Derek played chicken with a number of potholes on the way to Grace’s house. Once he neared her address the road suddenly smoothed out. He pulled into the driveway, parked, and sat studying the house for a few minutes.
Her home was beige stucco and small, probably around twelve hundred square feet with an attached single car garage. The blue shutters on the three front windows seemed strangely out of place in a neighborhood where the predominant colors were orange, green, or red.
He was rarely afraid. Not because he was naturally courageous, but because he lived a life in which he was rarely put in physical danger. He hadn’t joined the military. The politicians with whom he sometimes clashed were cowards, for the most part. They might bluster and threaten, but nobody ever hit him. Nor did he associate with people who got into bar fights. The closest he came to physical confrontation was the hate mail he received.
Yet sitting there he had the odd feeling that he should probably have prepared for this visit more. If nothing else, gone to the gym a few times.
The neighborhood wasn’t the best. There were a group of kids that looked to be high school age huddled on the corner. They looked toward his Ford, all of them laughing. He wondered what they would have done if he’d driven Breanna’s Porsche. It had belonged to her father and consequently she had a soft spot in her heart for it.
He got out of his SUV and approached the house, not unduly surprised when the front door opened.
Grace had been twenty-two when he was born. He was forty-one which meant that he was staring at a sixty-three-year-old woman, one who looked about thirty. She had dark brown hair, his blue eyes, and his height. Her face only had a few laugh lines around her eyes, and a dimple near her cheek. When she smiled her teeth looked perfect. None of the yellowing that indicated a thinning of enamel as you age. If he hadn’t known how old she was he wouldn’t have been able to guess.
“Derek?”
“Grace?”
She nodded, then stepped aside in a wordless invitation to enter her small home.
He walked through the door, followed her down the hall and through an arched doorway to a small living room.
His birth mother evidently liked a Japanese minimalistic simplicity.
The couch was moved out from the wall to accommodate a sofa table behind it. On it was a collection of spheres that caught the light, casting colors onto the pale yellow walls.
The curtains were sheer, less for privacy than to allow the sunlight into the room. The couch was a pale blue embroidered fabric. The rug beneath his feet had touches of blue and yellow on a white background. Everything was spotless, dust free, and curiously sterile. There were no pictures anywhere. No portraits of a loved one. No memorabilia designed to spark comment or recollection. The occupant of this room could be a teenager, an octogenarian, or any age in between. There was no indication of a life well lived or love felt.
It was a room designed by a person who held her emotions inside in order to protect herself. He didn’t know if it was because of anything that had happened in her past or what she was afraid might happen in her present or future.
He chose the end of the couch. Instead of sitting beside him or even on the chair opposite him, she remained standing.
Something brown and fast darted across the room, skidded to a halt, and stood in front of him, growling.
“Twinkles! Stop that! You have better manners than that. Go and get in your bed.”
As quick as he’d appeared, the Chihuahua turned and headed for the plush dog bed beside the chair.
“I am sorry. He’s testy on the best of days. He really doesn’t like visitors. Neither does Bubbles. My cat. She’s in the other room. She’s quite a young cat, but acts as if she’s a thousand years old. Very wise. Very knowing.”
He wasn’t a cat person. He preferred dogs, but dogs that didn’t have an attitude.
“I’ll go get the coffee,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Not on my account. I don’t need anything, really.”
She only smiled. “It’s the Hawaiian blend that’s your favorite.”
While she was gone the Chihuahua kept staring at him, occasionally growling at him as if he thought Derek was going to steal the silver.
A few minutes later she entered the room again, carrying a tray that looked too heavy for her to manage. He stood, took it from her, and put it on the coffee table.
Grace made him feel like he’d fallen down the rabbit hole.
“Who told you about the coffee?” he asked, taking a cup from her. He’d start with the easy questions and advance from there. “Was it Angie?”
She shook her head. “I only spoke to her twice. It was too difficult, otherwise.”
Her voice was young, as young as her appearance. It didn’t tremble or quaver. Instead it seemed to hold a note of self ridicule as if she didn’t take herself seriously.
“Breanna warned me that you weren’t going to accept things easily.”
He put the cup down and stared at her. “So, you never talked to my mother but you did talk to Breanna?”
“Breanna and I were friends. I like to think we were close friends.”
He found that difficult to believe. Breanna would’ve said something. She would’ve come to him and told him about meeting his birth mother. She wouldn’t have kept something that important from him.
Yet was that a true statement? She hadn’t told him who Susan was. Instead, she’d lied about the other woman’s relationship to her. Lied about the trust fund, too.
“Okay, that answers the coffee question. How did you know it was me on the phone?”
“That’s a little more complicated.” She took a sip of her coffee and smiled at him.
At another time he might have called the expression beatific, but not now. He was annoyed and more than a little confused.
“How did you do the word on the windshield?” He’d figured out how it was done the other night. If you took your finger and made a pattern — or drew a word — on glass, the oils from your skin would repel steam later. Someone had drawn the word to spook him.
“Word on the windshield? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He explained about the word Mother.
She frowned. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, Derek. I don’t engage in transposition.”
“What the hell is that?”
“What you just described. Someone was trying to communicate with you.” She put her cup on the tray and folded her hands. “Have you considered that it might have been Breanna?”
Every thought vanished from his brain. All except one: his birth mother was definitely nuts. There was no other explanation. First, the warning she’d given him. Now this question.
“She evidently wanted you to talk to me. Why else send you a message?”
“You believe in that? Extrasensory whatever? Ghosts and after life messages?”
He could swear her smile held a trace of pity. “I wish that she’d had the chance to tell you everything before she died. It would have made this conversation so much easier.”
Was insanity hereditary? Should he get himself checked?
“Tell me what?”
“About your heritage. Or even tell you that she was a witch.”
“You’re saying Breanna was a witch?”
“A quite accomplished one. Her father was one as well.”
He reached for his coffee and wished it was something stronger.
“Wouldn’t he be a warlock?”
She shook her head. “Witch doesn’t apply to one gender or another, Derek. That’s a mistake everyone makes.”
The sooner he got out of here, the better. “So, my wife and my father-in-law were both witches. And what’s this everything she should have told me?”
“Did you never ask yourself why you were adopted?”
The change of subject jarred him, but he answered her anyway.
“You wanted to finish college without the burden of a child to care for. Not an uncommon situation.”
She stared down at her hands. “It nearly killed me to give you up. I think something broke inside me that day, something that has never been fixed. I wanted you with all my heart and soul.” She looked over at him. “I wanted you in my life, to share my every waking moment with you. I wanted to teach you everything I knew. In the end, though, I did what would be best for you. The way to protect you.”
He knew he was going to regret asking this, but he didn’t have a choice. His curiosity was in overdrive. “Protect me from what?”
She looked away, her gaze on the coffee pot as if it were a crystal ball. He wouldn’t be surprised if she whipped out one of those. The only thing she’d said so far that he could possibly accept was that giving him up had been difficult for her. The rest? Not a chance.
“Not from what. From whom.”
“Okay, from whom?”
“Life isn’t what you think it is, Derek. There are things you don’t know, but that you need to know.”
She still wasn’t looking at him. He didn’t need her to wax philosophical. All he wanted was the answer to the question.
“Who are you talking about, Grace?”
“Your father.”