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“Mama?” my voice squeaked out of me, forcing its way between the walls of amazement and disbelief.
“Yes, baby. It’s me,” she said, and then seemed to read the next thought pressing on my mind. “It’s me. I’m alive.”
TWO
My mother guided me through the scrub-filled ravine that separated the powder magazine from the parking lot servicing the nearby businesses. A limousine waited there, and a liveried driver who was standing by its side jolted to attention, then opened the car’s door. Together, my mother and he eased me into the air-conditioned cocoon, and then my mother slid in next to me. A dark privacy glass separated us from the driver’s area, and even blacker windows, nearly onyx, protected us from the world outside. The car began moving, but I had no idea where we were going. Frankly, I didn’t care. I held on to my mother’s hands, grasping them so tightly it must have hurt. Her face held my eyes. It seemed so much like a mirror of my own, except that it held a couple decades more of experience, of sadness.
“I know you must have so many questions.” Her words began to make their way through the haze. “And,” she said as her eyes caressed me, “there are so many things I need to say to you. But we don’t have time now.” A pained smile formed on her face. She managed to extricate her right hand from mine, and ran her fingers through my hair. “I didn’t want you to find out like this. I didn’t want to just fall into your world, but I tracked you down at the powder magazine, and I had to get a look at you.” She pulled my head to her bosom, pressing her cool palm against my cheek. “If only I’d arrived a few moments earlier, I could have helped, but I discovered you too late. The old gentleman had already . . . expired. You were so distraught, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave you there.”
“But how could you?” I asked. “I mean, how could you have left me before? Left Maisie?” I pulled back from her, a sharp and stinging anger cutting me to the quick. “How could you let us grow up believing you had died?”
“I had no choice,” she said. “She wouldn’t let me near you. She was working against me long before she plotted against you.”
My mother didn’t need to supply the name. “Ginny,” I said. A slight nod confirmed my thought. “But why?”
“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. Only not right now. I’ve waited all your life to have a chance to explain things to you, and it isn’t a story that can be rushed.” She reached forward and pulled me into her again. I felt intoxicated by her scent—it reached all the way through the years and brought me right back to the cradle. For a moment, I let go of everything and just let my mother hold me. “I have to let you go for now,” she whispered. “But I’ll be near, and we’ll talk soon. Very soon. I promise.”
“No,” I looked up to her, my heart in my throat. “No, you have to come home,” I pleaded. “Come home now. We have to tell Iris and Ellen and Oliver that you’re still alive. They are going to be so—”
Her body tensed and her eyes narrowed, small lines forming at their corners. “No,” a barbed refusal tore from her lips. She drew a breath, forced her shoulders to relax. “No,” she said more calmly. She pushed me away gently, but then patted my hand. “They can’t know I’ve returned. Not yet.”
“But they have to . . .” My words died in the air as the look on her face told me more than I wanted to know.
Her eyes had turned downcast and distant, as if she were reliving an unpleasant memory. A tremble danced at the corner of her mouth, and she clenched her jaw to regain control of the tic. “Oh, they know, my darling girl. My sisters know very well that I’m alive.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “I’m not sure what they have told Oliver, but your aunts, they know.” She leaned in and pinned me with her gaze. “Iris and Ellen took you and Maisie from me at Ginny’s bidding.”
“I cannot believe they would do something so terrible,” I heard my own voice pleading with my mother. “Why would they?”
“The same reason Ginny stole your power and worked to turn your twin against you—yes, I know all about it. The line. Ginny justified all of her crimes by saying she committed them to protect the line. And in separating my children from their mother, Iris and Ellen were her willing accomplices.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe, but there was something about my mother’s words that I found so compelling.
She continued. “You think you know them, but you don’t. Not really. You only know the side they have allowed you to see. If they realize you know . . . if they learn I am back, I fear for your safety.” I started to protest that they would never do anything to hurt me, but she held up her hand to stop me. “They have always put the line before your well-being, and they always will. Deep down you know that, or you wouldn’t be sneaking around with the old root doctor trying to find out what the line has done with Maisie. My sisters will not think twice about alerting the united families if they find out you know about me. The other anchors already have it in for you simply because you are my daughter. If they learn that I have made contact with you, they will make a preemptive move against you. I fear they may work a binding on you.”
She waited until her warning had fully registered. Now that I was an anchor, a binding wouldn’t merely strip me of my powers. It would leave me to live out the rest of my life in a vegetative state—the power of the line would consume me, leaving me as nothing more than a receptacle. “You must say nothing. Tell no one. If you do, we will lose each other again, and this time it will be forever.”
“But what could you have done to threaten Ginny so? I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t,” she said and tapped once on the window that separated us from the driver. “And I’m sorry, but it isn’t safe for me to linger. I’ll explain everything when we see each other next. For now, promise me that you will keep this to yourself, for your own sake. For my grandson’s sake.” She smiled as she mentioned Colin. “Promise me.” She placed her smooth, cool hand under my chin and tilted my face so that my eyes met hers. I heard the car’s trunk being opened, then closed. That was when I realized we were no longer moving.
I found it impossible to refuse her. “I promise,” I said, and she leaned in to kiss my forehead. “But how do you know what’s happened to Maisie?”
“I have . . . friends who have kept me informed about my two daughters,” she said. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t prevent it all.”
“Okay, but can you help me find her?”
She smiled at me one last time. “I already am, my girl.” The door next to me opened, revealing the chauffeur. He stepped aside. I knew he expected me to exit, but I couldn’t tear myself away. My mother touched my cheek and then moved her hands to her neck. She unhooked the necklace she’d been wearing and fixed it around my own neck. Something about wearing her locket made me feel so safe, so loved. She gave me a gentle push. “Go on now. You’ll see me again very soon. This I promise you.” I climbed out of the car to find we had stopped not far from the southern edge of Forsyth Park. My bike, which had been in the trunk of the car, was waiting patiently on the curb. Suddenly a thought hit me, and I reached out to stop the driver’s hand before he could close the door.
“The man, the old guy,” I said, remembering that we had left the poor man’s body lying in the weeds.
My mother leaned slightly forward. “It’s already been taken care of,” she said, and the driver closed the door. I watched the limo as it pulled away, leaning on my bike for support, putting all my strength into not letting my legs give way. The blare of a siren yanked me out of my fugue, and an ambulance and police car flew past me, heading, I knew, toward the old powder magazine. A second police car followed them a minute or so behind. This one had its lights and siren working too, but it moved at a less frenetic pace. As it passed, a passenger inside turned to look at me, and a flash of recognition crossed Detective Adam Cook’s face.
THREE
As I walked my bike up our drive, it struck me that the house I’d grown up in had been really nothing more than a stage set. A theater of lies. The set may have been made of actual wood and brick, but nothing else was real. My mother’s perfume still clung to me. She was alive. Alive! That was real. That was the truth. Everything I’d ever believed about her, about my family, about my life rang false now. A darkness squeezed my heart as a newfound hatred for Ginny took root. I had been working on letting go of my anger toward my great-aunt, but now any thought of forgiveness evaporated. Forgiveness, hell. I would go tomorrow and dance on her grave. She had stolen my power from me. I could overlook that. But taking my mother from me, from Maisie? That I could never forgive. I prayed that wherever Ginny’s essence had landed, eternity would find her without one moment’s peace.
How could Ginny have justified keeping my mother from me? But then what could she have hoped to accomplish by separating me from my birthright of power? She would have claimed she was doing her duty as anchor. Protecting the line. Protecting it from my mother. Protecting it from me. But the line had chosen me. It didn’t fear me; it welcomed me. Ginny must have been wrong about my mother too. She must have been.
