She scraped curry from a few chicken pieces and slid her plate over to Oreo Figaro, who ate with a loud purr, his tail bent at the tip like a crochet needle. She waited for him to finish, then cleaned up the table, put the bills in a wicker basket, and threw away the junk mail, including the white card with the missing children. It slid into the plastic kitchen bag, and the picture of Timothy Braverman stared at her with that preternatural gaze.
"You're a dweller," she heard her mother say, as surely as if she'd been standing there. But Ellen believed that all women were dwellers.
It came with the ovaries.
She closed the cabinet door and put the white card out of her mind. She loaded the dishwasher, pushed the Start button, and counted her blessings again. Butcher-block counters, white cabinets with glass fronts, and a hand-painted backsplash with painted wildflowers, matching walls of pinkish white. It was a girl kitchen, down to the name of the wall color-Cinderella. Though there was no Prince Charming in sight.
She performed her final chores, locking the back door and retrieving the used coffee filter from the coffeemaker. She opened the base cabinet and started to throw the grinds away, but Timothy Braverman looked back at her, unsettling her all over again.
On impulse, she rescued the white card from the trash and slipped it into her jeans pocket.
Lisa Scottoline's column, "Chick Wit," appears Sundays in the Arts & Entertainment section.
