The Evolution of Alice Read Online Free Page A

older ones did. Alice had to watch herself, too, because if she ever let a profanity slip by her lips, there was Grace saying that same word about twenty times in a row just like she was reciting her ABCs .
    “What friend are you talking about?” Alice said.
    “Wha fend?” Grace said.
    “The big man with the blond hair,” Kathy said, shaking her head in disbelief that her mom could forget such a thing. She continued, “He took us to the bathroom. He’d come hold our hands and bring us there, and then he’d lock the door.”
    “Lock tha doh!” Grace said.
    “Yeah, Mommy,” Jayne said.
    “Yeah, whenever Daddy started shouting, every time,” Kathy said, “and then you’d come get us after, remember?”
    “And just where exactly did my friend go?” Alice said with a tone that challenged her little ones, but Kathy and Jayne, they were sure that that man was with them just as sure as they were that they’d eaten breakfast. They looked at each other and exchanged shrugs.
    “I don’t know. I guess he just left,” Kathy said.
    The girls stood there as Alice sat quietly in her seat, letting it sink in, processing what the girls had said and wondering if their imaginations had run wild. She asked them about her friend, what he looked like, and it was all general stuff. He was a big man, broad shoulders and jaw, short blond hair, and wore regular clothing—blue jeans and T-shirt kind of outfit. That was an eyebrow-raiser for Alice, because if the man was what she thought he was, he’d be wearing a white robe and wings. Then again, maybe that’d be too scary for a child. Maybe he had to fit in.
    She told me it reminded her of a car ride she had taken with her mother years before, when she was a teenager—before her kids, before the beatings. It was late and they were heading back home from town. The sky was perfectly clear and the stars were bright and countless, twinkling like snow did in the sun. On the horizon, they could see the northern lights, that familiar glow, the waves of colour shimmying across the sky like flowing ribbons. Then those ribbons started collapsing to the middle of the sky, right at the end of the highway, until they formed what looked like a face. Alice thought she had to be seeing things, so she asked her mother about it, but she saw it too. They pulled over and watched it until the ribbons spread out again and it was like the face was never there. She’d always thought it’d been an angel. Had that angel come back to help protect her most precious things?
    She took another long look at her girls. They’d lied to her before. Daily, in fact. Kids lied all the time. Did you climb up onto the counter and eat the sugar? No. Did you pull your sister’s hair? No. Did you take Mommy’s makeup? No. But with one look from Alice, the noes always became meek, guilty yeses. Always. But she knew the noes were lies before the girls admitted it. She could tell by their faces. And the girls didn’t have those faces on that morning, standing there innocently, wondering why their mommy didn’t seem to know her own friend was helping them. It was too much to think about. Her mother had raised Alice in the church, but none of that really stuck. Alice, she was never sure if there was a God or not but usually decided that there wasn’t. Figured if there were a God, she wouldn’t have the life she did. I mean, she was happy about her girls, I already said that, but not all the other shit—growing up without a dad, losing her mom like she did, gettin’ beat on by Ryan. Yeah, Alice was always pretty sure there was no God, but now maybe not, maybe He’d been there all along.
    She had the girls get dressed and followed them out to the back yard, where they went off to play, and she climbed up onto her tire and began to swing as high as she could. That’s when I came by. I always checked the back yard first, because more often than not, that’s exactly where they were. I saw the girls way out in the