Freya giggled again.
“Am I so funny?” Nancy crooned, laughing. “Yes, am I so funny? Do I say funny things?”
She seemed genuinely delighted by the baby’s response, and though part of Hunter wanted to delight in it too, somethingelse pulled him away from the door. It felt strangely like Nancy needed this, and if he were to intrude, he’d be shattering a moment. Shattering herpeace.
So, with all the stealth that years of war and training for war had taught him, he drew back from the ‘enemy’ lines and crept away without her ever knowing he was there.
CHAPTER 10
“You like those?”Nancy’s heart melted as she jingled her keys above the baby, Freya’s little hands swiping for them. “They make a good sound, hey?”
She’d have been lying if she’d said that she hadn’t gone into a full-blown panic when Isla was called away from the nursery, leaving her entirely alone with a three-month-old child. But, as it turned out, as long as she wasn’t crying, Freya was pretty easy to entertain.
The baby was lying on her blanket on the floor, challenging her hand-eye coordination rather well, after Nancy had given up on pointing out things from the window. There were only so many times she could say,“Look at that mountain. Look at that sheep.”
“This one is for my lovely little apartment that costs an extortionate amount of rent, but makes up for it with privacy,” Nancy explained, chuckling. “That one is for the car rental thatI’m going to get charged through the roof for. That other one is for my friend Emily’s apartment, though she’s not there right now.”
Freya gurgled happily, her tiny fingers trying to grab for the fluffy frog keyring that had seen better days, the fur all flattened from being squished at the bottom of her bag.
“I’d give him to you, but he’s probably not sanitary,” Nancy said with a grimace, suddenly realizing that she herself might be a threat to Freya’s immune system. There were all sorts of sicknesses in her world that didn’t exist here, or so she thought. She wasn’t exactly sure.
She reached into her bag and doused her hands in a few squirts of hand sanitizer anyway, just in case.
“You’d like Emily,” she cooed, making the little fluffy frog dance. “I said she was my friend, but she’s more like my sister. I’ve known her since I was nine, when we were in foster care together. I don’t know if you have fostering here. Probably not. Neighbors, family, or friends likely just take care of the kids who don’t have anyone.”
“Anyway, she and I used to get up to all sorts of mischief,” she continued in a brighter voice that Freya seemed to like. “We’d hide on the bus and let it take us all the way to the depot, where the drivers would give us hot chocolate and cookies, then take us back. We’d go for these endless walks through places we probably shouldn’t have been, and we’d make up theseimaginary worlds. Well, Emily would, and I’d play along… and it was pretty magical, until we’d eventually get chased off.”
Freya’s arms moved slowly, desperately trying to figure out how to grab the frog.
“You’re not even listening, are you?” Nancy laughed. “You don’t want to know about the year our foster parents took us to see Santa, and I pulled his beard off? Don’t worry,” she added quickly, “he wasn’t the real one.”
She was about to jump into another story, one of her happiest memories of her and Emily riding the ferry all day long, when the baby’s adorable smile no longer struck a happy note in Nancy. Instead, the note was discordant, so at odds with that sweet smile.
You’re going to end up like me.
The thought was ugly and painful, like a drill through the skull.
Of course, Nancy didn’t mean literally. Therewereprobably countless people who would see to it that Freya was loved and never felt alone in the world, but that didn’t change the fact that she would be parentally alone. That awful word: orphan.
“I wish I’d never seen it,” Nancy croaked, her throat tight. “That tapestry… It was real, and… I can’t see a way that it could exist in my world if it wasn’t created in yours. It happens in a month, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”
This precious little girl would grow up without a mother or a father. Evenifother people stepped up to give Freya the love and affection and care and support that she needed, there would always be a missing piece, a wrongness that was hard to explain but could do a whole lot of damage.
If it hadn’t been for Emily, Nancy knew she probably wouldn’t be alive anymore. At the very least, she wouldn’t be living properly. She’d beexisting, getting into more and more trouble to try to fill that gaping void inside her. All the thrills and risks and stupid actions, testing to see if anyone cared. Tolerated in a child, to an extent, but not in an adult, even if they were just that scared, abandoned kid inside.
“I could sneak you out?” she suggested. “How about some 21st-century luxuries, huh? You wouldn’t believe the toys we have.”
Provided that I canreturn…
The thought had been bugging her nonstop. If the tapestry was the linchpin in all of this, then she was more or less marooned here in the 18thcentury. Until some weaver went ahead and crafted that tapestry on a loom, she was stuck… and stuck watching it all play out, too.
“Your father is… a brute, and he definitely should learn to keep his hands to himself, but… I don’t think I want him dead,” she whispered, shuddering.
Her mind drifted back to that grisly tapestry that began with such hope and light, a loving bride and groom standing at the altar, ready to pledge themselves to one another forever. And then the blade through the Hawk’s heart in the last chapter of the woven story.
The blade throughHunter’sheart.
Not some abstract entity from history, but a man she had met, a man she had spoken with, a man who had made her feel things she hadn’t felt in years. Ever, probably. She’d certainly never experienced anything close to the excitement, the feverish rush of heat, theneedto be kissed and to feel his hands on her, the yearning that had overwhelmed her.
