The Abortionist's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

a smile.
    “Mia wannabees,” said Ernie. “Everywhere you looked.”
    His wife dead—and here they were talking about soccer! Frank started to pick up his wife’s robe, but Ernie stopped him. Frank dug his hands into his pockets.
    “Our house was on the Home Tour, you know,” he told Ernie. “Somebody might have scoped it out.”
    “Certainly possible,” said Ernie.
    “Somebody from the Coalition, did you think of that? They could have just walked through the house and gotten the layout of everything.”
    Ernie shrugged and agreed that there were a lot of people who didn’t like what Diana did. “Lots of avenues to explore,” he said. “We’re just getting started. Look, Frank, I hate to say this, but you should—well, you should call your attorney.”
    For the first time that evening Frank felt himself stand erect. It was surreal, being on this end of the telescope, but he was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of watching him act like a suspect at this point. He would have liked a cigarette right now, to tell the truth. He would have liked a good stiff drink. He would have liked to fall fast asleep, and wake up in the morning to find it was all a dream.
    “Thanks for the tip,” he told Ernie, “but I’m more concerned about my daughter right now.”
    —————
    It was probably the only time in her life when, while under the influence of a recreational drug, Megan would be glad to see the police.
    The two officers wrenched open the passenger door, pulled her out, and helped her into the back of the squad car. For a few seconds she forgot why she was there—the car was warm and she was warm and her neck was no longer spazzing up. But as soon as they crested the hill—as soon as she looked down and saw the ambulance, the police cars, the yellow tape already strung up all around her house—a fish flopped in her stomach. The Big Thing that they’d always lived under the shadow of had happened. It was real. It didn’t seem real, but it was.
    She let herself in and walked straight to the solarium, where her father met her, looking rumpled in the day’s workclothes: white shirt, dark trousers.
    “Dad,” she said as he hugged her, “Daddy,” and she was glad he was holding her because her knees went wobbly and she saw zigzag lights and she knew it had nothing to do with any green clover-shaped pill.
    She glanced around the room. There were people milling around, and they all looked at her. There on the green tiled floor was the long white-sheeted form. Suddenly Megan felt herself splitting into two people, the girl with the wobbly legs versus the girl watching it all unfold on TV.
    “Come on, I’ll make you some tea,” her father was saying, but Megan broke free from his arm and went and knelt by her mother. The only other time she had been in the room with a dead person was at Ben’s funeral, and Ben certainly hadn’t been covered with a white sheet; he’d been plumped and rouged and laid down to sleep in his Superman pajamas, and everybody who walked by the coffin seemed to want to touch his face, which had pissed her off, for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on.
    Megan turned back the sheet. Her mother’s face was puffed and gray and froggy-looking. The girl with the wobbly legs went fuzzy and sat down while the girl watching TV took over.
    “How did it happen?” she asked.
    “We don’t know,” her father said. “It looks like she had a nasty blow to her head.”
    “By someone else?”
    “Possibly.”
    “So, like, someone did this to her?”
    “Let’s wait for the autopsy, honey,” said her father.
    Megan stood up and looked at all the people standing around her. “You guys think someone killed her?”
    “That’s what the detectives are here for,” said her father. “This is Detective Berlin,” he said. “And Detective Vogel.”
    Megan looked at the detective with the blue eyes. The gold earring. The shadow of a beard. She looked away. How the fuck?
    The