Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(74)

My mother wore her favorite nightgown. It was pale yellow with tiny blue flowers and green leaves. The rain had plastered it to her skinny frame, molding wiry legs and whip-thin arms as she bent and heaved spadefuls of dirt. Her long brown hair was loose, wet hanks stuck to her hollowed out cheeks.

Up, down. Up, down.

The hole grew bigger. Not too big. Big enough.

Then, the baby, crying down the hall.

My mother heard it at the same time I did. Her head came up. The shovel stilled in her hands. She turned toward the window. She looked right at me. She smiled, her mouth a gaping black maw, and her hair suddenly turned to hissing snakes around her head.

I let go of the windowsill. I fell back. Bumped my head against a coffee table, but I didn’t cry out. I scrambled to my little feet and I began to run.

Down the hall. Baby crying.

Had to get there first.

The creak of the back door opening. My mother, stepping through the back door into the filthy little kitchen, bare, boney feet caked with mud.

Down the hall. Baby crying.

Had to get there first.

My fisted hands chugged. My little knees went up and down as fast as my mother’s spade had. Running, running, running. Hearing my panting breath, feeling my pounding chest. Running, running, running.

“Charlie,” my mother sang out behind me. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Down the hall. Baby crying.

Had to get there first.

“Come to your mommy, Charlie. Remember Charlie…Don’t make me angry.”

Then I was there, yanking open the closet door. No crib. No bassinet. A dresser drawer, padded with blankets and placed on the floor.

Footsteps, closer. Steady. Sure.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

The wink of the shovel blade, up, down, up down, up down.

I scooped up the baby, grabbed the pile of blankets, and ran for the front door. I bolted out into the wild night. Whipping wind. Lashing rain. Thundering sky. Couldn’t notice. Couldn’t care.

“Charlie. I see you. Charlie! Don’t make me angry.…”

I headed straight into the woods. Knew where I was going. Practiced this. Had known. Had to try. Had to do something. With my small little hands and my small little legs, but my big heart, nearly bursting in my chest.

“Charlie…Don’t make me angry.”

The broad-leafed tree was a dozen trunks back. Last-second pause, taking the longest blanket and using it to tie the baby in a sling against my chest. I’d practiced this before, too. Sometimes, I carried the baby around the house this way, because then she didn’t cry, and when she didn’t cry, life was better for all of us.

Blanket was wet. Baby was wet. I was wet.

My mother’s voice, not so far behind me now. “Charlie Grant, come here this minute. Charlene Grant, don’t make me angry!”

I reached for the nearest branch, low, slippery, not too big, and with determined little fists, I grabbed it with both hands and scrambled up to the first tree branch.

Moving fast and desperate. All up, no down. Tree wasn’t that big, but neither was I. If I could just keep moving, monkey-climb my way to the top…

My mother was afraid of heights. She would follow me out, she would follow us down, but she would never follow me up.

Below me, her sudden screech.

“Charlene Grant! You come down here. Right now! Do you hear me young lady? Charlene Grant you do as your mother says!”

Swinging up and up. Not looking down. Not wanting to think about the drop, the fall, the squirmy weight of the baby. Not wanting to see my mother standing below, her hands on her hips, glaring at me with her snake-like hair and black maw mouth and the shovel that would go up down, up down, up down. Forming the hole. Not too big. Big enough.

At last I ran out of branches. Had to stop, nestled in the junction, shivering uncontrollably, rain streaming down my face, one hand clinging to a branch beside my head, the other wrapped around the baby.

My mother still screamed, but the wind was now whipping her words away. From this height, she was smaller, harder to see. From this height, I didn’t have to be scared of her anymore.

Eventually she would wear herself out. Eventually she would return inside and, caked in mud and filth and leaves, curl up on the couch and fall asleep. Then I would carefully make my way back down.

I would change the baby’s diaper, wrap her in fresh blankets I’d left warming on the radiator. I’d feed her a cold bottle, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her propped on my lap.

The baby would fall asleep. Then I would return her to the nest in the hall closet, before heading back outside and refilling the tiny hole, working, just as my mother had done, by the glow of a flashlight.

If I did everything right, in the morning, there would be no sign of tonight. It would be erased, a bad dream that never happened. And my mother would wake up happy, maybe singing lightly under her breath, and she would dance around the house with me, giddy and gay, and she would kiss and hug the baby, and everything would be all right again. She would love us.

For a little bit, anyway.

I nestled deeper into the tree limbs. Felt the warmth of the baby against my chest. Hoped she felt my warmth, too, as I wrapped my other arm around her and held on tight.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to her now. “Almost done now. Almost safe.”

She was no longer crying. Instead, she stared up at me with big brown eyes.