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No. She’d avoided that city and the surrounding area like the plague, never wanting to go back to the place where she’d been taken away from her mother.
“Mommy, I said, I—”
“‘—you want to talk to your father.’ I know.” Lucy glanced out the window, where the shade was broken, and she could look outside to the still-dark morning. She then checked her watch. Five thirty-seven. “It’s too early. He’s sleeping.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I guess I don’t, but I think so.” She remembered waking up early to the sound of Ian’s soft snoring, his arm flung carelessly around her, his dark hair tousled. With Renee—no, Grace—asleep in the next room. Life had seemed simple then. Warm. Safe. And now . . . She climbed out of the shared bag, shivered, and rubbed her hands down her arms. “It’s really early. You stay here with Merlin and I’ll get the fire going again.”
She threw on her jacket and her boots and, following her flashlight’s beam, walked onto the back porch. The storm had stopped somewhere in the night, the snow piled high, a slice of moon offering a bit of silver light that glinted on the freshly fallen flakes. Trees, their branches laden, were flocked with the snow, and icicles glinted in the cold light, shimmering from the eaves.
A winter wonderland, she thought, if not for the ever-present feel of danger whispering through the fir trees and bringing goose bumps to the backs of her arms.
She searched the horizon, looking for half-buried footprints in the snow, or a glint of glass or metal, any hint that someone other than her or her daughter were nearby, but the slope of the mountain was calm, the nearest cabin a quarter of a mile downhill, according to the map she’d perused before driving here. She carried in two armloads of wood and was able to start the fire using the still-warm coals from the night before.
Renee had fallen into slumber again, and after Merlin had walked outside to scope the perimeter, do his business, and lap water from a dish Lucy had placed near the side door, he joined Renee, curling into a tight ball atop her sleeping bag.
Lucy went to work, scrubbing and cleaning. She’d found the valves on the pipes, then run water through them, cleaning out any debris that may have collected, and scrubbing the sinks until the water ran clear. The electricity might be working, but the lights had flickered twice, threatening to go out. She’d turned on the water heater, then drained the pipes again to get rid of the rust and dirt and bugs or whatever might have clogged them. The house, with its old, lumpy couch, small, round table, and café chairs would have to do. She only planned to be here a week, maybe less. Just long enough to get her thoughts together and plan her escape.
You can’t run forever.
“I won’t,” she said aloud, and Merlin lifted his head to look at her. “Just talking to myself,” she said, and the dog settled down again.
And where will you go, then? You can’t take Renee away from her father, no matter what name you give her.
“I’ll figure something out,” she whispered to herself. Maybe she would return to Europe. Not Austria—he might look there—but Paris, possibly, or Madrid, or Florence, cities large enough to get lost in, places where no one knew her identity. The opposite of this lonely isolation. As she tended the fire, brushing ash back into the firebox, the flames began to crackle and burn bright. Lucy glanced to the sleeping bag where her daughter’s hair, a tangle of brown curls, was visible against the stark white of her pillow. Ian wouldn’t allow her to take Renee out of the country.
Never.
She could plead and beg and threaten and cry, but he wouldn’t budge.
Nope. Europe was out. Mexico was out. Canada was out. Probably most spots in the United States were out. New Zealand? Japan? Egypt? Was there nowhere safe?
No.
The truth was, she would have to confront the past.
No matter how painful it was.
A Transatlantic Flight
Then
“Someone will meet us at the airport in Salzburg,” Aunt Beth said nervously again as she half-crouched near Lucy’s seat on the airplane, an aisle seat, four rows back from first class, where she and Mel were ticketed.
“I don’t want to go to Australia,” Lucy complained, not for the first time on the long trip.
“It’s Austria, dweeb. Not Australia.” Marilyn was seated next to her and flipping through the pages of People magazine, the one with Madonna and some guy she was marrying on the cover. It was old, and Marilyn wasn’t really reading it, just using it to cover up the fact that she had a newer copy of a magazine she called Cosmo tucked into the old, beat-up cover. Cosmo was a magazine that Aunt Beth would definitely disapprove of. “Big difference. Like it’s in Europe. You know. A country. Not a continent.” She pulled her Sony Discman out of her carry-on bag that had been tucked below the seat in front of her.
“Like you know everything!” Lucy said.
“I do. At least more than you. Like we’re going to boarding school in Salzburg, Austria, which is like the end of the world.”
“You’re just mad cuz you’ll have to be away from Nathan!” Lucy shot out and saw her sister wince, then blink, fighting a sudden rush of tears at the mention of the boyfriend with whom she’d been forced to break up.
Marilyn muttered, “Stop it!”
“Why didn’t Mama come?” Lucy demanded.
