“Your family has to come first. How is Jason?”
“He’s recovering nicely. The surgery went well.” Marcus grimaced and stared at his hands again.
Phelma Jo didn’t like the look of guilt that had flashed across his eyes just before he looked away. She flipped to the last page.
A familiar name jumped out at her.
“Why in hell are these people still allowed to foster children?”
“They are very good at hiding evidence of abuse and setting up situations of their word against that of a child known to lie.”
“Lying is a means of self-preservation. Survival.”
“My supervisor made the placement. She doesn’t know that family like you and I do.” He gulped and caught Phelma Jo’s gaze with pride and defiance.
“I’ve got photos of the bruises this time. Fresh bruises, blood, and tissue samples. DNA. She ran to me before they could force her to shower and blur the evidence. If I have my way, the man who beat you senseless for asking to watch television, and this girl for not knowing which prayer to say for grace on a Tuesday when the moon is half full and Mercury is in retrograde is going to jail. His wife, who cheered him on and watched, will never again have access to children. But you know the system. A good lawyer could get them off.”
“Meanwhile?”
“The girl needs a safe haven and a way out. She needs sanctuary far enough away that she can’t be intimidated into changing her story. She needs a friend.”
Phelma Jo gulped. “She needs a friend.” The phrase resonated as no other had in the entire debacle of her life. Thistle had tried to be her friend when she was seven. But Phelma Jo had been too angry to see that. Dick and Dusty had tried to be her friends in grade school. But then Dusty had betrayed her; called her “stinky-butt” out loud in front of the entire school on the playground.
The perpetual anger that had driven Phelma Jo to succeed and survive drained away.
“You know our rules. She has to be old enough and capable of taking care of herself; to pass the GED tests and get a job,” Phelma Jo said sadly. “With that low an IQ and so little education…”
“I know. I’ve got a family in Medford willing to take her, help her, get her tutoring and counseling. These are good people, already part of our network. They’ll bring her back to testify if it goes to trial, and I hope it does. They will show her the value of telling the truth and reinforce it with love. But we have to do this now so that the foster parents and their lawyer can’t trace her before the trial. We can’t let them intimidate her into changing her testimony.”
“Okay. I’ll get you what you need. Give me twenty-four hours.” Phelma Jo extracted the girl’s birth certificate, fingerprint card, and photo from the pocket in the back of the folder.
Marcus took back the file and slumped out of the office, too tired to demand illegal papers any sooner than tomorrow. “Off the record, I’m taking the girl home with me tonight. No one will know where she is,” he said over his shoulder.
Phelma Jo grabbed her purse and jacket. Tucking the official documents inside her briefcase, she exited without explanation. Some chores she had to take care of herself.
Thirteen
DUSTY GAZED AT THE EXQUISITE SILK wedding gown in Bridget’s Bridal Boutique window. The flow of silk cascading around the mannequin enticed her to reach through the glass and caress it.
“I never thought I’d get married at all, let alone to Chase,” she said on a sigh to Thistle who eyed the dress with equal longing.
She’d wasted almost half her lunch hour drooling over the gown.
“Which is more important, the wedding or the marriage?” Thistle asked. She sounded genuinely puzzled. She looked over her shoulder toward Dick, where he sat in his car across the street, talking on his cell phone.
“The marriage,” Dusty replied. “Definitely the marriage. Bonding with your husband lasts a lifetime. Or it should. The wedding lasts only a few hours, a day at most.”
“But it’s an important ritual to start the bonding. So why not endure your mother’s idea of an ideal wedding and just get on with the marriage?”
“Because it’s my mother’s idea and it’s grotesque.”
“Juliet does grab hold of an idea and not let go. Sort of like Mrs. Spencer’s dog. His teeth won’t chew bones anymore but he still defends them fiercely.”
“That’s my mother, more obsessive-compulsive than I am. Unfortunately, Shakespeare has so much rich material to draw from that she’ll never get bored and move on to something else.”
“Until we give her grandchildren.” Thistle held her ring up to the light. It sparkled with life and promise.
Strange how well it fit Thistle’s hand, almost as if custom-made for her, no resizing needed at all.
“I don’t want to think about what Mom’ll do to… to her grandbabies.” Dusty returned her attention to the dress. “It would be so much easier to elope without telling her.”
“Wait a minute.” Thistle grabbed Dusty’s arm, keeping her from moving down Main Street. “Isn’t that the meaning of elope, you run away without telling anyone?”
“In this case, Chase has made it mean go get married with minimal ceremony, but I have to tell Mom what we are doing and why. He’s right of course. I’ll hide in the basement and let her continue running my life for me if I don’t.”
“Oh.” Thistle sounded as deflated as Dusty felt. “Well, we can’t do anything right now. Juliet has gone to Portland for a meeting.”
“Wedding photographers and a cake. As if we can’t get good ones here in Skene Falls.”
“So, let’s look more closely at that dress you love, and see if we can find something glittery and light for me. Dick said he’d buy any gown I chose.” Laughing, they entered the shop. Thistle paused only long enough to wave toward Dick. He waved back with half his attention still on the cell phone. Almost a distracted dismissal.
Dusty began counting up the balance in her checking and savings account. Could she possibly, maybe with a little bargaining, buy the dress she truly wanted? She had enough. But would that leave enough to add to Chase’s savings for a down payment on a house? They couldn’t plan on the gift of Mabel’s house. She wouldn’t plan on the old woman dying. Mabel had to get better. She just had to. And soon.
Phelma Jo drifted down Main Street in a wondrous glow of new love, the morning’s trauma forgotten while she took a break. She refused to think about her illegal activities outside her home or office. If she didn’t think about them, then she wouldn’t slip up and mention them.
The tall man beside her, Ian McEwen, had entered her life with a clipboard and a hard hat. Now he held her hand as they strolled past shops and offices decorated with ghosts and cobwebs, witches and pumpkins, banners painted with harvest motifs hung from street lamps. Posters in every window advertised the parade and haunted maze. Outlying farms showed maps to the biggest pumpkin patches with hay rides, games, and fresh produce. The All Hallows Festival was as important a town fund-raiser as the summer Pioneer Days Festival and the Christmas Festival and the Spring Flower Festival. Actually, she thought All Hallows brought in more money and tourists than any of the others. Everyone wanted to party this time of year. Costumes and pranks only added spice to the mix.
She ignored the reminders that she’d never been allowed to dress up in costumes or go trick-or-treating as a child. All that mattered was that she and Ian walked together to file the building inspection at the courthouse, almost a couple.
She dared, for the first time in her life, to imagine a comfortable future without the drama, betrayal, and heartache of reality.
Her building, the one with Bridget’s Bridal Boutique anchoring the ground-floor corner space, had passed inspection, of course. She wouldn’t let it fail. A well-maintained historical building commanded higher rents than the ramshackle semi-derelicts other landlords owned.
Ian had complimented her on the state of the wiring. Then he’d asked her out to dinner. They
were headed back to her penthouse condo by mutual consent when he’d gotten that damned call to rush to his aunt’s side.
At first Phelma Jo had resented the interruption to her plans for the evening. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized Ian McEwen honestly cared about his aunt. If he showed such devotion to a woman who refused to speak to him, how much more loyalty would he show to the woman he loved?
Phelma Jo planned to become that woman.
Neither of her two previous marriages had worked because she had chosen older husbands for money and prestige. And escape from her past. Now that she had money and was earning prestige, she wanted a man that she wanted, not someone who could get her what she wanted.
She squeezed Ian’s hand and brushed her shoulder against his. He smiled down at her but did not stop his long-legged progress toward the courthouse. He had a job to complete, and it wasn’t complete until the last paperwork was filed with the city and the insurance company. Then they could go to lunch.
She liked that. He was almost as driven as she to finish a job and get it done right. Of course her definition of right didn’t always mean right for anyone but her own profit.
A wasp buzzed her ear. She swatted it. A wasp in October? She froze, hoping the bug would find a more attractive target. It strafed her again.
She thought she heard someone whisper, “Dusty.”
“Phelma Jo, what’s wrong?” Ian asked. He still held her hand.
“Bug,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“Don’t tell me you walked through cobwebs in your basement without a second thought, but a little old fly frightens you.”
“Wasp, you idiot. There is a wasp getting ready to sting me.”
“This beautiful bug?” A monstrous winged creature rested on his palm and nearly filled it. “It’s just a moth. Pretty thing with all that red on its wings. Unusual to have a random pattern, though. I’ll have to look it up later. Moths aren’t dangerous.”
“Looks more like a dragonfly to me,” Phelma Jo said. “A biting dragonfly.”
The “moth” reared its ugly head and bit Ian’s finger.
Phelma Jo watched him do it. Amazement and bewilderment stupefied her, made time slow down. She saw each movement as a series of images, like a slide show.
For half a moment she found herself back in The Ten Acre Wood on a hot summer’s day stuffing a purple dragonfly into a canning jar with a wolf spider. Dick had come along and rescued her prizes. What had he said about the dragonfly?
Then she reeled back into normal time.
“Ouch!” Ian shook his hand until the “moth” dropped away. It staggered down, then caught sufficient air under its wings to fly a rapid spiral right back to Phelma Jo’s ear.
“Dusty and Thistle are in the bridal shop. Dick is waiting in his car across the street. Do your job.”
She didn’t know where the high-pitched words came from. Part of her dismissed them as just random buzzes from the bug.
Still, she looked across the street and saw Dick Carrick in his BMW convertible, talking on his cell phone while consulting a tablet computer. And sure enough, Dusty and Thistle had just turned from admiring the shop window display to enter the bridal boutique.
The moth flew a deliberate path across the street—at windshield level forcing three cars to screech to a halt and nearly crash. It circled the BMW and landed on the roof.
Phelma Jo’s jaw dropped. It couldn’t be. That moth had spoken in Haywood Wheatland’s voice. He claimed to be a half-breed Pixie/Faery.
The world spun in a new orbit, robbing Phelma Jo of balance. Her peripheral vision started to close down. Cold sweat broke out on her brow and back. Suddenly, her head was too heavy for her neck to support.
“Phelma Jo!” Ian caught her. “You don’t look so good, little lady.” Deftly, he hoisted her in his arms and strode purposefully into a side door of the courthouse.
Shrill, discordant music clanged in Phelma Jo’s mind. Ding dang chug shplach. But she didn’t care. She snuggled into Ian’s chest, blotting out the anger behind the atonal chords.
Thistle hummed lightly as she deadheaded the last of the overgrown rhododendrons in Juliet’s garden. She’d found the perfect gown for her wedding at Bridget’s, a figure-molding sheath of light silk with an overlay of lace that sparkled with hints of lavender glitter and tiny bits of faceted glass that looked like stars spangling a night sky. Dum dee dee do dum dum. She hummed her happiness, imagining how the gown would look on her in candlelight during the simple, intimate ceremony.
She looked up from her daydreams to snip off another cluster of spent flower petals.
The quiet chaos of eccentric groupings of flowers and shrubs would make a perfect Pixie haven, she mused, or a location for a wedding in a different season, when the sun shone more reliably. She paused, drinking in the moist air, smelling the clouds thickening above.
With a quirk of a smile, she waited half a heartbeat before dashing for the back porch. She beat the first raindrop by half a wingbeat. In Pixie, she could count that as a prank. Cheating rain out of a drenching was difficult.
“I love my life now,” she whispered. Problems between Pixies and Faeries vanished from her mind. They didn’t involve her anymore.
She gazed at the little circle of gold, amethyst, and diamond on her left ring finger. Dick’s promise of marriage, he’d called it. A genuine antique, Juliet had proclaimed, with a warning to be very careful of the precious gem. It came from Juliet’s mother-in-law’s mother.
Thistle had trouble keeping the generations and tangled relationships straight. Music replaced the puzzle in her mind.
Dum dee dee do dum dum.
She spun in a circle and laughed.
“I’m glad your exile hasn’t been a total misery,” Alder said from somewhere near her right elbow.
“What? How? Who?” As she stammered, her former lover grew from a yellow-tinged green Pixie with mottled gray bark clothing into a graceful young man half a head taller than she was.
Skinny wimp. That’s what humans would call him. She bit back her smile, wondering how she’d ever thought him a strong and vibrant leader.
Until she knew for sure that he’d closed The Ten Acre Wood last summer to protect the tribe from a Faery invasion, she considered him a teenager prone to temper tantrums.
Thistle turned away from him and replaced her garden tools on the shelf above the old cement sink.
“Please, Thistle, I need to talk to you.” Alder stayed her hand with one of his own.
She stared at the short, slender fingers. “Your touch used to thrill me. Now it doesn’t,” she said flatly.
He jerked his hand away. “Please, I need your help, Thistle. Pixies need your help.”
“Why should I help you? You exiled me, humiliated me. Betrayed me.”
“I know. And I’m sorry for that.”
“Apologies aren’t enough.”
“Thistle, you have to come back to The Ten Acre Wood with me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“For the sake of all Pixies, you have to come. You are the only one among us who can end the war among the tribes.”
“You should have thought about that before you closed off access to the Patriarch Oak. You should have thought about the consequences before you took me on a mating flight, promised we’d be together forever when you knew you’d marry Milkweed within the week.”
“Consequences?”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re just a Pixie. You won’t think beyond the next prank. Was your betrayal just another prank?”
“Pixies don’t play tricks on other Pixies. That’s what humans are for. You broke that rule by getting Milkweed lost on her way to our wedding.”
“Go away, Alder. I don’t need or want you anymore.”
“But Pixie needs you. You are the only one of us who can think up a treaty we can all agree to. The Faeries are watching humans destroy their hill. Now they want to claim The Ten Acre Wood as
their own. They are behind this war, and unless you do something about it, those cowards will win, just by sitting back and watching us destroy ourselves. Do you want to see all of Pixie die? We’ve buried six this last week, all killed by other Pixies.”
“There is nothing I can do.” Grief and regret stabbed her heart. “You should find the Faeries a new hill so they’ll leave Pixie alone.”
“I removed the curse on you, Thistle. I removed it right after I cast it.”
“Then why can’t I get back to Pixie? I have tried.”
“You could have returned anytime. All you had to do was make being a Pixie more important than your love for humans. But you don’t love humans enough. There’s a lost child wandering around Rosie’s territory. Your territory. And you can’t even see her. Until you complete this mission, Pixie will not respond to you.”
“We are all lost children, Alder, wandering in a wilderness of conflicting emotions.”
“Find and help this lost child. Guide her to her proper home and family. Then you can come back to Pixie. But hurry. We are running out of time.”
With that, Alder shrank back to his tiny green form and flew off, dodging raindrops that fell from the sky like tears.
Only then did she realize he had no music. All Pixies had music. Why didn’t he?
Fourteen
DUM DEE DEE DO DUM DUM. THISTLE hummed lightly as she applied a scrub brush and cleanser to Mabel’s kitchen countertops. While the house was generally tidy and clean on the surface, a lot of corners and hard-to-reach surfaces showed signs of neglect. If she’d learned nothing else about being human while living with Juliet for six weeks, she’d learned how to clean.
Cleaning gave her an opportunity to think quietly about troubling matters; like a lost child in need of help. But she couldn’t help until the child acknowledged she needed help. That was one of the rules of Pixie. She had to wait for the child to show herself. But who was she? Where was she hiding? If Thistle could figure that out, she could arrange to stumble across the girl. Alder had said it was a girl child.
Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles Page 10
