Moonlight Mile - By Dennis Lehane Page 0,36

you're most definitely not imposing."

He lifted a grocery bag off the floor of the garage. There were six of them, and I reached for two. Angie took two more.

"Oh, no," he said. "I can get them."

"Don't be ridiculous," Angie said. "It's the least we can do."

"Jeesh," he said. "You're very kind. Thank you."

He closed the hatch of the Infiniti and I was mildly surprised to see one of those moronic 9/11 Terrorist Hunting Permit decals on the rear window. I suppose I should have felt safer knowing that if Bin Laden dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, Brian Corliss was ready to put out his lights for America, but mostly I just felt annoyed that the thousands who had died on September 11 were being exploited for a dumb fucking decal. Before my mouth could get me into trouble, though, we were following Brian Corliss up the path to the black front door and entering his two-hundred-year-old house.

We stood by the granite kitchen counter as he unloaded the groceries into the fridge and cabinets. The first floor had been gut-remodeled so recently you could smell the sawdust. Two hundred years ago, I doubt the builder had seen the need to go with the sunken living room or the pressed copper ceiling in the dining room or the Sub-Zero in the kitchen. All the window frames were new and uniform eggshell. Even so, the house had a mismatched feel. The living room was white on white-white couch, white throw rugs, off-white fireplace mantel, ash-white logs in the ivory metal log basket, a huge white Christmas tree towering over it all from a corner. The kitchen was dark-cherrywood cabinets and dark granite counters and black granite backsplash. Even the Sub-Zero and the chimney hood above the stove were black. The dining room was Danish Modern, a clean, blond hard-edged table surrounded by hard-edged high-backed chairs. The ultimate effect was of a house that had been furnished from too many catalogs.

Framed pictures of Brian Corliss and a blond woman and a blond boy sat on the mantel, on the shelves of a credenza, on top of the fridge. Collages of them hung on the walls. You could follow the boy's growth from birth to what looked like four. The blond woman was Donna, I assumed. She was attractive the way sports bar hostesses and pharmaceutical reps are-hair the color of rum and lots of it, teeth as bright as Bermuda. She had the look of a woman who kept her plastic surgeon on speed dial. Her breasts were prominently displayed in most of the photos and looked like perfect softballs made of flesh. Her forehead was unlined in the way of the recently embalmed and her smile resembled that of someone undergoing electroshock. In a couple of the photos-just a couple-stood a dark-haired girl with anxious eyes and an unsure, fleshy chin: Sophie.

"When was the last time you saw her?" I asked.

"It's been a few months."

Angie and I looked across the counter at him.

He held up both palms. "I know, I know. But there were extenuating..." He grimaced and then smiled. "Let's just say parenting is not easy. You have any kids?"

"One," I said. "Daughter."

"How old?"

"Four."

"Little child," he said, "little problems. Big child, big problems." He looked across the counter at Angie. "And you, miss?"

"We're married." Angie tilted her head toward me. "Same four-year-old."

That seemed to please him. He smiled to himself and hummed under his breath as he put a dozen eggs and a half-gallon of skim milk into the fridge.

"She was such a happy child." He finished emptying the bag and folded it neatly before putting it under the counter. "A joy every day. I fully admit I was unprepared for the day she turned into such a Sullen Sally."

"And what turned her into... that?" Angie asked.

He peered at the eggplant he pulled from the next bag, frozen for a moment. "Her mom," he said. "God rest her. But, yes, she..." He looked up from the eggplant as if surprised to find us there. "She left."

"How old was Sophie when she left?"

"Well, she left with Sophie."

"So, she left you. She didn't leave Sophie." Angie glanced at me. "I'm a little lost, Brian."

Brian put the eggplant into the crisper drawer. "I regained custody when Sophie was ten. She-this is hard-Sophie's mother? She developed a chemical dependency. First on Vicodin, then on OxyContin. She stopped acting like a responsible adult. Then she left me and went to live with someone else.