Mind Games

“I feel sick for that little girl, losing her parents this way. But listening to her telling it the way she did, it gave me the creeps.”

He shot her one look, cool and mild, as he drove. “You’d best get over that. This isn’t our investigation, but those are our people. If you’re going to work our part of it with me, you’d best get over that right quick.”

Inside the house, Lucy held Thea. “I can give you something to help you sleep awhile.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“How about you come up with me, lie down in my bed? Darling, I’ve got to call your uncles.” Her voice shook a little on the words. “That’s something I have to do.”

“Can I stay in your bed tonight?”

“Of course you can. Come on now.”

“We have to tell Rem.”

“Let’s wait till morning. That can wait till morning. He’s going to need your help, Thea. So am I. We’re all going to need each other. We all have to help each other.”

“They never hurt anybody, Grammie.” Eyes swollen from weeping lifted to Lucy’s. “They never even spanked me or Rem. Even when I guess we deserved it.”

“I know, I know. Sometimes there’s no understanding. Sometimes something’s so cruel it seems impossible. Lie down, honeypot, maybe close your eyes. You don’t have to sleep. Just rest.”

“I want them. I want Mom and Dad.”

“Oh, so do I.”

She sat, stroking Thea’s hair. “Find a memory of them, a happy memory. Go into that for a while and rest.”

She sat and stroked. Then she stretched the phone’s cord as far away from the bed as she could to call her sons.

While she told them, while they wept and she wept, she watched her granddaughter finally drift to sleep, drift into a dream, a soft one.

“I only need a minute, darling.” She murmured it as she brushed a kiss over Thea’s cheek. “I’ll only be a minute.”

In her bare feet, she ran down the steps, then out the front door she left open behind her. The wet grass soaked the hem of her sleeping pants as she ran across the road, into the trees.

Where she screamed and screamed and screamed until the mountains shuddered with her grief.

* * *

Lucy didn’t expect to sleep, so took the single hour of oblivion with gratitude. She’d need strength to get through the day, and that hour helped.

She rose in the predawn light, even more grateful Thea slept and Rem slept on. The thought of Rem and what she’d have to tell him brought tears rushing into her throat.

She swallowed them back as she dressed. Her animals needed tending. And when they woke, so would the children.

After yanking her hair back in a tail, she wrote Thea a note.

I’m just outside, darling, doing the chores.

On her way down, she peeked into Rem’s room. He slept flat on his stomach, arms and legs spread out like a starfish. Cocoa yawned, stretched, then padded out to join Duck and Goose.

Tails wagged.

Just a boy, she thought, barely ten. A boy who still smelled of forests and all the wild, wonderful things in it.

She left him sleeping.

She’d let the dogs out. She’d make coffee—she needed it—then see to her animals.