The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (44 page)

Behind them I could make out a river. And a willow tree.
 

“The Lightning Willow!” I said, feeling both exhilarated and disappointed at once. The tree was nothing special to look at, but I knew in my gut this was the one.

Merry handed me a box. “We found dozens of pictures of Mama and this man. The years on the back all read 1914 and 1915. That can’t be right, can it?”

“They all look authentic,” Ruth Anne said, flipping through the pictures in the box.

“That would make Mother almost a hundred years old,” I added.

“Correction.” Ruth Anne held up a photo and wiped it with the sleeve of her shirt. “That would make these pictures almost a hundred years old. It would make Miss Sasha around one hundred and twenty.”

“Good, God. How old was she when she had us, then?” Eve tried to do the math on her fingers when Ruth Anne answered.
 

“At least eighty, if not ninety.”

“So when I saw him in Mama’s room, it wasn’t just an illusion,” Merry said. “He was really there.”

“Now we have this photo of the Lightning Willow,” Ruth Anne said, clenching the picture of Robbie and Mother in her hand. “We can blow it up and use it to look for landmarks.”
 
She turned to me. “We ride at dawn.”

Leo and I stayed the night at Sister House.
 

I slept on the couch, tossing and turning. I kept an uneasy eye on Leo as Eve’s words about him being an ex sex offender played in my head. He slept in a sheet fort across the living room, surrounded by an army of stuffed animals and Pillow Pets. June Bug had stroked his hand to sleep, reassuring him that we would all be there in the morning for him. Merry had done the same for me when I was a kid.
 

Like mother, like daughter, I thought, wondering what kind of child I would bring into the world?

The next morning Ruth Anne woke me up.
 

“Time to get up, kiddo,” she said, grinning down at me. She was dressed head to toe in camouflage. “The day looks clear. Let’s head out.” I yawned then panicked when I didn't see Leo. “Relax, he’s having breakfast with June Bug and Miss Sasha”

Sure enough, Leo was seated at the table between the two as Merry poured syrup over his waffle.

“I feel like someone hit me over the head,” I said. “What time is it?”

 
“It’s only six. We get up early at
Chez
Shantay.” Ruth Anne tossed me my jacket and a pair of her hiking boots.

I put them on and stumbled after Ruth Anne, grimacing as I remembered the last trip I’d taken with her. We had ended up in a ditch.

 
“Don’t worry,” Ruth Anne said, handing me over the keys. “Merry grounded me from the car. You’re driving.”

Ruth Anne carried two maps, one from the turn of the last century when Dark Root was first founded and one from about two decades ago, when a surveyor had reestablished the area boundaries. When we’d blown up the photo of Mother and Robbie, we saw that the Lightning Willow stood in front of a river. According to the maps, there were three substantial waterways near Dark Root. We were going to systematically inspect them all.

 
“If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Ruth Anne said, marking our first stop on the more recent map.

 
“I wish I were as Zen as you. What changed you?” I asked, steering off the main road and heading to a spot I had already checked out with Leo.

“Changed me?” She rolled her neck in a circle and it cracked several times. “Life, I guess. If you don’t get the bear, the bear gets you.”
 

She rolled down her window, letting the wind catch her shaggy, self-cut hair. Her glasses whipped off her face but she caught them before they were flung to the wilds. She saw me staring. “Just because I'm a four-eyes doesn't mean I lack coordination.”

We parked and hiked to a river that was so clear I could see the rocks at the bottom. Ruth Anne pulled out a pair of binoculars and surveyed the surroundings.

“See anything?” I asked.
 

She shook her head. “No, the tree is hidden, remember?”

“Then how do you suggest we look for it?”

“We
feel
for it.” She pulled out two extendable walking sticks and handed one to me. “Use it to feel the area around you. Especially empty areas. She might have been able to make it visually disappear, but not physically. No one can do that, not even David Copperfield.”

We spent the day playing Blind Man’s Bluff, looking for an invisible tree up and down the waterways of Dark Root, feeling with our sticks along the way. I told her about Michael and Woodhaven. She told me about her father, the man who had taken her from us.
 

He died her freshman year of college, prompting her to drop out and become a writer.

“What did you write about?” I asked, poking my way through a series of sharp objects along the waterway.

“A girl from a large family who feels all alone.”

“Based on a true story?”

“Only part of it.”

“Did it have a happily ever after?”
 

“There are no happily ever afters, Maggie. But sometimes we get lucky and have a few happy minutes.”
 

Night was coming and we hadn’t made any progress, except for a series of X’s we marked on Ruth Anne’s maps. I was tired, hungry and, after hearing Ruth Anne’s story, a little sad.
 

“If we don’t find it,” she said, as I drove us home. “Know that you gave Leo a few minutes of happiness he may not have otherwise had. Seems to me, his existence was pretty miserable before you came along.”

“Thank you,” I said, brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes. “But we’ll find it.”

“Are you sure about that, Mags?”

“Yes.” Although I had my reservations, it was time to call in the big guns.
 

We returned to find Mother and Leo on the swing, huddled up close and whispering secrets. They didn't notice our appearance.

“What was it like, Leo?” Mother asked, with eyes half shut. Her hair flew like dandelions seeds behind her. “Was it beautiful?”

He shook his head. “Scary. Dark.”
 

She patted his knee. “It will be better next time. Robbie tells me there’s a beautiful garden you can wander in for days. And music. Oh, the music. I heard it once. It still calls to me.”

“Mother!?” I said, storming up the steps. “What are you telling him?”

She only smiled.
 

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I just don’t want him to be scared.”

She regarded me, an ancient wisdom in those crystal blue eyes. “I think you’re the one who’s scared, Magdalene.”

Twenty-Seven

BENT

“You don’t have to give me the silent treatment,” I said, studying Shane.
 

His face remained stoic as he gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were drained of color. He didn't stop or even slow down when we came to forks in the road or stop signs. His focus was straight ahead, and he hadn't spoken a word to me since we got into the truck.

“If you didn't want to help me, you could have told me,” I said, rolling up my window, which he immediately rolled down with a button next to his left arm. “And you don't have to freeze me, either, literally or metaphorically.”
 

I had hoped to illicit a smile with this clever line, but his eyes never moved from the road.
 

At last, we arrived at Sister House.

Shane pulled to a stop and got out of the truck without saying a word. I jogged behind him, trying to keep up. He stopped at the door, his manners getting the best of him, and knocked politely.

“Howdy Merry,” he removed his hat and tossed it on the nearest chair. “Is your ma up?”

“Uncle Shane!” June Bug dropped her crayons and ran to give him a hug.
 

“Mama’s upstairs sleeping,” Merry answered. “You should have let me know you were coming. I could have made you some lunch.”

“Thanks, Merry, but I just ate. I’m here to see your ma.”

“I can wake her.”

“No, don’t. Maggie, will you escort me to her room?”

Mother slept in her bed, naked and uncovered.
 

I hadn’t seen Mother unclothed, ever.
 

I looked away, knowing how embarrassed she would be when she found out. But not before I noticed how loose her flesh was, hanging off her bones like chicken skin.