by Sarah Wynde
He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered, “Carla something. Didn’t catch it. Community Family Services.”
Standing, Natalya gestured for Colin to hand her the phone. She’d take care of this. He scowled but she wiggled her fingers at him, demand clear, and he passed the phone to her.
“Carla? Natalya Latimer here.”
“Dr. Latimer! The sheriff didn’t mention you.” The woman sounded surprised, her tone tense.
“We must have woken you up,” Natalya said, making her tone sympathetic. “And on Christmas. How did you get stuck with this shift? You’ve been with the agency what, four, five years, now? Shouldn’t one of the new girls be working the holiday?”
“It’ll be six in March,” Carla answered, sounding more relaxed. “And I’ll tell ya, if I’d known what today was gonna be like, I sure wouldn’t have signed up for this shift.”
“Bad day?”
“A home visit that didn’t go well and two emergency placements. Plus all the usual juggling around the holidays. The Ruiz’s needed to visit out-of-state family—Marco’s mother is ill—and the Thompsons have visitors.”
“What about Mrs. Watson? Is she available?”
“She’s got a toddler and a baby, so she’s at capacity.”
“Who else do you have?” Natalya asked.
As Carla rattled down a list of names and reasons why each one wouldn’t work, Natalya turned some of her attention back to the exam room. Colin had picked up his shirt and was shrugging into it, but his eyes were on her.
“It sounds as if we need a new recruitment drive,” Natalya said, interrupting Carla.”
“This isn’t typical, it’s just—” the woman started.
“I’ll make sure it gets on the agenda for the next board meeting.” Natalya spoke over her. “Meanwhile, though, what do we do for the moment? I’ve got a little girl here who needs a bed to sleep in.”
“I’ve got space free at the juvenile facility and Hart House, but as I was telling the sheriff, that’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I can start calling out of county, but I can’t tell you how long it’ll take.”
“Hmm.” Natalya considered the options. Her role on the board was mostly symbolic, based on General Directions and the Latimer family being the largest financial contributors to the agency. She had no experience navigating the system.
“What are you doing there, anyway?” Carla asked. “Why did the sheriff call you?”
“Oh, just a little emergency first aid,” Natalya answered.
“Is she hurt?”
“Not seriously, no.”
“A hospital might be an option, though. I realize they won’t want to keep her, but if there was a bed on the pediatrics floor, maybe we could justify an overnight observation.”
“What about an emergency placement?” Natalya asked slowly. “For the same reason?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not licensed, but I took the training class last year as part of the development planning. And I’ve got a guest bed.”
“You’d let her stay with you?”
“For the night,” Natalya clarified hastily. “To keep her under medical supervision. Just in case.”
“That would work,” Carla said, sounding eager. “Up to twenty-four hours. And beyond that, thirty days if a judge signs off.”
It couldn’t take a month to find the girl’s parents. Surely they’d find them tomorrow. Maybe even by morning if the rangers got lucky.
Without even thinking about it, Natalya concentrated, expecting to see what would happen. Would it be a phone call, reporting the news? Or would someone show up at her door? Would they be at the sheriff's office? But nothing came to her.
She tried to summon a recent memory and it was easy: standing on the porch of her childhood home, the lights sparkling, the poinsettias red against the white porch, her father’s deep voice telling her to drive safely, Grace shoving food into her hands. But when she thought of the future, her mind was blank. Empty.
A paranoid person might think the emptiness meant she had no future.
Good thing she wasn’t paranoid.
Chapter Four
“Hannah.” Natalya’s eyes flickered open.
“Emily.” She lay still, motionless for the second or two it took to identify her location.
“Jane.” Her own bed, with its soft cotton sheets and thin, lightweight quilt.
“Anne?” Her own room, cream walls, moss-green trim, a careful selection of her own colorful artwork hanging within easy eyesight. But something wasn’t right.
“Am I totally off-track here?”
The voice was part of it. She recognized it, of course. Grace, her tone one of mild complaint. But what was she doing here? As Natalya sat up, she waited for her foresight to kick into action, for her brain to preview the next few minutes for her and answer her question, but her mind refused to cooperate, staying stubbornly blank.
“Should I be trying names like Sunshine? Harmony? Dharma? Cosmic Bliss?”
The light. That was what else was wrong. She’d overslept. Morning sun scattered its rays along the hardwood floor as she threw off the quilt, fumbling for a robe, and hurried into the short hallway leading to the adjacent kitchen.
Grace was sitting at her table, watching the little girl across from her eat. “More?” Grace offered, reaching for the cereal box.
Natalya tried in vain to recall what would happen next. Nothing. “What are you doing here, Grace?”
“I was going to make you come shopping with me,” Grace answered, pouring more granola into the girl’s bowl. “But I got distracted by the burglar in your kitchen.”
“She’s not a burglar.” Nat crossed to the sink and pressed the On button on her coffee maker. The low water light blinked at her, so she grabbed the sprayer from the kitchen sink to refill the reservoir.
“Depends if you want cereal for breakfast, I guess. That’s the end of your granola.” The girl’s spoon clattered against her bowl as she dropped it.
“No, no,” Grace said hastily. “I was just kidding. I’m the one who fed you, so that makes me the burglar.” She nodded toward the bowl. “Go ahead, eat. Nat’ll find something else.”
“There’s plenty of food.” Natalya turned to reassure the girl, noticing too late that she was letting water splash out of the coffeemaker. Oops. With the coffee started, she grabbed for a dishtowel and wiped up the water on the counter.
“Neighbor have a childcare emergency?” Grace asked as the girl started spooning cereal into her mouth, neatly but too quickly, her eyes down.
Cleaned up and wearing a brightly-colored t-shirt Natalya had given her to sleep in, she could maybe pass for a neighbor kid—if, that is, Natalya had any really crappy neighbors whose kids were half-starved, bruised and scraped, wary and silent, which she did not.
“Not exactly, no.” Natalya leaned against the sink, waiting for the machine to finish brewing.
“So where’d you get her?”
“I, um, found her.” Natalya ran her hands through her hair and yawned. She was going to have to tell Grace the whole story, she realized. Beginning to end. Finding Colin on the road. Colin not dying. The premonition. The past. Her foresight going wrong. Her foresight being gone.
“You found her? Like how? Like you’d find a stray kitten?” Laughter underlay the surprise in Grace’s tone.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No.” Hell. Natalya wasn’t ready to cope with Grace being efficient. She needed caffeine. She reached for the coffeepot.
“Why not?” Grace demanded.
“I didn’t need to. I mean I—” Coffee pot in one hand, Natalya turned, stepped, and slipped in a puddle of water on the floor. The coffee pot went flying.
Grace almost caught it.
Almost.
A yelp from Grace as the glass burned her hands and she tried to juggle the coffee pot, a crash-smash as it hit the
floor, a squeak of dismay from the child, a scrape as she pushed her chair away from the table and fled, and instant, profuse, apologies from Natalya.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so—sink!” Natalya finished with the order, grabbing her sister and tugging her over to the kitchen faucet.
Grace stared at the coffee staining the shirt, the brown liquid rapidly soaking into the sleeves. “Ouch?”
“Take it off,” Natalya ordered, turning the handle and shoving Grace’s arms under the cool water.
“I can’t take my shirt off when you’re pushing me around.” Grace protested automatically, before shoving both arms together and lifting them up so the water trailed down and dripped off her elbows. “What the hell, Nat? How did you not know that was coming?”
Natalya closed her eyes, feeling sickness wash through her. She’d burned her sister. But she never had accidents. Never. Her foresight should have kicked in the moment she heard Grace’s voice. She should have known what was coming before she even got out of bed.
“Don’t worry about the shirt,” she corrected herself. Lavender oil. Where was it? Her bathroom, probably, from the last time she’d used it in the tub as a relaxing aromatherapy. “Wait here. Keep your arms under the water.”
She hurried away. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Her friend Tim’s medical school litany swam through her head, ‘Fear is the mind killer. Let it go. Focus on the now.’ But it didn’t work.
Grace was burned. It was Natalya’s fault. And her foresight, her vision, the gift that had so often felt more like a curse, was gone. Nausea churned in her stomach and her pulse thudded in her ears.
With the lavender oil clutched in her palm so tightly her nails dug into her skin, she returned to the kitchen. “Okay, I’ve got it.”
But she wasn’t the first one back. The little girl stood next to Grace, on tiptoe, peering over the edge of the sink, her hands holding Grace’s arm while the water sluiced down. The girl met Natalya’s eyes, then soundlessly, she dropped Grace’s arm and darted toward the archway leading to the front room.
“Wait,” Grace said. “What was that? How did you, what did you, come back!”
The moment felt familiar. The little girl had run again, just like last night. But why? Natalya listened but there was no sound of the front door being pulled open, so with a worried frown, she turned her attention to her sister. “Take off your shirt.”
Grace shook her head, but not in refusal. Her hands started working the buttons as she said, “I think I’m fine. Really. It doesn’t hurt.”
Natalya’s mouth twisted. Burns could be deceptive and a lack of pain wasn’t always a good sign. But as Grace dropped her soaking shirt into the sink and held out her arms, Natalya’s frown deepened.
Grace’s arms were pink. Pink like skin run under cold water.
“Uh…” Natalya started, holding the lavender oil up. “Where does it hurt?”
Grace shrugged. “I told you. It doesn’t.”
Natalya set the oil down on the counter and took Grace’s left forearm into her hands. She turned it this way and that, holding it up to the light from the kitchen window. No red, no blisters, definitely no dead white skin. She dropped it and reached for Grace’s other arm. Same thing. With no vestige of embarrassment, she scrutinized Grace’s chest and stomach. Pink healthy skin, no evidence of a burn. Not even a mild first degree burn.
“Nice bra,” she said absently, trying to visualize the accident in her head. She’d spilled the coffee on Grace. The shirt proved it. The pot was straight from the burner so as hot as coffee ever got, certainly hot enough to burn skin. And yet—Grace was fine.
“Freya Deco,” responded Grace promptly. “Expensive, but worth every penny.”
Natalya nodded. She’d have to give them a try. And then she waved a hand back toward her bedroom. “Go grab a clean shirt,” she ordered. “You’re not burned.”
Grace reached for the dishtowel hanging off the oven and carefully patted her arms dry. “Isn’t that…”
“Unexpected?” Natalya provided the word for her. “Yeah.”
“Weird was what I was going for,” Grace said. She held the dishtowel out to Natalya and then headed back to Natalya’s bedroom to rummage through her sister’s closet.
The kitchen smelled of burnt coffee from the drops splashing onto the warming plate and overflowing along the counter. The tiled floor was a mess of brown liquid and broken glass. The little girl had run off somewhere, hopefully not outside. And Natalya still didn’t have any caffeine in her system.
With a sigh, she grabbed a mug and slid it under the dripping coffee, and then started to clean up. As she crouched, carefully picking up pieces of glass from the floor, she noticed a slight stinging on her bare leg, above her knee. She brushed at the red spot. It was a very minor, very small burn. First degree, no worse than a drop of sunburn. She must have been hit by a backsplash of coffee.
But if the heat was enough to burn her, then how had Grace escaped?
“All right, that was really weird.” Grace came back into the kitchen, flipping her blonde hair out from under the collar of a turquoise shirt.
“I don’t understand why you’re not burned,” Natalya admitted, rocking back on her heels.
“I don’t understand why you spilled coffee on me,” Grace said, accusation in her voice. “What’s up with that?”
“That, too.” Natalya let her hair fall across her face, ignoring the way the dark straight strands dropped into the coffee puddle on the floor.
“Nat?” Grace sounded worried. “Are you okay?”
“It’s a long story.” Natalya stood, pieces of glass cradled in her hand and then paused. She was standing barefoot among broken glass. And she didn’t know whether she would cut herself. Damn it. She didn’t like this. “I’ll tell you the whole thing after I get some shoes on, finish cleaning up this mess, and, please God, have a cup of coffee.”
Grace chuckled. “All right, I’ll give you a hand.”
Natalya dumped the glass into the trash can and navigated the floor, avoiding coffee and glass, as Grace grabbed a mass of paper towels. Heading for the front door, where she typically left her shoes, she added a task to her list: check on the little girl.
Her cottage wasn’t very big. There weren’t too many places a child could hide. But Natalya didn’t see her in the living room as she crossed to the front door and grabbed her sandals. Slipping her feet into the flat-soled slides, she let her eyes skim over the comfortable, overstuffed furniture and under the tables, before stepping back to the door by the front bedroom where the child had slept.
Most of the room was her studio, a paint-splattered tarp spread across the floor, canvasses piled against the walls. A seldom-used bed was shoved against one wall, sheets neatly pulled up, comforter folded at the foot of the bed. And there the girl was, crouched in the corner next to a wooden table holding paints and brushes, linseed oil and sketchbooks. Her eyes were closed, her thin arms wrapped around her knees, her head bent.
“It’s okay.” Natalya kept her voice gentle and didn’t move from her spot in the doorway. “Grace is fine and we’re cleaning up the mess. You didn’t step on any glass, did you?”
The girl lifted her head. On her pale face, the shadows under her blue eyes looked almost like bruises. Her fear was palpable.
There is more troubling this child than a day or two lost in the woods, Natalya realized with a jolt. “Can you tell me why you’re afraid?” she asked.
The girl didn’t answer. Her stare was so blank she might not even have understood the question.
Natalya sat down where she stood, crossing her legs and propping her elbow on her thigh, her face on her fist, as if she planned to stay there awhile.
She wasn’t a trained therapist. The child needed to talk to a forensic psychologist, someone with experience in asking the right questions, providing the right reassurances. But Natalya couldn’t leave her hiding in a corner.
She thought back to the foster parent traini
ng she’d taken, but she’d had no intention of becoming a foster parent and much of it had to do with the rules and regulations and procedures. Still, help the child feel safe—that was pretty basic.
“Grace was trying to guess your name, and you weren’t answering,” she said slowly. “But I need something to call you. Is it okay if I give you a name? Just for now?”
No response. Natalya hadn’t really expected one.
“Kenzi,” Natalya said. Now where the hell had that come from? Oh, right. Television. “Can I call you Kenzi?”
The girl's eyes opened wide and then she blinked twice in rapid succession.
Natalya decided to take that as a yes. Carefully, picking her words with caution, she continued, “Okay, Kenzi, here’s the deal. I’m a doctor. That means sometimes I have to hurt people, like when I cleaned up your feet last night and it stung a little.”
She waited but got no response, so she went on. “But doctors swear an oath.” She paused, suddenly doubtful, as she asked, “Do you know what that is?”
Kenzi didn’t move but something about her air of tension looked uncertain to Natalya, so she explained. “It’s a promise. A really serious, really important promise. The most important promise a doctor makes is to do no harm. Do you understand what that means?”
Natalya hoped for a nod, at least one of the tiny inclinations the girl had managed the previous evening, but Kenzi just looked at her, unblinking.
Natalya sat up straighter, resting her hands on her knees, and wished she knew what she was doing. “It means I will do my best never to hurt you on purpose. If you do something wrong, I won’t hurt you. If you do something bad, I won’t hurt you. If you make me really, really mad—which is pretty hard to do, I don’t get angry easily—but if you do, I might yell a little, but I won’t hurt you. You’re safe here. I don’t know why you’re scared or what you’re scared of, but I promise, you you’re safe with me and safe here in my house.”
She waited. Two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds, and then Kenzi took a deep breath and let it out on a shaky exhale, the kind that said tears might be close to the surface.
Good enough. Natalya didn’t know whether she should follow up and try to get the girl to talk or leave her in peace. Best bet, though, would be to leave the talking to the professionals.