Fearless

by Mike Dellosso

  “And that pays the bills?”

  “We don’t have many bills to keep up with. The farm’s been in my family since before I was even a thought, and the equipment, what little we have, is all paid for. Our son is a lawyer in Chicago. Partner in a big firm. I think he feels bad he’s not here to help tend the land, so he does what he can, or what eases his conscience, by funding it.” Bob rubbed his hands together. “Hey, why don’t you fire some farming questions at me and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.”

  “Good enough. How about starting with the tools here? What are the necessities a budding farmer needs?”

  Bob walked over to the workbench and ran his hand along the surface. The look in his eyes was one of pride and contentment. Here was a man who loved what he did with his hands, who took great satisfaction in his work. He and the bench were old friends and had no doubt spent countless hours getting to know each other. Most of the hand tools dangled from the pegboard in orderly fashion but a few—a hammer, a wrench, a couple screwdrivers—lay on the bench. These were the ones that got used the most.

  “A good work area is essential,” Bob said. “And a variety of tools.” He pointed to the pegboard. “You see here we have hammers in various sizes, mallets, an assortment of screwdrivers and wrenches, all the usual stuff.”

  The man pointed to a table saw standing next to the workbench. “And what’s that?”

  “That?” Bob looked at him incredulously. “Boy, you really are green, aren’t you?”

  Up until that moment, until that comment, the man was actually having second thoughts about what he had come to do. He could always find another farm, another place of solace and rest while he completed his task. This region of the state was dotted with farms. But that one remark burned him, ignited a fire that could not now be extinguished. He would spare Bob’s life because he believed the old farmer to be truly a humble man as Mitch’s grandfather was, but he would have to pay for his condescension, his disrespect.

  The man laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am. Can you show me how it works?”

  When Bob turned to the table saw and bent to hit the switch, the man grabbed the wrench from the workbench and brought it down on the back of the farmer’s head. It landed squarely with a solid thunk, and Bob dropped like someone had kicked his legs out from under him. He lay on the floor of the barn, motionless.

  On the pegboard, next to the hammers, was a wall-mounted handheld two-way radio, no doubt Bob and his wife’s way of communicating between the barn and the house. The man lifted the radio and depressed the talk button.

  “Uh, hello?”

  A couple seconds later, “Yes?”

  “Hi, uh, it’s Mitch. I think you should come out here, to the barn. Bob’s fallen over.”

  “Oh, dear . . . ”

  The radio went dead, and less than a minute later Bob’s wife appeared in the doorway, flour splashed across the front of her apron. She scanned the barn, found them, and ran to where her husband lay on the floor. Her eyes were wide and frantic.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “We were standing here talking, and he suddenly clutched his chest and went down, hit his head on the saw there.”

  “Oh, dear lord.” She dropped to her knees next to her husband, and when she leaned over him, Mitch Albright slipped the wrench from his back pocket and gave her a matching head wound. She went limp and collapsed on top of Bob.

  The man smiled and looked around the barn. Yes, this farm would do perfectly.

  His name, of course, was not Mitch Albright.

  Chapter 4

  JIM SPENCER SHUT off the alarm before it even rang. He had been in a light sleep, and his internal clock knew the time to awaken was near. Muted rays of light slipped past the edges of the dark shades and cast the room in a dusty glow. He listened but heard nothing. The house was quiet.

  He thought of Louisa, the enigma who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and saved Jake Tucker’s life. Who was she? Where had she come from? Perhaps she’d been abandoned on Jake’s farm minutes before the house went up in flames. It was sick, even unbelievable, but stranger things had happened.

  But there was another option, one Jim didn’t want to seriously entertain but nevertheless had to because it kept knocking on the door of his mind. She may be what Jake thought she was: an angel. It was absurd, unbelievable, and worthy of a visit to the asylum for even giving it weight . . . but there it was, a possibility.

  Whoever she was and wherever she came from, she was here now, in their house, on their sofa, and he needed to explain to Amy what had happened before she went downstairs.

  He rolled toward Amy and found her on her back, eyes open and staring at the ceiling.

  “Hey, you. Good morning.” He kissed her on the nose. “You’re awake already.”

  She turned her head toward him and smiled. “Good morning. I didn’t hear you come home last night.”

  “I know. I think I’ve mastered the art of walking on air. You were sleeping, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “What happened? Is Jake—”

  “In the hospital getting checked out. He’ll probably be released today.”

  “He’s okay then?”

  “Miller said he’d be fine. Just got a few good lungfuls of smoke.”

  “And his house?”

  “Gone. They couldn’t save it. Everything gone.”

  “Oh, how sad. Poor Jake.”

  Jim sighed. “Yeah. For now I imagine he’s just glad to be alive, but once that wears off, he’s gonna be hit with reality.”

  “I can’t imagine losing everything we have.” She stopped abruptly and folded her arms over her abdomen. A protective position, Jim knew. Her motherly instinct subconsciously kicking in. It already felt like they had lost everything.

  Jim propped himself on one elbow. “Amy, something strange happened at the fire.”

  “Stranger than poor Jake losing everything in the middle of the night?”

  “Much. There was a little girl in the fire with Jake.”

  “What little girl? Who?”

  “That’s the strange part. Nobody knows. She just showed up.”

  “Just showed up.” If she was trying to hide her disbelief, she didn’t do a very good job of it. Convincing Amy the child might be an angel stranded on earth would be as difficult as proving to her that Sasquatch was not only real but also a distant relative on her dad’s side of the family. “Was she hurt?”

  “Not at all. Jake said he never saw the girl before. It was as if she dropped from the sky.”

  “Like an angel.” The sarcasm in her voice made Jim abandon any idea of posing that as a viable option for her appearance.

  “No. She’s real, all right. Flesh and bone. Cute little thing too. She’s nine, but that’s all we know. She couldn’t tell us where she’s from or who her parents are. Can smoke inhalation cause memory loss?”

  Amy shrugged. “I guess. Carbon monoxide can.”

  “Miller asked me to take her home for the night.”

  Amy closed her eyes.

  As if on cue the bedroom door opened, and there, standing in the doorway, backlit by the light of the hallway, was Louisa.

  Amy opened her eyes and the child came forward, moving across the floor with small, even, determined steps, as if she were walking down the center aisle of a church spreading flowers before a bride. She kept her eyes on Amy the whole time. Those blue, piercing eyes cut through flesh, sinew, and marrow and examined the soul.

  Amy’s first intuition was to push back into the headboard, maybe even pull the covers up for some sense of protection or barrier. But the girl was so young and delicate, so innocent, she was hardly a threat. Her blonde hair was mussed from sleep and her dress wrinkled. Such a beautiful little dress, white with tiny blue flowers. But what grabbed Amy’s attention more than anything were those eyes. She’d never seen such a striking shade of blue. She was a remarkable child, indeed, and in fact looked exactly
how Amy had imagined her own daughter.

  That thought sent waves of prickles up and down Amy’s arms, and her flesh dimpled.

  Jim must have noticed her response, for he put a hand on her arm and said, “Honey, this is Louisa. She’s nine. Louisa, this is Miss Amy.”

  The girl, Louisa, stood beside Amy, her arms at her sides. If ever an angel came in human flesh, this is her, Amy thought.

  She suddenly had a lump in her throat, and she had to struggle to swallow past it. “Hello, Louisa.”

  Louisa didn’t smile, but her eyes seemed to glow with some queer sense of recognition. “Miss Amy.”

  Then the child lifted her hand and placed it on Amy’s abdomen, low, below the navel, and closed her eyes. Her touch, the feel of her hand, so light and gentle, rendered Amy as useless as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. She wanted to push Louisa’s hand away, tell her that area, that blessed, cursed, area was off limits, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak. There was something special—Mystical? Magical? No, it couldn’t be—about the child’s touch, something that sent involuntary shivers along Amy’s body.

  Louisa suddenly snapped her head up and opened her eyes. There was such hurt in them, such pity. Tears pooled along the bottom lid. “You’re hurt,” she said, and her voice quivered like a windblown leaf.

  Amy wanted to say yes, she was hurt, and wounded, and scarred. She had the sudden urge to shout it, to release all the pent-up emotion, the fear, the great sense of loss she’d carried around for the past six months. She wanted to take this child, this Louisa, in her arms and hold her, but she couldn’t; she was still paralyzed, still mute.

  All this time Jim said nothing. Amy barely noticed he was there except for his hand still on her arm. He seemed just as transfixed by what was happening as she was.

  Louisa kept one hand on Amy’s abdomen and smeared tears across her face with the other. She sniffed. “You are loved, Miss Amy. He adores you so much.”

  Amy found her voice, but that was it. The rest of her felt heavy and awkward. “Who?”

  “God. He hurts with you, but His love is bigger than the hurt. You have to believe that.”

  Amy didn’t know what to say. She was again struck mute not by any physical malady but by mere ignorance. She believed once that God loved her, but now she didn’t understand His way of showing it. Now she felt abandoned, left in some wilderness to fend off the wolves and cold and hunger by herself.

  “Do you believe it?”

  Still Amy said nothing. She couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she believed it or not.

  Louisa tilted her head slightly to the left, and the corners of her mouth curved upward ever so gently. “There’s still life in you.”

  Amy didn’t feel alive; she felt dead, like she’d perished with her baby daughter and now walked the earth as a zombie, trapped in her body but not really living.

  Then suddenly Amy’s strength returned, her ability to perform voluntary actions, and she was seized by a feeling of panic. Quickly she pushed Louisa’s hand away. “Jim.”

  Jim jumped up from the bed and walked around to the child. “Louisa, honey, let’s you and me go downstairs and get some breakfast, okay?”

  Louisa nodded. Jim ushered her from the room, leaving Amy alone with a weird burning in her abdomen. It was not uncomfortable but odd enough that it caused her to rub the area. The girl had affected her in ways she could have never imagined. There was something about her, this Louisa, something peculiar yet attractive, odd yet oddly familiar.

  Something that put an eel of uneasiness in Amy’s stomach.

  Chapter 5

  LOUISA CHOSE WAFFLES and vanilla ice cream for breakfast, and Jim didn’t argue. It was, after all, one of his favorite combinations. While the waffles toasted, he got the ice cream from the freezer and set it on the counter.

  “Now this is a good choice,” he said to Louisa. “Not the healthiest, but I’d imagine it’s better for you than a couple of doughnuts and a large latte, and people eat that for breakfast all the time.”

  While they waited for the waffles to finish, he couldn’t help but think about what had just occurred in the bedroom. Louisa, this girl who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, was a true enigma. What she’d said to Amy had given him goose bumps. Was it that obvious to someone else, even a child, that Amy was still licking her emotional wounds? He was around her every day, so he was sure on some level he’d grown accustomed to it, even immune to it. And Louisa was certainly no ordinary child. She was mature well beyond her years. What must she have already gone through in her young life to give her that kind of insight?

  The bell on the toaster oven rang. He opened the door and slid the waffles onto a plate. “All right, hot out of the toaster, the best way.” He divided them onto two plates, two apiece, and scooped a heaping amount of ice cream on each. “The warmth from the waffle will melt the ice cream just a little and soften it. Why don’t you find a seat at the table and I’ll get you a fork.”

  Louisa sat on a chair while Jim fished a fork from the drawer. He put the plate in front of her. “There you go, Mr. Jim’s famous ice cream waffle breakfast. You won’t find a better-tasting breakfast in all of the state of Virginia.”

  Louisa smiled and eyed the waffles hungrily. “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Jim got his own plate and a fork and joined her at the table.

  Louisa looked up from her plate. “Will Miss Amy be joining us?”

  Jim paused. “Not yet, sweetie. She’ll come down a little later.”

  “Can you say grace?”

  Again Jim hesitated. Ever since Amy’s miscarriage prayer seemed different, forced, even useless. Like words spoken in an empty room with no one around to hear them.

  He forced a smile, said “Sure,” then quickly prayed, thanking God for the food, for Jake’s safety, and asking him to please help them find Louisa’s parents.

  When he said “Amen,” he lifted his head and found Louisa staring at him. “What is it, sweetie? Is something wrong?”

  “No. I just wanted to watch you pray.”

  For no apparent reason the goose bumps returned to Jim’s arms. Had she caught a hint of his faltering faith in the sound of his voice? Could she see past his propped-up exterior to his wounded spirit? “How did I look?”

  She shrugged. “Normal.”

  “Good. Normal is good, right?”

  When she didn’t answer, Jim said, “Eat your breakfast, sweetie, before the ice cream melts too much and all you have is a gooey, soggy mess. Then I’d have to get you a spoon to eat it with, and waffles aren’t made for spoons.”

  Louisa wasted no time digging into her breakfast. Midway through the mound of ice cream Jim said, “Louisa, do you have any memory of your parents at all?”

  She paused, and a distant look overtook her eyes. They focused on nothing in the room but rather something in her mind, some far-reaching memory bank that was now as empty as an abandoned vault. The fork hovered over the plate, dripping melted ice cream. Finally she refocused on Jim and shook her head. “No. I can’t remember a thing.”

  “You don’t remember how you got to Mr. Jake’s house?”

  “No.”

  “Where you got that pretty dress?”

  “No.”

  “But you remember your name is Louisa and that you’re nine years old.”

  She thought a moment. “I guess so.”

  “Well, hopefully Chief Miller will be able to find something out.”

  She cut off a huge piece of waffle topped with ice cream and shoved it into her mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she looked at him with those intensely blue eyes, eyes that seemed to be hiding something, a secret of sorts, and said, “Yes. Hopefully.”

  Again the goose bumps were there, running patterns up and down Jim’s arms. Why wasn’t this child more upset? Shouldn’t she be spooked too? Or did amnesia not only take away memory but also emotionally paralyze its victim?
>
  Louisa took another bite of her waffle, chewed, swallowed. “Will you have to go to work today?”

  “No. I’m taking the day off. I work here at home, though. I write books. Most people wouldn’t call it work at all, but it is.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Books for grown-ups. Love stories. Not the kind you see in the grocery store—” He remembered who he was talking to. “Nice love stories.”

  He hadn’t always been a full-time writer. For the first ten years of their marriage he’d worked as a mechanical engineer and wrote on the side. He was able to put out twelve books in that time, but none of them had garnered any national attention. Sales were respectable enough that the publisher kept the contracts coming, but there was not a best seller among the lot. Then a movie producer in Hollywood found his books and fell in love with them. One after another she optioned his stories and found homes for them, mostly at Hallmark and Lifetime. It was nothing to make him rich, but it was success like Jim had not seen before, and when he’d gotten a couple movie deals under his belt, enough money started coming in on a regular basis that he could quit his engineering job and write full-time.

  “Does Miss Amy work?”

  “She did. She was a teacher. But she’s taking this year off.”

  “How did Miss Amy get so hurt?”

  The question did not take Jim by surprise. He expected she would ask it sooner or later and thought it would be sooner. “Well, this past April she got pregnant. Miss Amy had always wanted to be a mother, but for some reason it just didn’t happen. Finally, after we’d been married for fifteen years, it happened, so as you can imagine, this was a very special baby.” He had never told the complete story to anyone, and here he was spilling it to a nine-year-old. “She was a girl, and we were going to name her Olivia.”

  “Olivia is a beautiful name.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He paused and pushed melting ice cream around on the plate with the fork. This next part was the hardest. Amy had her wounds, certainly she did, and they were raw and oozing still, but he was also hurt. He’d wanted a child too, and the thought of having a daughter, a little girl to spoil and cuddle, had put him on another level of happiness. But when the miscarriage happened and he saw the needless suffering Amy endured, such sadness overcame him that it plunged him beneath dark waters and held him there. He cried out to God at first, begged for mercy, for any relief. He needed air; they both did. But there was only silence.