Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller, Mort Castle (Ed)

highway. I drove out after lunch.
    The Fountain Bleu Mobile Home Park sign was faded, and paint was chipping off at the bottom. As I pulled in, a kid ran across the street, chasing a ball. I slammed on the brakes, the van lurching, barely missing him. He was maybe seven or eight, with a crew cut and plenty of freckles. He glared at me.
    “Sorry,” I mouthed, and waved. In the side-view mirror, I could see him as I pulled the van forward, standing with his ball, mouth pinched, scowling.
    The mobile homes of Fountain Bleu were so run-down that they looked like haunted trailers, with plywood planking and stained bedsheets over the windows. But some had jaunty flower gardens and new shiny mailboxes in front. I found Candace Courington’s mobile home at the end of the street. A Doberman chained to the neighboring mobile home barked, baring its teeth. Across the street, a man working over the engine of an El Camino looked up at me. I nodded. He didn’t say a word or nod back. He wiped sweat from his brow.
    Along the walkway leading to the mobile home, plastic flowers spun in the wind. The windows had dusty metal horizontal blinds turned shut. I stepped up to the door and knocked. The guy across the street wiped his oily hands on a towel and watched me. The dog continued to bark, straining against its leash.
    The door opened just a bit.
    The woman held a lit cigarette in her hand. She had a dome of swimming-pool-blond hair and tired eyes.
    “Can I help you?” she asked.
    “Candace Courington?”
    “Yes,” she said, looking over my shoulder to the van parked on the street.
    “Flower delivery,” I said, extending the arrangement in my arms.
    She took it.
    “Thanks.” Her cigarette dangled from her lips. She began to close the door.
    “I knew your daughter,” I blurted, my words running together, before she could shut the door.
    “Oh yeah?”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “Thanks,” she said. “How did you know her?”
    “High school.” I thought about Sir Walter Scott’s old quote about webs and deception.
    “You went to school in New York?” she asked. “What are you doing out here, in Sterling Springs?”
    The lies were building. “This is actually where I grew up. My parents just moved there for a few years, and that’s how I met Catherine.”
    I had no clue where this was going.
    “That so,” she said.
    “The flowers are from me.” I tried a smile.
    Candace Courington looked at the arrangement. “That’s nice of you.”
    She stepped back to close the door. I knew this was my only chance. “Can I tell you a story about Catherine, Mrs. Courington? A story from our days in New York?”
    Jesus .
    She stared at me for a moment, thoughtfully.
    “Sure,” she said at last. “Come in. You want a glass of water?”
    “If you don’t mind.”
    The mobile home was dark and piles of bills were stacked on end tables, alongside prescription pill bottles. The TV was on, and a woman on the screen was sobbing.
    We sat in the living room, on a saggy sofa with the plaid cloth worn thin on the edges. A framed print of that Impressionist painting by Seurat, “Sunday in the Park” or whatever it’s called, hung slightly crooked over us. It’s weird that all the people in that painting, all the well-dressed women with their parasols, and the men with their top hats and the dogs and the kids, and even the monkey, are all facing the lake or away in another direction. But not the little girl. That kid with her white dress and bonnet, right in the middle of the painting, is looking right at you.
    Candace Courington fetched me a glass of water from the kitchen. On a coffee table was a magazine, Modern Amputee . I picked it up and looked at the attractive blond woman posing on the cover. She wore a prosthetic leg.
    I thumbed through some unopened envelopes next to the magazine. One was addressed to Catherine Courington, 210 E. 5th Street, New York, New York—a phone bill. I folded it and put it in my back pocket. I felt