So be it.

Lucy looked up at the sky, waiting for the man to get on with it. The man stared down at his notebook, brows furrowed.

“What now?” Lucy asked, pacing, frustrated at having to be told to ask at all.

“Give me a second, I’m not quite sure,” he said, calmly sipping his tea. “Do you… want to head back towards the woods, or do you want to go into the city?”

She was delighted to have a choice at all.

“Oh, the city!” she squealed with excitement, “I’ve never been to the city! I’d love to go to the city!”

“Do you know anyone there?”

“Oh, well, I’m not quite sure,” she mused coyly, pulling at the hem of the floral dress he’d chosen for her.

“I think you do. You have an aunt there or something. You’re gonna go stay with her.”

“Well, okay.”

“She’s not a very nice lady. That’s going to be the problem.”

“Not nice how?” Lucy asked, beginning to wonder if the city had been the right choice.

“Well,” he began, “Blue-haired and scowling, she used to be one of the most beautiful women in all of New York City. In her prime, she was a welcome charm on the arm of any man, but time was not kind to her physically. And with that, it hit her just as bad financially.”

“Poor thing!” Lucy stared back with empathy in her big, green eyes.

“Beauty, having once been her most prized possession,” the man continued, “soon became her worst enemy. She came to hate all things beautiful, anything full of life or joy or light. And so, reduced to life in the slums, in an apartment with strips of torn, discolored wallpaper cascading down its water-stained walls and cockroaches cozily nesting in its corners, she grew angrier and meaner the more wrinkled she became.”

“And I’ll have to live there, with the cockroaches and all?”

“Yep. You won’t even have a proper bed, just a stained futon in the middle of the living room floor.”

“But I’m her niece! Her flesh and blood!” Lucy protested.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the man countered, “Your mother was her sister-- and the only woman more beautiful than she was in her prime –- and you look exactly like her.”

“I do?” she smiled at the compliment, imagining her lovely mother.

“Yep. And your aunt hated her too,” the man went on, “With eyes as deep green as the ocean and hair of silk and honey, she was truly something to behold. Men gravitated toward the incredible beauty of both women but stayed for the great wit and intelligence that only Emily possessed. Unlike – your aunt– her presence rose far above that of optic pleasure or pure aesthetic. Emily’s effervescent charm, her laugh, the way she spoke and the things she spoke of; her beauty was ageless. And the now hunched and miserable woman despised that most of all.”

“Who’s Emily?”

“That’s your mom’s name.”

“Oh, she sounds wonderful. And I’m just like her?”

“Yep.”

“My aunt’s really going to hate me.” Lucy agreed, smirking proudly.

“She sure will. She might even try and kill you.”

“KILL ME?!” Lucy gasped.

“Yes. Just like you suspect she did your mother.”

“She killed my mother?!”

“You have a feeling she did, yes,” he told her, “Afterall, it’d been suspicious. It was unimaginable, even in the craziness of New York City, for a young mother, so lovely and of such social standing and apparent sound mind, to choose to end her own life in such a gruesome spectacle. She sprung, fully nude, from the sisters’ 17th story balcony directly into the concrete below, landing somewhere between the rose bushes and the gutter, barely missing an unsuspecting passerby and causing shrieks and screams to echo above the sounds of traffic on the busy city street. She hadn’t seemed that sad or selfish or off any of the days leading up to the unforeseen affair, but --your aunt-- was that only witness. And she insisted it was a suicide. Even back then they believed, behind closed doors, that it was a case of fatal envy.”

“How awful!”

“Terrible! And now you’re going to go investigate those suspicions.”

“I can’t do that! I don’t have any equipment to go about investigating…”

“I could give you some.”

“But… I don’t know anything about spying, or being secretive or creeping around or, or…”

“I could let you know.”

“Let’s try the woods! Can we please try the woods instead?”

“Ok, ok,” the man agreed, “Scrap that…The fog was thick, and Lucy stood, fear in her big green eyes, among the even thicker darkness…”

“Are you just making this up?!” Lucy demanded.

“Of course I am,” he laughed to himself as he looked up from his notebook to the digital clock on his night stand.

5am. He’d be late to work. Again.

He shrugged.

He'd let his imagination get the best of him, but even if it cost him his job, he wouldn’t ever change that.