Mac took a few steps closer, then bent her knees slowly until she was crouching on her heels. She decided to disregard the fact that she had somehow slipped into another fricking dimension. And that this dimension was inhabited by a creature she had conjured whole-cloth from her own mind, twenty-five years ago. Mac focused on this creature being a small, scared child. She knew how to comfort frightened children.
She settled cross-legged into the snow, which was neither cold nor wet. Mac looked up into the blue-lit trees, feeling the little girl’s curious gaze on her face, letting her study her. She didn’t speak until the hands the girl had clenched to her chest began to loosen.
“My name is Mac.” Her tone was low and friendly. “I bet you already knew that, though.”
The child didn’t answer, but after a moment she shuffled a few steps forward.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” Mac continued. “But it’s been a long, long time since we’ve talked. You’ve been following me around for years and years. Is that right?”
The girl nodded, looking a little like all of this should be obvious. She stood close enough that Mac could see the light spray of freckles across her nose.
“Is your name Ashley?”
A furrow appeared between the girl’s eyebrows. “Kind of.” She had a sad, piping voice.
“Kind of?”
The girl nodded, her wide green eyes level with Mac’s, since she was seated on the ground. She was no more than five years old. She took the last few steps, and Mac could have touched her.
The child seemed fascinated with Mac’s body. She reached out a timid hand and patted Mac’s breast. Then she looked down at her own flat chest with a puzzled frown.
“Ashley? I think you must want something very—”
“I wanna stay here,” she answered at once. She pointed to the ground with both hands in emphasis, in case Mac needed help understanding where “here” was. “I want us to stay right HERE.”
“You mean at Fireside?” Mac saw the small turquoise ring on the child’s finger, and the words died in her throat. She stared at the blue stone, smaller than the one in her own ring, but identical in every other way. A chill coursed down her back.
“Yes! Here. Sheesh.” The child sighed explosively, possibly in satisfaction or relief, and then turned and plunked down in Mac’s lap, as naturally as a weary wolf cub nestling against its mother.
The sturdy little body was warm and real and solid.
Mac’s arms slid around the girl and held her lightly. She breathed in the scent of her hair, salty and fresh and somehow deeply familiar.
“You walk too fast,” the child complained.
“Sorry. I know I do,” Mac murmured. She showed her the fingers of her left hand. “Look. Your ring’s real pretty. I’ve got one almost exactly like it. Want to see?”
The girl’s head nodded against her shoulder. Mac slid off her ring and handed it to her. She turned the aqua blue stone in her small hands, and traced the letters etched into the silver band.
Kaya, Mac’s middle name. A Hopi word, meaning “older sister.”
“Can I see yours?”
Another nod, and the child pulled her turquoise ring off her small finger. Like Mac’s, it bore the distinctive etchings of a Hopi christening ring. The letters in its band were almost too tiny to read, and Mac had to squint to make them out.
Ayashe. Hopi for “little sister.”
Mac shivered, cradling the child in her lap. She had not one iota of psychic ability, none. But she could still hear the slow rippling of the river. She could see it, behind the lids of her closed eyes. Not a pure, fast mountain stream, but the deep roiling of the muddy Rio Grande in high spring.
“I fell in,” the little girl said. “Then you forgot.”
“You fell in.” Mac opened her eyes and stared sightlessly at the blue-tinged trees. “Ashley. Ayashe. Did you drown?”
“And then you forgot.”
A dozen glass tumblers clicked into place in Mac’s mind.
Her mother, immobilized by depression throughout Mac’s childhood, especially on milestone occasions like her birthday, her graduation. Pictures of a young Mac on the walls of her family home, but only of Mac, alone. All traces of a brief life locked away, hidden out of a grieving mother’s sight. Even the mention of the lost child unendurable. Her younger sister.
“No.” Mac rested her lips in the child’s soft hair. “You’re five years old. I would have remembered a little sister who was five years old.”
The girl craned her neck to look up at her, apparently puzzled. “Well. We were the same size, til you forgot. Then just you kept getting bigger. I stayed like this.”
“Okay.” Mac thought this out. It wasn’t easy, because she wasn’t feeling especially logical. “You died when you were younger than this. But you kept growing as long as I remembered you. Until I forgot.”
“I guess.” The girl squirmed in Mac’s lap, getting more comfortable. “I want to stay, Mac.”
Mac felt Ayashe relax bonelessly against her, still clutching Mac’s ring.
Mac had no conscious memory of a younger sister, or a family outing by the Rio Grande that had ended in tragedy. But she was holding a very real small girl, who was following her big sister around because that’s what little sisters did when they were lost and lonely.
She and Ayashe were a fine pair of ghosts. It made an effortless kind of sense.
She had wandered as ceaselessly as her sister’s spirit, seeking peace and never finding it. Seeking comfort from an immeasurable loss she had never understood, and never properly mourned. Mac had only sensed, in a deep and shadowed corner of her mind, that unguarded love was answered by mysterious and painful separation. She had spent her youth traveling, searching for healing in some nebulous future, unaware that her true grief lay in her past.
And in all those years, Mac had never been able to see this ghost. She had never heard her voice. She still didn’t understand the dynamics of this eerie morning, or how the living and the dead came to meet in this uncanny grove. But Mac was beginning to understand why this reunion was possible now, for the first time since Ayashe died, a quarter century ago.
The sound of the flowing river was fading, and in its place a faint, muted crackling rose around them. Mac closed her eyes and saw the tendrils of flame rising in the hearth, flickering redly on the backs of her lids. She squeezed Ayashe carefully. “You see the fireplace?”
“Uh-huh. It feels nice.”
The warmth of the flames reached Mac too, then.
She had tested Fireside in every way possible since her arrival. And in every way, it had met her challenge. The richness of the work she’d found here. The growing depth of her friendships. The beauty of her surroundings. And in Abby, the dawn of a genuine and passionate love.
Mac couldn’t have seen Ayashe before. She couldn’t have touched her. She needed Fireside to ground her, to promise a lasting safety Mac could trust, if she was to give her little sister what she wanted.
Mac stroked Ayashe’s hair, her throat suddenly dry and parched. Over the crackling of the fire, she realized she was hearing Abby’s voice. It was too low, too far away to distinguish words, but it was Abby’s voice. Mac would have recognized the light music of her tone through a raging typhoon.
She opened her eyes and saw her, standing a few yards away. Abby appeared imperfectly and briefly, just a few shining seconds of her, and she did nothing spectacular during her visit. She just stood with her hands clasped behind her, looking down at Mac. Her eyes were filled with longing and patience and faith.
“What do you want?” Abby asked softly. She smiled at Mac and faded away.
Mac remembered the night she came to Fireside. She remembered seeing the house for the first time, and thinking healing could begin in such a place. A faint echo of Cleo’s belly laugh reached her, and she pictured Danny’s face. She thought about Abby. She thought about having cojones.
Sometimes, you just had to
be brave. She made a decision.
Mac wrapped Ayashe’s small fingers securely around her turquoise ring, and held them gently. “Hey. You awake?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want you to do me a favor,” Mac whispered into the child’s hair. “Hold on to my ring. Keep it with you all the time.”
“Okay.” The little girl’s eyes were drifting closed.
“I’m going to make you a promise. I want you to remember my promise, every time you look at my ring.”
“Okay.”
“We can stay, Ayashe. We’ve found a home here.”
“Okay,” the girl sighed. “Good. That’s good, Mac.”
Ayashe slept in her arms. Mac held her for a long time, until a new sound began to filter out of the sounding trees. It was a faint, odd beeping noise, and with it, Mac heard again the murmur of a much-loved voice.
*
“Mac? Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
Mac swam up out of a foggy mire, her surfacing less ethereal and more leaden with every passing second. She cracked open one eye, and then closed it immediately as a ray of sunlight dazzled her.
“Come on. Show me those baby greens, now.”
Abby’s soft voice, rich with feeling.
Mac filled her lungs slowly, which made her side hurt, but then she opened her eyes again, and this time a bleary image of Abby’s lovely features appeared above her. “Hi,” she whispered. Her throat was gravel dry.
“Good morning.” Abby’s cool fingers brushed her face. “Do you know me, Mac?”
“My sex slave.”
Abby smiled, and the tears in her eyes spilled over. She ignored them, and held a tumbler with a bending straw to Mac’s lips. “One sip. Hold it in your mouth, and swallow slowly, please.”
Mac savored the benediction of cool wetness on her tongue, then looked around, groggy. The beeps she’d been hearing apparently came from the machines surrounding the bed.
“Do you know where you are, love?”
Suddenly Mac did, and she gripped the blanket. “Cleo?”
“She’s all right, Mac.” Abby lowered the railing of the bed and sat carefully beside her. “She has a broken leg, but it should heal well. She’s on another floor in this hospital, and Scratch is with her. Mostly, she’s been worried about you.” Abby stroked her forehead. “She hasn’t been alone in that.”
“Ah, I’m sorry.” And Mac was, she could see the circles beneath Abby’s eyes. “Have you been here all night?” She tried to lift her arm to touch her face, but stopped when that distant pain gripped her side again.
“Take it easy, Counselor.” Abby eased her arm down. “You have a concussion and a few broken ribs. I’m afraid they’re going to smart for a while.”
“I remember the road, and Cleo yelling. Not much else.”
“We’ll fill you in on the details, when you’re more alert. What’s important is you and Cleo will both be fine.”
Mac was already sleepy again—the juice in her IV must be powerful juju. She forced her eyes open. “I need to call my parents.”
“You can do that. As soon as you can stay awake long enough. We’ll let them know you’re safe.”
“Abby?”
“Hmm?”
“Can we go home soon?”
“As soon as we know I can take care of you there, yes.” She felt Abby’s lips touch her forehead. “Rest, honey. I’ll be right here.”
“Okay.” Mac brushed her thumb against her finger to be sure, and she was right. Her ring was no longer there.
Just before she drifted off, she heard Abby whisper, “Thank you.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Is she awake?”
Abby was checking Mac’s IV, and she hadn’t heard Danny enter the room. She was pushing Cleo in a wheelchair, her blue-casted leg extended on the foot brace.
“Well, hello.” Abby kept her voice low. Mac had been dozing off and on since early afternoon, but now she seemed to be sleeping in earnest. She saw the growing alarm on Danny’s face as she looked at Mac. “It’s all right, Danny, she’s just napping. She’s come around very well since last night.”
Danny let go of the wheelchair and walked slowly around Mac’s bed, studying the IV line in her arm, the shallow scrape on her jaw. “Cleo says she has broken ribs.”
“Yes. Her left side.”
Abby noticed Danny’s pallor as she pulled a chair closer to Mac’s bed and sat down. “We’re going to keep her here for a couple of days, to keep an eye on her concussion and make sure she’s on the mend. But as I told Cleo this morning, Danny, Mac’s going to be fine. She’ll be home soon.”
Danny nodded, staring at Mac’s still face.
Abby folded her arms and sidled to Cleo. Her cast looked well placed, but her face was drawn and tired. “How are you this evening?”
“Ready to get out of here. I’ve been sprung.” Cleo lifted a fistful of papers, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off Mac. Abby took the sheets from her and studied them, and found the discharge instructions sound enough.
“How’s your pain? Any nausea from the meds?”
“Pain’s bearable, no nausea.” Cleo dropped her voice another notch. “Danny knows. We talked this morning.”
Abby nodded. She could have guessed Danny had heard about her father just by looking at her. She rested her hand for a moment on Cleo’s head, then pushed her chair closer to Mac’s bed. “Is Scratch downstairs?”
“Yeah, he brought Danny in, and he’ll take us both back. Viv’s still holding down the fort.” Cleo reached through the bed’s railing and brushed her finger across Mac’s hand. “Did she eat anything?”
“Yes, a full course of tasty liquid protein.” Abby gestured to the IV bag. “It’ll have to do until she can sit up and handle some solids.”
“Hell, let Mac take that bag and trot it down to Safeway. She’d bring it back loaded with enough condiments to make a gourmet feast.” The humor in Cleo’s tone faded. “Danny?”
There were no tears in Danny’s eyes, but she was looking at Cleo with a wrenching bleakness. “He was so terrible to you, Cleo. All my life, he was so awful. It never mattered to him that I loved you.”
Abby sat quietly in the only remaining chair. She and Cleo must have learned something from Mac and her listening silences; neither of them spoke.
“But I loved him too.” Danny sounded suddenly half her age. “Do you think I’m stupid, to still love him? Does it make you mad?”
“Danny.” Cleo rested her fingers on the bed’s thin pillow. “Of course not, baby.”
Danny played with the edge of Mac’s blanket, and the only sound in the cramped room was the beeping of the monitors. Abby saw Mac’s eyelashes flutter and knew she was surfacing. She monitored the shallow rise and fall of her breasts beneath the blanket.
“I’m sorry, Cleo,” Danny said. “For all of it.”
Cleo glanced at Abby before looking back at Danny, her brow furrowed. “And just what are you apologizing for, Danielle?”
“You could have died yesterday. Mac could have too. She almost did.” Danny touched Mac’s wrist, fleetingly. “The only reason my dad took after you guys was because of me.”
“Uh-huh,” Cleo said slowly. “And now you’re thinking you’re somehow responsible for yesterday, for what your father did?”
“It’s true.” Danny shrugged, and the attempted adolescent casualness of that gesture hurt Abby’s heart. “It wouldn’t have happened, if I never came to Fireside. He came after me there too. I put the whole place in danger.”
“Abby.” Cleo sat back in the wheelchair, looking mystified. “Get that ice bucket. Dump it on Mac. Wake her up so she can talk some sense into this child.”
Abby only smiled, even through the tightness in her throat. She’d been watching Mac’s breathing, and knew she was awake. But Mac had stopped Cleo from picking little Lena up out of the snow, the day she’d had her nosebleed. She had known then that Inez, Lena’s mother, should be the only one to cradle
her injured child. Mac didn’t stir, her lashes still against her cheek. Abby understood that Cleo had a wounded daughter too, and it was her words Danny needed to hear now.
“You listening to me, Danny?” Cleo’s voice was low and calm.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I know how much you’re hurting, baby. You had an awful shock today. But I think you’re losing track of something that’s real important.” Cleo paused until Danny met her gaze. “You did love your dad. You tried to take care of him. You cooked for him, you nursed him when he was hungover. Sometimes, in that house, it was more like you were the adult, and he was the child. But that wasn’t the way of it, Danny.”
Cleo’s brow was smooth now. “My troubles with your father began when you were three years old, honey. He was a grown-up man even then. And every day, for the last fifteen years, Sam made his own decisions. Bad ones, lots of them, but they were his to make. You have to let your daddy be a man, now. Let him be responsible for his choices, like all adults have to be. Don’t you take on any blame that isn’t rightfully yours.”
Danny’s expression didn’t change, but she nodded. At least she had taken the words in.
The charge nurse tapped on the door, bringing a fresh unit of saline. By the time Abby had accepted it and thanked her, Mac’s eyes were open and Danny’s face had lightened considerably.
“Hey, Danny.” Mac sounded drowsy but not too sedated. She turned her head on the pillow and offered Cleo a solemn peace sign in greeting.
“Yo, Counselor.” Cleo smiled. “Think you’ve had enough beauty sleep for now?”
“Oh, yeah.” Mac flicked a finger at Cleo’s leg. “How’s the drumstick?”
“Itches like hell already. How’s the beanie?”
Mac’s bleary gaze moved past Cleo and focused on Abby. “Better than ever.”
“Do you need anything, Mac?” Danny still whispered, as if she were afraid of startling her.
Mac lifted her arm enough to point. “Pass me that water, Dan?”
Fireside Page 18
