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When we returned to the house, Mrs. Healy called her into her personal den and the two of them had a private conversation behind closed doors. They were in there for a long time. After Liona came out of the den, she bagged the clothes that I had left in room eight into a duffle and turned to me,
“Get a shower,” she ordered. I paused for a minute, not knowing what would happen to me. She tossed me a towel.
No one said a word to me after that, so when I had dry clothes on, and I was clean, I sat outside on the porch on the swing with a sandwich Mrs. Healy brought me. I ate and watched the sun set and the rain come down. The air was chilly, but the ground smelled sweet from being damp. Around eight o’clock at night, Liona stepped outside. She jingled the keys in her hand and walked to Mrs. Wright’s car.
“Coming?” she asked. I scrambled to catch up to her.
We didn’t talk all the way to Reef Hollow and neither had the rain stopped. Potholes in the gravel road filled with water and streams trickled along the gutters. The station wagon bounced and swerved around them. Liona, who had little experience driving, ended up bottoming the car out. The left front wheel dug further into the mud while the other three burned holes into the ground when she stepped on the gas. After several tries, she shut the engine down, slapped the steering wheel and buried her head in her hands. I sat next to her speechless having no experience at all with motor vehicles and even less with trying to say something comforting to a girl stuck in the mud.
I hated seeing her cry though. Depression could set in and the thought that she might take sleeping pills worried me. We’d already been fogged in as we sat in the car, so I couldn’t see outside very well. It was dark though. Dark, damp and cold.
“Liona?” I spoke over the beat of raindrops on the windshield. “Why don’t we just leave the car here for a little bit and walk to Tim Lan’s house? It’s dry in the house. We could make a little fire and talk. I could make us some cocoa. We aren’t far.”
She didn’t move, nor did she answer.
“Maybe the rain will stop a little bit later, and we can figure out how to get the car out of this hole, then. Or maybe I can conjure up some...”
“No!” she interrupted me and finally raised her head. “You can’t just keep depending on magic to solve all your problems.”
“But...” I wanted to argue that we didn’t really have any other solution now. We were stuck. She opened her door and got out before I had a chance to speak.
She was already drenched by the time I got to her side of the car, so I shook my left hand, pleased with how quickly magic came for the small tricks, and popped an umbrella open. No sooner had I lifted it to hover over her then she gave a sharp nod of her head. The umbrella disappeared. She moved to the back of the car and inspected the hole Mrs. Wright’s car had sunk in.
“Stuck, stuck, stuck!” she groaned and kicked the tire.
Thinking there had been some mistake with my magic, I made another umbrella and again she scowled at me, nodded her head, and made this one disappear, too.
“Why are you doing that?” I shouted over the sound of the rain.
“Because I’m sick of your magic,” she answered as she stood up again. She pulled her foot out of a puddle and trudged through the mud to the other side of the car.
“You’re using magic too and you don’t seem to be sick of that!”
“I don’t use my magic to keep me away from people I care about.”
“That’s what you think I’m doing?” I raced as quickly as I could to catch up to her.
“I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. I see that’s what you’re doing. Why else aren’t you living at the boarding house?”
“I can’t live there anymore. Mrs. Healy doesn’t want me there anymore.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe if you didn’t keep coming back here to Reef Hollow you could stay with us. There’d be a chance if you weren’t hanging out with Tim Lan using your magic to make him rich.”
“He appreciates the special things that I can do with my magic. And what I’m doing is earning my keep. That’s a lot more than I do at your boarding house, at least.”
“Making pearls? So, he can sell them? He’s using you, and you’re worth more than that. Have some self-pride, why don’t you?”
“I bet I could use magic to get your car out of this hole. I bet you would appreciate that!”
“Don’t. I’d appreciate you more if you pushed my car out of the hole, like a normal person.”
“I’m not normal.”
She sloshed through the mud back to the driver’s side, got in the car and started the engine. I barely had enough time to get to the rear before the wheels started spinning. Mud flew everywhere. I leaned my weight against the trunk of the car and pushed with all my might, slipping and sliding until the rear tire grabbed hold of the ground. The car moved slowly, and finally jumped out of the hole, leaving me a muddy mess. She did a three-point turn around, slowed alongside of me and rolled down her window. “Doesn’t that feel a whole lot better than using supernatural powers to solve your problems?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer her. Wet, muddy, and exhausted, and with a blank stare I took too long to respond, so she rolled up her window and stepped on the gas, red tail lights being the last I saw of her that night.
Chapter 20
