brilliantly white; loudspeakers blared and people murmured in low voice.
    She was in a hospital again. God! What had happened this time?
    It was hardly her first time in a hospital, waking up not knowing where she was, sometimes not knowing
who
she was. It had all started … she tried to shut out the memories, banging a steel door of censorship closed in her mind. It did no good at all. The memories were as clear as yesterday. She remembered the first time, the well-meaning doctor asking her why she drank so much, beyond insensibility, as if it were a suicidal plunge, so deeply crazy were her blackouts. Doctors could be so funny in their way. They searched for organic solutions everywhere. Ellen closed her eyes to the lights. Her forehead hurt, but she didn’t reach up to finger it. She turned inward in a waking dream.
    Funny. It was all so funny – they really expected her to talk about it. Cleanse the psyche. Walk away cured, a totally healthy woman.
    Well, it couldn’t be talked about.
    Did they really expect her to talk about the night when Trish with her pillow, and she