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I step lightly over the soft springy grass and I’m halfway across the yard when my heel comes down on a sprinkler head. My ankle twists and I fall on my tailbone, slamming my elbow into the ground, and I can’t help it: I cry out in pain.
Caroline and Ted come running across the yard. “Mallory? Are you all right?” I’ve got my hand cupped over my elbow—the pain is so sudden and searing, I’m certain I’m bleeding. But when I lift my fingers to look, I see the skin is bruised but not broken.
“I’m okay. I just tripped.”
“Let’s get you into the light,” Ted says. “Can you stand up?”
“I just need a minute.”
Ted doesn’t wait. He slides his arm under my knees, then stands and carries me like a child. He walks me back to the pool deck and gently lowers me into a patio chair.
“I’m fine,” I tell them. “Really.”
Caroline inspects my elbow anyway. “What were you doing in the yard? Did you need something?”
“It can wait.”
Through it all, I’ve managed to keep my grip on the three drawings, and Caroline sees them. “Did Teddy do these?”
At this point I decide I have nothing left to lose. “He asked me not to show you. But I think you ought to look at them.”
Caroline studies the pictures and her face falls. Then she shoves the papers into her husband’s hands.
“This is your fault,” she says.
Ted sees the first picture and laughs. “Oh, dear. Is this person being strangled?”
“Yes, Ted, she’s being murdered and her body is being dragged through a forest and I wonder where our sweet gentle little boy got all these terrible ideas?”
Ted raises both hands in a show of surrender. “Brothers Grimm,” he explains. “I read him a different story every night.”
“These aren’t the Disney versions,” Caroline tells me. “The original stories are much more violent. You know that scene in Cinderella, where the wicked stepsister tries on the glass slipper? In the original, she slices off her toes to make it fit. The slipper fills with blood. It’s horrifying!”
“He’s a boy, Caroline. Boys love this stuff!”
“I don’t care. It’s not healthy. Tomorrow I’m going to the library and getting some Disney storybooks. No strangling, no murders, just good clean G-rated fun.”
Ted tips the bottle of wine into his glass and gives himself an extra-large pour. “Now that’s my idea of horror,” he says. “But what do I know? I’m just the boy’s father.”
“And I’m the licensed psychiatrist.”
They look at me like they’re waiting for me to choose a side, to declare which parent is right.
“I don’t think this is a fairy tale,” I tell them. “Teddy says he’s getting these ideas from Anya. He says Anya is telling him what to draw.”
“Of course he does,” Caroline says. “Teddy knows we won’t approve of these pictures. He knows it’s wrong to draw women being strangled and killed and buried. But if Anya says it’s okay, then he’s allowed to proceed. He can achieve a kind of cognitive dissonance.”
Ted’s nodding along with his wife, like this all makes perfect sense, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. Cognitive dissonance?
“Teddy says he’s drawing Anya’s story. He says the man in the pictures stole Anya’s little girl.”
“That’s classic Brothers Grimm,” Ted explains. “Half their stories have children gone missing. Hansel and Gretel, the Pied Piper, Godfather Death—”
“Godfather Death?” Caroline shakes her head. “Please, Ted. These stories. They’re too much. You need to stop.”
Ted takes another look at the drawings and at last he surrenders. “All right, fine. From now on, I’ll stick with Dr. Seuss. Or Richard Scarry. But I will not read those awful Berenstain Bears, that’s where I draw the line.” He puts an arm around Caroline and squeezes her shoulder. “You win, hon, okay?”
And he’s acting like the matter is resolved, like now we should all go inside and call it a night. But I worry that if I don’t ask my question now, I might never have another opportunity. “I just thought of one other possibility,” I tell them. “What if Anya is Annie Barrett?”
