Little Girl Gone Read Online Free

coils of wire, and dumped them behind a mound of boulders, where they still lay like the skeletal remains of the property’s history. The Great Dane trailer could not be moved without a tow truck, so they stippled its battered aluminum exterior in camouflage shades of gray and green and tan that blended with the sycamores and dusty cottonwoods along the dry creek bed at the back of the property.
    Initially, Willis had been fascinated by the trailer, but then he forgot about it and more than three years passed. Eight months ago, he had cut a window-sized hole up high on one side and installed an air-conditioning unit and an electric generator to power it and a few lights. Madora assumed he was making a room for himself, a place to study when he went back to school.
    He never mentioned Linda. He just brought her home and put her in the trailer one rainy night.
    He had brought her into the kitchen, water dripping off his ankle-length plastic raincoat, his black hair plastered and shining against his head. Behind him, had stood a girl with straggly hair in frayed-out Levi’s and a yellow T-shirt, hip shot out, staring down at her bare feet.
    Madora remembered thinking that Linda looked like a Tinkertoy, round in the middle with sticks for arms and legs.
    “She’s pregnant, Willis.”
    “You think I’m blind?”
    “You’ve got to take her to a doctor.”
    “Pregnancy isn’t a disease, Madora. Besides, I’m a Marine Corps medic. I can manage a pregnancy. It’s not brain surgery.”
    At that moment, Madora was juggling four or five thoughts at the same time, and it was hard to know what to say first. She didn’t mind helping this pregnant teen with nowhere to go, and she admired Willis for his generosity and didn’t want him to think she was stingy. But they were always short of money by the end of the month, and feeding one more was going to be a stretch.
    “And where’s she going to sleep, Willis? We’ve only got the one bedroom.”
    “I fixed up the Dane.”
    “The trailer? But it’s freezing out there.” All the blankets they owned were on Madora and Willis’s bed, plus an old sleeping bag. And still they were cold at night.
    “I put a mattress down and a couple of blankets and she can wear those flannel pajamas.”
    The ones he had given Madora. A gift of soft, blue flannel pajamas at the start of the cold weather, a surprise. She loved his occasional and unexpected bursts of generosity, and she knew it was small of her to begrudge this girl the comfort of warm pajamas.
    “What’s she going to eat?”
    “I stopped on the way home and got a couple of burritos.”
    “Where’d the mattress come from? And the blankets? We don’t have any extra blankets.” If she asked too many questions Willis would become defensive and then angry and accusing. He would say she did not believe in him and lacked commitment to their shared life, the terms of which he set without consulting her. And that was all right. She was by nature a follower. He was smarter than she and far more worldly. But she needed to know the truth. “Did you plan this ahead, Willis?”
    “I’m going to take her over to the trailer now.” He opened a kitchen drawer where this and that collected and pulled out a padlock.
    “What do you need that for?”
Another question.
    “She’s been on the street, Madora.” His tone implied Madora was a stupid girl, perhaps a little retarded. “Do I have to tell you what that means? She’s probably got drugs in her system and she could start hallucinating and walk right out the door. Believe me, Madora, I know about this kind of thing. The lock’s for her own good.” He paused. “Get it?”
    All Madora knew of the world was what she’d seen from behind Willis, on tiptoes, looking over his shoulder. What he said made perfect sense.
    “She needs a hot drink,” he said. “Make a thermos of tea and put a lot of sugar in it. I’ll come back and get it.” Before he left he smiled at Madora. “I