The Good Daughter: A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller. Alexandra Burt

closer to each other.

      “It’s the Day of the Dead and the only night of the year my abuela sleeps in her bed.”

      “Where does she sleep if not in her bed?”

      “On the floor.”

      “But she’s an old woman. Why would she do that?” Quinn thought of Sigrid and her large bed covered in the finest linens.

      “When my grandfather died, she promised to never again sleep in their bed unless it was with him. That one night she believes he joins her and she cooks and sets out a plate of food for him, and washes his clothes and lays them out on the bed.”

      Quinn tried not to think about Benito’s story too much, for it made her remember her father, and Sigrid hardly even visited the cemetery to leave flowers on his grave.

      “Does her husband ever show up?” Quinn asked, but the image in her head was not one of old abuela waiting for her dead husband to join her, but rather of her father in the blue suit, his head resting on a satin pillow in the cherrywood coffin, propped up at Mitchell’s Funeral Home in town. His face had appeared waxen and bloated, he had looked nothing like himself.

      “It’s just something you do. The dead don’t show—I mean not really, but in spirit—it’s a matter of honoring them,” Benito said.

      Later, careful as to avoid curious eyes watch Quinn get out of Benito’s truck, they agreed on another day and time when they’d meet again. The following Sunday, after they walked the fields by the forest, Benito showed her how to pick grass with the widest and coarsest blade. He put it between his thumbs, pulled it taut, and pursed his lips and blew into it. Depending on how he cupped his hands, the sound changed. He said that the grass in his hometown grew higher than any grass he’d ever seen in Texas. Soon they began meeting after dark and with every passing day, with each stride she made toward him, she felt more in command of her own life. She felt like a girl walking toward her destiny, and geisha stories seemed silly and thoughtless and she imagined leaving Aurora with Benito to start a life someplace where no one knew them.

      That night, with thoughts of a future together, Quinn forged ahead, mesmerized by the moon above. It offered a brilliance and silvery light that she had never seen before and even as she stumbled over dips in the ground, she continued to stare into the night sky. Some stars were rather dull, merely flickering into existence every now and then, but some were powerful enough to illuminate the night. She walked on, down the rural road, and at some point she cut across a field and ended up on the dirt path leading into the woods. When she entered, low-hanging branches tickled her cheek ever so slightly, making her jump.

      The woods seemed different that night, the surroundings suddenly unfamiliar. The trunks were slanted and the paths had all but vanished, the trees were higher than in the daylight and they were spreading toward something way beyond their reach, up into the night sky, almost touching the moon. There was talk about these woods. Always had been. The trees whispered, locals said; on certain nights you could make out voices and it was best to walk in the other direction and not turn around. Quinn knew that the cottonwood trees were abundant and the leaves were flattened sideways, conducive to a particular type of movement in the wind, and that was all there was to it, even though she had to admit when the wind picked up and rustled the leaves, the noise level seemed unnatural, even to her. When she finally reached their secret place, an oval clearing within the darkest part of the forest, she sat on a fallen tree and waited for her lover.

      “Mi corazón.” She felt the words more than heard them.

      They embraced and his wet hair tickled her cheek. His wrinkled shirt smelled of soap and some faint odor of food that was unfamiliar to her. Everybody in his family called him Benito. He was nineteen with a strong body from the hard labor of setting up fences and removing trees, stints at farms where they’d brand cattle and build barns. He had a broad face with a hooked nose and his skin was soft with barely a hair on his entire face.

      They spread a blanket on the forest floor and they became lovers. Quinn was a virgin but Benito wasn’t and he was gentle and whispered words in Spanish Quinn didn’t understand yet that sounded like a melody to her. Even though his hands were coarse and calloused, they felt soft as he took hold of her face, forcing their eyes to meet. A beautiful stillness descended upon them as they lay on the forest floor and even though he was not inside her yet, they were one. Their bodies were trembling and Quinn felt something take hold within her, some entity clinging to her as if she’d done this a million times. His mouth captured hers and he kissed her slowly as he moved with her. Her chest rose as she drew in a breath and held it while his body shifted. She felt a tinge of pain and cried out. Benito stopped moving. Finally Quinn let out the breath she’d held in and then she slowly drew in another. Everything she’d ever believed this to be was a mistake, this was not crude and vulgar, there wasn’t any power over Benito, not like Sigrid and Cadillac Man, but the power was within her, and pouring out of her into him. It was like the lunar eclipse she had watched with her father years ago, an event so momentous that every time she thought of it, she felt as if she was reliving it. That’s how this moment would feel to her for all eternity.

      Benito reached out and touched her, running his fingers over her flushed cheeks. He drew her into a hug, then covered her face with kisses. Eldorado was real, a golden city, he told her, the land of a king who was covered with gilded dust so thick he seemed to be made of solid gold. Quinn wasn’t sure if it was a legend or if a scrap of truth rested beneath his words but she didn’t care. She thought of Benito as a prince who would soon become a man and then rule some sort of kingdom. And she’d be his queen.

      “I have to go,” Benito said. “I have to work with my uncle early in the morning.”

      “Come see me after school on Monday? At the hardware store?”

      “Yes, mi corazón, I’ll try but it’s a big job. A deck. It will take all weekend and maybe all of Monday. I’ll wait for you Tuesday, maybe Wednesday,” he said and held out his hand to help her up. “Let me drive you home.”

      “I’ll leave in a bit. I want to see the sun come up.”

      He bent down to kiss her and Quinn watched him disappear between the cottonwood trees. She heard a faint sound of a car door opening, then slamming shut, followed by the revving engine. Quinn imagined Benito skillfully maneuvering across the potholed dirt road.

      She propped her arms behind her head and stared at the night sky. The wind had died down and as she lay under the stars, she still felt Benito’s soft breath and his heartbeat. She was nothing like Sigrid, and whatever wiles were, they didn’t apply to boys like Benito. She was too much in her heart and not at all in her head, so whatever advice Sigrid had given her was no longer relevant, maybe never had had any significance at all. Forever she wanted to remember the moment she became Benito’s lover. Quinn closed her eyes and drifted off into an inky darkness.

      She awoke to a gunshot sounding in the distance. Quinn opened her eyes, but only for a second, and when all remained silent she drifted back to sleep, thinking she could have been mistaken.

      The last image she’d remember later was the moon looming overhead with a sharp point, almost like a hunter’s horn.

       Chapter 7

       Dahlia

      After leaving the Barrington for the last time, I rack my mind, wondering what the next step down from hotel housekeeper is going to be. On my mother’s street, I find her house sitting quietly without a sign of life. The glaring and lonely porch light illuminates the impeccably clean front porch. I can’t make out a single cricket in the harsh light of the bare bulb.

      When I cross the threshold, beneath my feet something crackles as if I am stepping on a cracker or a piece of popcorn. I take another step and again I hear a crunching sound. Another step, another crunch. I swipe the light switch upward. Arranged two inches apart like cookie dough on a sheet pan