Read Online Lacy Eye by Jessica Treadway - Free Book Online Page A

wearing a rented Colonial dress and bonnet, Dawn, who was always eager to please her father, lingered with him as long as he wanted in the blacksmith’s shop or the apothecary or the textile mill. Once, she got called up from a crowd of children to try her hand at running the loom in prerevolutionary Williamsburg. I still have the photograph Joe took of her that day, flushed with excitement at having been chosen, sticking her tongue through her teeth and squinting in concentration as the weaver guided her hand. She focused on her task so hard that you can’t tell, from the picture, that something was wrong with her eyes.
    On the bedroom floor had lain a faux Oriental rug from Joe’s parents’ bedroom, which we took from the house in Tonawanda after they died. It was worn through in spots, but we never thought of replacing it.
    The room had been nothing fancy. But it reflected who we were, and what we loved together.
    Iris had bought a plush comforter and bedding set I never would have chosen for myself, in green and violet complementing the soft rose paint of the walls. Thick carpet covered the entire floor. Bright floral prints faced out from ornate frames. She’d installed a chaise longue next to the closet, across from a flat-screen TV.
    The last thing Joe would have wanted in his bedroom was a television. And a chaise longue wasn’t my style. Iris had decorated the room more in line with her taste, not mine. But she knew this. I understood that after all that had happened there, she thought a complete makeover was for the best. She also thought she was preparing the house to be sold, so it made sense that she hadn’t tried to create a space I’d spend any time in.
    I walked to the window and looked out, went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet to its empty and pristine shelves. It was clear nobody lived here. But my husband had been mortally wounded a few feet away from where I was standing, and I waited for it to rush over me—a flood of memory, a flashback that knocked me off my feet. I’d counted on it. It had never occurred to me that going into the bedroom might not bring back, in more detail than I could handle, the events of that night.
    I’d expected to feel panic because I thought I would remember. Now I felt panic because I did not.
    But: “Be careful what you wish for,” my mother used to remind me, along with “Pride goeth before a fall.” I should have known that the ease I felt was too good to be true. I was only a few feet from the door—I remember thinking the words “home free”—when a shadow passed above my head and I ducked, crying out, before realizing there was nothing there.
    What was it, then? A vision so vivid I thought it was happening at that moment, instead of three years before. Was it a hand, a wrist, an arm? I couldn’t tell, but whatever it was contained a mark. Black figures pressed into white flesh, dark ink on pale skin. The picture evaporated as soon as I tried to read it. Words? Numbers? Both?
    It was gone. Holding my breath, I ran the last few steps to the door, yanked it open, then slammed it shut behind me. I sat on the top stair and shivered, despite the warmth of Abby’s breath as she laid her chin on my knee.
    The experience was almost enough to make me abandon my resolution to serve as a witness in the new trial. But I didn’t want to give in to the fear I’d experienced in the bedroom. I didn’t want to be that weak. The only conclusion I could draw was that I’d seen a tattoo, and Rud Petty didn’t have one. So either I’d made a mistake—hallucinated somehow, conflated a more recent and random image with what I’d actually observed that night—or I was remembering something that could be important to the case.
    Joe and I knew Rud Petty had lied about the burglary in our house the day after Thanksgiving. That, on top of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, was why I and most everyone else, including the police, suspected him in the