Strawgirl by Abigail Padgett

turning to oatmeal. That really is Piaf. What happened to the band?
    "Duhon always ends with that recording," Andrew LaMarche said, leading her toward the door with his right arm firmly around her waist. "It's his trademark."
    "Mine too," Bo nodded sleepily, aware that he was kissing the top of her head occasionally as they walked to the car, and too tired to break the mood.
    On the way home Bo heard the Jaguar's motor murmuring "le monde" repetitively. Something about the notion, the insistent syllables of it, kept breaking and spreading in her mind like an egg. The man beside her was harboring a secret. Why? Because there were different worlds? It made little sense, but then what did? A broad view, then. Blurry, gentle. Maybe wise. Lois Bittner, Bo smiled to herself, would probably approve. Madge Aldenhoven would vaporize with rage.
    "Thanks for the evening," she nodded as LaMarche saw her to her door. "I'll think about what you said."
    He left with a polite nod. No future dates set. No promises to call or be called. It was good. And, Bo reminded herself, it was over. Andrew LaMarche just didn't fit into her world. Nobody did.
    Inside, the answering machine on the tiled counter between her living room and lilliputian kitchen was blinking.
    "Bo?" Madge Aldenhoven's voice announced, "you're going to have to fly to New York tomorrow. The police have captured the perp in the Franer case at some cult hideout in the Adirondacks. We're sending you to retrieve the sister. Your plane leaves at 6:19 A.M. for Albany. I'll meet you at the office at 5:00 with the tickets."
    In the neon glare of her bathroom Bo stared at a pharmacist's brown plastic bottle half full of pinkish tablets. Lithium. A surefire way to remain uninvolved, to stop the French "le monde" thumping in her brain. But did it need to be stopped?
    Maybe LaMarche was right. Maybe there was another way to view the broken lives that fell across her desk in orange-banded case files. Maybe more to it than disgust and helplessness. The possibility felt like new canvas, stretched and beckoning.
    Bo tossed the pills in her carry-on bag for the journey, just in case. Then she fell in bed humming a French song about having no regrets, and fell asleep wondering what life would be like without them.
     

Chapter 9
    Eva Broussard lay sleepless upon a large bent-twig bed that had belonged to one of the lodge's Prohibition-era owners. A Pittsburgh glove manufacturer with stern views on temperance, the man had given his ideas immortality in the property's deed. No alcohol could be served within the lodge walls while the government of the United States remained intact. The troubled woman turned softly, imagining a bloodless coup at that very moment in Washington, D.C. A large cognac, she thought, might muffle the incessant mating whistles of the thousand spring peeper frogs calling, bog to bog, through the Adirondack night. Hannah Franer lay asleep on a cot beside the antique bed.
    In shadow the child seemed merely a younger version of the mother. The same fine blonde hair drifting across the pillowcase. The same wide-set hazel eyes, full lips, and overlarge nose that reddened at the slightest emotion. Eva wondered if the similarity between mother and daughter extended to what lay inside—that core being some might name "soul." If so, extreme caution must be exercised now. For Hannah Franer's future would lie squarely in the ways she learned to deal with the pain of the present. And even that wasn't complete. Eva was certain there would be at least one more devastating blow for the child to absorb. Grimly certain.
    Soundlessly she slipped to an open casement window. Below the lodge Night Heron Lake appeared to hold floating beneath its surface scattered sparks of light identical to those in the sky above. At the water's edge a pale glacial boulder left there twelve thousand years ago by a retreating wall of ice seemed a small, abandoned moon.
    "I know nothing," the rangy woman whispered