The Burning Girl by Lisa Unger Page B

she was getting into her car.”
    “Sounds like a good way to get maced,” said Eloise.
    Ray ignored her. “‘Let me ask you,’ I said. ‘What was the first thing Stephanie Schaffer said to you when you told her she was pregnant?’ ”
    Oliver hopped into Eloise’s lap, made himself comfortable, and started to purr.
    “She gave me the usual runaround—can’t talk to you, doctor-patient confidentiality, blah, blah. Then I asked her, ‘Did she seem happy with the news?’ I told her the truth. I told the doctor that I wanted to know how hard I should work to find Stephanie. That seemed to get to her. Struck a nerve.”
    The doctor had told Ray, that no, Stephanie hadn’t seemed happy. That she’d cried. But that was all she said, though Ray suspected the doctor knew much more.
    “Stephanie was one of those seeker types, you know what I mean?” Ray kept on. “She had all these self-help books around, little sayings on plaques about change, and positivity, and following your heart. In the drawer by her bed, there were like a hundred pictures of beaches, palm trees, people surfing, boating. They were wrapped up in a rubber band along with a little postcard that said: ‘We must be willing to let go of the life we planned, so as to have the life that’s waiting for us.’ ”
    Eloise closed her eyes. Yes, that was it. Florida or maybe Hawaii, someplace where it was warm all the time, someplace where the sun shined more than it didn’t. Stephanie Schaffer loved the feel of water on her skin, the smell of the ocean. Stephanie wanted a better life for her daughter—it was a girl—than the one she’d wound up with. And she was going to find it before it was too late for both of them. Eloise smiled.
    Tell him to let her go.
    “It sounds like you’re thinking about dropping the case,” said Eloise. “I’m sure Mr. Schaffer will be disappointed, but you’ve hit a dead end. And there’s nothing to do now but let it go.”
    He watched her as he chewed. He’d finished his meal and now he was polishing off hers.
    “We won’t get paid,” he said. “He’s that kind of guy.”
    “Whatever,” she said. “We never cared about that, did we?”
    “No,” he said. He pushed her plate away, trying not to eat any more. “I guess not.”
    She found herself staring at him, his shirt dusted with flour, his brow creased with concern. Maybe it was the golden morning light, or perhaps it just the feeling that some weight had been lifted. But she felt like she was seeing him for the first time—his warm, dark stare, his broad chest. She reached for him, and he took his hand in hers, their eyes locking. She felt her cheeks flush. Then he was pulling her up from her seat, he turned in his seat and guided her into his lap. She let herself be led.
    “I want to take care of you,” he said, wrapping a strong arm around her waist. “Let me.”
    Her body resisted him. She had always held herself back from him just a little, even when they made love. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, give over all of herself. How could she betray Alfie by surrendering everything to another?
    She put her hand on his chest, the gentlest push away, even as her other arm folded around his neck.
    “Let me,” he whispered.
    Something in her heart loosened and released, a balloon drifting up into the sky. Ray pressed his mouth against hers, warm and sweet, and she breathed him in. Unexpectedly, with the kitchen a terrible mess around them and Oliver mewing at her feet, Eloise felt herself finally, after so many years, let go.
    • • •
    Letting go. Why was it the hardest thing? It sounded so easy, as if all you had to do was open your palms and step away. And yet we cling, don’t we? To ideas of ourselves, hope, how things should be, how we wish they were. What we should be able to do, what we want, what we were supposed to want.
    The Burning Girl kept holding on to Eloise. That afternoon, she came back, and this time she told Eloise her name,