by Ninie Hammon
The crunchy, not-sticky-enough ice cannot be transformed into the magnificent structure María envisioned, not even when they add ice cubes from the other side of the ice maker to build the walls. As soon as they construct anything fanciful, it either falls apart in seconds or begins to melt into nothingness. The best they have to show for their efforts by the time their fingers are too cold to keep working is a kind of lumpy mound of frozen ice-and-snow. One turret remains standing. You can’t really tell it’s a turret, but they call it that because that’s what they were trying to build. The wall around the castle, made of ice cubes, is the most discernible feature of the structure. The rest … not so much.
Mr. Anderson comes stomping into the kitchen in his sock feet, having taken off his snow boots in the mud room. His cheeks are rosy from the cold and his nose makes María think of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
“Whatcha girls doing?” He’s a nice man. Too nice, really, so he is unable to command the respect of the herd of boys that Mrs. Anderson has to keep in line. He allows the household to be too loud, the boys to be too rowdy and the symphony of constant bickering to reach such proportions María sometimes wants to scream “shut up” at the lot of them.
Bailey is standing behind María so María can’t see her. But she can tell Bailey is mouthing something to Mr. Anderson.
“Why, that’s an ice castle, isn’t it?” he says and wins a permanent place in María’s heart for the effort.
“It’s where the ice queen lives,” Bailey says.
“And the ice fairies.” Wheeze.
María turns back to the rapidly dissolving not-structure and pronounces grandly, “But then the Meanies from the North” … wheeze … “come to plumber—”
“Plunder,” Bailey whispers.
“Yeah, that, plunder” … wheeze … “and they destroy the castle” … wheeze … “and melt the queen and the fairies.”
María reaches to the back of the sink and pulls out the spray nozzle on its black cord, points it at the castle and pushes the plunger. Water sprays out in a whoosh and whatever features the pile of ice might ever have had dissolve instantly and it becomes a formless pile of slush.
As María squirts water on the castle, Bailey pronounces solemnly: “And all the Meanies from the North grew up to be firemen.”
María giggles. It’s hard to laugh when you can’t breathe and it comes out as a gulping, gasping sound that only resembles laughter enough that the people who know her no longer think she’s choking to death. It wasn’t an exceptionally clever remark, but María continues to cough and gasp out merriment anyway. It bubbles up from that place in her heart where she treasures a love for Bailey that she has never felt for anyone else in her whole life.
“Mommy?” María realized that Bethany had been tugging on the hem of her shirt. “Can we build a snowman?”
Bethany had just gotten over a really nasty ear infection and María wasn’t keen on letting her play outside in the cold. She got down on one knee and looked into the child’s eyes, such a startling shade of blue, the color of robins’ eggs.
Pushing the child’s black curls back behind her ears, she managed to keep her voice level and cheery. “I have a better idea. We’re going to build an ice castle.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bailey’s fingers were instantly cold.
She was standing just inside the door of Walmart, waiting for Dobbs to park the Jeep, matching tooth for tooth the Walmart greeter’s smile that clearly had been unloaded off a truck at the beginning of his shift.
All of a sudden, her fingers were freezing.
Not just cold as in it’s-a-cold-day-and-you’re-not-wearing-gloves.
Cold as in you-have-a-handful-of-ice.
Biting, numbing, painful cold.
She stared at her hands in disbelief for a moment, heard a bleat of sound, a burst of static and then the sensation was gone.
Dobbs and T.J. approached and she told them what had happened.
“I connected to María.” There was a mixture of joy and terror in the words. Joy, of course, because she was somehow connected to her beloved younger sister in a way she’d never been when they were children, no matter how close they’d felt.
And terror because the connection was born of the portrait she had painted of María dead.
The image stole her breath and it must have shown on her face.
“How about we go have us a Starbucks and you tell us ‘bout it,” T.J. said.
“There is nothing so wrong with me that I’d have to suffer through a Starbucks coffee to remedy it.” Coffee was coffee, for crying out loud. Why would you pay some ridiculous amount of money for it? She supposed it was so you could walk around sipping from the moon-face cup and the world would know you were cool. Dobbs loved Starbucks, though, so she never belabored the point.
“My fingers got cold. You know, like how I smelled breakfast that morning after I painted Macy, because she was smelling bacon and coffee. This was feeling instead of sight or smell.”
Then it dawned on her what the cold fingers meant.
“María’s building a snowman … with Bethany.”
The thought knocked the wind out of her. She had not allowed herself to think of Bethany so freely, or María either for that matter, in all these months. She’d walled off those thoughts because if she wallowed in them, in the pain of them, the loss they conjured up, then …
Well, that’s where Oscar had come from.
She had breakers on the circuits of her brain, and when her mind went to images of her daughter or dreams of her or fears for her, the breakers shut the circuits down.
That was the only way she could function.
But she didn’t need the breakers anymore, didn’t need to rein in her thoughts of her little girl. Because she would get Bethany back soon, and soon was a real time — tomorrow!
“Well, somethin’ just lit you up like you just swallowed a flare. What was you thinkin’?”
Her smile was so wide, she had trouble talking around it. And around the laughter that bubbled up for no reason, like she’d just heard the most hilarious joke.
Joy. Pure joy.
“I was just thinking of Bethany. I never do that. If I did—”
“Yeah, Oscar,” T.J. said.
She shouldn’t have been surprised by his intuitiveness, but she somehow always was.
“Is everything I think and feel written on my forehead?”
‘Nah.” He took her elbow and began guiding her into the store. “Not on your forehead.”
“In the sky,” Dobbs said.
“In purple,” T.J. said.
“In Hebrew,” Dobbs concluded.
The toy department caused another crisis, not as joy-filled, more tinged with pain.
She looked up and down the aisles stocked with every imaginable thing any kid had ever wanted to play with, or didn’t want to play with but some marketing director at Hasbro had figured out they could be manipulated into wanting to play with if the ad spend on the right kiddie television shows was adjusted properly.
“I don’t … I have no idea what a three-year-old … three-and-a-half-year-old little girl might want to play with. What do I get?”
Dobbs looked down an aisle filled from floor to ceiling with dolls. “Just get her one of everything.”
Bailey rolled her eyes.
“I don’t want to overwhelm the child. And it matters what kind of child she is. I don’t even know. Is she a girly girl, who loves lace and pink and taffeta and Barbie dolls? Or maybe firetrucks. Or superheroes. Or dinosaurs. Or unicorns. Or …
Bailey was on such a rollercoaster of emotions she barely had time to feel something before she got hammered with the next feeling.
“You said María loved Barbie dolls so she probably got some for Bethany.” Dobbs was ever the voice of logic and reason.
“Point taken. Barbie dolls it is.”
Then she gazed with growing wonder/horror at the selection of Barbie dolls
, clothing, accessories, vehicles, houses …
How in the world …?
T.J. took over then.
“This here one.” He picked up a Barbie that didn’t look in any way unique.
“Why that—?”
“‘Cause you gotta pick somethin’ and if you stand here looking at everything you ain’t never gonna pick nothin’.”
He dropped the doll into the basket and turned toward the accessories.
“Okay, we got the doll. Now, what do you want to dress her in so she’s wearing somethin’ ‘sides her skivvies?”
And so it went. T.J. placed another Barbie doll in the basket.
“You don’t want this here one to get lonesome, do you?”
And then a third.
“How they gonna have a Barbie party if ain’t but two of ‘em?”
Bailey managed to slam the door on memories of the Barbie dolls that a little girl had left lying in the grass in a park …
When they had the group of dolls properly clothed, the basket was filled to the top.
“Now, don’t we need something for them to ride in? Like one of them campers or vans with flowers on it? You can’t let ‘em walk wherever they’re goin’, not in them shoes.”
“Enough’s enough. We’ll start here, and when we find out what she likes after she gets here—”
BAM, took her breath away again.
After she gets here.
After I meet my little girl.
“Oh, T.J., in just a few hours I …”
And all at once Bailey was scared to death.
“What’s wrong?”
Dobbs didn’t have to ask.
“You’ve progressed from thinking that you don’t know your little girl to realizing she doesn’t know you, either. She’ll have no idea who you are. That’s a scary thought.”
It was indeed scary.
T.J. took her by the shoulders, turned her around and marched her out of the toy department toward housewares. “Let’s go find us some foofy sheets.”
Back at home, the guys carried the purchases into the house and Bailey fished around in the sacks for the sheets she’d selected. They were from some movie about mermaids that she hadn’t seen. True fact: Bailey Donahue had not seen a single movie since … Not in more than two years. She had some catching-up to do.
She left the guys downstairs unloading and throwing away boxes and sacks while she went up to put the sheets on the bed in … on the bed in Bethany’s room.
She would take Bethany with her to the store and let her pick out the curtains and the bedspread and if she didn’t like the sheets, Bailey would get new ones she did like.
The smell of spices. Something cinnamon. And cookies baking. Chocolate chip.
… laughing all the way. Bells on bobtails ring, making spirits bright …
The music was so loud and clear Bailey actually turned to look, though she knew even as she turned that she’d find no source for the music here.
The music wasn’t in the Watford House. The music was in Bailey’s head. And it was in Bailey’s head because somewhere in Boston, María and Bethany were listening to that song.
“… a sleighing song tonight, oooooooh.” Singing was not María’s strong suit, but what she lacked in skill she made up for in gusto.
Come for the off-key, stay for the tone-deaf.
Bethany sang along with the melody. She mispronounced the words but carried the tune better than María.
“Gendile bells, gendile bells, gendile all the waaaaa.”
As the little girl sang, María looked into the box of Christmas decorations and picked out a shiny gold one in the shape of numbers: 2012. Across the front it said: Baby’s First Christmas. It had been in the box of Bailey and Aaron’s Christmas decorations. María had cried over every one when she finally managed to go through Bailey’s things.
When she looked at it now, her eyes welled with tears and she gave Bethany a squeeze before she hung the ornament on the artificial tree she had just set up in front of the apartment window.
“That smells good, Mommy. Is it cookies yet?
“Did you hear the ding on the timer?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not cookies yet.”
“Soon?”
“Soon.”
María flattened out a tree branch that’d gotten bent in the box.
“Would you like to go out into the woods and cut down a real tree next Christmas?”
Bethany’s face — her whole face — beamed when she smiled.
“With a axe?”
María hadn’t thought it through that far. An axe would be unwieldy, and she might end up chopping her foot off with it. Or Bethany might cut—
“No axe. Next Christmas, we will go to a tree farm and get the man who runs it to cut down whatever tree we pick.”
“Trees grow ona farm? Like chickens?”
“Yes, but the trees don’t lay eggs.”
“Acorns not tree eggs?”
“Come to think of it, I guess they are.”
The “real tree” was only one of the plans María had for after she graduated in June from Boston University. Anthropology/archaeology double major — because she was utterly fascinated by ancient civilizations. English minor because she cherished deep in her heart a yearning to become a writer. And no, her degree didn’t offer particularly stellar career opportunities. There was a reason why the best place to find an archaeologist was in fiction, and the Indiana Jones slot was already filled. She’d picked those majors in the beginning with an eye toward finding something more practical down the line, but she’d been too occupied with Bethany in the past two years to do more than stay the original course. Bethany’s financial future was assured by the trust set up for her from her parents’ estate. So María wasn’t being an irresponsible parent by picking a less lucrative career path. In the past couple of months, she’d been giving serious consideration to applying to law school. With a 3.9 GPA, she’d likely make the cut and next fall, Bethany would be four, ready for preschool.
“Look, Mommy, da angel’s wing is broke.” The plastic angel María’d purchased at a yard sale last summer had been on its last leg … well, last wing, then, but it was the one Bethany’d picked out so María had bought it anyway. “We needa take it to da doctor — for a shot.”
“All she needs is a little superglue and she’ll be good to go”.
María realized that her life plans were myopic, centered around her and Bethany exclusively. But María didn’t have time for anybody else in her life. She’d had an on-again off-again boyfriend when Bailey’d been killed, and he’d faded into the woodwork then. Actually, she hadn’t even realized he was gone for months.
There had been other men along the way, but she hadn’t been interested. She’d had her hands full with school and a toddler. It wasn’t hard to stay single when you were that busy. Besides, she was self-aware enough to realize she wasn’t a particularly pretty woman. She had a nice face, nothing to write home about — her nose was too big. She was nothing like the beauty Bailey had been. It was almost like pheromones and insects. She wasn’t attracting the attention of the opposite sex because she wasn’t looking.
But someday. Yeah, maybe there’d be a man in María’s life someday. After all, Bethany needed a daddy.
Chapter Fourteen
Brice pulled up at the Watford House a little before noon on Monday. He was driving his own car, not a sheriff’s department cruiser, but he was still in uniform.
“You’re not going to change clothes?”
“Planned to, but it got crazy. I’ve got a go-bag in the trunk. Jeans and a t-shirt — that’ll do.
“A t-shirt? Do you know how cold it is in—?”
“We’re only going to be there a few hours.”
“That’s the plan. But who knows what’ll—”
“I’m good.” He dismissed the subject before she could pursue it. She’d brought what she affectionately referred to as her Nanook of
the North coat.
“Do you know what you’re going to say to her?”
“Kinda sorta. I was hoping maybe we could all talk about that on the way.”
The Cessna Citation CJ2 was sleek and comfortable. Bailey didn’t even want to think about what it had cost Dobbs to charter it. As soon as the plane reached cruising altitude, T.J. tacked words onto the thoughts that had been chasing their tails around and around in her mind for hours.
“How you gonna tell your sister you still alive? You decided yet?”
Al Zankoski had texted Dobbs the address of María McKessen. Wouldn’t even charge him for the information, said Dobbs could have found it with his phone. It was in a nice neighborhood with big red-stone houses that’d been converted into apartment buildings, usually three up and three down, but occasionally a single apartment had a whole floor.
Bailey shrugged and tossed the ball back at him.
“How do you think I ought to break it to her?”
“I can tell you what I think that federal marshal, the Jordan fella, was plannin’ to do, the plan you’re doin’ an end run around right now.”
Bailey gave him a be-my-guest gesture.
“If I’s him, soon’s I got that Mikhailov behind bars I’d pay a visit to your sister, explain that I was a marshal with the Witness Protection Program … and then spill it. It would be a shock, sure, but not as shocking as opening the door and finding you on the other side of it.”
“The Marshal’s Service, the badge — he could soften it.” Brice had either come around to her view of the Boston trip or — more likely — resigned himself to the futility of arguing. “But he’s not here and we are. Say one of us goes first to warn her — she’ll think we’re crackpots at best and nut-cases at worst and she might even call the police.”
He was right, of course. He looked at Bailey when he continued.
“The only person who can approach María who isn’t suspect is you. Shocking as that will be, it’s better than the poor girl thinking somebody’s playing some cruel joke on her.”