“I missed you,” he said. “I worried about you.”
At a wide part of the road, Mary stopped the van, put it in park, and got out. The gentle thud of the door a few seconds later told her Jorge had followed. Mary started walking, taking a favorite path down to a fishing hole she and her dad used to frequent when she was a child. Jorge stood quietly beside her, watching her fling stones across the water, skipping them.
When she got six, her lucky number, she finally turned to look at him. “I should give you a chance to turn around now and not come back.”
“Not a chance,” he said.
“My mom isn’t the same as when she disappeared, Jorge.”
He reached out and rubbed her shoulder. “It was like that when we got my brother Miguel back, too. They did something to him at that hospital. What did you find out about what happened to your mom? How did you find her?”
“I didn’t find her, not really. They found me.” Sitting down on a log, she poured out the whole story—her abduction from Dr. Liu’s house and reunion with her mother in the Department’s medical department. What she suspected about the nature of the organization and how they experimented on her mom and other “patients” like her. Their daring escape. The only thing she held back on was talking about the Director, though she couldn’t have said why she left him out of the story.
Jorge hugged her to him. “You are so brave.”
Mary drew back and looked up at Jorge’s handsome face. There had been something false in his tone, something manipulative. “Don’t patronize me.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m not patronizing you. I mean it. It took balls, doing what you did. And now, you’re hiding out, keeping those hyenas away from your mother. She’s lucky to have you.”
Mary looked into his face for a long moment as his eyes searched hers in return. Maybe she was paranoid. She stood back up and walked to the water again but didn’t throw any stones this time. Instead, she stood there looking at the lake and thinking about the steam rising from the pond outside the cabin and the crazed look in her mother’s eye.
“She scares me. The other day, I thought she might hurt me. She’s out of control. I don’t know what to do.”
Jorge walked up and slid his hand into hers, interlacing their fingers again. “Whatever you need, babe. I’m in this with you. We’ll find a way to help her.” Mary leaned against his shoulder, hoping it was really this simple.
The sun was starting to set when they pulled up to the cabin. Helen Braeburn sat on the porch, making small balls of fire and lobbing them toward the pond. Some sizzled on the surface for a moment before going out, others had burnt patches in the grass and reeds. Mary saw Jorge’s eyes grow wide at the sight, but he didn’t say anything.
“You ready for this?” she asked him, wondering if he was going to change his mind and bail after all. To her relief, he nodded.
When Mary hopped down out of the driver’s seat, her mother stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “Took you long enough,” she said.
Mary waited for Jorge to step out, then took his hand and led him over to the porch. “Mom, this is Jorge. Jorge, my mother, Helen Braeburn.”
He held out a hand to her. “Very nice to meet you at last, ma’am. I know Mary was beside herself trying to find you.”
“Polite and handsome, huh?” Helen looked around Jorge’s shoulder at her daughter without letting go his hand. “A real step up from your last one, honey.”
Mary glared. She had told her mother to be nice. After all, Jorge was putting himself at risk to help them. But this was laying it on a little thick. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
Jorge whistled when he stepped through the entryway. “Nice place. I thought it would be smaller. Mary said cabin, but this is more like a real house.”
Mary turned and looked at the place with new eyes. It was kind of big for the two women and had been even when her father used to come with them. She hadn’t really thought about it before. To her, this was just the place her parents had taken her when she’d rather have gone to the beach or Disneyland. Quiet and dull. But seeing it through Jorge’s eyes, she had to admit it was a very nice house.
“I got a good deal,” her mother said. “Got it at auction after probate for a fraction of what it was worth.”
“I’m glad you never sold it. I like to imagine Mary playing in these woods as a little girl.”
Helen laughed. “Mary’s not so much a woods sort of girl, I’m afraid. A lot of those trips were her complaining there wasn’t any cable.”
“Mom, you know that’s not true. I used to sit out here for hours drawing the barn and the well.”
“True. I guess I didn’t think of drawing as an outdoor occupation.” Her mother shrugged, and Mary let it slide. Helen looped her arm through Jorge’s pulling him with her. “Come on. Let me show you the house. Then we can get some dinner and plan for tomorrow.”
Helen got into her role as tour guide. She was funny and charming, and Mary wondered if this was how her mother presented when she sold houses. If so, she could see why she’d done so well at it. As she led them from room to room, pointing out items of interest, Helen told Jorge things about the cabin even Mary had never heard.
She had no idea the quilts in the downstairs bedroom had been made by her grandmother or that the rickety chair on the back porch was a botched carpentry attempt by her father. With a rush of guilt, she saw how painful it must be for her mother to be here, in the place where she had been a happy wife for so many years. In her hurry to get them away and find them someplace safe to hide out, she had never considered that this house might be full of echoes for her mother.
When they walked out on the back deck, Helen lit the oil lamps and citronella candles on the table one by one, without using any matches. Jorge let out a long slow breath, watching Helen raise the flame on a fingertip, then extinguish it against her own palm. He grasped Mary’s hand.
“I know you told me, Mary, but it’s different, seeing it myself.”
Helen smiled. “You want a demo?”
An eager smile spread across Jorge’s face. “Yes, ma’am. I’d like that.” Mary looked at him, incredulous that he wasn’t frightened or nervous seeing her mother manipulate flame so casually. She’d had far more time to adjust to the idea, and her stomach still twisted in knots at the sight. Maybe he was trying extra hard to make a good impression on her mother.
“Let me go slip into something more comfortable. I’ll see you in the yard in a few minutes.”
Mary and Jorge wandered up to the edge of the pond, hand in hand. “She doesn’t seem so bad,” Jorge said, a question in his voice. Mary hugged Jorge to her, avoiding his question for now. She didn’t have an answer.
Her mother was presenting herself in a good light just now, but, deep in her gut, Mary felt something was wrong. Her mother had vaporized someone when they escaped the Department, simply turned that nurse to ash in a moment of rage. And she’d seen that rage turned on herself only a few days ago. She couldn’t help but feel this was like the eye of a hurricane and that the real storm still waited on the horizon.
Jorge kissed the top of her head, and Mary stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss him. He responded eagerly, and when she broke away, they were both breathless. “I missed you,” he said into her hair. “I worried you were lost forever.”
“I wasn’t lost,” she said. “I was taken.” She was pulling Jorge’s head down for another kiss when her mother cleared her throat behind them.
“What do you think?” She pirouetted and dropped into a curtsy, tilting her head to one side like a middle-aged version of the child star Shirley Temple.
Mary threw a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Her mother wore a costume. A yellow tee shirt with flame made out of red and orange material sewn on it, over a pair of red sweatpants. There wasn’t a cape, but Mary suspected she had one and just hadn’t put it on. She stood with her hands on her hips a
nd her head to the side like the poster shot for a superhero movie.
“Mom? What are you wearing?”
“My Flamethrower outfit. It’s fireproof. Cindy showed me how to treat the cloth, and I made these today while you were out.” There was a wounded tone to her voice and Mary knew she had hurt her mother by picking on her efforts. She still had trouble not laughing at the get-up.
“That makes sense,” Jorge offered. “You’d need something fireproof to wear.” Jorge was either much better at keeping a straight face than Mary, or he meant it.
Helen rewarded the young man with a beatific smile and shot a scowl at Mary, who dropped her head, ashamed to have hurt her mother’s feelings. Jorge knew how to handle mothers. That either made him wonderful or terrible. She wasn’t sure which, but either way, she was glad he was there.
Mary squeezed his hand, and the two of them sat on the stairs to the cabin while Helen walked to the center of the yard. The grass was already singed in places from her temper tantrum the other day. The hair on Mary’s arms rose, and she scooted close enough to Jorge that their hips touched.
Her mother began by theatrically stretching an arm into the air and raising a pillar of flame on it. Jorge gasped as she made it wiggle like a tower of Jell-O then turned it into a ball and spun it. She rolled it up her arm and around her shoulders and down her other arm, and Jorge and Mary clapped and cheered. Whatever Helen had done to her clothes was working. They didn’t catch fire.
Both young people jumped when she turned the flame into a longer stream and lit the grass around her into a circle of fire, which she then raised to waist high with a gesture of her hands. Jorge tensed like he might try to rush in to rescue the woman at the center of it all, but Mary rested a hand on his arm and shook her head, and he settled back into his position on the stairs.
“Just watch.”
Helen raised the flames higher until they couldn’t see her through the wall of fire. Mary’s skin warmed uncomfortably, but she didn’t look away. She licked her lips and stared into the flames, waiting.
When the pause had been long enough that she began to worry, Helen stepped forward, walking through the wall of flames as if she were taking a stroll through the shopping mall. The flames licked her skin and hair and her clothes, but nothing caught. Turning back to the inferno behind her, she gestured again with her hands, and the fire lowered then slithered through the grass like a snake, leaving charcoaled embers in its wake. Helen directed it with a single finger, which she waggled in the air like a schoolteacher admonishing a child. The snake mimicked each movement faithfully.
The fire snake wound its way around Helen’s leg and up her body and finally became a ball of fire in the palm of her hand again. Helen tossed it into the air, creating more until she juggled five balls of fire. A strange light came into her face. Mary’s throat went dry. Her mother looked manic, gleeful, and possibly even insane. With the fire shining in the darkness and lighting her pallid face, she resembled a demon. Even her eyes seemed aflame. She tossed the balls of fire higher and higher, and Mary watched them fly, her anxiety growing.
Jorge stood and whistled and clapped like a small boy watching a fireworks show. “Bravo.” Did he really not see how using the fire affected her mother, brought something else out in her? Was she misinterpreting what she saw there just because it was her mother?
Hearing him, Helen seemed to come back into herself. She dropped the next ball and stomped out the patch of grass that caught fire, then gathered the remaining balls into a single rotating globe in her hand. Helen clapped her hands once, and the fire went out, extinguished between her palms. She bowed as Jorge and Mary applauded, Jorge the more enthusiastic of the two.
Mary looked out across the yard at the bright spots still glimmering in the darkness as if a field of fireflies had alighted on the lawn and tried to still the panic that gripped her, causing a tightness in her chest. What her mother could do was amazing and also terrifying. Mary shuddered to think what might happen if she lost control.
Leonel’s Forty Pounds of Cure
“Months?” Leonel hadn’t been prepared to hear that.
The doctor nodded. “You were very lucky, Mr. Alvarez. You’re getting off easy with a few months’ recovery time. We could just as easily be making your funeral arrangements right now.”
Leonel understood. Understanding didn’t help with his impatience. He wanted to be a part of the hunt for Dr. Liu. It was probably immature of him, but he had this feeling of having made the varsity team then being forced to spend the first game on the bench. Being allowed a little more movement, with assistance, and the use of a bed pan instead of a catheter did not feel like progress to him.
He was glad David had not been in the room to hear the prognosis spoken aloud. It would have given him that much more reason to argue he should leave the Department. “When can I go home?”
“I think I can clear you in another week or so, so long as you are careful not to reopen your wounds again.”
Seven more days of sitting around in a hospital room avoiding a confrontation with David. The thought made his stomach churn. Eso sí que es. It was what it was. It’s not like working hard could heal an abdominal wound faster. Summoning his gratitude from beneath his frustration, Leonel thanked the doctor before he left, and wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes with the blanket when the man was gone.
Sighing loudly, Leonel picked up the new clicker for the television and very carefully pushed the “on” button. He flipped through the channels, but there was little to capture his attention—just the usual daytime television mess. Makeovers and family reunions weren’t going to do it for him today. He was about to give up and turn off the television when he caught a news announcement about a missing young woman. He turned up the volume.
“Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Mary Braeburn should contact the police.” A phone number scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
The newswoman put on a face of quiet concern as she addressed the camera. “In a strange coincidence, Ms. Braeburn’s mother, Helen, is also missing and has been for several months. Police are looking for connections and information about why the two Springfield women might be a target for violence.”
Pictures of the two women flashed onto the screen again with the phone number for the police. It was Helen. Their Helen. There was no mistaking the picture. Leonel gasped aloud. He knew where Helen was. He knew the Department had her. He also knew it was his fault. He’d thrown Helen into a wall in a rage. Helen had been working with Dr. Liu. Had her daughter gone looking for her and gotten herself into trouble?
Agitated, Leonel reached for his phone, wishing the doctor had not left the side table so far out of reach. He put a hand over his wound and used the buttons on the hospital remote to bring the bed up slowly, trying hard not to engage his abdominal muscles. He needed to talk to the Director. He would know what to do.
A few sweaty moments later, he had tugged the rolling table to the side of the bed and grasped his phone. The effort left him panting. He held the phone in his hand and tried to steady his breath. He peeked under his hospital gown at the bandage around his torso. It was still pristine white; at least his efforts had not caused him to bleed again.
When he felt like his voice would sound normal, he dialed the number he had memorized in his first days of training and entered his access code. “The Director,” he said when the recorded voice prompted him to state his business. To his surprise, the phone immediately started ringing.
“Leonel?”
“Soy yo,” he said, smiling at the excitement in the Director’s voice. Even over the phone, the man was able to make Leonel feel important.
“I had heard you were awake. How are you?”
“All things considered, I am well. But I am worried.”
“The Department will see to your care, Leonel. All you need to worry about is getting better.”
“It’s not that. I mean, thank you, but I’m no
t worried about me.” He paused, considering how best to say what had him upset. He wanted to believe the Department was doing the right thing, but the news story had given him doubts. He couldn’t help but remember the times Patricia had warned him against flying blindly with a government agency, telling him he needed to listen to his heart’s voice and not just to his orders. He plunged in. “I saw on the news that Helen’s daughter is missing.”
There was silence on the line for a beat or two. Then the Director sighed. “Yes. She was here. We had to bring her in when she went looking for her mother.”
“She’s all right?”
“I wish I knew.” He sighed again. “They escaped.”
Leonel was stunned. “How?”
“We underestimated Mary. I thought I had convinced her to take our side. But she was more resourceful than I gave her credit for. I’d love to recruit her. She thinks outside the box. She disabled some security cameras and made it to the staff parking lot and stole a car. They welded a door closed and obliterated part of the fencing.”
Leonel gasped. “Was anyone hurt?”
The Director sounded genuinely pained. “One of our medical staff was injured, and another was killed.”
“Killed?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this. You need to concentrate on getting better. We have our best agents out on this. We will find them.”
Leonel’s heart was racing. There had to be something he could do. “I want to help,” he said.
“Leonel…”
“Please, sir. There has to be something I can do. I can’t lie here on my back while there’s so much danger circling around us. There has to be something I can do.”
The Director made a clucking noise with his tongue. He let the silence grow long before he spoke again. “I can send someone to see you. I can’t promise she will help. She won’t do it for just anyone. And if she does help you, you can’t tell anyone. Not even Jessica. Not even David.”
Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3) Page 9
