A Merciful Secret

FIFTEEN

I had to run.

I had no choice. All my life my mother warned me, and now it had started.

I will not let him harm Morrigan. She is my heart, my soul, my everything. My sole focus is to protect my daughter.

The fact that she physically exists outside my body is one of the miracles of motherhood. How can she run and play in my sight when she is part of me? When I feel every heartbeat, every scraped knee, every moment of her joy?

She is my daughter and I will protect her with my dying breath.

As my mother did for her.

I’ll never know why Morrigan didn’t wake as my mother was murdered. I suspect my mother muted the noises, both hers and the murderer’s, and then blurred his vision to the sight of my daughter sleeping in her bed.

There is a hole in my heart from my mother’s absence, but I’ve shut down everything and refuse to dwell on her death. Later I will mourn and say good-bye in the way I was taught. But not now. My emotions are numb, my thoughts shocked into a protective vault. I can’t think about her murder if I am to function.

Instead I remember our past.

All my life we lived in the woods. I hated it.

“One day you’ll understand,” my mother told me. “One day you’ll thank me for saving you.”

“Saving me from what?” I’d cry. “You keep talking about this person who will ruin our lives, but you won’t tell me who it is! You make us live in fear of a ghost!”

“Right now we are protected. In the future that might change, and we’ll need to hide.”

“We are hiding! Everyone thinks you’re a witch and that I am your cursed spawn.”

That is when I’d start to cry. I hated our life, I hated her, and I dreamed of her death.

If she was dead, I’d be able to live as I pleased, see who I wanted, be normal.

But it wasn’t that simple.

When I was young, she taught me to read and write at home while I longed to sit in a classroom with other children. We shopped in the bigger, more crowded towns and stores, blending in with the crowds. I stared at the children who ran through the stores, laughter ringing in their voices. I wanted to be like them, play with them, talk to them. I grew up believing our seclusion was normal, but as I became a teenager, I demanded freedom and she relaxed some rules. She allowed me to get my driver’s license and enroll in high school.

I went to school with enthusiasm, convinced my life would change. I would have friends and confidants and be normal. Instead high school was a foreign land. The students stared, pointed at my clothes, and snickered at my shoes. The girls hated me, but the boys wouldn’t stop looking. Their gazes were different from the girls’.

I liked the stares from the boys. I was noticed.

So I manipulated the attention, learned how to foster it, how to tease them, how to make them pant after me like dogs.

Outside the woods my eyes were opened to how money ruled society. Money bought you beauty, big houses, and cars. Our family’s lack of money was a painful, glaring sun in my eyes.

My mother always managed to get by. We had food, a solid roof, a dependable car, and what she believed were enough clothes. She ran a small business out of our home, taking advantage of society’s darkest desires.

Her clients were satisfied, and they always came back for more.

I watched through cracks from behind doors, ordered to keep out of sight. The female visitors spoke in high voices and laughed too often, their gazes darting to every corner of the room, rarely looking my mother in the eye. They joked that they didn’t believe in my mother’s arts, but in their eyes I saw their desperation. They wanted beauty, love, and eternal youth. They wanted to know their futures. Their greed compelled them to take risks and enter our strange house, speak to a so-called witch, and hand over their cash for my mother’s concoctions.

I could smell and feel the air pressure change with their entrance, showing me their true intent. I thought everyone could smell emotions . . . It was like smelling a color. Blues smelled fresh and felt light. Reds spicy and heavy. Greens damp and mellow. People emoted colors and changes in the air; I read them. It was that simple. Later I learned this was my special gift.

Some tried not to pay for my mother’s wares. Usually it was the men. Their discomfort showed in different ways, but men were just as easy to read. They were scornful and belittling, hating that they’d stooped to what they considered unnatural. But they had the same desperation in their eyes as the women. They wanted their cancer to go away, money to fall in their laps, and a woman to worship them.

My mother knew how to make her clients believe in her. Image was the first step, she told me. She dressed in brightly colored long flowing dresses and grew her wavy hair to her waist. It didn’t gray until she was sixty, and then it happened rapidly. I swear in one month her hair changed from solid black to silver. She looked the part and spoke the part, her voice low and melodious, her words sometimes foreign. The buyers ate it up.

I watched, learning body and facial language from the visitors. I knew how to spot fear, distrust, desperation, sorrow, and wariness without a word from their lips. Physical cues. The twitch of fingers. The set of the lips. The hesitation in a step. The picking at skin. Humans told their stories without speaking.

Later I used these skills for my own benefit.

I recognized Truman in the pizza parlor’s parking lot. I can’t place him, but I know we’ve . . . been involved. It must be long ago since the memory is fuzzy. There have been too many men over the years, and their faces blur together. I feel unclean when I meet their gazes in a store. The recognition flashes and they quickly look away, a flush creeping up their necks. Often there is a woman at their side. Her gaze is usually dismissive or locks on me with hatred.

I’m sorry you married such a weak man.

Truman didn’t look away. Compassion shone in his words and eyes. Perhaps he doesn’t remember me.

I can’t stop staring at my daughter as she sleeps. For the moment we are safe. Her bed is warm, the room is secure, and we have food.

But how long can we hide?

He killed the judge. That was how I knew it was him.

When Truman first told me of my mother’s death, I denied the possibility that her warnings had come true, telling myself it couldn’t be him. We knew her business had dangers. My mother risked her life every time she sold a spell or told someone’s future. We both knew that if someone physically attacked, we could be hurt or killed. She wouldn’t allow guns in the house for our protection. Another root of our fights.

But when Truman said the judge’s name, I knew my mother’s fears had become truth, and my body physically rejected his words. Everything she’d warned me of was in motion. No one could protect me from him. He was too powerful, too connected.

I had to run.

SIXTEEN

Truman couldn’t sit idly by. Curiosity about the two murders was driving him insane.

Feeling like a spy, he’d looked up Rob Murray, the employee who had borrowed the Lexus, and decided to pay him a visit. After all, the car had been found in Truman’s jurisdiction . . . well, almost in his jurisdiction . . . and it was his responsibility to see that the man hadn’t been injured.

Right?

Rob Murray lived close to Bend. He definitely didn’t live in the Eagle’s Nest city limits, but Truman was a thoughtful cop. He liked to know everyone was okay. Maybe Rob would say a good citizen of Eagle’s Nest had helped him out when he abandoned the SUV, and Truman could go thank them. Community involvement should be recognized.