Still Life with Shape-shifter Read Free Page A

the job. I’m not sure there was a time you could have asked me, from the minute she was born until this very day, when I would have given a different answer to the question
Who does Ann belong to?
She’s mine.
    And that’s why it is killing me to think she is in danger and I cannot help her and I cannot find her, for I cannot live if she is lost.
    *   *   *
    D ebbie offers me a ride home, but the AAA guy shows up at five minutes to five and changes the tire with no fuss. I’m on my way home a half hour later, squinting against the setting sun. I make three turns through the heart of Dagmar, then I’m on the first winding loop of Bonhomme Highway, the two-lane road that will take me all the way to my door. It’s early March, so the trees that crowd up against both sides of the road are still mostly bare, but I’m starting to feel a little hopeful. It can’t be much longer until spring, can it? One day soon, the branches will bud and blossom and explode into greenery. One day soon, winter will surely be gone.
    Ann has been in my mind so strongly all day that I start wondering if there’s a reason. Is she on her way home? Will she be waiting for me when I pull up in front of the house? Will she be sitting on the front porch, curled up in the chilly spring sunshine, or will she have remembered where I keep the spare key and let herself inside? You’d think the hope, or the uncertainty, would have sent me home at a faster rate, eager to see her and hug her thin body to mine, but instead I dawdle. I stop at the grocery store to pick up coffee and fruit and bread, items I don’t really need; I pause at a service station for gas though I still have half a tank left.
    I don’t
want
to go home, that’s the truth. I don’t want to get closer and closer to my house and feel my chest tighten with hope. I don’t want to skid onto the gravel bed at the edge of the lawn so fast that the rocks spew up from my tires. I don’t want to run to the door, almost dropping the keys in my nervousness, calling out her name. I don’t want to dash from room to room, checking, just making sure, thinking maybe she’s asleep in her bedroom or maybe she’s outside, running barefoot across the back acres. I don’t want to go home because until I know for sure she isn’t there, I can still believe she might be.
    But just in case she’s there, I have to go home.
    The last mile of my journey takes me past Markham Manors, Kurt’s new development, where more than half the homes are still under construction. As I always do, I drive straight past, keeping my eyes fixed on the road. When I swing the Cherokee onto the gravel patch, I note that parts of the lawn are starting to show green, the front gutter looks loose—and Ann is not perched on the small front porch, waiting for me. My groceries are in two sturdy cotton bags, and I carry them in one hand while I shake the house key loose in the other. I’ve promised myself I won’t call my sister’s name as I step into the house, but I can’t help myself.
Ann? Ann? Are you here?
    There’s no answer. There’s no blond girl sleeping on the sofa, in her room, in mine. There’s nothing in the house at all but old furniture, older memories, useless worry, and helpless love. I feel my chest cave in with the oppressive G-force of disappointment. Grocery bags still in my hands, I lean my head against the chilly white surface of the refrigerator and forbid myself to cry.
    *   *   *
    I have not been home for more than fifteen minutes when there’s a knock on the front door. My heart gives a painful squeeze. Could that be Ann? Was I right, after all, to expect her home tonight, simply wrong about the timing? I lay aside the newspaper and jump up from the couch, trying not to run, reminding myself that Ann would not be content with a single polite knock but would be pounding the wood, ringing the doorbell, calling my name. This will be a local kid selling magazines or a siding salesman