One. Two. Four. Eight.
Wait. Where was her mother’s shadow?
She glanced behind, in front, in every direction. Helen’s shadow was nowhere to be found.
Which was impossible, wasn’t it? Marigold hadn’t yet studied physics, but she had common sense. Shadows couldn’t take off on their own. They were anchored to an object and created by blocking a source of light.
So Marigold, who was still young, did what she thought was most sensible. She tugged on her mother’s sleeve, and said, “Mom, I think you lost your shadow.”
Helen stopped short, her back going straighter than a curtain rod. “What did you say?”
“Your shadow, Mom. It’s missing.”
A normal mother might have laughed. Might have stepped into the light and wriggled her fingers to show her child justwhere her shadow was. Helen did no such thing. Rather, she went paler than the moon.
Headlights flashed then, white and brilliant. A truck was accelerating through the parking lot.
“Helen!” shouted Philip. “Watch out!”
Marigold heard an anguished scream as Helen shoved her out of the way.
She tumbled back, glasses flying off her face, elbows scraping the pavement. The tires screeched.
“Mom!” she shrieked.
The instant before the truck would’ve hit her mother, Helen vanished.
Vanished. Disappeared. Without a trace. Into thin air.
Marigold had read about vanishing illusions in a magic book from the library. She’d learned how magicians made coins appear and disappear through sleight of hand. But nothing in that sharp and logical brain of hers could explain how her mother was there in the parking lot one instant, then gone the next.
Peony and Rosie raced to her. “Marigold!” her little sister screamed. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
They helped her up and Peony handed Marigold her glasses. “You’re bleeding and you’ve got a bump by your eye,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
Marigold rubbed the spot, and sure enough there was a raised bump, like a scar, that she hadn’t felt before. Was it from her glasses?
“She’s fine,” came their mother’s voice.
Marigold whirled. There was Helen, sitting on the pavement. The barrette clipping her bangs had fallen off, leaving her hair disheveled, and she’d lost a shoe. Aside from that, she appeared untouched. Unshaken, too, the same of which couldn’t be said of Marigold.
The young girl gaped at her mother. “I... I saw—”
“Girls, get in the car,” Helen interrupted. “Let your father handle this.”
The driver had gotten out of his truck. Marigold observed his wide shadow cast over the white parking lines, weaving in and out as he approached her father, whose shadow was far slimmer, the stance of his legs like a pair of open chopsticks.
“Marigold!” said her mother.
Marigold didn’t listen; she was too busy staring at the ground. Everyone had a shadow. Everyone except—
Her throat squeezed tight, an invisible cord strangling her. She started coughing. She couldn’t breathe.
“We’re taking you to the doctor tomorrow,” said Helen.
“What . . . what about . . . you?” Marigold asked breathlessly. “The truck was about to hit you, then you . . . you vanished.”
“Vanished?” Her mother regarded her darkly. “Don’t talk nonsense.”
