A stalk has sprouted from the sour cream container, unlike any flora I have ever seen.
I throw off my covers and get out of bed.
With my breath caught in my throat, I ease onto the window seat. The tall, slender stalk is pitch black, wrapped in red, thorny vines as delicate as blood vessels. Halfway up, a skeletal leaf has sprouted, twinkling like starlight.
Very slowly, I reach out and touch it.
My mother’s voice echoes from the dream.
I came back for her.
I wanted to make things right.
Oh, Simon.
A shock of heat zaps my skin.
With a yelp, I jerk back and clasp my fingers.
When I look again at the plant, the skeletal leaf is no longer glowing.
It’s as dark as the night outside.
17
SHE CAME BACK FOR ME
The rising sun sets the east wing turret ablaze. A shaft of light slants around the tower and spills across the lawn, where fog clings to the glittering grass. I lift the brass knocker, shaped into the likeness of a hollow-eyed beast, and give the door two sharp raps.
She came back for me.
The thought sticks like gum on the bottom of my shoe and I don’t even know if it’s real. Last night’s dream could have been just a regular dream. But somehow, I don’t think so. Why else did the plant grow like that? Why else did I hear the echo of her voice when I touched the glowing leaf? I can still feel the spark in my fingertips.
I lift the knocker and rap on the door again.
If my intuition is right and I had another vision, then that makes two, and in both of them, my mother wasn’t a teenager. She was an adult, and five years ago, she returned.
She told Simon she came back for me.
She wanted to apologize.
She wanted to make things right.
But then she was chased down and taken.
Is she still alive?
Is Simon alive with her?
Have they been held against their will this whole time?
I think of the creature by the well at the same moment I was at the well. It feels like someone is trying to communicate with me. Whether or not that someone is my mother, I’m going to listen.
There’s a low scrape of metal.
With a groan, the large, oak doors open.
Even this early in the morning, Mr. Denis Tulane greets me in his butler attire, his bushy eyebrows as wild as ever. “Good morning,” he says with a bow. “I’m afraid Master Jude is out of town.”
