Page 120 - My FlipBook

L IS A J. L A W R E N C E

“That’s nice.” If Ash was trying to sound excited, he was
failing.
Greta had avoided the topic of Alice since she’d burst
into their room a week earlier. She noticed Ash and Elgin
had done the same.
“I could use your help making the rub,” Elgin said. Ash
didn’t stop pulling clean silverware from the dishwasher and
sorting it into a drawer. He pursed his lips tightly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to save that for when Alice
comes?” Greta asked, sliding clean plates onto a shelf.
“Oh, she’s coming,” Elgin said.
Ash and Greta stopped moving.
Elgin straightened and looked at them. “She’s my daughter,
and we need to make peace here.”
Greta heard: That monster is my spawn, and I plan to feed ADVANCE READING COPY

you to her. “Ash and I could go downstairs for a while, if you
want some alone time.” Only one person had responded to
Elgin’s rental ad, and nothing had come of it. She and Ash
had also applied for a few more jobs that week but hadn’t
heard anything back. They checked the answering machine
in the basement every day. Greta had hoped to have every-
thing lined up before they saw Alice again.
“No, that’s not the point,” Elgin said. “We need to sit
down, all together, and sort this out. The ancient Greeks

had a word for it—heuristic. It’s not solving the problem
completely but finding a functional solution.”
Greta had the feeling a heuristic with Alice would involve
a lot of yelling.

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