motioning for her to follow me. The lure of a particularly bright lightning
bug, however, was too much for her to overcome. She raced across the
yard to catch it and when it flew too high she kept running, presumably
in the hopes that it might chase her back. She zigzagged down the middle
of the street, forcing the lone car driving down our road to swerve into
some recycling bins. We hurried after her cursing and screaming as she
occasionally looked back at us over her shoulder, her manic eyes joyful as
she saw others taking part in her game. She stopped when she reached
Mr. Dutrey’s house, and sat in his driveway. Pete and I stumbled into
the yard, breathless. She looked at us one more time and zipped into the
garage, past the Chevy and finally through the door that led inside the
home.
Pete and I went into the garage and paused before the open door.
“Mr. Dutrey,” he called. There was no response, but I could hear
voices in some back room. I inched closer to the open door and peered
inside. I faced a wall that divided the living room on the left from the
kitchen on my right. Olive was sprawled, panting, on a plaid couch that
sat in the living room.
“Olive. Get out of there. Come!” She got up from the couch and
rushed towards me. “Pete! Look,” I cried in astonishment. “She listened.
She’s coming!” As I reached to pick her up, though, she ran from my
arms, through the kitchen and disappeared down the hallway that the
voices came from. I motioned for Pete to follow me, and we cautiously
entered the house.
“Where are the safari animals?” Pete asked in a whisper. The
cream walls were decorated only with a few cross-stitch patterns of
various bird species.
“Probably in a back room,” I said quietly, hopefully. We followed
Olive’s path, taking note of the wooden kitchen table on which a pile
of dirty dishes sat. The voices grew louder as we moved further into the
house. The hallway was similarly bare, only a single family portrait hung
in it.
“What the hell?” I heard Pete hiss. “Kel, look at this picture.”
I squinted in the dim hallway light to see Mr. Dutrey posing beside a
Christmas tree with two women in matching sweaters. Dutrey Family
Christmas- 2005. The older woman, I presumed Dutrey’s wife, was
rather larger than him, with grey shoulder length hair. The younger was
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