Sisters of the Road by Barbara Wilson

back in this house—not when there’s an innocent little baby on the way.”
    I was so angry that the words didn’t quite sink in. “Trish is pregnant?”
    “Melanie is—seven months.” He was still fuming about his son though. “I don’t pretend to think the boy’s perfect. His mom and me was divorced when he was just a baby and she’s raised him all screwed up—taking him to Mexico with her and her artsy friends, putting him in private schools and all. And then trying to dump him on me when she got married again. No wonder Wayne don’t know how to hold a job. But he’s a good kid all the same. I won’t hear nothing said against him. He only tried to help Patti—but she wouldn’t listen to him either.”
    “Well, thank you,” I said and got up. I suddenly couldn’t bear to listen to any more, even though I was sure Rob would be able to regale me for hours with details of Trish’s troublemaking. He certainly seemed to hate her—and I suddenly wondered if Rob could have been obsessed with Trish in another way? Obsessed enough with her as a whore to follow her, to kill her friend, to kill her?
    “What’d you say the name of your institute was? So I can tell Melanie. Something about juvenile delinquents, am I right?”
    “That’s right,” I said. “And you’ve been very helpful. No, I can find my own way out. Thanks so much.”
    I heard the television roar alive as I left. “Betty, I’m telling you that it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll always love you, always and forever.”

14
    I MADE A FEW PHONE CALLS to various personnel departments and discovered that Melanie Hemmings worked at the Bon Marché in the nearby Northgate shopping mall. Hosiery.
    I found her straightening striped and patterned kneesocks on tiny hangers. I went over and fingered a couple on sale. Maybe this was all happening in order that I could enlarge my wardrobe. I never went into department stores if I could help it.
    “Can I help you?” she asked, with a timid but friendly smile. Like Trish she had a triangular face and widely spaced eyes. She was petite and dark-haired; under a burgundy smock her pregnancy was very apparent.
    “I’m Nancy Todd, with the National Institute for Research on Delinquent Youth…” I realized my voice sounded tentative and added firmly, “I’ve just talked to your husband and wanted to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
    Melanie shook her head. Her dark brown hair was thick and cut in a bob with bangs. “I haven’t seen her for months, almost a year,” she said distantly. “My husband… well… he… we just don’t want to see her, that’s all.”
    I nodded and kept my voice neutral. “When did the trouble begin?”
    Her hand went to her abdomen and she looked around for escape. If we’d been at her house she would have politely shown me the door.
    “She was such a good girl,” Melanie finally said, helplessly. “But something changed a few years ago. I didn’t recognize her anymore.”
    “Do you think it had something to do with your marriage?”
    She defended him immediately. “Oh no. Rob wanted to be a father to her… He just believes in discipline.”
    “Did he—punish her?”
    Some memory seemed to hurt Melanie; it showed in her eyes. “I told him I thought it wasn’t the right way. I never hit her when she was growing up. And she was such a wonderful little girl, it was just her and me for six years, we always got along. But she put up such a fight when I married Rob. He’s a good man, he didn’t know much about kids, that was all…” Her hand went anxiously to her belly again. “They just got off on the wrong foot. He has a quick temper sometimes, that’s all. He doesn’t like being talked back to.”
    “But the real trouble started when your stepson came to stay with you, didn’t it? How old was Trish then?” I was unconsciously shifting from researcher to interrogator.
    Melanie’s face sharpened, just as Trish’s did when she was