Entangled- The Homecoming

by Barbara Bretton

  “They helped me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The people in fancy bathrobes,” her daughter said, scrambling into the back seat of the white minivan. “They opened the door and undid the strap for me.”

  “The door was locked,” Mallory said, closing her eyes against a wave of dizziness. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Moving slowly against a rising tide of pain, Mallory eased herself onto the back seat next to her daughter. Poor Ava was shivering like a baby bird. She tried to wrap her arms around the child, but the pain in her chest and side was too great and she yelped when she lifted her arms.

  “Mommy? Is anybody going to help us?”

  Her thoughts tumbled through her brain. Flashes of images danced before her eyes, but nothing made sense. Breathe, she told herself. Take a deep breath and start again.

  The phone! Her spirits rose. All she had to do was press 9-1-1 and help would be on the way.

  “I need my tote bag, honey,” she said, her words breathy and labored. “If you could reach up front for it, please, and pull out my phone.”

  Her daughter’s face crumpled in on itself as she started to cry.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Mallory said, alarmed by Ava’s reaction. “Everything will be okay. I’ll make a call and—“

  And then she remembered. She didn’t have her phone. Her blasted phone was back in Sugar Maple at Sticks & Strings.

  Chapter 7

  CHLOE

  When the phone rang, we all jumped like we’d been poked by a cattle prod.

  “It’s not mine,” Wendy said, glancing down at her ever-present iPhone.

  And it wasn’t the landline or my less-than-reliable smartphone.

  We both glanced toward Elspeth who gave us a look that could have withered a redwood tree.

  “Foolishness,” she said as the mystery phone continued to ring.

  “Oh, crap!” I jumped up and dashed into the hallway where I had left my tote bags filled with leftover snacks from the workshop.

  I had totally forgotten about Mallory and her phone. The drive home had been such a nail biter that her problem had dropped to the bottom of my To Worry About list.

  By the time I dug her phone out from beneath a dozen plastic bags filled with apple slices and cheese, it had stopped ringing.

  “I bet that was Mallory,” I said, sitting back down at the kitchen table. “She probably left a voicemail.”

  “Ava’s mom?”

  I nodded. Wendy’s memory for names and faces always amazed me.

  “What are you doing with her phone?” Wendy asked.

  “She was charging it during the workshop and left it behind.”

  Wendy feigned a shiver. “I wouldn’t want to be on the road tonight without a phone.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “I hope she stopped and bought another one before she got on the highway.”

  “Is it unlocked?”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you check and see if she left a message?”

  I hesitated. It felt like an invasion of privacy and I said as much to Wendy. “Besides, wouldn’t she text?”

  “Who knows what she’d do,” Wendy said. “It’s worth a shot.”

  I futzed around with the phone, tapping various icons, until I reached her voicemail.

  Well, almost reached it.

  Please enter your password, followed by the pound sign.

  So much for listening to her voicemails.

  Reluctantly I clicked the text message icon and blushed when I saw a message from her husband.

  “Nope,” I said, “nothing for me here.” I turned the phone face down on the table to both Wendy’s and Elspeth’s amusement.

  Laria, however, had grown quiet. Her normally cheery expression had been replaced by a look of concern. I know that sounds crazy. I mean, what does a ten-month-old baby with a full belly and a dry diaper have to be concerned about but the look on her face spoke for itself.

  “Does the baby look sad to you?” I asked, tickling a tiny foot with my finger.

  Laria barely registered the touch.

  “The wee one had a busy day,” Elspeth said. “She be needing her sleep.”

  “She looks like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders,” Wendy observed.

  Laria’s head drooped, her plump chin resting on her chest. Maybe Elspeth was right and I should take her to her room and tuck her in for the night.

  “What’s this?” I pointed toward her tightly closed right fist. A shot of hot pink peeked through.

  “Some little crochet doodad,” Wendy said with a shrug. “She had it with her on the way home.”

  I gently pried the baby’s tiny fingers open so I could see what she was clutching.

  “Ava’s hair thingie,” I said. “I guess Mallory will be coming back for more than her phone.”

  Clearly Laria was tired. She looked like she was half-asleep but I had the feeling she was alert and aware of everything that was going on around her.

  She made a small sound, almost a whimper, and moved her hands across the tray of her highchair as if she were drawing a picture on the bright yellow plastic surface with here fingertips.

  If there was one thing I had learned in my months of magickal motherhood, it was that nothing was exactly as it seemed. Not when your daughter’s powers are stronger than yours and even more unpredictable.

  “I think she’s trying to tell us something.” I pulled a few pieces of paper and a handful of markers from our junk drawer.

  Wendy lifted a brow. “Isn’t she a little young for that?”

  “We’ll find out,” I said as a protective Elspeth watched closely.

  I put the paper on the tray in front of Laria and placed the markers, caps off, next to them.

  “She’s not paying any attention,” Wendy said.

  “Sleep be what she needs,” Elspeth chimed in. “Not play.”

  But I knew my daughter better than either one of them.

  I waited.

  Laria looked at the paper and then at the markers. She reached out with her left hand and wrapped her tiny fist around the red marker then looked up at me.

  I nodded. “Go ahead, Laria,” I said. “See what you can do.”

  I could almost feel Wendy’s eyes roll back into her head.

  Hand-eye coordination wasn’t exactly my daughter’s strong suit yet but what she lacked in fine motor skills, she made up for in sheer determination.

  One oblique line from top left toward bottom right. A squiggle near the mid-point. A few wonky circles scattered about.

  “Wow!” Wendy applauded Laria’s efforts with enthusiasm. “I’m seriously impressed. I didn’t think a ten-month-old baby could even hold a crayon.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted, “but we both know our girl isn’t exactly your ordinary baby.”

  “No argument there,” Wendy said with a laugh. She had witnessed Laria’s first foray into flying and still couldn’t quite believe it had happened.

  Laria quickly filled the page with scribbles then reached for a clean sheet. That alone was pretty darned amazing.

  I think that was when I realized she wasn’t just making random doodles on the page. She might be trying to tell us something.

  We watched as she put down the red marker and picked up a green one. She inspected the tip for a moment, then exchanged it for a blue marker. Her movements were clumsy but deliberate. She held the broad tip of the blue marker against the snowy white piece of paper and giggled as a blue blot spread outward from the point. I heard her draw in a deep breath as she began moving the marker across the page in a series of crisscrossed lines that made absolutely no sense to me.

  I was so proud I could scarcely breathe. My baby was blasting her way through the developmental markers and I felt like she’d graduated Harvard summa cum laude. My girl’s powers weren’t dependent upon falling in love years down the line. Her powers were blossoming with every day that passed. E
very child in Sugar Maple possessed powers humans could never imagine, but not one of them had flown like a bird long before a first birthday rolled around. She was destined for greatness.

  Laria made a sound of frustration and pushed the red marker off the highchair tray. It fell to the floor and rolled under Wendy’s chair. The scribbled-on piece of paper quickly followed.

  “There be a price to pay for keeping the wee one up late,” Elspeth said as she loaded the dishwasher.

  “You’re getting old and jaded, Elspeth,” I teased, my eyes never leaving Laria. “You’ve watched so many babies grow up that you don’t recognize greatness when you see it.”

  The ancient troll harrumphed. I’d never actually heard a harrumph before, but it was unmistakable.

  “The babe be special,” she admitted, a tiny smile twitching the corners of her mouth, “but a sleeping babe be better.”

  Of course I ignored her. There was no way I was going to stop Laria’s exploration for something as mundane as sleep.

  Muttering something about foolish new mothers, Elspeth took her leave. As a rule, her weekends were her own. I never asked where she went or what she did when she wasn’t here with us, but she had mentioned that she was to midwife a birth in a different dimension tomorrow morning. I told her I would hold a good thought for mother and child.

  Wendy reached under her chair for the fallen piece of paper and the tossed marker and then put them on the kitchen table. Laria had managed to grab an orange marker with her fist and was laboriously moving it across a blank sheet of paper.

  “The girl is on a mission,” Wendy said. “I hope you have plenty of paper.”

  “Tons,” I said. “We keep it around for when Luke’s nieces and nephews come to visit.”

  “How often is that?” Wendy asked.

  “Often enough,” I said.

  “How do you keep the baby from flying over to them?”

  “Dumb luck so far,” I said. “It was easy keeping Sugar Maple’s secrets from the tourists, but once the tourists became family . . .” I let my words fade away.

  “Like me,” Wendy said, with a laugh.

  “Yep,” I said, laughing with her. “Exactly like you.”

  Laria made a grumble of clear exasperation and redoubled her efforts.

  “She’s definitely trying to say something.” I peered down at the wonky, concentric circles she was inscribing. “I wish I knew what it was.”

  “Maybe she just likes making shapes,” Wendy said. “This might be her artistic side stepping up.”

  That was something I hadn’t thought of. “Could be,” I said. “She was definitely interested in the knitting this afternoon.” Laria had hung onto little Ava’s every word and action during the impromptu needlework lesson.

  But my newly minted maternal instinct told me there was something more going on here.

  The question was, what?

  Chapter 8

  MALLORY

  The only good thing Mallory could say about the pain tearing through her body was that it kept her awake. Her head felt like she’d gone in the ring with a MMA contender. The rest of her felt like she’d lost.

  But at least she was awake.

  Ava had found some plastic garbage bags and an old moving van blanket under a pile of books Mallory had earmarked for the library fundraiser. They were currently huddled together beneath them, but Mallory knew it wasn’t close to enough. Darkness was falling quickly and the snow showed no sign of stopping. The inside of the minivan was growing colder by the minute and the chances of being rescued any time soon were slim to none.

  They were in deep trouble. There was no sense pretending otherwise. She would put on a good front for her little girl’s sake but without a phone to call for help, the odds were against them being found any time soon.

  Her hand rested lightly on her still flat stomach. Pain of any kind wasn’t a good sign. This was supposed to have been a wonderful day. First there was the knitting workshop that Ava had been looking forward to, then the trip to Rhode Island where she and Josh, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, would share the news of their pregnancy with his parents.

  Josh!

  He would know immediately that there was something wrong. Her spirits soared. He was probably freaking out right now, wondering why she hadn’t texted him her progress. His parents would phone the police and they’d send out a search party and before you knew it, Mallory and Ava would be safe and warm.

  Except that wasn’t going to happen. Josh didn’t know anything about Sugar Maple. All he knew was that she’d planned to take Ava to a knitting workshop on the way to Rhode Island. They’d search the highways between her upper New York State home and his parents’ house near Little Compton.

  They wouldn’t be looking for the mother and daughter in a forgotten piece of woodlands in the middle of nowhere in Vermont.

  She was grateful for the snacks Chloe and her crew had stuffed into their goodie bags. The bottles of water alone would get them through the night and into the morning. Ava munched on cheese and almonds while all Mallory could manage was a few sips of water.

  “Someone will find us soon, right?” Ava was trying very hard to be brave. “Someone will come looking for us.”

  “Definitely,” Mallory said. The sound of her own voice made her head ache even more. “I’m sure the police keep an eye out for people in trouble when there’s a bad snow storm.”

  “Are we in trouble?” Ava’s voice trembled the tiniest bit, but enough to make Mallory’s heart ache.

  How honest was too honest?

  “We had an accident,” she said carefully. “We’ll need help with the car.”

  “You need help, too,” Ava observed.

  There were times when Mallory wished her little girl wasn’t quite so observant.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mallory said, trying hard to focus against the double vision plaguing her. At least the bleeding from her head wound had slowed to a trickle. “The important thing is--”

  The silence in the minivan was absolute. Her words had disappeared mid-sentence.

  “Mommy?” Ava’s lower lip began to tremble.

  “…fine,” she heard herself mumble. “…no worry.”

  Oh God, what was happening to her? She felt herself fading in and out like a bad phone connection. She had to hang on for Ava…for the baby…for Josh…for herself. She was stronger than this. She had figured her way out of dangerous situations before, hadn’t she? All they had to do was get through the night and everything would make sense in the morning. The storm would have played itself out and the road crews would be busy clearing away the snow and looking for stranded motorists.

  “I can’t see out the windows,” Ava said, snuggling closer. “Do you think a bear might get us?”

  Mallory sucked in a deep breath of cold air to clear her head. “If you can’t see out, the bear can’t see in.”

  Her daughter’s small body stiffened with alarm. “But there are bears out there.”

  “Lots of deer,” she said carefully, “but no bears.”

  Mallory wasn’t sure Ava believed her. Of course there were bears. This was Vermont. They were in the woods. And it was too early in the year for the bear population to be tucked away for a long winter’s nap.

  But no mother worth her stretch marks would tell her child any of that or the fact that the bucket they used for collecting rocks on their river walks back home would have a whole different purpose tonight.

  The woods might be hiding all manner of wildlife, but it also shielded them from the worst of the storm. The trees provided a natural barrier to the high winds and deflected some of the heavy snow.

  But even trees had their breaking point and as the evening wore on, the occasional loud crack and ground-shaking thud reminded both of them that the sheltering woods could turn against them.

  “Mommy, are you awake?”

  “Sure, honey. Go to sleep. I’m keeping watch.”

  “Mommy, say someth
ing!” A small hand pushed against Mallory’s shoulder. “I need to go.”

  “Okay, we’ll take care of everything.”

  “Mommy! Why don’t you answer me?”

  What was wrong with her daughter? Mallory had answered every question.

  Ava was crying. She could hear the small sobs.

  “Don’t cry, honey,” she said. (Or, at least, thought she said.) “Get the bucket from the back and everything will be just fine.”

  She heard the sound of the door sliding open.

  She felt the blast of snow swirling into the passenger compartment.

  She heard the door slide shut behind her daughter.

  She didn’t know where her daughter was going or why.

  “Ava, stop!” Was she really crying out or was it all in her head? “Come back!”

  But there was nothing but the rush of wind and the sound of the snow against the windows.

  Chapter 9

  CHLOE

  In the blink of an eye, Laria went from silent concentration to frantic wailing.

  Wendy and I exchanged puzzled looks.

  “Don’t ask me,” my childless cousin said. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Unfortunately, neither did I.

  My baby girl was sobbing as if her tiny heart were breaking and nothing I said or did was good enough to calm her down.

  The thing is, my daughter isn’t one of those babies who cry all the time. Oh sure, there is the occasional wail of frustration, the grumble when her diaper change doesn’t come around fast enough, but for the most part she made her needs well known without eardrum-shattering sobs.

  So you can imagine how shocked I was when she launched into a downright operatic display of serious displeasure over what seemed like nothing to us.

  “I think that’s what they call a tantrum,” Wendy said, wincing as Laria hit one of those notes they claim only dogs can hear.

  “I think you’re right.”

  The Terrible Twos were going to require noise-cancelling headphones if this was any indication.

  I tried talking to Laria, but she ignored me. Her fingers were curled into tight little fists. Her face was crunched into a gargoyle-like mask. Tears splashed unchecked down her chubby cheeks. Her legs thrashed against the seat of the high chair. It was a whole-body assault that made me wonder if I would ever really understand my own child.