The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman Read Free Book Online

with anything, it was with his own selfish desires. The girls rode their bikes past the house he'd moved into, but no one ever seemed to be home. When they telephoned, a woman answered. Allie said it was probably a friend or a housekeeper. Maddy may have been younger, but she knew better. Secretly, she had begun to make little cuts on her arms and legs. She didn't know if she wanted to hurt herself or somebody else. She began calling the woman their father was living with every night. Revenge was an acquired taste, but it was addictive if you didn't watch out. Maddy was the mystery avenger. She didn't even tell her sister. Even at that age she knew that revenge was a private act.
    Then one day the girls' father reappeared. He parked in the driveway and called Maddy and Allie out to the lawn. He was angry, as if he were the wronged party.
    â€œYou are terrorizing an innocent woman. You are never to call her again,” he told them. “If you do I'll have my number changed. She's just my landlady, you know. She's nothing more than that.”
    Allie knew nothing about the phone calls. But she didn't blame Maddy. She stood up to her father.
    â€œInstead of changing your number, you should come back. We need you here.”
    â€œDid your mother put you up to this?” he wanted to know.
    â€œOur mother wouldn't stoop to that,” Allie said.
    Maddy hung her head. She didn't say a word.
    Their father got back into the car. Allie went after him. He was crying and he wouldn't roll down his window. He drove away. He went through a stop sign and didn't look back.
    Later, up in their room, the sisters lay in one bed, their heads on the same pillow, holding hands.
    â€œI feel bad for him,” Allie said.
    â€œDon't,” Maddy told her. “He doesn't deserve it. He left us with a sick woman.”
    â€œHe was crying.”
    â€œCrocodile tears. Crocodile father.”
    â€œDo you really call every day?” Allie wanted to know.
    â€œAt least twice.”
    â€œDo you think she's really his landlady?”
    â€œDo you think he's really a crocodile?”
    They both laughed. Allie was surprised that Maddy could keep a secret so well.
    â€œThere's a lot about me you don't know,” Maddy said. “You should hear what I say to her.”
    Allie had become the one who went to all the doctor's appointments with their mother. She could be relied on to sit in the chemo room for hours, pouring glasses of ginger ale, looking for saltines at the nurses' station, reading aloud from magazines. Back then, there was some talk that Allie would be a doctor. As for Maddy, she already knew what she would be best at: betrayal and revenge.
    â€œI say I'm going to kill her and hang her bones out to dry in our backyard,” Maddy told her sister. Their knees were touching. “I'm going to make soup out of them.”
    Allie was shocked. “Maddy!”
    â€œI tell her I'm going to drink her blood and put a hundred needles in her eyes. If she really is just his landlady, she'll kick him out.” The woman on the phone hadn't sounded like a landlady. She sounded like somebody's flustered girlfriend.
    â€œYou probably shouldn't do it anymore,” Allie told her. “You'll get us both in trouble and Mom and Dad will be mad.”
    â€œWho cares? I hate them both.” Their mother didn't seem to notice anything—the razor cuts on Maddy's arms and legs, the phone calls she made in the middle of the night. “Maybe they'll disappear and we can live alone in this house,” Maddy said. “Maybe the blue heron will come and we can go and live with him.”
    â€œWe can't,” Allie said. “The police would come for us and there'd be a social worker who would put us in foster homes. And anyway, who would take care of Mom?”
    â€œSomebody else,” Maddy had said stubbornly. “Not me.”

    T HE GROOM'S DINNER WAS crowded. It was held at a French restaurant where