What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

sister,” their father said, in both girls’ hearing, so Sunny couldn’t lie about it later. Otherwise, Heather knew, her older sister would have nodded and pretended agreement, then left her at home anyhow. Sunny was sneaky that way. Or tried to be, but Heather was forever catching her in her schemes.
    â€œWhy?” Sunny protested automatically. She must have known that the argument was lost before it began. It was pointless to argue with their father, although, unlike their mother, he didn’t mind when they talked back. He was happy to have long discussions in which he debated their points. He even helped them shape their side of things, build their cases like lawyers, which he was always reminding them that they could be. They could be anything they wanted, their father told them frequently. Yet in an argument with him, they could never be right. It was not unlike playing checkers with him, when he would guide his opponent’s hand with small shakes and nods of his head, letting the girls avert disastrous moves that might result in double-or even triple-jumps. Still, he somehow claimed victory in the final play, even when he was down to just one king.
    â€œHeather’s only eleven,” he said in what the sisters thought of as his reasoning voice. “She can’t stay home alone. Your mother’s already left for work, and I have to be at the shop by ten.”
    Head lowered over her plate, Heather watched them through her lashes, still as a cat studying a squirrel. She was torn. Normally she pushed for greater privileges whenever possible. She wasn’t a baby . She would be twelve next week. She should be allowed to stay at home alone on a Saturday afternoon. Since her mother had started working last fall, Heather was alone for at least an hour every afternoon, and the only rules were that she mustn’t touch the stove or have friends over. Heather liked that hour. She got to watch what she wanted on television— The Big Valley, usually—and eat as many graham crackers as she wanted.
    That bit of freedom, however, had been forced on her parents. They had wanted Heather to wait in the Dickey Hill Elementary School library after school until Sunny could collect her, the same plan they had used when Heather was in fifth grade and fourth grade before that. But Dickey Hill got out at three and Sunny didn’t get home from junior high until past four now that her bus ride was so long. The principal at Dickey Hill had told Heather’s parents in no uncertain terms—that was her mother’s recounting of the story, and the phrase had stuck with Heather, in no uncertain terms —that her librarian was not a baby-sitter. So Heather’s parents, always eager not to be seen as people who expected special treatment, had decided that Heather could be in the house by herself. And if she could be by herself for an hour every day, Monday through Friday, then why couldn’t she be alone for three hours on a Saturday? Five was greater than three. Plus, if she won the right to stay home today, maybe she would never have to spend another deadly dull Saturday in her father’s store, much less her mother’s real-estate office.
    But that long-term possibility paled alongside the prospect of a Saturday at Security Square Mall, a place of great novelty to Heather. Over the past year, Sunny had fought for and won the right to be dropped offthere on Saturday afternoons, once a month, to meet friends for matinees. Sunny also got to baby-sit, earning seventy-five cents an hour. Heather hoped to start doing that, too, once she was twelve, which was just next week. Sunny complained that she spent years trying to gain her privileges, only to see Heather awarded them at a younger age. So what? That was the price of progress. Heather couldn’t remember where she had heard that phrase, but she had adopted it for her own. You couldn’t argue with progress. Unless it was