Down the Rabbit Hole Read Free Page B

Ingrid hurried out, slipping slightly on the unopened mail, and jumped into the cab.
    â€œThe soccer fields,” she said.
    â€œThis is adjacent the hospital?” said the driver, toothpick wagging between his lips, face on the ugly border between beard and no beard.
    â€œYes, yes,” said Ingrid, checking his ID posted by the meter: Murad and then a complicated last name.
    â€œYou are pressing for time?” he said.
    â€œYes.”
    He flipped the lever on the meter and made aquick U-turn, driving back the way Ingrid had come. The rain was falling hard as they passed Benito’s Pizzeria, Blockbuster, and Dr. Binkerman’s office, its parking lot now empty. A few minutes after that, they zipped by the hospital and stopped alongside the soccer fields. Empty soccer fields, not a soul in sight.
    â€œWhat time is it?” Ingrid said.
    The driver snapped open his cell phone. “Five on top of the button,” he said.
    Practice didn’t end till five thirty. Where was everyone? Ingrid paid the driver—five dollars plus a fifty-cent tip, which was possibly not quite enough, but wouldn’t a whole dollar have been too much?—and got out. The taxi drove off.
    Ingrid walked over to a bench on the sidelines and sat down. Cold rain soaked her hair, her shoulders, her back. A thought came, a little late, like maybe she should have stayed in the taxi and had the driver take her home. What was the route from soccer to her house, 99 Maple Lane? Through the line of trees at the end of the field, Ingrid could see the red cross marking the helicopter pad on the hospital roof, and beyond that the spire of the Congregational church. From the church, you went by the village green andturned right at that corner with the Starbucks. Or was it the next corner, the one with the candy shop? Ingrid didn’t know, but it was getting dark now. Time to go.
    Ingrid rose just as a car came up the road. A minivan, actually, and green: a green MPV van. Ingrid started running.
    Mom was already out of the car when Ingrid ran up.
    â€œIngrid,” she said, rain dripping off the hood of her rain jacket. “Where have you been?” Those two vertical lines on Mom’s forehead, the only flaws in her soft skin, were deeper than Ingrid had ever seen them, and her big dark eyes were open wide.
    â€œHere,” Ingrid said, moving around Mom to get in at the other side. Mom put out a hand to stop her.
    â€œWhat do you mean, here?” she said. “I’ve been by three times and Dr. Binkerman’s office had no idea you’d even left.”
    â€œI just got here,” Ingrid said. “I decided to walk.” Maybe leaving a message to that effect with Dr. Binkerman’s receptionist would have been a good thing.
    â€œYou walked?” Mom said. “And you’re just getting here now?”
    â€œI got a little turned around,” Ingrid said. All thatother stuff—Cracked-Up Katie, the purple parlor, the taxi—seemed too messy to bring up at the moment. “Where is everybody?”
    â€œSoccer was canceled,” Mom said.
    â€œCanceled?”
    â€œThe rain, Ingrid. Mr. Ringer called hours ago. And I was at Dr. Binkerman’s at four twenty-five.”
    â€œOops,” said Ingrid.
    Mom gazed down at her. Not so much down anymore—almost eye to eye. “Nothing like this will ever happen again, will it, Ingrid?”
    â€œUh-uh.”
    â€œDo I need to explain why?”
    â€œNo.”
    Ingrid got in the car. Mom explained why all the way home.

three
    N INETY-NINE M APLE L ANE was a two-story Cape built in the 1950s with a master-bedroom suite on the ground floor and three bedrooms upstairs. The extra bedroom—now an office with desks for Mom and Dad—and Ty’s bedroom faced the street. Ingrid’s was at the back, looking out over the patio, the garden, and the heavily wooded conservation land that stretched all the way to the