Life Penalty by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page A

bushes, but there was no one there. She spun around. The crowd had disappeared.
    She was, once again, alone.
    She heard a sound and threw her body in its direction. But there was nothing there. And then she saw it lying onthe ground, half buried by the mud. She lunged to pick it up—the bag from Bloomingdale’s. She tore it open, hearing strange, masculine laughter emerging from the bushes which were now closing in around her. Frantically, her hands pulled at the contents of the package. She tossed the bag aside and stood staring at what she had found.
    A child’s purple velvet dress.
    She woke up screaming.
    “It’s all right,” she heard Jack telling her parents at the door of their bedroom. “She had a bad dream. She’s all right now.”
    When Jack got back into bed beside her, he moved his body close against hers.
“Are
you all right?” he asked quietly.
    Gail nodded without speaking, pulling Jack close to her, opening her eyes wide, as if her eyelids could force back the images of her nightmare and keep them from reappearing.
    “Do you want a sleeping pill?” he asked.
    “No,” she whispered, forcing out the words. “No more pills.” She felt the warmth of his body easing the shivers in her own. “Did I wake you?”
    “No,” he said. “I wasn’t asleep.”
    “Maybe
you
should take a pill,” she suggested gently. “What time is it?”
    Jack stretched his body to see the clock. “Three-thirty,” he said.
    “Three-thirty,” Gail repeated, both silently acknowledging the significance of the hour. Cindy had died at approximately three-thirty.
    Jack closed his eyes and Gail studied his thick lashes, thinking of the horror those eyes had been forced to endure when he’d had to identify their child’s lifeless body.
    How did our baby look? Gail wanted to ask but didn’t because she couldn’t bear to hear the answer.
    She burrowed her body in tighter against her husband’s as if to compensate for the newly imposed distance between them. They were essentially alone in this, she realized, despite all their years of closeness. Death demanded solitude.
    From the spare bedroom she could hear her parents talking quietly, the worry in their voices audible even through the walls. She remembered, when she was young, lying in her bed listening to their soft chatter, trying to make out their words, understand the reasons for the laughter she heard sneaking out from underneath their closed door. There was no laughter now.
    Still, she found the simple sound of their presence comforting. Taking her back as it did to her childhood, it made her feel secure.

FIVE
    S he had grown up in a house full of music. Her father was always singing, and all Gail’s earliest and strongest memories were built around her father’s vibrant baritone raised in song. Opera had been Dave Harrington’s particular favorite. His record collection was the envy of all who knew him, consisting as it did, of at least three different versions of all the great classics. While most other small children were busy singing about Mary and her little lamb, Gail and Carol were stumbling their way through the complicated arias of
Aida
and
La Bohème.
While other children were weaned on the bedtimes stories of the Brothers Grimm, the small sisters went to bed with
The Tales of Hoffmann
and
La Traviata.
    The Harrington household staged minioperas of its own, Gail’s father always assuming the lead role of the dashing suitor, with Carol as his tragic lover. Lila Harrington, who fancied herself something of a dancer, played a multitude of parts, most of them involving long, flowing chiffon scarves, of which she never seemed to run out. Gail provided the musical accompaniment on the piano.
    Gail never told anyone at school about these home productions, embarrassed the way children often are by what they consider their parents’ peculiarities. She wantedonly to be regarded as normal by the other kids, whose parents never answered questions about