Chapter Nineteen
The little girl’s drawing was on the refrigerator.
She sat on a stool at the bar in the kitchen, a bowl of fresh porridge in front of her, untouched. Her gaze was fixed on the drawing. It wasn’t a frame, like he’d said, but it was still on display.
Her mother always covered their refrigerator with the little girl’s art, layer after layer, heavy magnets holding it all up. The Tin Man had used a piece of duct tape to stick it there, dead center of the freezer door, not a magnet to be found anywhere.
“Why are you not eating your kasha?” the Tin Man asked, his voice low and gritty, kind of like sandpaper to the little girl’s skin. His eyes were gray again, but they didn’t appear very kind that morning.
“I don’t like porridge,” she said, looking down at the bowl. “I like Lucky Charms better.”
“Lucky Charms? You like the marshmallows? You like all that sugar?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad,” he said. “We eat to live, kitten. We do not eat for fun. So eat your kasha. It is good for you.”
Frowning, she took a bite, forcing it down. In the month she’d been there, she hadn’t had any sweets. No cakes, no cookies, no candies, no nothing. It was all soups and stews and too much fish, which she hated, but if she didn’t eat what he made her, she just went hungry. She missed ice cream, and pepperoni pizza, and even hot dogs. She missed Kool-Aide, and root beer, and chocolate milk. Tea or water was all he ever offered, except that bitter burning vodka. Yuck.
The little girl missed so much, but most of all, she missed her mother, who used to say life was too short to eat yucky stuff.
The little girl looked over at the Tin Man as he sat across from her, reading a newspaper. “Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“She woke up, didn’t she?”
He didn’t look up from the paper. “Sure, kitten. Woke up good as new. We had a laugh about it this morning before she went home.”
He was lying. Nobody laughed that morning. The little girl had sat at the top of the stairs, afraid to come down, and watched the Cowardly Lion carry the woman outside wrapped up in a black tarp.
“I meant Mommy,” she whispered, looking at her porridge, thinking she’d rather starve than force down any more of it.
She could feel his eyes then, regarding her in silence.
“Your mother is fine,” he said finally. “We have not laughed about it yet, but we will, and everything will be as good as new when we do.”
Her eyes lifted, meeting his stern gaze. “She woke up?”
“Of course,” he said. “Does that surprise you?”
She slowly nodded.
“Words. Do not mime your answers.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t find me yet.”
He stared at her for a moment longer before his expression cracked. His lips twitched with a hint of a smile. “You think she is looking for you? That someday you will hear, ‘Knock-knock, kitten, Mommy is here’?
The little girl nodded again, earning an annoyed growl, his fist slamming against the bar so hard her bowl bounced, some of the porridge splattering out.
“Words.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He laughed again, that mean laugh now.
“I hope you do hear it,” he said. “I hope she crawls out of the Hell she is in and comes for you, kitten. I would enjoy watching that happen.”
He ruffled the top of her head, still laughing as he walked away, leaving her with the porridge she didn’t want and an answer she couldn’t understand.
Did that mean she wasn’t coming?