The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (42 page)

The next morning Eve printed me out a map. “His mother lives just outside of Linsburg. Easy drive. It will take you less than thirty minutes to get there.”
 

I folded it in two, and put it in my purse.

“So you’re not taking any of his money?” she asked, as she poured herself another cup of black coffee. Unlike me, her exhaustion didn’t show on her face, only in her mannerisms––the way she tapped her foot on the ground, paced around the room, and slurped down one cup of coffee after another.
 

“No. I’m not taking any of the money.”

“Not even a little?”

I hesitated. It was tempting. There was so much we could do with it. But it wasn’t ours. “Not even a little. We’ve already screwed with karma enough, don’t you think?”

“You keeping the car, at least?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t.”

“If you had a car, you could visit him. It’s not like he’s going to be driving for a while.”

“Poor Leo,” I said, watching him color in one of June Bug’s books at the far end of the table. “He probably isn’t going to be doing much of anything for a while.” The guilt returned and my chest tightened. “Do you think it’s fair dumping him on his mother like this?”

“She’s the one looking for him. Besides, when you’re a parent, you’re a parent for life.”

For life.
 

I wondered how anyone could do it. The anxiety, the frustrations. It was hard enough taking care of myself, without constantly worrying about someone else.

Leo held up his artwork, a smile extending across his simple face. He had worked hard to stay in the lines and to use every color in the box. “For Maggie,” he said, sliding the picture across the table to me.

My heart fluttered as I took it.
 

“Thank you, Leo. I’ll treasure it, always.”
 

I was beginning to understand.
 

His real mother deserved to have him back. This was her son and she’d love him no matter what.

“Leo, it’s time. Ready to go home?” I came up behind him, squeezing his shoulders. They felt small and knobby. Despite my efforts, he had lost more weight.

He looked around the dining room. “Leo home.”
 

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “This will always be Leo’s home, too.”

Leo’s mother lived in a district dubbed “Shrub Town” by the locals, a string of ramshackle houses settled willy-nilly around a large hole that may have once held water. I’d visited there with my own mother once, when I was a kid. We had gone to cure a woman who suffered from a particularly bad broken heart.
 

The woman had been a wreck, greeting us in a half-open robe that revealed one sagging breast as she uttered incoherent noises that only Mother seemed to understand. Her house was equally awful, with dishes swimming in stagnant sink water, a floor so covered in grime I couldn’t make out its original color, and piles of dirty clothes strewn over the sofa.
 

I had stayed outside most of that visit, peeking in the windows from time to time as Mother counseled the woman. After an hour, Mother was out, leaving the woman with an amber locket in the shape of a heart, an incantation to read beneath the light of a new moon, and instructions to burn her philandering husband’s picture in the flames of a purple candle.
 

“What happens when she casts the spell?” I had asked Mother on our drive home.
 

“He disappears.”

“Disappears? Where to?”

“I don’t know.”
 

I looked into my lap, fiddling with the friendship bracelet Merry had made for me.

“Don’t worry, Magdalene. She won’t do it.”

“Why not?”
 

“As much as people want to get over a broken heart, they still cling to love. Even hopeless love. If she casts the spell, she gives up any chance that her husband will come back. It takes a particularly cold heart to put on the locket and recite the incantation. In all my years, I’m not sure anyone has ever done it.”

“Why would a person want love from someone who doesn’t love them back?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

“That’s one of the great mysteries of life,” Mother answered, staring out her window as if it were the abyss the offending husband disappeared into. “But it keeps me in business.”

“Maggie,” Leo tapped my on my thigh, jolting me from my memory. “Music?”

“Sure.”

He turned on the radio, blasting
Living La Vida Loca
. He danced in short, jerky motions as he tried to sing along, pulling some of the lyrics from his memory and forgetting others.
 

I wondered if he would ever fully recover, if he had enough time. Had he suffered temporary brain damage in the
accident
or a complete flushing of the mind and soul? It was as if someone had tried to put a puzzle together by jamming the pieces together, getting only a few in just the right spots.

“Want a cheese stick?” I asked.

“Candy.”

“Eat the cheese, first. It will make you big and strong.”
 

Leo proudly showed me his muscles, unaware that much of his mass had been lost and his arms hung like bat wings. I smiled sadly and turned away.

“And some fruit,” I added, handing him a baggie full of apple slices. He frowned and pushed it back. “I cut those myself and you’re gonna eat them. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said, taking the bag and forcing an apple into his mouth. “Yucky.”

“You’ll thank me for it later.”
 

But there would be no later. Once I dropped Leo off, I knew I might never see him again. The thought left me profoundly sad. I adjusted the rear view mirror and gunned it.
 

“Three miles till our exit,” I said, feigning cheerfulness.

Leo munched on his apple but didn’t look at me.

We had reached the end of our road together and Leo was alive enough to realize it.

Twenty-Five

WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL

The house was small––a squat building with one door and three windows. The lawn was dirt with a few weeds shooting up near the walkway. The neighboring houses that had sprouted up around it were larger and newer, encroaching on it like they were waiting to gobble it up.
 

But the small house held, an unpleasant reminder of the shadows of the past.
 

When Leo saw the house, he shook. I had to drag him out of the car.
 

“No, Magg-ee, no,” he said, digging his heels into the ground as I pulled him along.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I assured him, even as a prickly sensation crept down my spine.

I knocked and the curtains in the front window fluttered. After a moment of seeming deliberation, the front door opened.

“Mrs. Winston?” I asked, peering at the small, wrinkled face with squinting eyes that hovered in the crack of the door. “I’m Maggie and I’m with your son.”

I stepped aside, revealing Leo. The door opened wider, the room beyond it devoid of light.
 

“My son! Where have you been?”

We sat in Mrs. Winston’s living room, an area with one loveseat and a TV. Aside from the single, mosaic crucifix that hung on the wall, there was no color to the room. I tried not to stare at the cockroach that burrowed itself in the crack of a floorboard.

“I’ll make you some tea,” Mrs. Winston said. Her tone was formal but not friendly.
 

Leo sat next to me, pressing his shoulder into mine.
 

“Scoot over,” I said when his mother left the room. If she saw us like this, she might assume we were lovers.

“I’ve missed you, Leonard.” She returned with two cups and a package of saltines. She sat the tray down on a crate that served as a coffee table. “I’d offer you more but this is all I have, right now. I was saving the tea for a special occasion.”
 

“This is fine,” I said, forcing myself to nibble on one of the crackers. “You have a lovely home.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, still standing. “I know this place is not lovely. All the beauty of this place disappeared when Leo’s father left.” She smoothed her sparse gray hair into place and straightened her equally-gray skirt. Then she turned her attention to Leo.
 

“When you didn’t send a check this month, I got worried. That’s not like you. Figured something must have happened.” Her eyes flittered to me. “He doesn’t call. Never has. But at least he always sends me grocery money. Let’s me know he cares and that he’s still alive. Two hundred and twenty dollars a month. That’s more than his father ever sent.”

“Mrs. Winston…” I began.

“That’s
Miss
Winston,” she said, extending a left hand without a ring.

“Miss Winston…”

“I thought maybe Leo had left me for some floozy, too.” she interrupted. “The men in this family never could take care of their responsibilities. It’s like the good book says: the sins of the father are passed down to the son.”

I was caught off guard by her statement but continued on. “Yes, well, you see, Leo has had an accident.”

“An accident?” Her hand went to her chest. “What kind of accident?”