Midnight Voices by John Saul Page A

about the relationship between Alicia and Max and the girl they’d taken into their home. In fact, when she’d called this morning, it had only been to set up a routine visit sometime next month. But when she’d been told that Rebecca wasn’t going to school today, she’d decided to come over, just to make sure that it really was nothing more than a minor virus that had kept the little girl home.
    Alicia Albion looked worried when she opened the door for Andrea Costanza. Worried, and tired.
    “I’m afraid I’m being much worse about this than Rebecca is,” she said fretfully, the fingers of one hand nervously rubbing those of the other, which looked a little swollen. “My arthritis,” she went on as she saw Andrea looking at her hands. “Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes. . . .” Her voice trailed away, and she shrugged the whole matter off as if it weren’t even worth talking about. “She wanted to go to school, but we kept her home. She’s still in bed, and I’m making her some soup.”
    For the first time, Andrea noticed the aroma wafting from the kitchen. It was a strange scent, almost bitter, smelling nothing like the wonderful chicken soup her mother used to make, which had imbued the whole house with the aroma of herbs and spices. Alicia Albion’s soup smelled almost medicinal, and the only image it brought to Andrea’s mind was of a bowl of lukewarm grayish broth that was offered to her when she’d been in the hospital having her appendix out at the age of ten. Even now the thought of that soup made her stomach knot in rebellion. “May I go in and see her?” she asked, avoiding any comment on the strange odor emanating from the kitchen.
    “Oh, please do,” Alicia said. “She likes you so much.”
    As Alicia disappeared into the kitchen, Andrea made her way down the hall into the big corner bedroom that was Rebecca’s. Rebecca herself was propped up against a bank of pillows, and though she looked a little pale, her eyes lit up when she saw Andrea. “You did come!” she said.
    “Why wouldn’t I?” Andrea countered. “When I heard you were sick, wild dogs wouldn’t have kept me away.”
    “I’m not really sick,” Rebecca assured her. “I felt much worse on Saturday, and I’m going back to school tomorrow.”
    “You are if Dr. Humphries says you are,” Alicia pronounced, coming into the room with a steaming bowl of soup on a white wicker bed tray. She set it carefully in front of Rebecca, then tucked a huge napkin around the girl’s neck. “Don’t burn yourself,” she cautioned. “It’s hot.”
    Rebecca dipped a spoon into the soup—which was every bit as thin and colorless as the stuff that had been served to Andrea in the hospital years ago—blew on it for a second or two, then slurped it noisily into her mouth. If it tasted as bad as it looked, Rebecca was managing to put on a far better face than Andrea could have. “Want some?” the little girl asked.
    “I made it for you,” Alicia protested.
    “Couldn’t Andrea have just a taste?” she begged.
    “I can’t imagine she’d want one!”
    Rebecca turned back to Andrea. “Tell her you want some. It’s really good.”
    Through the exchange between the young girl and the middle-aged woman Andrea had been watching and listening as carefully as she knew how and everything she’d both seen and heard had told her that there was nothing amiss in this household.
    Rebecca had the flu.
    Alicia Albion was taking care of her.
    Both of them seemed totally relaxed with each other.
    Then why did she have the sense that something was wrong?
    She stayed another half hour, and even managed to try the soup, which she told herself couldn’t really be as bad as it tasted, since Rebecca was still slurping it down as if it were the best thing she’d ever eaten. Other than the soup, which was obviously a problem only for herself, Andrea got no sense of anything at all being amiss, and finally, at ten, she took