"What do you know about her?" Stella readied herself to take notes.
"What she looks like, the song she sings. I saw her when I was a girl, when she came to my room to sing that lullaby, just as she's reputed to have done for generations before. It was. . . comforting. There was a gentleness about her. I tried to talk to her sometimes, but she never talked back. She'd just smile. Sometimes she'd cry. Thanks, sweetie," she said when David poured her more coffee. "I didn't see her through my teenage years, andbeing a teenage girl I didn't think about her much. I had my mind on other things. But I remember the next time I saw her. "
"Don't keep us in suspense," Hayley demanded.
"It was early in the summer, end of June. John and I hadn't been married very long, and we were staying here. It was already hot, one of those hot, still nights where the air's like a wet blanket. But I couldn't sleep, so I left the cool house for the hot garden. I was restless and nervy. I thought I might be pregnant. I wanted it - we wanted it so much, that I couldn't think about anything else. I went out to the garden and sat on this old teak glider, and dreamed up at the moon, praying it was true and we'd started a baby. "
She let out a little sigh. "I was barely eighteen. Anyway, while I sat there, she came. I didn't see or hear her come, she was just there, standing on the path. Smiling. Something in the way she smiled at me, something about it, made me know - absolutely know - I had child in me. I sat there, in the midnight heat and cried for the joy of it. When I went to the doctor a couple weeks later, I already knew I was carrying Harper. "
"That's so nice. " Hayley blinked back tears. "So sweet. "
"I saw her off and on for years after, and always saw her at the onset of a pregnancy, before I was sure. I'd see her, and I'd know there was a baby coming. When my youngest hit adolescence, I stopped seeing her regularly. "
"It has to be about children," Stella decided, underlining "pregnancy" twice in her notes. "That's the common link. Children see her, women with children, or pregnant women. The died-in-childbirth theory is looking good. " Immediately she winced. "Sorry, Hayley, that didn't sound right. "
"I know what you mean. Maybe she's Alice. Maybe what she needs to pass over is to be acknowledged by name. "
"Well. " Stella looked at the cartons and books. "Let's dig in. "
* * *
She dreamed again that night, with her mind full of ghosts and questions, of her perfect garden with the blue dahlia that grew stubbornly in its midst.
A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.
She heard the voice inside her head, a voice that wasn't her own.
"It's true. That's true," she murmured. "But it's so beautiful. So strong and vivid. "
It seems so now, but it's deceptive. If it stays, it changes everything. It will take over, and spoil everything you've done. Everything you have. Would you risk that, risk all, for one dazzling flower? One that will only die away at the first frost?
"I don't know. " Studying the garden, she rubbed her arms as her skin pricked with unease. "Maybe I could change the plan. I might be able to use it as a focal point. "
Thunder boomed and the sky went black, as she stood by the garden, just as she'd once stood through a stormy evening in her own kitchen.
And the grief she'd felt then stabbed into her as if someone had plunged a knife into her heart.
Feel it? Would you feel it again? Would you risk that kind of pain, for this?
"I can't breathe. " She sank to her knees as the pain radiated. "I can't breathe. What's happening to me?"
Remember it. Think of it. Remember the innocence of your children and hack it down. Dig it put. Before it's too late! Can't you see how it tries to overshadow the rest? Can't you see how it steals the light? Beauty can be poison.
She woke, shivering with cold, with her heart beating against the pain that had ripped awake with her.
And knew she hadn't been alone, not even in dreams.
Chapter Thirteen
On her day off, Stella took the boys to meet her father and his wife at the zoo. Within an hour, the boys were carting around rubber snakes, balloons, and chowing down on ice cream cones.
Stella had long since accepted that a grandparent's primary job was to spoil, and since fate had given her sons only this one set, she let them have free rein.
When the reptile house became the next objective, she opted out, freely handing the controls of the next stage to Granddad.
"Your mom's always been squeamish about snakes," Will told the boys.
"And I'm not ashamed to admit it. You all just go ahead. I'll wait. "