I was thinking about Joe Randazzo, the county supervisor, and how much he would love to nail us on even the most minor infraction when something, or someone, appeared in the road about ten feet in front of me.
The figure was swathed in pale, billowing fabric. Its face was hidden from view. Even though I knew better, my foot hit the brake hard in a very human reflexive action. The car slid sideways and moments before it made contact, the figure merged with the falling snow and disappeared.
“Damn,” I muttered, forcing my hands to release their death grip on the steering wheel. The car was now perpendicular to the road, front bumper almost kissing a giant maple tree. I was shaking so hard I could hear my teeth rattling inside my head. Were Rohesia’s people practical jokers or had the individual been trying to scare me into an accident? Of course, there was the possibility that whoever or whatever it was had wandered away from their settlement and had been every bit as scared as I had been by the encounter.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t laughing. I could have hit that tree and been killed, leaving my daughter motherless the same way I had been.
Not for the first time, I wondered if I had made a mistake opening up Sugar Maple to Rohesia’s clan, a group whose understanding of our 21st century earthbound dimension was non-existent. When my mother agreed to betroth me to Gavan on my sixth birthday, her intention had been to ensure both my future security and that of the creatures of Sugar Maple. Linking our clans through a dynastic marriage must have seemed a foolproof way to secure my birthright.
My mother had no way of knowing she wouldn’t live out the day or that, years later, her daughter would fall in love with a human, same as she had, and set out to make a life with him.
Had I made the decision to bring Rohesia’s clan into our dimension out of guilt or a sense of duty? I wasn’t sure it mattered but the question lingered just the same. Still, they were here and it was up to me to figure out how to make it work before the entire town turned against me.
First, however, I had to get home.
I struggled to get the Buick back on the road and facing in the right direction. Even though I was close to the cottage, the fear of being alone in a storm set my nerves on edge. There were some things not even magick could overcome and nature was one of them. Thanks to my human ingenuity and a humongous bag of kitty litter in my trunk, I finally managed the task.
My cottage can be reached only by a dirt road that veers off from Osborne at the edge of the woods. In fact, calling it a road is giving it too much credit. Path is more like it. In fact, if you didn’t know the path was there, you would never find it.
The tire tracks left by Wendy’s van an hour ago were rapidly filling with snow. I followed in their wake, slipping and sliding, up the slight rise that led to the cottage.
Lights burned brightly in the windows. Curls of smoke rose from the brick chimney and disappeared into the swirling snow.
The ten-minute drive had taken forty-three minutes but I was home safe.
Well, almost.
I had told Wendy to park her faded minivan in the driveway, as close to the front door as possible, to limit the baby’s exposure to the wind-blown snow. I parked the ancient Buick at the foot of the driveway, turned off the engine, and swore I wouldn’t drive again until the spring solstice.
As much as I missed Luke, I was glad he had opted to stay another night in Philadelphia. Before long both the highways and our twisty, narrow local roads would be thick with snow and ice. The thought made my blood run colder than the wind that propelled me up the driveway.
I was halfway to the front door when I heard a loud crack to my right and before I could react, something hard and cold and wet hit me in the head and sent me tumbling into the accumulating snow.
Chapter 4
MALLORY
"Laria can fly.”
Six years of motherhood had pretty much prepared Mallory Dawson Grant for everything. She didn’t miss a beat.
“A flying baby?” She cast a quick glance at her daughter Ava in the rearview mirror as she rolled to a stop at the traffic light near the entrance to the highway. “That’s pretty cool.”
Ava nodded. “Her daddy doesn’t like it, but it makes her mommy laugh.”
“How do you know Laria can fly?” Mallory asked. “Did you see her fly?”
“No,” said Ava. “She told me.”
Imagination was a wonderful thing, but Mallory knew there was a fine line between storytelling and lying.
“I didn’t know Laria could talk. Sounds like she’s a pretty smart baby.”
“Yes,” said Ava, “she is. But she only talks to me.”
“And why is that?”
She caught a glimpse of tiny shrugged shoulders. “Because I can hear her.”
“Can’t her mommy hear her?”
“I don’t know.”
The light changed to green. Mallory’s breath hissed as her tires struggled for purchase on the snowy roadway. It had taken an hour to travel the fifteen miles between Sugar Maple and the highway that would take them south to Rhode Island. A gas station and a pair of fast food restaurants beckoned near the entrance to the highway. Time to make an executive decision.
“Bathroom check,” she called over her shoulder. “This might be our last chance before we get to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.”
“Yes,” Ava said, nodding her head vigorously. “And hot chocolate.”
“First the hot chocolate, then the bathroom.” A small distinction, but an important one when the car trip ahead would be measured in hours, not minutes.
Of course, they ended up with more than hot chocolate. She purchased a Happy Meal for Ava and splurged on a Big Mac with fries for herself. The inside of the restaurant was well-lighted and warm and for a few minutes Mallory forgot about the snow slapping against the big windows.
Josh’s parents would be so surprised when they pulled into their driveway and beeped the horn. Trish and Allen were both retired teachers in the early stages of what-do-we-do-next. They had been thinking about part-time tutoring but hadn’t yet pulled the trigger.
She loved her in-laws, even more now that her own parents were gone. She wanted Ava to spend as much time with them as possible. Grandparents were important, especially when your father was stationed on the other side of the earth. It scared Mallory to think of how few people stood between her daughter and a dangerous world. If something happened to Josh or to her, she knew Trish and Allen would guide Ava into adulthood, but she wasn’t going to let it come to that. Not if she could help it.
Even though it was still early days, she and Josh had decided to tell his parents that she was pregnant again. Conceiving Ava had been a miracle. Getting pregnant a second time? That was the stuff of dreams, even if it had happened the night before he had deployed to Afghanistan. Unexpected. Wonderful. Very scary. Fortunately, Boston was a short drive from her in-laws’ home in Rhode Island and she had an appointment Tuesday at Brigham with a high-risk pregnancy expert.
There wasn’t a scrap of wood in the entire restaurant, so she knocked on the tabletop.
“Why did you do that, Mommy?”
Her Ava never missed a trick.
“Just a superstition, honey.”
The child’s brow crinkled. “What’s that?”
“Something you do because you’ve always done it.” And you’re afraid that if you quit doing it, the world will stop spinning on its axis.
“Why?”
“For good luck.”
“Why do you need good luck?”
“Everyone needs good luck.”
Ava considered that for a moment. “What’s luck?”
“It’s like when you find a quarter on the ground and you weren’t looking for it.”
Ava nodded, her small face serious. “Can I have one of your fries, please?”
Another lesson in motherhood. Never volunteer more information than your kid is actually looking for. Mallory hoped she remembered that wh
en it was time for the where do babies come from talk.
“Where’s your flower?” Mallory asked. “Did you put it in your pocket?” The crocheted hot pink accessory was one of her daughter’s favorite things.
“I gave it to Laria.”
“You did?” Mallory was surprised. Ava loved the yarn flower so much that she even wore it when she slept. “What made you do that?”
“She said she liked it.”
“That was very generous of you, Ava.”
Her daughter nodded. “I know.”
She would whip up another one for her girl tomorrow.
They finished their meals, paid a visit to the bathroom, and were about to leave when Mallory decided to check for messages.
“Tell me this isn’t happening,” she said, her voice shaking.
Ava looked on, eyes wide with curiosity, as Mallory fumbled through her pockets. She emptied the contents of her enormous purse on a cleared table, pushing her way through socks-in-progress, two copies of Vogue Knitting, her wallet, a juice box, a bag of oatmeal raisin cookies, coloring books, crayons, and three packets of tissues.
“Mommy?” Ava’s voice was high with concern. “What are you looking for?”
“My phone.” Mallory managed to sound calmer than she felt. “I can’t find it.”
“I bet it’s in the car,” Ava said. “Remember when the water bottle rolled under the seat that time?”
The car! Of course it was in the car. Where else would it be?
Except it wasn’t. For once the interior of the minivan was free from clutter.
“Daddy says the best way to find something is to think back to all the places you remember seeing it.”
A sharp spear of longing pierced Mallory’s heart but she pushed it aside and stayed focused. Military spouses were good at that.
“I had the phone in the knit shop,” she said out loud. “I changed our outgoing message just before the workshop started and saw the battery was getting low.” She groaned. “I asked Chloe if I could plug it in to recharge.”
And then she had totally forgotten all about it.
There was no way she was going to brave the highway during a snowstorm with no phone and a six year old in the back seat. Like it or not, she had to go back to Sugar Maple and retrieve her phone.
Mallory was a snow country girl. Born and raised in upstate New York, she had grown up so close to the Canadian border that her first word was hockey. Navigating through snow was second nature to her. She knew the drill. Slow down. Concentrate. Keep a light foot on the brake and be prepared to steer into a skid. Make sure you have a bag of kitty litter in the trunk, some reflective blankets, flares, flashlights, batteries, bottles of water, a few protein bars. You would probably never need any of those things, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
That was what you did from November until May and you didn’t think twice about it.
But it was the second Saturday in October. The weather forecast hadn’t even whispered rain, much less snow.
And she hadn’t given a single thought to the unexpected.
So now there she was in the middle of a Vermont blizzard with her daughter in the back seat and no water, no blankets, no kitty litter in the trunk, and no cell phone.
The roads weren’t great but they were still open. She wasn’t sure that would be the case an hour from now, but so far, so good. The trip back seemed to be taking a long time, but given the reduced visibility and speed, that was understandable.
The miles slowly accumulated beneath her wheels as she kept moving back toward Sugar Maple. She consoled herself with the fact that she was far closer to town than she was to the highway. Slow but steady, she told herself. It seemed like they had been on the road forever, but she was making progress.
Something up ahead caught her eye and she slowed down to a crawl. A fallen tree the size of a T-Rex completely blocked the two-lane road from shoulder to shoulder.
“Why did we stop?” Ava asked from the back seat.
“There’s a tree blocking the road.”
Ava squirmed in her car seat, trying to see. “Where?”
“Right in front of us.”
“What are we going to do?”
Good question.
“Stay put,” she said. “I’m getting out of the car so I can look around.”
The snow stung her skin like shrapnel and she was shocked to realize the accumulation already went halfway to her knees. For one crazy moment, she considered abandoning her phone altogether and heading back toward civilization but she had to be within shouting distance of Sugar Maple and a warm place to spend the night.
She spotted what appeared to be some kind of path or roadway about twenty yards back. It was worth a shot. The path had to lead somewhere. A house, maybe, or a short cut to a bigger road that would take her to Sugar Maple or one of the other nearby towns. What other choice was there? The snow was getting deeper and she would never be able to retrace her steps back to the highway entrance. And sitting in a freezing car, praying that help would somehow find them was not an option.
It took every ounce of snow-driving experience and an awesome vehicle with blessed all-wheel drive, but she finally managed to back up to the path and start moving forward again.
She grinned at Ava in the rear-view mirror. “Now that’s what a woman driver can do!” she said, feeling more than a little pleased with herself.
Ava was engrossed in watching a video and paid no attention.
One day she would understand.
The only thing that kept the path even remotely identifiable was the canopy of trees overhead, deflecting some of the accumulation. She had always prided herself on her sense of direction but this time she was stumped. North. South. East. West. She had no idea which direction she was headed and no landmarks to guide her.
“I’d kill for a working GPS,” she muttered, relaxing her grip on the wheel a little. The glow of her headlights made the falling snow glitter like precious gems as she moved steadily forward. “I shouldn’t have turned back.”
“What, Mommy?” Ava piped up from behind her.
“I said I shouldn’t have turned back, honey. I should have found a Best Buy, bought a burner phone, and then hopped onto the highway.”
“But you didn’t,” Ava said, with the practical logic of a six-year-old.
“No, I didn’t,” Mallory agreed, “so now it’s time for Plan B.”
In the back seat, Ava giggled. “Daddy says Plan B means Plan A sucks.”
“Ava!” She was trying hard not to giggle herself. “Don’t say ‘sucks.’”
“Daddy does.”
“Daddy can. You can’t.”
She didn’t have to see her daughter’s face to know there was some major sulking going on.
“We’ll stay in Sugar Maple tonight,” she said in as relaxed a tone as she could manage. “We’ll have a good sleep, eat a big breakfast in the morning, then drive down to Rhode Island to Grandma and Grandpa’s house after they plow the roads.”
“Can we stay with Laria?”
“We’re not going to bother Laria. We’ll just ask her mommy for our phone and say thanks.”
“I want to finish showing Laria how to knit.”
“Maybe next time.”
“When next time?”
Take a deep breath, Mallory. Count to ten. “The next time Chloe schedules a workshop.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you ask?”
“After I find my phone.”
Ava thought about that for a moment. “That makes good sense.”
Mallory’s irritation ebbed as quickly as it had flowed. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I liked knitting.”
“I liked it, too, when I was your age.”
“When was that?”
Mallory grinned into the rearview mirror. “A long time ago.”
“How long?”
�
�You have a lot of questions tonight.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m curious.”
“Twenty-eight years ago,” Mallory said.
“Twenty-eight plus six,” Ava said, a question in her voice.
“Can you add those numbers together?”
“It’s a big number.”
“Yes, it is,” Mallory said, laughing. “Definitely a big number.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. She wished she had a map so she could get an idea how deep the woods around Sugar Maple were. It felt like she had been driving through them for hours. She glanced down at the gas gauge and winced.
Concentrate on driving, Mallory. You can worry about filling the tank in the morning.
First she left her phone behind at Sticks & Strings. Then she forgot to top off the gas tank at the station right next to the McDonald’s where they’d stopped to eat. Normally she had the bits and pieces of life under control, mainly because she had no choice. With Josh in Afghanistan, she was operating as a single parent, which meant there was no room for error. She wasn’t a control freak, but she did find comfort in knowing she was in charge.
Not that she felt in charge at the moment.
The woods seemed to go on forever. Even taking the blinding snowstorm into account, she should have stumbled onto Sugar Maple by now. She silently cursed the downed tree that had sent her in this direction.
“Why did the man run away?” Ava’s high-pitched voice broke the silence.
Mallory frowned and glanced in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“Back there,” Ava said, squirming around so she could look out the back window. “He was waving at us.”
Her daughter had been blessed with an active imagination. Sometimes Mallory found it difficult to distinguish facts from flights of fancy.
“Did you wave back?”
“I wanted to, but he ran away.”
“Where did he go?”
“Back into the woods.”
“I bet he’ll be happy to get home.”
“Maybe he lives in the woods.”
“Maybe he does,” she said, glancing back at her daughter in the rearview mirror. “I hope he stays warm.”
Entangled- The Homecoming Page 4