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He did not speed home like a busy man with lots to do, but like somebody out for a leisurely drive She had not been in a car with hih to know if that was how he always drove, but she suspecteda little slower than he usually did, so they could have ether, just the two of theht and her eyes watery Oh, terrific A pile of cow flop could’ve carried on a better conversation than she wasto burst into tears, which would really cement the relationship Surely every adoptive parent desperately hoped to receive a ht? It was all the rage, don’t you know Well, if she did cry, her treacherous sinuses would kick in, and the old snot-faucet would start gushing, which would surely ive up the idea of a leisurely drive, and head for home at such tremendous speed that he’d have to stand on the brakes a h the back of the garage (Please, God, help ht "cow flop" not "cow shit," so I deserve a little mercy)
They chatted about this and that Actually, for a while he chatted and she pretty runted like she was a subhuman out on a pass from the zoo But eventually she realized, to her surprise, that she was talking in co so for a couple of miles, and was at ease with hirew up, and she just about bent his ear clear off explaining that so the kinds of books she liked to read and that she had been co her own stories for a year or two Laet better at it She was very bright for ten, older than her years, but she couldn’t expect actually to have a career going until she was eighteen, maybe sixteen if she was lucky When had Mr Christopher Pike started publishing? Seventeen? Eighteen? Maybe he’d been as old as twenty, but certainly no older, so that’s what she would shoot for--being the next Mr Christopher Pike by the time she enty She had an entire notebook full of story ideas Quite a few of those ideas were good even when you crossed out the eent pig from space that she had been so hot about for a while but noas hopelessly du books when they pulled into the driveway of the house in Laguna Niguel, and he actually see of this fao drea flipped open in the dark The dry rasp of the striker wheel scraping against the flint A spark A young girl’s white su into flames The Haunted House ablaze Screa tongues of orange light Tod Ledderbeck was dead in the cavern of the Millipede, and now the house of plastic skeletons and rubber ghouls was abruptly filled with real terror and pungent death
He had dreaht of Tod’s twelfth birthday It always provided the most beautiful of all the chimeras and phantasms that passed behind his eyes in sleep
But on this occasion, strange faces and iain A soleray eyes that seemed too old for her face A s A nah the leaping flaina … Regina
The visit to Dr Nyebern’s office had depressed Hatch, both because the tests had revealed nothing that shed any light on his strange experiences and because of the gliotten into the physician’s own troubled life But Regina was a medicine for melancholy if ever there had been one She had all the enthusiase; life had not beaten her down one inch
On the way from the car to the front door of the house, she moved more swiftly and easily than when she had entered Salvatore Gujilio’s office, but the leg brace did give her a ht yellow and blue butterfly accoaily a few inches from her head, as if it knew that her spirit was very like itself, beautiful and buoyant
She said sole me up, Mr Harrison"
"You’re welcoravity
They would have to do so about this "Mr Harrison" business before the day was out He sensed that her for rejected as she had been during the trial phase of her first adoption But it was also a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and unwittingly destroying her own prospects for happiness
At the front door, he said, "Either Lindsey or I will be at the school for you every day--unless you’ve got a driver’s license and would just rather coo on your own"
She looked up at Hatch The butterfly was describing circles in the air above her head, as if it were a living crown or halo She said, "You’re teasing me, aren’t you?"
"Well, yes, I’m afraid I am"
She blushed and looked away froood or bad thing He could al me because he thinks I’m cute or because he thinks I’ pretty close to that
Throughout the drive hoina suffered froht she concealed but which, when it struck, was evident in her lovely, wonderfully expressive face Each time he sensed a crack in the kid’s self-confidence, he wanted to put his arht, and reassure her--which would be exactly the wrong thing to do because she would be appalled to realize that her moments of inner turh, resilient, and self-sufficient She projected that iainst the world
"I hope you don’t ," he said as he inserted the key in the door "That’s the way I arah outfit They beat you with rubber hoses and h time passed, when she felt she was loved and part of a family, her self-confidence would be as unshakable as she wanted it to be now In thehe could do for her was pretend that he saw her exactly as she wished to be seen--and quietly, patiently help her finish beco the poised and assured person she hoped to be
As he opened the door and they went inside, Regina said, "I used to hate Lima beans, all kinds of beans, but II ’specially want, I’ll eat every kind of bean there is for the rest ofthe door behind theht to be io’s drea eht a flower A house flanked by palo, and her eyes revealed a soul of tremendous vitality and a heart so vulnerable that the beat of his oas quickened even in sleep
They found Lindsey upstairs, in the extra bedrooled away fro Lindsey’s blouse was half in and half out of her jeans, her hair was in disarray, a smear of rust-red paint marked her left cheek, and she had a look that Hatch knew from experience meant she was in the final fever of work on a piece that was turning out to be everything she had hoped
"Hi, honey," Lindsey said to Regina "Hoas school?"
Regina was flustered, as she always seemed to be, by any term of endearment "Well, school is school, you know"
"Well, you ed off the co the kid, Hatch said to Lindsey, "She’s going to be a writer when she grows up"
"Really?" Lindsey said "That’s exciting I knew you loved books, but I didn’t realize you wanted to write theirl said, and suddenly she was in gear and off, her initial aardness with Lindsey past, words pouring out of her as she crossed the rooress, "until just last Christift under the tree at the home was six paperbacks Not books for a ten-year-old, either, but the real stuff, because I read at a tenth-grade level, which is fifteen years old I’m what they call precocious Anyway, those books ht it’d be neat if soot my books under the tree and felt the way I felt, not that I’ll ever be as good a writer as Mr Daniel Pinkwater or Mr Christopher Pike Jeez, I ht up there with Shakespeare and Judy Bluood stories to tell, and they’re not all that intelligent-pig-fro-from-space junk They’re not all like that"