The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 by Laura Lippman, Otto Penzler Read Free Book Online Page A

first called.
    “What are you saying?” he said, or tried to. No words came out.
     
    Katie-Ann Krusie had no children, but told people she did, all the time. After a long history of emotional problems, she had spent a fourteen-month stint at the state hospital following a miscarriage.
    For the past eight weeks she had been living in a rental in Torring, 40 miles away, with a little blond girl she called Kirsten.
    After the police released a photo of Katie-Ann Krusie on Amber Alert, a woman who worked at a coffee chain in Torring recognized her as a regular customer, always ordering extra milk for her babies.
    “She sure sounded like she loved her kids,” the woman said. “Just talking about them made her so happy.”
     
    The first time he saw Shelby again, he couldn’t speak at all.
    She was wearing a shirt he’d never seen and shoes that didn’t fit and she was holding a juice box the policeman had given her.
    She watched him as he ran down the hall toward her.
    There was something in her face that he had never seen before, knew hadn’t been there before, and he knew in an instant he had to do everything he could to make it gone.
    That was all he would do, if it took him the rest of his life to do it.
     
    The next morning, after calling everyone, one by one, he walked into the kitchen to see Lorie sitting next to Shelby, who was eating apple slices, her pinkie finger curled out in that way she had.
    He sat and watched her and Shelby asked him why he was shaking and he said because he was glad to see her.
    It was hard to leave the room, even to answer the door when his mother and sister came, when everyone started coming.
    Three nights later, at the big family dinner, the welcome-home dinner for Shelby, Lorie drank a lot of wine, and who could blame her, everyone was saying.
    He couldn’t either, and he watched her.
    As the evening carried on, as his mother brought out an ice cream cake for Shelby, as everyone huddled around Shelby, who seemed confused and shy at first and slowly burst into something beautiful that made him want to cry again—as all these things were occurring, he had one eye on Lorie, her quiet, still face. On the smile there, which never grew or receded, even when she held Shelby in her lap, Shelby nuzzling her mother’s wine-flushed neck.
    At one point he found her standing in the kitchen and staring into the sink; it seemed to him she was staring down into the drain.
     
    It was very late, or even early, and Lorie wasn’t there.
    He thought she had gotten sick from all the wine, but she wasn’t in the bathroom either.
    Something was turning in him, uncomfortably, as he walked into Shelby’s room.
    He saw her back, naked and white from the moonlight. The plum-colored underpants she’d slept in.
    She was standing over Shelby’s crib, looking down.
    He felt something in his chest move.
    Then, slowly, she kneeled, peeking through the crib rails, looking at Shelby.
    It looked like she was waiting for something.
    For a long time he stood there, 5 feet from the doorway, watching her watching their sleeping baby.
    He listened close for his daughter’s high breaths, the stop and start of them.
    He couldn’t see his wife’s face, only that long white back of hers, the notches of her spine.
Mirame quemar
etched on her hip.
    He watched her watching his daughter, and knew he could not ever leave this room. That he would have to be here forever now, on guard. There was no going back to bed.

DANIEL ALARCÓN
Collectors
    FROM
The New Yorker
     
    R OGELIO WAS THE YOUNGEST of three, the skinniest, the least talkative. As a boy, he slept in the same room as his brother, Jaime, and his earliest, most profoundly comforting memories were of those late nights, before sleep: the chatter between them, the camaraderie. Then Jaime left for San Jacinto, and shortly afterward, when Rogelio was eight, his father died. In the months after that, Rogelio began skipping school to spend hours walking in the hills