Читать книгу Bury This - Andrea Portes - Страница 24

FIVE

And that could be something, too. The taste of a shell, or the dodge of a hand . . . something always, not infuriatingly, but rivetingly . . . just out of reach.

Danek tried not to think about Dorothy Krause in this way. It was inappropriate. It was ridiculous. And yet.

A sentence never uttered.

A something never had.

He wondered what she carried around underneath that ebony, ink-like crown.

She was a raven.

Odd, wasn’t it, that he should feel this, feel anything really, this . . . grappling. And yet, there it was, right in front of him. He wanted to laugh. Wished he could laugh.

He found himself thinking of her, drawn to her name.

Dorothy Krause. What had it been before? Maybe he could ask her. But how could he ask her?

Matter of fact.

Put it with a lot of other questions.

And the name Dorothy. Wasn’t that simple? Was she named, after all, after Oz?

Simpletons!

But yet, there she was, Dorothy Krause, with the invisible maiden name. Invisible life. What had she been before she had been . . . his?

His thoughts raced imagining her then, way back then. He did not want to, would not let himself think, count, calculate, how long ago it actually was. He would not add it up.

It dangled right there, right beyond, the edges of what he would and would not think. A thought-not-thought. A word not spoken.

Much like the fleeting glimpse, the don’t-allow-yourself-to-think-it image of her daughter draped down dead in the snow. No, no, keep that for someone else to think. Throw it out the back screen door and give it to the sparrows.

No one could hurt her now at least.