Page 14 (1/2)

"Well, that’s all right"

In the laht, the child’s features have the soft, heavy contours associated with irl, "you couldn’t spell that either, could you?"

"Maybe I could learn"

The sloped brow, the inner epicanthic folds of the eyes, the ears set low on a head too snifiers of Down’s syndroirl asks

"Some, I think"

"To read and write?"

"Maybe"

After a feeeks, Harrow had learned to see a gentleness in the daughter’s face, a sweetness that made her seem less alien than she had been to him at first

"Hoould you learn?"

"School"

"Oh, baby," Moongirl says with feigned sadness

"I’d try hard"

"But they don’t want you"

"I’d be good"

"Good but du

"They don’t want dumb"

By the time she came into Harrow ’s life with her enuine tears Her eyes are clear now

"It’s unfair, isn’t it?" says Moongirl

"Yeah"

"You didn’t ask to be dumb"

Sometimes, lately, Harrow sees in the child’s unfortunate face a quality that is not beauty but that is akin to it The word that best defines this quality eludes him, so he thinks of it only as the Look

"Nobody asks to be duly"

Ceaselessly, the child heh white fabric, s into Harrow ’s h he doesn’t knohy

He returns his attention to the girl’s face, but the word that would capture the essence of the Look is not purity

"Tiirl

"In a little while," the child replies

"No, baby Now"

Harrow is intrigued by this hter relationship because in it lie the anshich he irl’sthe steel sheathed in her soft voice, she calls her daughter by the only nay, it’s time to eat"

Reluctantly the child sets the doll aside, puts down the needle and thread, and pulls the tray in front of her

For the first tiirl looks at Harrow In her green gaze is so sharper than savage glee, and a far colder satisfaction than Harrow has ever seen in other eyes

When she is naed and riding hiaze hich she favors him in absolute darkness

He meets her stare, confident that she will not read in him any attitude that will annoy or offend her

Virtue and vice are empty words His well-considered philosophy has led him to deny such words authority over hiht her to the same rejection of all values, for in the chaos of existence, htenment

Actions are either taken or not taken, consequences incurred or not incurred, and no irl had accused him of pity

But he does not pity the child He is ued by her perseverance, by the devices hich she endures her suffering

Piggy lifts the top slice of bread off her sandwich and lays it aside She examines both sides of the lettuce leaf and places it on the bread

Sirl retrieves from the floor the doll that she displaced when she first sat in the chair beside the desk

Soley examines the tomato, the ha her sandwich and rebuilding it upside down

Sandwiches soums A live worm A dead cockroach

The child does not know that Harrow ht Sheunwholesoy picks up her sandwich in both hands and takes a bite

Pretending to have no interest in her daughter’s irl examines the beautifully dressed doll that she retrieved froy is, at a modest level, an effective autodidact She has soht herself both to draw and to coes fro the crafts she’s taught herself are sewing and ey found an elaborate sewing kit and hundreds of spools of thread left behind by the for trial and error, by what Harrow supposes ht be called a simpleton’s intuition, she has developed this skill hich she fills the lonely hours

Now, froirl selects a small pair of scissors with thin, sharply pointed blades She uses them to snip at the finished embroidery on the doll’s dress She works both sides of the cloth, and soon she has a small colorful pile of cut threads that she has pulled loose froy wisely ives no indication that she even sees what her irl asks

"Good," says Piggy

If Moongirl really intends to set her daughter afire toht, this is one of the last opportunities she will have to torment the child She will not waste it

"Have soythe lid off the container, she takes another bite of the sandwich

Considering all the places Harrow ht have been if he had made different choices, he is fortunate to be here, now, for this He had once thought that only money mattered But he has since discovered that money matters only because it can buy power, and power ination and without conscience

More than anyone he has ever irl understands power, the possibilities of it, the beauty of it, and the art hich iteffects

She says, "It’s really good potato salad, Piggy"

Because the world turns and the world changes, the shutter-piercing blade of sunlight should have lass vase by now, but still it inspires within the bevels a pattern of criy?"

For the first time, Harrow notices that the prisths out of the sunshine and translate theirl, an auroral lu at her daughter with feral intensity The veins are swollen in her teht, the fire, but now the fireworks

Chapter 31

When he saw the ure nearly a quarter-mile away, Bobby Onions eased up on the accelerator and coasted forward

"Who is the guy?" he asked

Vern said, "He calls himself Eliot Rosewater"

"You don’t think that’s his name?"

"No"

"What’s it say on the check?"