Angels of Destruction Read Online Free PDF Page B

her along the aisles—how she had loved shopping in those days. Taking her mother's hand, Erica had danced from display to display, coveting every bright color and wild design.
    Lost in the past, Margaret did not notice the man in the camel hair coat who followed her around the store, stopping a few racks away when she paused to guess at sizes. He switched his fedora from hand to hand, anxious to be under the brim again. Whenever she looked in his direction, he stiffened like a mannequin and remained motionless until some other bright thing caught her eye. Conspicuous by his mere presence, he became inconspicuous by dint of will. He merged into the general background and disappeared in the thickets of hanging clothes.
    The few other shoppers were women like herself. Widows, perhaps, but grandmothers surely, out hunting for birthday gifts or bargains to store away for next winter. They shuffled in a daze from bin to bin, and Margaret read in every face some suffering or disappointment, their hopes and dreams marked down, 40 percent off. She wondered if others saw the shame written in her eyes and scratched across her brow. The others, if they noticed her at all, must have recognized her as that woman whose daughter had run away from home, gotten into trouble, and never returned. Photographs of Erica had been in the papers and on television when the story broke, and even Margaret and Paul had once been on the front page of the local newspaper. If the women didn't remember the exact circumstances, they knew instinctively that she shared their heartbreak over irredeemable losses. But the little girl was her secret, and she clung to it with all the ferocity of untrammeled happiness. Margaret gathered in the parka, quickly chose a watch cap, scarf, and mittens in complementary red, and paid her way out of the store. She thought of crossing over to the Rosa Rossa Flower Shop to see her neighbor, but decided she did not feel like talking to anyone after all.
    To get to her car on Robinson Street, she had to pass the diner where she and Erica had often stopped for an ice cream or to split a slice of chocolate cake. The air bit at her cheeks, and she felt hopelessly tired again. No harm, she thought, to step inside for a cup of coffee and warm up before heading home. At eleven o'clock, the place was nearly empty, so she picked a booth out of the draft. The decor had not changed from the 1970s, the same cracked vinyl flooring, burgundy booths, chrome fading to the sheen of silvered mirror, and the laminated menus offered the same choices—only the prices differed from her last visit. A waitress arrived as Margaret read from the selections, trying to decide if a piece of pie would upset her stomach. She could sense the young woman's presence, a dark mustard-colored uniform, glass of water set down with a thunk, silverware wrapped in a paper napkin dropped unceremoniously on the placemat. Margaret looked up just far enough to see the name tag: Joyce.
    “What can I getcha, hon?”
    Bring me my daughter at nine years old.
    “Just coffee,” Margaret said. “And—oh, I don't know—what pie is good today?”
    “We have apple, blueberry, cherry, sour cherry, peach, pumpkin, lemon meringue, banana cream, coconut cream, though that's been here over two days. Nobody gets the coconut. None of the fruit is fresh this time of year, but the apples in the apple pie are real.”
    Echoing across the years, the girl's voice finally registered in her memory. Margaret had known her once upon a time, and instantly she averted her eyes, studied her fingernails. “Sour cherry, thank you. A small slice.”
    She watched the waitress walk toward the kitchen, just as she stared at all young women, trying to discern some sign of her own daughter in their faces and figures, a clue as to what Erica might look like now, how she might act, what she might feel or think. Trying to draw the particulars of Erica's life from the surface of others’, she could not