Betrayed by Trust

by Frankie Robertson

  Dan gulped his juice, washing down the muffin. “Yeah, that would be fun.”

  Dan’s Aunt Sissy and Uncle Bob arrived for lunch and stayed for dinner. Their grown sons, Steve and Greg, along with their wives and kids, joined us for the evening meal. The genders split along traditional lines. The women chopped vegetables and stirred gravy and set the table, while Dan and his cousins kept the kids busy running around outside, playing some game that entailed a lot of laughter and shrieking. Through the window, I heard Dan growling as he stalked a well-bundled four-year-old who squealed and giggled as Dan swept her up over his head.

  I imagined this scene a few years from now, our child among the others, gathered for Christmas maybe, building a snowman with the help of his or her older cousins. I’d gotten pregnant as a way to hurt the people who’d taken Mark from our family, and found something wonderful along the way.

  “Marianne?” Paulette, Greg’s wife, had apparently asked me something.

  “Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

  She looked over my shoulder to see what had stolen my attention. “Dan’s going to be a great dad. How far along are you?”

  “Six weeks.”

  She nodded. “If you want, I can send you some of our baby things. We’re not planning on having any more kids.”

  “I have some stuff you can have, too,” Connie offered. “Be good to get it out of my attic.”

  The conversation drifted to talk of morning sickness remedies, natural childbirth versus drugs, the joy and discomfort of breast feeding, and whether it was better to put the baby on a schedule right away or let his natural rhythms determine when he slept and ate. I’d never been interested in these topics before. In the past I would have wanted to be out playing in the yard or watching the game with the men, not gossiping in the kitchen with the women. But I’d never been expecting a baby before, and I soaked up every tidbit of information they offered.

  The light faded, and soon the pot roast was ready. With a fair amount of chaos, the kids and men shed their coats and caps, then settled at Gran’s big table that had been extended with makeshift leaves and covered with mismatched tablecloths.

  Gran held out her hands and everyone clasped their neighbors’. “Dan, would you say grace?”

  Dan bowed his head and gave the blessing.

  “Amen,” everyone except the smallest assented.

  I lifted my head and looked at Dan. He caught my gaze and smiled. In all our talks about Aldwyn, about the Na-gá, Dan hadn’t said he was religious, yet he’d recited the prayer without hesitation. I had a lot to learn about my husband.

  A couple of hours later, with the kitchen cleaned and the leftovers put away, the extended family departed, citing the need to get the little ones to bed. It was barely eight o’clock, but we’d all had a busy day. Gran was nodding off in her chair, so Dan and I pled jet-lag and escaped to our room so she wouldn’t feel she had to stay up to entertain us.

  I leaned against the door as I shut it behind us. The room seemed extremely quiet after the hub-bub of multiple conversations all evening.

  “I like your family,” I said.

  “They like you, too.” Dan smiled and the bed squeaked as he sat to pull off his shoes. Then his expression changed. “Oh, no.” He bit his lip, trying not to laugh as he pointed to the tiny night stand beside the bed.

  Gran had left us a can of 3-in-1 oil.

  Red and amber lights flashed. A warning klaxon blared in harsh alarm.

  Cold fear jerked me awake. Urgent dread demanded action. I sat up, pressing a hand against my chest in a futile attempt to slow my bounding heart. I searched for the clock. It was three forty-five in the morning.

  Dan lifted his head. “What is it?” He put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  I felt him come alert beside me. “With the baby?” He sat up. Thanks to the oil, the bed was silent.

  “No, we’re fine. It’s … it’s something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just know something is wrong.”

  Dan was silent for a moment, as he rubbed slow circles on my back. Then he said, “I’ll check on Gran.” He padded out the door and down the hall.

  I got up and started dressing. We couldn’t stay here. We had to go.

  “She’s fine,” Dan said as he slipped back inside our room. “Snoring away.” He took in the fact that I was putting on my clothes. “What’s up?”

  “We need to get out of here. Wake your grandmother.”

  Dan frowned. “She’s worn out. You’re worn out. We should go back to sleep. It’s the middle of the night, babe.” His tone was eminently reasonable.

  “I can see that. We still have to leave. You should call your aunt and uncle and your cousins, too.”

  Dan rubbed sleep crust out of his eyes. “And tell them what, exactly?”

  I paused with my arms inserted in a pullover sweater. What could he tell them? My pregnant wife has a feeling? I sat down on the edge of the bed. What could I say? “This isn’t hormones. I’m not crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  I pulled my arms out of the sweater, and bunched it up in my lap. Dan waited while I opened and closed my mouth several times. I didn’t know how to explain so I didn’t sound nuts.

  “Just say it,” he said with a hint of impatience. “It can’t be any stranger than meeting Na-gá in the jungle.”

  “I get feelings. That’s what I call them, anyway. Flashes of intuition, if you like that better. Foxworth said I scored pretty well on the psychic skills test when they hired me, but they didn’t put me in one of the training programs, so I couldn’t have done that well. And I never thought my feelings were all that useful.” I bit my lips. I was babbling, but the sensation was getting stronger.

  “I don’t have these experiences very often, but when I do, it’s usually something important. I was anxious for days before we found out Mark was MIA. That’s also how I know he isn’t dead. And I had a feeling I had to wait that night we met Conrad.”

  Dan pursed his lips and sat beside me. “Do you ever have premonitions that don’t work out?”

  “Sometimes. Maybe just knowing things changes the things we do, so nothing happens.

  “Maybe.”

  The grandfather clock in the living room chimed four, each strike sounding like an alarm. “Oh God! We’ve got to go!”

  “Take it easy.” Dan pulled me close, with an arm around my shoulders. “You’re okay.”

  “Don’t patronize me!” I pulled away and jumped up, glaring at him, then sat down hard again as a wave of dizziness left me blinking.

  Dan put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

  In just a few moments I was myself again. I didn’t want him to dismiss me as an hysterical pregnant woman, so I forced myself to speak in a calmer voice. “My ‘feelings’ have been stronger lately. This isn’t a delusion. Something is very wrong.”

  He was silent for a long moment, chewing his lip. Then he said, “Okay. I’ll get dressed and wake Gran.”

  My heart leapt with gratitude. I could tell he still had reservations, but he was trusting me anyway—or at least giving me the benefit of the doubt.

  I started packing as Dan pulled on his clothes. He left the room again, then I heard voices in the kitchen and smelled coffee. Gran was already awake.

  I finished stuffing our things into our suitcases. I followed the aroma of frying bacon down the stairs to the kitchen. When I joined them, Gran was bustling around in her blue flannel robe, popping bread into the toaster and cracking eggs into a bowl. I wanted to shout, We don’t have time for this! but I managed not to.

  “You two are supposed to be honeymooning,” she said as I came into the kitchen. “Not arguing.”

  “We weren’t arguing, Gran.” Dan hugged me to his side with an arm around my shoulders. I could tell from the way I eased under his touch that I’d been standing there rigid as a poker.

  I fo
rced a smile. “I’m sorry we woke you. Dan wasn’t happy that I woke him up this early. He’s not used to it anymore, now that he’s out of the Army.”

  He looked askance at me. Then I caught Gran’s skeptical expression. She wasn’t buying my explanation.

  I felt like a kid caught in a fib. “We weren’t arguing, really. We just weren’t seeing eye-to-eye.”

  “About what?” she asked. “It must be something important if you’re talking about it in the wee hours of the morning.”

  Dan let his hand slide away and cocked an eyebrow at me, clearly interested in how I was going to persuade his Gran to leave her home before dawn.

  “I …” I had no idea what to say, and covered my confusion by sitting at the kitchen table. Dan sat next to me, but didn’t offer any help. I took a deep breath; blew it out. My mind agreed with Dan. Why was I so anxious? It wasn’t as if the house was on fire. But a ferocious urgency still drove me. I couldn’t ignore it, but I tried to speak calmly. “I think something bad is going to happen. We need to leave here as soon as possible.”

  Gran nodded. “That’s the pregnancy talking, dear.”

  I’d expected her to say something like this. It was a reasonable assumption to make, but it was still wrong. “This isn’t hormones. I’m not delusional.”

  She raised her hand to stop my protest. “The warning is real, but it’s more forceful because you’re pregnant. Do you have any specifics?”

  I shook my head, too surprised to speak.

  “We have time to eat breakfast, then, and maybe even wait to find out what and where the problem is before we have to go.”

  The stunned expression on Dan’s face was almost comical. “Gran?”

  “Where do you think you got your sharp instincts, Danny?” She turned the sputtering bacon with a fork. “I’ve had premonitions all my life. Kept them to myself mostly. They’re not as strong now as they were when I was younger. I think it’s because I don’t have babies to protect anymore. I knew when you were hurt over there in Vietnam. And I knew that suddenly you were better.”

  Dan gaped at his grandmother.

  Gran turned her attention to me. “Your momma didn’t tell you any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Well, sometimes the sight skips a generation.” She looked at Dan. “It’s stronger in the women than in the men. The men, if it shows up in them at all, just think they’re smarter than everyone else, or have better instincts.” She poured a splash of milk into the bowl of broken eggs, and started beating them with a fork.

  “Does everyone else in the family know about this?” Dan asked.

  “I haven’t gone into much detail about it with anyone except your momma. Your aunts and uncles and cousins all know I have my hunches, and sometimes they ask my advice because I “guess right” so often. I told everything to Alice because my little girl had the sight, too—though it didn’t save her and your daddy from that drunk driver. Sometimes the warnings don’t come in time, or they’re too vague.”

  Gran turned her back on us for a moment, fussing with the bacon. I thought she might be blinking back tears. Dan’s hand fisted on the table. He looked like he wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t move. Maybe he knew from experience that she’d rather deal with her sorrow on her own.

  A minute later, she continued. “I haven’t seen any sign of the sight in your sister, or I’d have told her. None of your cousins seem to have it either. Maybe it’s dying out in our family.” Gran looked a little sad, but then she brightened. “But maybe not. When the sight is there, as it is in you, like calls to like. That’s how you and Marianne found each other, I expect.” She smiled. “And now you’re bringing a new little Collier into the world. Maybe you’ll have a girl, and she’ll have the gift.”

  I was glad she was still facing the stove, because I couldn’t have met her eyes. My baby might be born with the Collier name, but he wouldn’t have the Collier blood.

  Gran speared bacon out of the pan to drain on a paper towel, pulled an old coffee can from the fridge and poured in the bacon drippings. It was something I’d seen my mother do a thousand times. I felt warm and cozy in this kitchen, happy to be a part of Dan’s family. I tried to ignore the guilty nag in the back of my mind that accused me of bringing a cuckoo’s egg to the nest.

  Gran put four slices of bread into the toaster. “Now, about this premonition of yours,” she said as she poured the eggs into the sizzling pan. “I don’t doubt you’re experiencing something, but it might not be as urgent as it seems. Pregnancy changes everything, honey. Your whole body is out of whack. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, though. After we’ve eaten, I’ll call Sheriff James and find out what’s going on. Then we can figure out what to do about it.”

  Maybe she was right. I’d never had a feeling this strong before. Maybe being pregnant was making mole hill intuitions into mountains.

  I tried to relax. Clearly I wasn’t going to hurry her, and I was sure Dan wouldn’t leave without her. For that matter, I didn’t want to leave her behind either. My stomach rumbled. And as much as I wanted to hurry us all out the door, I wanted to eat, too. I was beginning to understand that my body’s demands shouldn’t be ignored. Not eating when I was hungry had bad consequences.

  “Okay.” I stood slowly and made sure I was steady, then started gathering plates and silverware to set the table.

  Thirty minutes later, my stomach was full but we were no closer to leaving. Dan had volunteered us to wash and dry the breakfast dishes to keep me busy. Gran called the sheriff’s office, but at five in the morning, Sheriff James wasn’t in, and the graveyard shift had no news of anything significant happening anywhere in Dauphin County.

  “That doesn’t matter,” I said. “They just haven’t got the report yet. We should go.”

  Dan chewed a corner of his mouth. “That could be true. But you said yourself that just knowing something might happen can change it.”

  My heart sank. I thought he’d believed me, especially now that he knew his Gran had these feelings too.

  “My feelings may not do me any good,” I agreed. “But when I get them, they always mean something. Or at least they do when I pay attention to them.”

  Dan didn’t flinch. “Okay, but I can’t see running when we don’t know where the danger is. We could be running into the middle of the problem instead of away from it.”

  “How about a game of gin rummy?” Gran asked, as Dan dried and put away the last of the plates. “You can win back that five dollars you owe me.”

  Maybe Gran was right, and the pregnancy was making me overreact, but I couldn’t play cards. Not now. Not when my instincts were yelling at me to get the hell out of Dodge. I looked at Dan, hoping he would throw his persuasion in with mine, but he shrugged and told his grandmother, “Deal.”

  I went up to our room to lie down, trying to ignore the anxiety that was twisting in my gut.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MARIANNE

  It was nearly nine in the morning when I woke up. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep. Worry still crawled under my skin, but I felt better for having a few more hours of rest. Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I shuffled downstairs to the kitchen.

  Everything looked so normal and domestic, I felt as if I didn’t belong. Dan and his Gran were still playing cards, and Toto’s “Hold the Line” was just wrapping up on the radio.

  I could feel Dan’s gaze on me as I helped myself to a glass of milk. I avoided looking at him. I didn’t want to see the doubt in his eyes.

  “Feeling better?” He sounded concerned.

  I started to answer, “The same,” when Gran reached across the table and turned up the volume on the radio, drowning me out.

  “… at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. A utility spokesman says there is a problem with a feedwater pump. Emergency personnel are monitoring the situation, but at this time there is no danger to the public.”

  A chill speared my spine. I shivered, and put my hand over my
belly.

  Gran turned down the radio again. “There, you see? That’s probably what your premonition was about,” she said. “And there’s no danger.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t care what the guy on the radio said. I was leaving, and I was taking Dan and his grandmother with me. “They’re wrong. There is danger. Whatever is happening isn’t under control yet.”

  Dan stood and went to the phone, his expression focused and determined. “I’ll call Greg. He can get the others moving.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You believe me?”

  “I know spin when I hear it. And when it comes to you and the baby, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  It wasn’t exactly an endorsement, but I’d take it. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll get my bag,” Gran said, stiffly getting to her feet.

  “You’re already packed?”

  “I didn’t doubt you, dear. I just didn’t want to go off half-cocked, not knowing where the problem was. Now we know.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “You stay here. I’ll get your bag.”

  When I came back down with Gran’s things, Dan was frowning. His knuckles were white from his grip on the handset. “You shouldn’t wait until he gets home. Call him at work, Paulette.” He listened, then said, “What about your kids?” He held the receiver away from his ear.

  I could hear an irate female voice from across the room, though I couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t need to. She was clearly not happy.

  Dan’s voice took on a soothing tone. “Of course you’re a good mother. I don’t doubt that for a second.” Paulette must have calmed down a little, because Dan didn’t flinch at whatever she said next. Then he hung up, and dialed another number.

  I went back upstairs for our luggage. The steps were narrow, so it took me three trips, carrying one bag at a time. By the time I had everything lined up in the living room it was a little after nine, and Dan had made all his calls. His expression was grim. “They’re not leaving.”

  “Why not?”