“Fine,” Degale mumbled, rubbing her face in her hands. “I know I couldn’t keep up with y’all. Please, just go.”
Vivian checked her wristwatch. “If we don’t hear a whistle within twenty minutes, we’ll call the police.”
“You butter yourself a scone and sit tight.” Cleo leaned over and gave Degale’s cheek a smacking kiss. “We’ll be right back with your boy.”
At first Mac was relieved at the mild chill in the air as she followed Abby off the front deck. It wasn’t terribly cold, and the new snow wasn’t adding much to the white swells already carpeting the ground. But it was snowing crazy hard, a dizzying vale of flakes that obscured vision after only a few yards.
Cleo was disappearing into the white curtain rapidly as she trotted toward the west wing. “I’ve got my cell. Whistle when you find him, and then call Viv.”
“Keep your team together, Cleo,” Abby called, closing the collar of her jacket around her throat. “We don’t want to lose anyone else in this soupy mess.”
Cleo whistled back that she heard, but Mac had already lost sight of her, as well as the entire west wing.
“Good advice, Doc.” Mac took hold of Abby’s hand as they headed toward the trail that led to the open spaces behind the property. She shortened her stride to suit Abby’s shorter legs, and they both stepped carefully. The path was rocky under several inches of snow, and footing was treacherous.
“Waymon’s just getting over a head cold,” Abby said, “and he’s asthmatic. He shouldn’t be out in this.”
Mac could hear the worry in Abby’s tone. The snow’s chaotic dance was almost silent, and sound carried clearly.
“Let’s give him a call.” Mac was giving up on being able to see any farther down the path. “Loud, but keep your tone light. Don’t sound angry.”
“Waymon!”
Silence answered the chorus of their voices, and they kept walking. Faintly, Mac heard Waymon’s name echoed far behind them. Cleo’s team was searching the north yard.
Mac struggled to quell the first stirrings of real alarm. Kids wandered off all the time. She’d been on half a dozen lost-child quick searches in her career in shelters, and every kid had been found safe. It wasn’t that cold, it hadn’t been that long…
Abby let go of her hand and slid her arm around her waist. Mac didn’t know if she was seeking comfort or offering it, but she was instantly grateful. Abby glanced up at her, white flakes dusting her lashes, and smiled reassuringly—beautifully. Walking shoulder to shoulder, clinging to each other, they probably looked less like an intrepid search party than a pair of stumbling, anxious parents.
“Could those be tracks?” Abby gestured at minute indentations in the snow ahead of them.
“Could be,” Mac answered, but it was impossible to tell. The marks were irregular, mere nudges in the blanketed snow. “Let’s give another yell.”
They called Waymon again. While their voices almost seemed amplified at close range, the thick curtain of flakes buffered sound in the distance. Mac strained to hear Waymon’s high, piping voice, and turned instead at the far-off sound of stamping feet. “Did you hear that?”
“What, Mac?” Abby stopped immediately. “Did he answer us?”
Mac lifted her hand for silence, and she heard the sound again. Apparently she was the only one who did. “There’s something back this way.”
*
“Over HERE over HERE over HERE,” Ashy screamed, punctuating each yell with a flat-footed crash of her hard-soled shoes on the big rock. She could jump very high and stomp down very hard and loud. “Hurry UP hurry UP hurry UP!”
She only waited until she saw the dumb woman and the blond lady finally turn around and come back. Then she jumped down off the rock and scrambled back to Waymon.
He wasn’t crying when she left him, but now he was crying. Not a lot, but there were two tears rolling down his fat cheeks. She felt very bad for leaving him, but it was just for a minute. Ashy was scared. They were having so much fun until Waymon started breathing funny!
She sat down in the snow beside him under the tree. She knew he couldn’t feel her, so she just talked to him until the two grown-ups finally turned the corner around the rock and saw Waymon.
*
They reached Waymon quickly. He was sitting in the snow, leaning back against a pine, his short legs splayed. Recent tear tracks marked his cheeks, but he didn’t look frightened now. Waymon was frowning, his small eyebrows furrowed, obviously having to work hard to draw breath.
“Hello, little one.” Abby knelt in front of Waymon, already drawing a red-capped albuterol inhaler from her satchel. “We’ve used this before together, haven’t we?”
Abby slid the inhaler between the boy’s lips. Mac waited until they counted down and Waymon breathed in the medicine that would ease the constriction in his lungs. Then she mirrored Abby’s friendly voice. “Waymon, I’m going to blow this whistle, okay? Really loud, just like at the start of a game.”
Abby nodded, then shielded Waymon’s ears for good measure. The albuterol needed time to work, and they didn’t want to startle him.
Mac stepped a few feet away, lifted the whistle to her lips, and sent a long, piercing blast through the air. Then she fished the cell phone from her jacket pocket and keyed Fireside’s main line.
“We found him. He’s not far from the house.” Mac spoke quickly when Vivian answered. “Looks like he’s having a little trouble breathing, but Abby’s had him use the inhaler. Hang on for a moment. We’ll see if we need 911.”
“Wonderful, Mac. We’ll stand by.” Mac heard Vivian repeat the message to Degale.
Mac watched Abby’s face, rather than Waymon’s, as the seconds ticked by. Her eyes were keen as she studied the boy and talked to him quietly. In spite of Mac’s concern, there was room in her heart to wish that every lost and frightened kid in the world could be found by Abby Glenn. Her touch on Waymon’s wrist was maternal as she read his pulse.
As far as Mac remembered, Waymon’s history with asthma wasn’t particularly severe, but she’d seen some nightmare attacks in young children before. She didn’t exhale until she saw the faint lines in Abby’s forehead begin to fade.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” Abby capped the inhaler, then slid her hands beneath Waymon’s arms. “I’m going to pick you up out of this wet snow, little friend. I’ll bet your bum’s pretty cold.”
“Bum,” Waymon echoed sadly, but Mac was deeply relieved he had the air to complain.
“We need to get these wet pants off.” Abby stood, cradling Waymon in her arms, and Mac whipped off her jacket.
She helped Abby ease Waymon’s soaking pants and underwear off his legs, then wrapped his hips quickly in the warm bulk of her coat. The snow flurry was beginning to let up, but fat flakes still drifted around them, so they stood in a protective arc over Waymon to shield him. Mac thought he was looking better, his little body relaxed in Abby’s arms.
“Ashy,” Waymon said, pointing over Abby’s shoulder.
Abby glanced back. “Yes, I see the tree too. Mac, grab that small blue meter from my bag, please, and we’ll start back.”
Mac found it, and they walked carefully back toward the main trail while Abby had Waymon blow into the peak flow meter. She read the dial, then nodded at Mac.
“I think we can tell Vivian we won’t need an ambulance. He’s coming back nicely.”
Mac relayed the news over the cell, then looked up to see Cleo plowing toward them, followed by Jo and Tina, two residents from the west wing.
“Thanks for leaving good tracks,” Cleo puffed, her breath steaming in the air. “How’s the little bean?”
“Looks like he’ll be fine and feisty again soon.” Mac returned the high-five slap Jo offered.
“Waymon can tell us about his travels once we get him home.” Abby shifted the boy in her arms.
“I’ll be happy to pitch in with the Waymon-toting.” Cleo took Waymon gently from Abby, freeing her to retrieve her sa
tchel. “C’mon, little guy. Your grandma’s gonna be happy to see you.”
They plodded toward the house. Cleo glanced back at Mac.
“Don’t linger, Counselor. You’re out here half naked.”
Mac waved acknowledgement, then turned back to stare into the small stand of trees where they’d found Waymon. She folded her arms against the chill, hearing nothing now but the silence of the snowy woods.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you’re far too heroic to feel the cold.” Abby was still standing beside her, and she slid her arm around her waist again. “But I’m going to supply what thermal support I can, so just humor me.”
“Th-thanks.” Mac’s teeth had begun to chatter. She let Abby turn her away from the trees, but she looked back over her shoulder again as they followed the others toward Fireside. “You believe in an afterlife, Abby?”
Abby didn’t answer right away, her brow creased. “I haven’t really come to any conclusions about that, Mac. Lord knows I’ve thought about it often enough, in my line of work. I guess I’d say that I don’t have any firm beliefs in an afterlife. But I do have hopes. Why do you ask?”
“What about ghosts?” Mac stumbled a little on the uneven path, but Abby’s arm held her steady. “Any thoughts on those?”
“Well.” Abby brushed stray snowflakes from Mac’s shoulder as they walked. “My beloved childhood nanny believed in them. She was a bit of a romantic. She thought ghosts were souls who wanted something so badly, they haunted this earthly realm forever trying to find it. It sounds like a lonely existence to me.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Is something wrong, Mac?” Abby stopped and looked up at her.
And there in the snow, shirtsleeved and shivering, Mac almost told her. About hearing invisible footsteps when she was in grade school, and then junior high, and her friends teasing her when they walked together and she turned to look back at nothing. She almost told Abby about a ghost following her around the country for years, as tirelessly nomadic as she. A ghost who must have stomped on a rock to call them to Waymon, because that little boy sitting under a tree surely hadn’t.
“No, nothing’s wrong.” Mac nudged Abby on again. “Lost kids just spook me, I guess.”
The house came into view, and Mac saw Degale emerge from it and step off the front deck. The cluster of women in front of them waved, and Jo unleashed a cheerful whistle through two fingers. Mac was relieved to dismiss the notion of lonely ghosts in exchange for a happier scene of reunion.
*
She walked very quietly through the deepest part of the snow.
The woman looked back at Ashy, but she didn’t see her. She never ever saw her. She never heard her voice, either. Almost nobody could.
Maybe that was good. Look what happened when somebody finally saw her. Ashy went and got little Waymon in trouble, but she only meant to be friends.
She watched the woman walk away with the gentle blond lady with the blue eyes. Ashy liked that lady the best of all the new grown-ups. Back there in the forest, when the lady held Waymon in her arms, Ashy got really lonely for a second. She wanted to be where Waymon was, when the blond lady hugged him. She had hugged herself instead.
She liked all the woman’s new friends. There was nobody mean here, like that mean lady the woman lived with for a long time back at the other place. Everybody here was nice.
But they would probably leave again, Ashy knew. The woman never stayed, even where people were nice. Ashy hadn’t had a home for as long as she could remember because the woman was all she knew about home. And the woman never wanted to stay anywhere for very long. As soon as Ashy got used to a place the woman moved on. She said good-bye to all her friends and went away, and Ashy followed.
Ashy stopped as the woman and the nice blond lady got smaller as they walked away. She filled her lungs and yelled “Mac!” Then she yelled it again, as loud as she could. The woman didn’t turn around.
Ashy knew the woman’s name was Mac. She had known it forever. But why should she call her by her name? Mac didn’t ever call her by anything. At first, it had hurt Ashy’s feelings, a lot, that Mac didn’t even know her name. Now she didn’t care anymore. But she wasn’t going to call Mac by her name until she learned some better manners.
The woman had a lot of friends here, but Ashy only had the woman, who couldn’t even see her, and didn’t even know her name.
She watched all the grown-ups take Waymon inside the big house. Then she sat down on the ground and cried and cried.
Chapter Seven
Mac’s sessions with Degale often passed in comfortable silence.
She had no new wisdom to offer this grandmother, a survivor first of her husband’s abuse, and then her son’s. Degale Pettus understood interpersonal dynamics and self-empowerment, thank you. And she had talked things out enough. The silence she shared with Mac now allowed for deep contemplation, and thus was time well spent.
Tears would sometimes coast silently down Degale’s seamed face during these quiet sessions, as they did tonight. Mac watched the firelight from her small hearth flicker redly across the older woman’s weathered features. A windstorm was picking up outside, throwing sleet against the house like handfuls of rattling rice, but this small room was warm and safe.
Mac hadn’t told Degale about her own abusive relationship. She rarely disclosed her past to clients, or even to coworkers. She was able to convince herself that her silence was evidence of sound personal boundaries, and that was partly true. But Mac had made close friends in the past five years who had never heard about Hattie, and probably never would. She still felt shame.
And she castigated herself for that shame, even tonight. Mac spent uncounted hours counseling women through their guilt over staying in violent relationships. She helped them claim their histories as testament to their ability to survive. It was pure illusion to believe that any professional working in this field was somehow immune to abuse or coercion, Mac knew that. Perhaps, after enough years had passed, telling her story would come easier.
It wasn’t all that different from many Mac had heard from her clients, gender aside. Her first months with Hattie had been euphoric, filled with the passion of their shared political activism and unbelievably intense sex. Mac had been in her early twenties, and Hattie was eight years older, but Mac’s love for her had been innately protective. Hattie had survived a childhood in foster care that still haunted her. It gave her a passion for changing the child welfare system, but left her angry and cynical and wary, and in the second year of their relationship, increasingly vicious.
But you didn’t leave someone because she was in pain. You didn’t just give up on her. Not if you wanted to spend your life as a healer. Mac believed that, at twenty-three. She weathered the rages, the glasses shattered against walls, the nights when sex was more punishment than making love. She didn’t leave the first time Hattie hit her, or the second. It took an ambulance carting her to a hospital to bring her to her senses.
Degale was still silent, so Mac closed her eyes and let Hattie fill her mind, testing her image like a tongue probing a sore tooth. There was no real flash of pain. There hadn’t been for some time. Emotionally, she had done most of the hard work needed to close that ugly chapter in her life. It had quelled any immediate urge to jump into other relationships, true, but Mac had hardly been a nun. She had welcomed other women briefly into her bed, along the many stops her path had taken so far. They had taught her to make love gently again, to share all the pleasures of a woman’s touch that she had known she wanted since childhood.
Mac heard Degale hitch a slow, deep breath, and she opened her eyes.
“I could have lost that baby, the other day.”
“That’s possible,” Mac said quietly. “But not very likely. You knew Waymon was gone within five minutes.”
Degale nodded, but her shoulders were still slumped. “Never thought I’d be raising a grandbaby, not at my age. I sure want to do better by Waymon than I did by his da
ddy.”
“You’re working hard to make sure Waymon grows up in a loving home, with no violence. He’s lucky to have you, Degale.”
Degale smiled with real warmth and slid on her shawl. “You gonna drop in on our surprise party for Ginny tomorrow night, Mac?”
“I am, yeah. Looking forward to it.”
“Ginny’s gonna be fine down in Atlanta. Got a job waiting and family there.”
“I think she’ll be fine too.”
“Family sure counts.” Degale closed her eyes again, but the sparkle was back in them when she looked at Mac. “Thank you for your time tonight, honey.”
“I enjoyed it, Degale.” Mac waited while she climbed out of the sofa that sat before her office’s small fireplace. “Tell Waymon I’ll help him finish his snow fort before the party tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell him.” A wave of weary affection passed over Degale’s face. “You have a real nice evening.”
“You too, ma’am.”
After the door closed behind Degale, Mac unwound gingerly from the sofa, wincing freely now that there was no one to see her. She lifted a brass poker from the stand on the hearth and adjusted the nearly charred logs, relishing the fragrant remnants of pinesap, and then looked around the cozy room.
It was her office in full now. County stat sheets were stacked beneath her obsidian paperweight, a shiny ebony glory culled from a mine near Taos when she was a kid, hiking with her mom. Her mother had been in and out of psych wards for most of Mac’s childhood, but that had been a truly nice day. She had hauled that black rock in her duffel from town to town for over a decade.
Her favorite prints were on the wall, an O’Keeffe and a Pena. Mac dismissed any notion that Georgia didn’t intend to portray women’s sexuality in her paintings—those liquid swirls of pink and azure sang pure celebration of a woman’s most intimate pleasure.
Mac heard the faint chiming of the grandfather clock in the living room, and then a quiet tap at her door. She replaced the fireplace poker with a minor grimace, and her hand was on the doorknob when a white light washed over the wall. Cleo’s Jeep was trundling down the circular gravel drive outside, the headlights flashing across her small corner window.
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