“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nieve knew that she sounded more exasperated than she had a right to be. Besides, her dad didn’t need another member of the family to be peeved with him.
“Forgot,” he said. “Does it matter?” He addressed this question to the inside of the fridge where he was rummaging around for a midnight snack.
Yes it mattered, but she could hardly say so. Nieve was heating up a saucepan of milk on the stove and gave it a stir with a wooden spoon so it wouldn’t burn. She’d been so worried about Gran – and so worried period – that she couldn’t sleep. She had returned home – fast – without incident, and had clambered back in through her window without discovery, but still shivered to think of her close call. If that’s what it had been, she didn’t know. Nor had she known that Gran had gone to the city hospital for a few days to be with Dr. Morys, who was still in a coma.
Sutton’s hand appeared above the fridge door holding a carton of gooseberry yogurt. “Want this?”
“No thanks.” She poured the hot milk into her old, chipped Bunnykins mug.
“Gran came by earlier to let us know. I meant to tell you.” He pried the lid off the carton and plucked a spoon out of the dish rack. “I would have tomorrow.”
Nieve nodded, but she doubted it. Her father wasn’t exactly with it these days. He hadn’t even mentioned the scratches on her hand that she’d gotten from crashing into the rosebush. Usually he was much more observant. Although now she knew that Gran was safe and accounted for and that was the main thing. Gran wouldn’t be sitting idly by Dr. Morys, either. She’d be talking to him, calling him back, working hard to help him.
“Dad.” She took a sip of her milk. “Where’s the Black City? Is it near here?”
“Black City?” He set the yogurt on the counter and stared through the kitchen window, perplexed, as though a city might have sprung up outside without him having noticed. “Nowhere. Never heard of it.”
“Ick.” The skin that had formed on the surface of the hot milk had come off and stuck to Nieve’s lips like a popped bubblegum bubble, only it was white and rubbery. She felt so goofy with it stuck on her mouth that she started to laugh.
Sutton didn’t join in, only stared at her absentmindedly for a moment before wandering out of the kitchen without a word, his uneaten snack abandoned on the counter.
Nieve picked the milky seal off her lips and, filling in for her dad, said, “Try to get some sleep, En.”
“I will,” she promised.
She did, too. She slept as if she were in a coma, or as if she’d spent the night underground, dreamless in a deep cavern. When she woke, she even had strands of cobweb trailing across her chin as if she had emerged from some hidden, spidery place. Nieve brushed the cobwebs away with her pyjama sleeve, not much liking the idea of spiders taking shortcuts across her face during the night. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and blinked a couple of times. It was still fairly dark in her room, yet she had a feeling that it was late morning. For a minute or two she lay listening to a soft tapping sound on her window. That creepy plant outside came to mind . . . and then . . . rain, she realized, her heart sinking. Then school, and her heart sank farther. Not that she minded school, but a dreary Monday, and the smell of damp clothes in the classroom, and math, and the hands on the classroom clock moving so slowly that they seemed to be injured . . . then no, it was Sunday!
Nieve sat up. Sunday, no problem. A rainy Sunday indoors was bearable. She was never at a loss for things to do, drawing, reading. Her friend Malcolm might be over his measles by now and they could get together at his place or hers, play some cards or crokinole. She was a wizard at crokinole. Or, even better, they could start a newspaper. This would give Nieve some journalism experience, see if she was suited for it.
Getting dressed, she considered what to call the paper. Not The Star or The Sun, both of which were taken already. The Moonbeam? Too cute. The Beacon? Too boring. The Comet maybe . . . or how about The Laser? Yeah, that was more like it: incisive, probing, up-to-the-minute news.
The house was hushed and dim, no sign of the parents. Nieve made her way to the kitchen and fixed herself an ample breakfast: cereal, toast with loads of butter and jam, juice. She was careful not to make too much noise. Her parents might feel better if they got to sleep in. She certainly felt better, although there was something at the back of her mind struggling to get to the front. Something she was supposed to do? Didn’t matter, if it was important, she’d remember eventually. If it was about burning that freaky plant out front, the day was too wet. She might try cutting it down, but pictured it fighting back, or springing back up, twice the size. She pictured it bleeding all over her . . . and then she told herself to wise up. That wasn’t possible.
When Nieve finished breakfast, she carried the dishes to the sink and called Malcolm’s place. No answer. She hung up and tried again, in case she’d punched in the wrong number. There was still no answer. Her luck, he and his mother were away somewhere. Malcolm must be better, which was great. Maybe they’d gone out for a morning hike . . . in the rain . . . .
Nieve wandered into the living room and looked around. It was awfully quiet, not to mention gloomy. She turned on the lamp beside the couch and the light that poured out made the whole room cozier and more inviting. What would it be like to produce light simply by snapping your fingers, she wondered? She tried this, although finger-snapping wasn’t one of her finer talents, and nothing happened of course, but there was no harm in pretending that it had. FINGER-SNAPPING GIRL GENERATES LIGHT read a headline in her (so far) imaginary paper.
Rain was pounding down on the roof and she could hear thunder in the distance. When she walked over to the window and gazed out, she saw that the front yard had huge puddles in it, and the spruce trees that lined the walk were twitching and shaking their branches as if they were mightily angry. A vein of lightning streaked across the sky and the boom of thunder that followed was a whopper, a house-shaking crash that made her jump. Somebody was getting pummeled.
Nieve had always found storms exciting, and when younger had begged to go out in her swimsuit and jump around in the rain. Silly, since she could have gotten fried by lightning, and she’d never been allowed to anyway. Storms terrified her mother. During a storm, Sophie usually hid in the downstairs closet with a shopping bag on her head. Nieve smiled at that, and it occurred to her to check the closet in case her mum was in there. The moment she turned away from the window to do this, though, the front door sprang open.
“Dad!” She whirled around. He’d given her a start. “I didn’t know you were up.”
“Yep.” His hair was plastered to his head and his sneakers made a slurping noise as he pried them off.
“What were you doing outside?”
He unzipped his sodden windbreaker, which was sticking to him like an extra skin, and peeled it off. “Walking.”
Weren’t single-word answers the kind only kids delivered when they were trying to be evasive? Apparently not.
“In this weather?”
“Great for ducks,” he said.
“I suppose.” She also supposed that corny humour was better than none. “Is Mum up? I was going to check the closet.”
Sutton gave her a blank look. A blank, wet look, as there were drips of water hanging off his nose and chin.
“You know, in case she’s hiding from the storm.”
“I already checked there,” he said, heading toward the bathroom.
She watched him go, watched as his socks left big wet splats on the floor. Ducks, she thought.
Nieve spent the rest of the day working on her newspaper, although she found it hard to concentrate. Where was her mother? She drew a picture of Artichoke for the front cover and wrote a story about him, about how Dr. Morys had found him, a puppy abandoned on the side of the road (people from the city often dumped their unwanted pets in the countryside, which infuriated her, but she tried to give her story a neutral tone). She wrote about what a smart and loyal dog he was, and how he had gone missing. Missing . . . where was her mother? Every time she asked herself this question, a knot in her stomach tightened. By dinnertime her stomach was practically all knot and she couldn’t have forced a single thing down. Not that any cooking smells were wafting out of the kitchen.
But then . . . Sophie reappeared. She walked through the front door at six-thirty carrying a pizza! And not only was she back, but she was back to her old self. Except that she was chattier than usual; she hurried through the house, talking a mile a minute. Nieve didn’t care. She didn’t even care that the pizza had spinach on it. Relief swept through her, unpicking the knot on its way, easily undone as a slipknot. She scrambled to get some plates on the table. This was more like it! She was ravenous.
As she ate slice after slice of pizza, she watched her mother’s animated expression with pleasure, and listened to her talking about the storm with mounting interest. This was definitely going into her paper, front page news.
“So many trees down, it was incredible.” Sophie was waving her hands around, too worked up to eat. “Power out all over the city, I did tell you I was going to the city, didn’t I? Nora Mullein called last night, you remember her, don’t you? Friend from way back, maybe you don’t. She was all in a stew about . . . nothing really, some personal problems, but I had to go, she was flipping out. I’m positive I left a note beside the phone. No? Gosh, sorry you two, hope you didn’t worry . . . .”
Sutton was also watching Sophie and smiling. Smiling and frowning. “Where did you get that ring?” he asked.
“This?” Sophie looked at her hand in surprise. “Oh this.” Nieve had noticed it, too, a gold pinky ring set with a jet black stone. “Piece of junk. Nora insisted I take it, guilty for dragging me all the way in to the city, I guess.” She pulled it quickly off her finger and slipped it into her pocket.
Sutton shifted uneasily in his chair and continued to frown.
Nieve didn’t want to think about what the frown meant, didn’t want another dinner ruined, but when she climbed into bed that night, she did have to admit to herself that things weren’t quite right with her mother. But they were more right than they had been. Whatever the not-right thing was, it didn’t get in the way of sleep. The storm had spent itself and she drifted off listening to the rain plicking softly against her window. It sounded like a clock that kept wonky, imperfect time, but had a hypnotic effect just the same.
It was only the next day that the forgotten matter that had been idling at the back of her mind finally worked its way to the front.