Some Kind of Fairy Tale Read Online Free

passed through.”
    “Wouldn’t that be amazing? If you were there the same time we were there?”
    “These things are possible.”
    “What year was it?”
    “Peter, stop interrogating the girl, will you?” Dell was wringing his hands. “Look, she’s hungry and I’m going to rescue what I can of Christmas dinner and we’re going to sit down and enjoy it, and you can sit down with us, too.”
    “I’ve had my Christmas dinner, Dad.”
    “Okay, but no more questions.”
    “Don’t you think this is a day for questions? You realize we are going to have to tell the police?”
    Tara looked startled. “Is that really necessary?”
    “You bet it is!” cried Peter.
    He explained to her what had happened after Tara had walked out of their lives some twenty years earlier. He explained how everyone had feared the very worst, feared that she’d been abducted or killed. That there had been wide-ranging searches conducted. That neighbors and friends had, along with a huge force of police officers, carried out searches at the Outwoods and at every other place they could think that she might have gone. That her photo had appeared in all of the local newspapers and some national ones; that her face had appeared on national TV; that known sexual offenders had been dragged in for interrogation; that not a clue had turned up, not a hair from her head; that the search was eventually scaled down; that her mother and father went into a state of shock and mourning from which they had never entirely recovered; that he and her boyfriend at the time, Richie, who had himself fallen under a cloud of suspicion, had continued to search the countryside and local beauty spots for months and even years afterward.
    “They had frogmen searching the pools and the lakes, Tara. It went on for days. Weeks. Yes, even after all this time I think we have to inform the police, don’t you?”
    Tara looked ashen at these reports.
    Suddenly Mary was on her feet, the ice pack slithering to the floor. “Stop it! Stop it! All I know is that Tara has come home for Christmas Day and it’s a miracle to have her home and I don’t want to hear any more talk of it! I want no more questions today! Peter, you can stay here and be pleasant or you can go straight back to your family. That’s an end to it.” And with that she collapsed back on the couch.
    “You don’t have to go,” Tara said gently. “I’m the one who should go.”
    “No,” Peter said. “It’s just …” He didn’t want to say any more, because he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t be a direct criticism of his sister’s outrageous and hitherto unexplained behavior. He hauled himself to his feet. “Look, I should getback. The kids. It’s Christmas Day. Maybe you could meet them. Tomorrow. What do you say, Dad, do you want to bring Tara over tomorrow?”
    “That sounds perfect. All right with that, Mary?”
    It was all right with everyone; it was all right because for the moment it got Peter out of the house.
    Peter went to the door and Tara followed him. She hugged him again, and with her back to Dell and Mary she narrowed her eyes at him and made a shape of her lips, as if to tell him she had something to say to him, but not in front of Dell and Mary.
    He wished his parents a happy Christmas. Then he regarded his sister sadly. “Happy Christmas, Tara,” he said.
    “Oh, my. Happy Christmas, Peter.”

CHAPTER THREE
    A fairy tale … on the other hand, demands of the reader total surrender; so long as he is in its world, there must for him be no other
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    W. H. A UDEN
    T he light was beginning to fade when Peter let himself into his cottage. The door, swollen and damp, was still sticking. He’d have to fix that. Except that he’d repaired the door hinge recently, which was why the door was now sticking. “One job makes another” was a common saying in the Martin household.
    Whatever was happening with Tara, Peter felt heartened to come back to the