And then there was another sound, a thump followed by the grunts and cries of a fight. Gwen wanted to see, needed to see, what was happening, but the cage held her tight. Fear suddenly welled up inside her as she realized what an insane situation she had found herself in.
Was she going crazy? Was this really happening, or was it all inside her head?
It had to be inside her head. Trees didn’t talk. And they certainly did not wrap themselves around people to create a protective cage.
Not only that, but there was no way a stranger would try to hurt Gwen, let alone walk around speaking an ancient language, but in a way that Gwen could understand her.
She was insane. It must be schizophrenia, or some other kind of psychological illness.
What else could it be?
“Gwen?”
She tried to turn her head again, despite having discovered several times already that she couldn’t.
“Cei?”
“Hold still. I’ll get you out of there.”
She could hear him whisper, but she couldn’t make out the words. In seconds the branches began to recede, freeing her body, her limbs, until she was able to sit up. Cei was there, squatting beside her. She moved into his arms, tears she hadn’t even realized were just below the surface began to fall.
“You okay?” he asked, his hands moving quickly over her shoulders, her arms. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He took her face between his hands, studied her for a long second before his hands became gentle, his thumbs brushing away her tears.
“Why don’t we get you out of here?”
He helped her to her feet and stooped to pick up her bag, which came up freely, as though it had never been stuck. Then he took her hand and led her away from the school.
Gwen glanced behind her. The tree looked as it always did, tall and regal, a beautiful oak that was as graceful as anything nature had made. But as she looked at it, the tree seemed to lean forward slightly, the branches reaching toward the ground just enough that it looked as though the tree was bowing.
Stay safe.
Chapter 17
“Theresa volunteers at Richie and Thomas’ school most Friday mornings, so she shouldn’t be home.”
Cei reached up over the top of the door and came away with a key. Gwen shivered as he unlocked and pushed the door open, slipping his arm around her to guide her inside.
He sat her on a kitchen chair and began opening cabinet doors. “I think Theresa keeps a first aid kit in here somewhere.”
“It’s fine,” Gwen said, lifting an arm to show him she was fine. But then she saw a collection of small scratches all along her forearm. She touched them lightly, blood smearing against her fingertips. “I didn’t—”
“Just scratches,” Cei said, finally finding the first aid kit and bringing it over to her. He carefully opened a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured a little on a sterile bandage. “Just let me clean them up.”
“The tree.”
He glanced up at her. “Yeah.”
“You saw it, too?”
“I did.”
A sob, quick and unexpected, slipped from Gwen’s throat. She laid her head back, tears again slipping from her eyes as she stared at the ceiling. Cei didn’t respond, he just kept dabbing at her scratches until her arms burned.
“Are you sure she didn’t hit you?”
Gwen didn’t answer. The whole episode was replaying itself in her head, the woman with the rock—but it wasn’t really a rock, was it?—staring at her from across the lawn. She could still see her as clearly as though she were in this very room. So beautiful. And standing in the same place Cei had stood that day she had lunch with Rhein.
Why did it feel like there was some sort of connection?
“Gwen,” his hands were again on her face as he tried to pull her gaze down to him, “answer me.”
“Did you see her? Who was she? Why was she there?”
Cei pulled away, climbing to his feet and busying himself with putting away the first aid supplies.
“Cei, did you see her? Because, I’m beginning to think that I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not losing your mind.”
Gwen grabbed his arm, pulled herself up so that she was standing almost eye to eye with him—she’d never be completely eye to eye with him unless he suddenly lost three or four inches. “You saw her. All of that was real.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t just…hallucinating?”
There was something like compassion in his eyes as he looked at her. “No. You weren’t hallucinating.”
“Then who was she? What did she want with me?”
Gwen could feel the hysteria building up in her chest, could hear it in the panicked tone of her voice. But, in that moment, she didn’t care.
“Gwen—”
“Tell me what’s going on. Why me? What did I do?”
“It’s not something you did.”
“Then what—”
“You have to calm down,” Cei said, taking hold of her arms and pushing her back into her chair. “It’s over now. There’s no reason to get all excited.”
“I was attacked, Cei. Someone came after me, she said that…that I—”
“That you, what?”
“That I was someone capable of something, that I needed to be killed.” Gwen looked up at Cei, grabbed the front of his shirt. “Why would someone want to kill me?”
“She was just a crazy person, Gwen. Probably just one of the many homeless people who live in the city.”
“In this part of town?” Gwen shook her head as an image of the woman filled her mind, the designer jeans and leather jacket she’d been wearing slipped through her thoughts. “She didn’t look homeless.”
“What other explanation is there for it, Gwen?”
He pried her fingers from his shirt and turned away, again busying himself with the first aid stuff. She watched but didn’t see. She played the whole thing over in her head again, the look on the woman’s face, the dissolving rocks, the voice of the tree.
Even if the woman was real, wasn’t it possible that the rest of it was just her imagination?
But where had the tree branch cage come from? And where did it go when it was all over? Gwen looked back. She didn’t see anything under that tree that could explain the cage that moved around her, that protected her.
It didn’t make sense.
Gwen knew nothing about her real parents. It was possible one of them had a history of insanity. It was possible that had something to do with why they abandoned her.
Maybe she had simply inherited it.
She went to the sink and ran the water, bathing her face in the cold water until her skin went numb and her thoughts began to clear. When she finally turned the water off, Cei was there with a clean towel.
“You’re in shock. It makes you see and think things that may not seem rational once you calm down.”
She nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“Why don’t you go upstairs, try to get some rest. I’ll call Tony and let him know what’s going on.”
Gwen touched Cei’s arm lightly. “Thank you. You saved me. Again.”
Cei’s eyebrows rose, but before he could argue, Gwen reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. When she pulled back, she thought she saw…something. But that was probably just her imagination, too.
She climbed the stairs two at a time, but she didn’t go all the way to the third floor. She waited on the second floor landing, listened to see if Cei would follow her. After just a second, she heard the door to Tony’s study close.
Gwen slipped into Tony and Theresa’s bedroom. There was a phone on the bedside table, just like there had been in almost every foster home Gwen had been in. It was only one of three in this house, not counting the one in Tony’s office that was on a different line so that his business calls didn’t interrupt family dinners—or so Theresa said. Gwen didn’t reall
y care what the reason was. She was just glad there were two different lines.
She dialed a familiar number, one she had been careful to memorize the second it was offered to her because she knew the moments she would need it the most would be moments when she didn’t have time to search out a piece of scrap paper to find it.
“Forrester.”
“Hey, Paul, it’s Gwen.”
There was a pause, then the dimming of the background noise, suggesting he had closed his office door. Gwen didn’t have to focus to picture Paul in his office; she’d seen him there so many times that she knew exactly what the scene looked like. He was sitting behind his perfectly organized desk, his computer on, but the monitor turned so that only he could see it. He would be leaning back in his cheap but comfortable office chair, his hair already mussed from the number of times he’d ran his fingers through it already that morning. There was a bulletin board behind him that he was always hitting with the back of his chair or an elbow, the papers tacked there torn on the bottom edges from the impact—she had once suggested to him that he stop putting papers there, but he wasn’t sure where else to put them in the small office space—the wall underneath smudged by the bottom of the chair and the heels of Paul’s shoes.
That was how she saw him in that minute, settling back in his chair with his fingers in his hair and his chair tearing another one of those lame fliers.
“What’s going on, Gwen? Why aren’t you in school?”
“I need a favor.”
“You know I’m always here for you. Whatever you need, within reason.”
“I need to know about my parents.”
There was a heavy pause. “Gwen—”
“I know you don’t know much about them. But my other social worker told me that the state had hired a private detective and that they had some idea who they might be?”
“This is a dangerous road for you, Gwen. Why now? What’s happened?”
“I just want to know about their medical history.”
“Are you sick? Theresa hasn’t said anything.”
“No.” Gwen stood up, needing to pace as the frustration of explaining this to Paul built in her chest. “I just…what do you know about my parents?”
Silence fell over the line. If not for the soft puffs of Paul’s breathing Gwen might have thought he had hung up on her. Then there was a long sigh.
“You are so close to getting out of the system. Why do you want to know now?”
Because I think I’m going insane.
But she couldn’t say that, could she?
“I just want to know.”
“And you know everything I do. You were found abandoned outside a restaurant in downtown Lubbock. The couple who found you thought they saw a tall, dark-haired man speak to you before walking away, but none of the employees of the restaurant ever saw him, and the police were never able to gather enough information from you or any of the witnesses to develop a sketch that might have helped them find the man. They don’t even know if he was your father since you refused to speak until a year later, and then you couldn’t answer their questions. You had apparently blocked the whole thing out.”
“But then the investigators—”
“They checked a bunch of area hospitals, hoping to locate a couple who’d had a baby girl about the same time they suspected you were born, but that led to nothing. They concluded that you were born in a different city, or even a different state.”
Gwen dragged her fingers through her hair, tears again welling in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, pushed them down, as her logical mind worked over everything Paul was telling her.
“What about the couple who found me? Do you know who they are? Maybe they know something more.”
“They’ve been interviewed dozens of times over the years, Gwen. If they knew anything helpful, it would have come out years ago.”
“What about the employees at the restaurant? Maybe someone—”
“What is this all about?” Paul’s voice had softened, adopting that I-know-you’re-upset-what-can-I-do tone. “Why do you want to know all of this now?”
Gwen stood in front of the lone window in Theresa and Tony’s bedroom. It was on the back wall, parallel to the bed and the side table where the phone normally sat. There was an old fashioned club chair stuck in a corner beside it, a book open on its arm. It was a cozy corner, perfect for a little reading nook. And the view out the window was spectacular. It looked over the back of the house, the generous yard and the alley behind it. But beyond that was the soft prairie that began just outside of the city limits and spread off into the endless horizon.
That wasn’t what Gwen saw. She saw rolling hills with grass so green it was almost unnatural, tall oak trees scattered here and there, a sweet scented breeze that could ease all human tensions. She didn’t know where it was, but it offered some peace.
“How can somebody just abandon their kid?” she asked softly, the urgency gone from her voice. It was a rhetorical question, one she had asked herself many times in the past, but never said aloud.
“I don’t know,” Paul responded, his sadness palpable, even over the impersonal phone line.
“And why don’t I remember anything from before? Three-year-olds don’t remember everything, but they remember some things, right?”
“Depends on the child.”
“Being abandoned is quite traumatic. Why don’t I remember that?”
“Each child is different.”
Gwen leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window pane. “I’ll never know anything about them, will I?”
“I wish I had something else to tell you…”
“It’s okay.”
Gwen turned in preparation of putting the phone down. As she did, she caught a little movement out of the corner of her eye. There was a bathroom across the room. The door was partially open, so she thought that she might have just caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror. But then she saw it again.
“Who’s there?”
“Gwen?” Paul asked in her ear. “What’s going on?”
The movement came again, something fluttering close to the ground. She walked around the end of the bed and cried out as a ball of brown burst up toward her.
“Gwen!”
And then she was laughing as her back slammed into the door and she slid to the floor. It was a bird, a small thing with cinnamon coloring on its back and a smashed-like face that reminded Gwen of an owl.
“It’s just a bird,” she said, still laughing a little. “There’s a bird in Theresa’s bedroom.”
“How did a bird get in there?”
“I don’t know.”
Gwen leaned forward and laid her hand on the carpet, palm up. “Hello, little one,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”
The bird considered her for a moment, tilting its head a little like a human might do when considering someone new. Then it hobbled over to her hand, climbing onto it as though it knew that this was what she had wanted.
Gwen lifted it carefully, smiling as she watched it watch her.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Paul asked.
Gwen had almost forgotten the phone.
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
“I am working.”
The bird made a funny little chirping sound, as though agreeing with Paul.
“Ganging up on me, huh?” Gwen laughed.
She climbed to her feet once again, something that was made quite difficult by the fact that she was holding the bird and the phone. But she managed, crossing to the bed again and sitting on the edge beside the nightstand.
“I’ll let you go, Paul,” she said. “I have stuff I should be doing.”
“Like school.”
“Like school.”
“You’re a good kid, Gwen,” Paul said. “Your parents are the losers in this situation.”
“Maybe.” Gwen sighed as she tried not to let her thoughts go back to that place. “And maybe it
’s all just a terrible misunderstanding. We can all fantasize, can’t we?”
“Always.”
She hung up a moment later, the bird still balanced weightlessly on her hand.
“What am I going to do with you?”
She was supposed to be upstairs, resting, so she took the bird with her. She sat in the open window, but the bird seemed perfectly content to stay with her.
“Do you think I’m insane?” Gwen asked it. “Thinking trees can talk and protect me from crazed homeless women?”
The bird chirped once and moved in its hobbling way up her arm.
“I don’t know what happened today, but it’s not the first time. I’ve heard the tree talk before. And the wind…I swear I heard the wind talk to me last night. And then the images I saw when I touched that book. Doesn’t a pattern suggest a psychological disorder?”
The bird chirped again before leaning over and rubbing its delicate head against her arm. Gwen ran her hand along the line of its back, awed by the delicacy of its body. It was strangely comforting, realizing something this fragile could survive in the wild. Maybe, if that was possible, she had a chance, too.
Insanity wasn’t the end of the world. It could be treated. True, it would require medication and psychotherapy for the rest of her life, but she could deal with that.
SONS of DON Page 11