by Paula Graves
He gave one final upward lunge and his body went rigid as he found release. Her name trembled on his lips, soft and desperate as a prayer, and she didn’t care that her own body still buzzed with tension, unfulfilled. For this moment, at least, she’d given him exactly what he needed.
It was what she’d come here to do.
MCBRIDE DIDN’T KNOW HOW much time passed before he was able to move again. Lily’s fingers convulsed against his back, her hips still moving slightly against him. He stroked her hair and brushed his mouth against hers, tasting her tears. “It’s okay,” he whispered, wondering if it was. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, but not so long that he had forgotten what it felt like when she reached her climax.
Lily hadn’t.
He lowered her feet to the floor and pulled away from her. She made a soft, rattling noise deep in her throat, and clung to him, not letting him release her.
He stroked her cheek, growing alarmed. “Lily?”
She lifted her hand to his face. “Shh.”
Her gentle touch felt like an accusation. He could hardly bear to look at her. “I’m sorry. I just—I needed—”
She pressed her lips to his. “I know.”
He should have gone slow, taken time to find out what pleased her. To make love to her with his hands and mouth, readying her for him, giving her pleasure before taking his own.
She took his hand and moved toward the hallway. When he resisted, she met his gaze, her eyes dark with need and a hint of laughter. “Don’t dawdle. You have unfinished business.”
His heart stopped, then restarted at a jackhammer pace. Grasping her hand, he led her to his bedroom.
FULL DARKNESS HAD FALLEN when Casey woke. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but she’d kept reading after Lily left, and suddenly her eyes just wouldn’t stay open. She sat up and yawned, looking at the thin crack of light under her closed door. Was Mama awake?
She crept to Mama’s bedroom. The door was open, and she slipped inside. Mama was on the bed, still clothed, her shoes on her feet. She lay atop the covers, but Casey could tell by the slow rise and fall of her chest that she was asleep.
Maybe that was good, Casey thought. Maybe when morning came, Mama would be like she used to be, before her spells.
Casey tiptoed back to her bedroom, changed into her pajamas and curled up on the bed, cuddling Mr. Green close. Still groggy, she closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep. But she had a hollow feeling in her chest, as if she was all alone in the world. The feeling made her sad and a little scared. She wished she could go find Lily. Lily would make her feel better.
Or maybe Abby, she thought with a sudden smile. Abby probably had that empty, all-alone feeling, too. She was a lot littler than Casey, and she was always real scared because of the mean men who took her away from her daddy and mommy. Abby would probably like Casey to come see her.
Casey didn’t have words or thoughts to explain how she could visit Abby and Lily in her mind. She just could. She had thought they might be like her other friends, the ones she played with in her mind. There was Fern, who had a white poodle named Juliet. And Sam, who had a cat named Moonshine and a daddy who was a sea captain. She’d read about all her friends, knew what they looked like from the pictures in the books or from her own imagination.
But she’d never read about Abby or Lily. Lily had appeared to her first, a brief flash in her mind as she lay in bed, somewhere between sleeping and waking. Curious, Casey had followed her through the gray mists to the room where Abby stayed. Casey had left when Lily did, but the next time she’d stayed and talked to Abby. Abby told her about her daddy and mommy and about how the bad men had grabbed her and hit her mommy and how her mommy had fallen down and gone to sleep.
Casey hadn’t said the word dead to Abby, but that’s what she thought. Abby’s mommy was dead, like Casey’s real mama.
But what about Daddy?
Casey could still hear his voice in her head sometimes. Sweet baby marshmallow, close your bright eyes….
Casey grabbed Mr. Green and squeezed his lumpy body to hers. She curled into a little knot, her forehead creasing with concentration. She tried to imagine the mists surrounding her, like on a foggy day, when she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She drifted through the fog, looking for Abby.
She found Abby’s room, smelled the musty, dirty scent. But Abby wasn’t in there.
Fear coiled in Casey’s chest. Was she with the bad men?
Then she saw the open window. The sunflower curtain rippled in the cool breeze flowing through it. Casey let herself float to the window to look out at the meadow of tall grass stretching to the edge of thick, dark woods. She spotted Abby, a speck of light in the darkness. She’d crawled out of the window! She’d gotten away from the bad men! Casey clapped her hands and laughed. Yea, Abby!
Suddenly, the door behind Casey banged open. She whirled around and saw a man filling the doorway. He had sandy hair, a mean, scowly look on his face and a big gun in his hand. Beyond him, two men lay on the floor. Something red pooled around them, as if they’d spilled cherry Kool-Aid and taken a nap in the middle of the mess.
Only Casey knew it wasn’t really cherry Kool-Aid. It was darker and thicker and it smelled funny, like the bright pennies she collected in a little pink piggy bank on her dresser. She didn’t like the way it smelled. It made her tummy feel all squirmy and hot.
The big man in the doorway rushed toward her, sending panic shooting through her veins. She crouched in terror, trying to make herself as small as she could.
He walked right through her, and she remembered with a gush of relief that she wasn’t really there in the little room with the messy bed and the open window.
He peered out the window. Could he see Abby?
Casey joined him at the window, keeping her distance even though she knew now that he couldn’t see her. Outside, Abby had disappeared from view. Relief washed through Casey, making the room glitter like fairy dust and almost disappear.
She focused her mind on staying in the room, braced by her growing worry about Abby alone in the woods. Now Lily wouldn’t know where to find her. And anything could happen to a little girl all alone. Didn’t Mama always tell her that, back when Mama used to talk to her more?
She had to follow Abby so she wouldn’t be alone. That was all there was to it. And later, maybe she could find Lily and tell her where Abby was now. Lily would know what to do. She’d know how to stop the bad man with the scowly face and the gun.
Lily would take care of them.
LILY NESTLED NEXT TO McBride under the warm quilt and listened to his heartbeat beneath her cheek. She could never turn back now. Making love to him had only sealed their fate. She just had to figure out how to make things work for them outside the bedroom.
“This isn’t how I thought today would end,” McBride murmured against her neck.
“You’re not sorry, are you?”
He sat up, drawing her into his arms. “No. You?”
“No.” She pressed her mouth against the faint cleft of his chin. “But since you brought up the subject of today…”
He drew away slightly. “Do we have to talk about it?”
She wasn’t going to give in. McBride needed this. She scooted to the headboard and draped her arm around his broad shoulders. “Start with Laura. Where did you meet her?”
He turned to look at Lily, his features tinged with reluctance. But after a moment, he relaxed a little, leaned into her embrace.
“College,” he answered. “She was great at math. I was good at history. We sort of bartered with each other. She helped me in math and I got her through Western Civ.”
“What did she look like?”
He smiled, his eyes distant. “Cute. Not movie star pretty, but cute. She had the prettiest skin, very fair. I remember she always wore about a ton of sunscreen whenever she walked out the door. Clare had the same kind of skin.”
Once McBride got started, the story pour
ed out of him. He told Lily about the friendship that had turned into romance. The marriage right after graduation. Laura had taught junior high math and he’d gone straight to the police academy. After three years of marriage, they’d started trying to have a baby, but Laura couldn’t carry to term.
“A fertility expert finally found a deformity in her uterus that other doctors missed. It was a fairly simple surgical procedure. Next thing we knew, we had Clare.”
His mouth tightened when he said his daughter’s name. Lily squeezed his shoulders, wishing she had her sister Iris’s gift. Iris could have absorbed his pain and eased his suffering. Lily would’ve given anything to take away McBride’s pain.
But all she could do was see things that other people couldn’t, a gift McBride loathed. And after seeing him with Delaine this afternoon, hearing how the woman’s broken promises had ripped his life apart, Lily understood why.
“How old was Clare when she disappeared?” she asked.
“Barely three.”
Just a baby, Lily thought.
“She was there, playing in the yard one minute, and the next…” His voice grew faint, as if he couldn’t believe it any more now than he could six years ago. “Gone. Just like that.”
“Nobody saw anything?”
He shook his head. “It was a weekday. Most of the families on the street had older kids, all in school. Laura had been teaching Clare to ride her tricycle when the phone rang. Laura ran inside to get it. She wasn’t gone more than a minute or two. We had a fenced-in yard.” His voice broke. “She didn’t think anything could happen.”
Lily closed her eyes, heartsick. Maybe she’d been wrong to make him tell her these things.
He drew his legs up to his chin, curling in on himself. “It was Laura’s idea to work with a psychic, but I didn’t argue. I’d have done anything to find Clare.”
“So you found Delaine.”
“She found us. She came to the station and said she’d had a vision about Clare. She knew what Clare had been wearing and about a scrape on her chin where she’d fallen off her trike. She knew about her favorite toy. God, we wanted to believe her,” he said bitterly.
“Of course. You wanted to find your daughter.”
“We wanted somebody to tell us that she was all right, even after weeks passed without any leads.” He rubbed his jaw with a shaky hand. “I’m a policeman, Lily. I knew the truth. It was staring me in the face, but I couldn’t deal with it. Delaine convinced us that she’d seen Clare, that she was living with another family and all we had to do was find out who those people were. She kept having visions, getting closer and closer, and I believed every single word she said.
“I followed every clue, stayed up all night for days on end, going over every detail, considering all the possibilities. If she saw a rose in her vision, I’d make a list of all the florists and nurseries in the state. I’d even look for the name Rose in the phone book, just in case. I did legwork and more legwork, knocked on doors, made phone calls, hounded my fellow cops until they were ready to have me put away, and finally—finally!” His laugh was the most horrible sound Lily had ever heard. “Delaine had a break-through. She saw Clare in a green-and-white house over in Rockwell, just over the county line. She even gave us a name. The Graingers.”
“So you found the Graingers?” Goose bumps scattered across Lily’s bare shoulders.
“We converged on the place. Two cars from here, plus the county sheriff over in Rockwell. Lights flashing, sirens going. Scared the hell out the poor Graingers, who were having a birthday party for their little girl.”
“Who wasn’t Clare.”
“Who wasn’t Clare.” His voice sounded dead. “Because Clare was dead. I think I realized it the instant I saw the little Grainger girl with her pigtails and pretty green party dress. Holly Grainger was alive. My baby was dead.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears spilled down Lily’s cheeks.
“After that, I told Delaine to stay away from us. I forbade her to go anywhere near Laura. I made sure she wasn’t allowed at the station house.” He sighed. “What she did to us was the cruelest thing she could’ve done. She should have just killed us instead.”
Lily felt sick, understanding so much that had puzzled her since she’d first met him. She wondered how he could bear to be around her after his experience with Delaine. No wonder he wanted her to stay away from Andrew.
Yet she knew Abby Walters was alive. She knew it.
But had Delaine been equally sure about Clare?
“After the incident at the Graingers’, Laura started seeing Clare everywhere. At the grocery store, the park, at church. She’d drive by schools and swear she saw her playing on the swings or climbing the monkey bars.” His chest heaved, as if the mere effort to breathe was too much for him. “One day, she thought she saw Clare across Beaumont Parkway. She didn’t even look before she ran into the street. There was a car—”
Lily couldn’t bear to hear any more. She pressed her hand over McBride’s mouth. “Please!”
He pulled her hand away as if compelled to finish. “I got to the emergency room just before she died. The last thing she told me was that she’d seen Clare. She wanted me to go get her.” His face crumpled. “I couldn’t do the last thing she wanted me to do. I couldn’t go get our baby.”
A hard, gasping sob exploded from him, wrenched from the dark place Lily had sensed in him almost from the first. She held him, aching for the child he had loved and she’d never gotten the chance to know, while he emptied himself of six years of darkness.
His shudders subsided gradually, and he drew away from her. She let go, giving him time to compose himself. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, his hands moving over his eyes to wipe away the evidence of his grief. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He looked at her over his shoulder. “I know you believe you’re really seeing Abby Walters when you go into your trance or whatever it is. I know that.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“I don’t have it in me anymore.” He ran his hand over his jaw. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
He turned away from her. “You’ll start to resent me.”
Was he right? At this moment, in his bed, with his body warm and solid beside her, she couldn’t imagine it. But what would happen the next time she had a vision of Abby?
Lily had run from her gift her whole life, had hated it, feared it. Now she’d finally begun to trust herself, to believe she had been given this special ability for a purpose. She could use it to help people, find scared little girls like Abby.
She couldn’t turn back now. Even when she had run from it, the gift had been a fundamental element of who she was.
It defined her.
McBride turned and touched her face. “Let’s not think about any of this tonight, okay? We’ll think about it later.” He lay down and pulled her into his arms, his breath warm against her cheek. She heard his breathing deepen as he drifted off to sleep, his body relaxed and content behind hers.
But she lay awake, wondering if their newfound intimacy could outlast her next vision.
Chapter Fourteen
Casey couldn’t feel the cold as she followed Abby into the woods, but she knew the smaller girl had to be freezing. She wore no coat and only a pair of thin, dirty socks on her feet. Older and wiser, Casey felt the weight of responsibility for her friend. She had to help Abby find a warm, safe place to stay until Casey could find a way to reach Lily.
“Abby!” she cried. Abby kept running.
She must be scared of the scowly man with the gun, Casey thought, straining to catch up. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the man was following. She couldn’t spot him, but she heard crashing noises in the woods behind her. Fear rose in her chest, hot and sharp. It tasted like pennies, reminding her of the men she’d left behind in the trailer.
Ahead, Abby dashed through the woods, tripping on tree roots and g
etting tangled in the low bushes blanketing the forest floor. She somehow stayed just out of reach, and Casey couldn’t figure out why. After all, Casey was floating along like a butterfly, easily staying clear of the stumps and vines that made Abby fall down over and over.
“Abby, you’ve gotta hide! I can help!” Casey screamed into the darkness. Oh, God, please help her hear me, she prayed fervently. Make her hear me.
Abby tripped over another root and sprawled forward, hitting the ground with a thud. She made soft, gasping noises that scared Casey into a final spurt of effort.
“Abby, are you okay? Abby, can you hear me?” Casey finally touched her friend.
The little girl managed to draw a few short, struggling breaths. The wheezy sounds subsided and her eyes widened. “Casey?”
Casey felt like cheering. “Shh! Yeah, it’s me! You got away from them but somebody’s coming after you!”
Abby started crying. “I heard a bang-bang noise, Casey. I think it was a gun!”
Casey thought of the weapon she’d seen in the scowly man’s hand. It had looked gigantic, like a cannon.
“They’re gonna find me,” Abby mewled. “They’re gonna come after me and shoot me!” She choked on her sobs. “Tell me what to do, Casey! I’m scared.”
“You’ve gotta be quiet, like Lily tells you, ’member?”
Abby’s sniffles sounded like thunder in Casey’s ears. “I want Lily!” the little girl wailed. Even though the words came from Abby’s mind, not her mouth, Casey held her breath, afraid the scowly man had heard.
“It’s okay,” she promised, her own thoughts a whisper. “Lily will be here, you wait and see.”
BY MIDNIGHT LILY WAS still awake, too tense to close her eyes. Her stomach growled, reminding her she’d skipped dinner.
Without waking McBride, she extracted herself from his grasp and slid out of bed. Cool air washed over her body, raising chill bumps, so she slipped on his discarded shirt and picked up the extra blanket that had fallen on the floor during their lovemaking, wrapping it around herself before heading to the kitchen to find something to eat.