1Ellie
“Ellie!” Aunt Hestia’s voice cracked through the old farmhouse like a whip.
Elleanor Brandeau exhaled in relief. Every day, that insistent voice was like a pressure valve opening, easing the panic that Hestia would vanish. Again. As a younger woman, Hestia had disappeared without a trace for several years. The grumbling archaeologist upstairs rarely mentioned it, but Ellie thought about it every day.
Was this the day she’d be gone? Was this the day that everything fell apart?
There was a reason Hestia had gone, and until Ellie understood it, she would wrestle with anxiety. Despite her aunt’s insistence that she knew nothing about that missing time—and plenty of therapists telling Ellie that it was impossible to know—Ellie had doubts. More than that, perhaps, she had an irksome sense that there was an answer just at the edge of knowing.
As with every morning, Elleanor Brandeau was downstairs in the kitchen enjoying a bit of silence with a pot of overpriced coffee. As a teen, she would open Hestia’s door, just to make sure she was still there. Now, she was an adult, so she’d watch the automatic pot brew coffee in silence.
And wait.
Every day, the coffee clicked on at 6:00 A.M. Hestia would wake by 6:15 A.M.
Those fifteen minutes dragged out with a pressure Ellie hated. She’d wait patiently for both the summons and the caffeine.
Fine, maybe not exactly patiently. Ellie watched the pot like a fox watched the hens that used to live in the coop out back. Unlike the fox that still crept around their empty backyard henhouse every so often, Ellie didn’t paw at the coffee pot. She’d wait for the coffee and her aunt, busy herself baking—today was fresh lemon scones—and wait.
“Is the coffee ready, El?” Hestia called from her upstairs lair.
“On the way!” Ellie smiled wider. Life was normal, steady.
Hestia had some sort of internal timer. By 6:15, she was usually awake and calling to Ellie. Until recently, she’d call out to have Ellie pour her a cup and then come to the kitchen so it was the “perfect temperature” when she walked into the oversized room. Lately, she’d had to wait to have it brought to her.
Sixty-three years of sass and salt in a five-foot package, Hestia Brandeau was as energetic as a woman half her age—and twice as surly since she needed a hip replaced. Surgery was in a matter of days, and it was hanging over the household like a wet cloud.
“Coming!” Ellie sang out as she poured a cup for Hestia and shoved the second tray of scones into the oven.
A piping hot scone in one hand and coffee in the other, Ellie climbed up to the third floor where Hestia was propped up like a Victorian regent in a bed that was so immense that it had to be assembled inside the bedroom.
“Scones already…?” Hestia eyed the plate.
“My, what big eyes you have,” Ellie teased, wiggling the scone.
“Not your granny, you beastly child.” Hestia grabbed the dark wood cane beside the bed and made to stand up. “If you won’t hand it over, I’ll go get my own damned scone.”
“Nope.” Ellie was there beside her in an instant. “Do you want to fall again?”
“No. I want to be on my feet in my own damn kitchen, but I’ll settle for that scone and a cup of black coffee,” Hestia grumbled.
Ellie handed her the breakfast and then went over to the recliner by the window. It was burgundy toned, like the curtains on Hestia’s ornate bed.
“Almost there,” Ellie reminded them both.
A few days until surgery. Then recovery … At least three months of Hestia testing the rules, and Ellie trying to convince her parental figure that not all rules were meant to be broken.
Hestia had raised her since Ellie’s parents had died, but she wasn’t a rule-follower by nature. Ellie had started filling that role for both of them by the time she was in her twenties—and Hestia had started testing any and every rule Ellie tried to impose.
Ellie took a long moment before saying, “If you fall down the stairs because you’re being impatient, you’re going to be sleeping in one of those rental hospital beds. That’s the deal. You promised you’d follow the rules if I agreed to not rent one.”
At that, Hestia cackled. There was no other word for it. The elegant little woman in her red damask four-poster Jacobean bed with its ornately carved posts and thick canopy cackled like a wily old witch.
“You’re my favorite niece,” Hestia said once her cackling subsided. “Lord knows, no one else in this world ever had the gumption to stand up to me.”
Ellie smiled, despite best efforts. “I’m your only niece, and you are a cantankerous old goat.”
“You’re no fun, El.” Hestia sighed. “When I was your age—”
“You were just as feisty as now, dating all over, but free as a bird,” Ellie finished.
“Don’t you want more out of life?” Hestia’s teasing faltered. “A woman to settle down with…”
“Hestia.” Ellie rubbed her temples. Sure, she wanted that—a great sweep-her-off-her-feet romance—but it wasn’t in the cards. Not for her. She lived a quiet life in a quiet town with an elderly relative. It wasn’t exactly prime conditions for romance. “I don’t need that right now.”
“Well, I do. Maybe we could go into Pittsburgh to a singles bar when I’m on my feet again.” Hestia grabbed her laptop, presumably to start researching bars.
“I swear I’ll take away the internet one of these days.” Ellie ran downstairs to pull the second set of scones out of the oven.
The truth of the matter was that sometimes, when Ellie was alone and thinking about the future, she wondered what was left for her. Was this it? Would she grow old with her aunt as her whole life? There were no advancements to be had in the library, beyond the occasional pay bump, and she had no hobbies other than researching missing people.
She lived a life of stasis. Quiet. Mundane.
If I were to vanish or die, would anyone other than Hestia even give me a second thought?
That thought stung. She wanted something more—a woman who made her heart race and her words tangle. A romance that was book-worthy, dramatic and exciting. To have that meant being someone else, someone not mundane and uninteresting. So Ellie chose safety over dreams. Over and over.
It’s better this way.
A few hours later, Ellie was still pondering her place in the world as she drove to work at the Ligonier Public Library. After Ellie’s parents had died, Hestia had gone from field archaeologist to part-time teaching while writing cozy mysteries and the occasional romance that she passed out like Halloween treats at every possible chance. She’d rearranged her life so as to be both mother and father to a child who was anything but easy at the time.
How could Ellie even think about moving away or finding a relationship now that Hestia needed her? Sixty-three wasn’t old, but it was old enough that Hestia sometimes needed help.
So Ellie got a degree by commuting the hour and change into Pittsburgh. She eventually got a job in Ligonier. She stayed home or worked. Sure, there were occasional flings over in Greensburg or in Pittsburgh, but nothing that could become serious and result in Ellie moving.
She needed to be sure that Hestia wouldn’t vanish again. Despite what her last therapist said, Ellie was certain there was a reason why some people vanished. Not the usual reasons, like murderous spouses or criminals silencing witnesses, but a reason Ellie couldn’t quite understand—despite her copious research. The only thing she had gleaned was the missing were all interesting, adventurous people.
So Ellie decided to be uninteresting, although she had a secret belief that she was far from uninteresting. She laughed it off most days. It was a sort of arrogance, a narcissism, to believe Ellie Brandeau—small-town librarian and quiet wallflower—was anything extraordinary.
And thinking otherwise made her feel like eels were swarming under her skin.
2Maggie
Maggie Lynch was driving through the mountains of North Carolina at the end of her vacation with her son, Craig. By tonight, she would have to turn her son over to his father.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Craig folded himself into the too-small space of the passenger seat. He was all legs and arms, a teen athlete whose body seemed longer and leaner than he knew what to do with unless he was on a field or court.
“Not really,” Maggie admitted. A part of her wanted to just keep driving, to go anywhere else. Fake identities. New lives. Maybe she could waitress or something.
“Something new bothering you?” Craig prompted. “Something Dad did?”
Maggie glanced at him and sighed. “All the parenting books say not to disparage the other parent.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh.”
She still wasn’t ready to tell Craig that Leon wanted full custody—or how much of a criminal his father was. Tell him I knowingly married a crook. What does that make me look like? So Maggie had avoided the conversation the entire trip. Now she felt like something was rolling through her veins and making her feel queasy in the process. Lying always made her feel sick.
“We need to talk about something that came up last week,” she finally said.
Craig deserved to know. His opinion mattered to her, even if Leon hadn’t asked him what he wanted.
“Is it the part where you tell me the truth about Dad’s job?” Craig sounded far too mature for his years. “Or that he’s trying to cut you out of my life?”
“Maybe…?” She glanced at Craig, trying to figure out how to tell him not to antagonize his father.
Would he really hurt his own son?
Then, a terrible snapping noise in the general area of her engine made her pause. Or maybe it was more that it felt like a snap. She couldn’t explain it, but the brakes were squishy all of a sudden.
“Fuck.”
The brakes weren’t working. The SUV started going faster and faster. Mashing down the pedal did nothing to slow them down. Leon, you bastard! She knew her ex was lower than a possum’s belly, but she’d thought he’d care enough to not hurt Craig.
“Mom!” Craig yelled.
“Hold on!” Margaret knew with certainty that this was how they would die if she didn’t do something, and what felt like a protective bubble oozed out of her, trying to encase her body. She swore she could see it. I don’t want to live if Craig dies. She shoved the bubble at him.
“Slow down!” Craig begged-asked-ordered.
“Trying. No brakes,” she said, one hand tight on the wheel as the other fumbled for the emergency brake.
The imaginary bubble she’d shoved out of herself around Craig was now holding him motionless. She couldn’t say how or why, but she felt it. She felt a sort of barrier that extended from her body to keep him safe.
The edges of the bubble leaked onto her, as if slowing her down, and she shoved it toward her son again.
If they could get around this curve safely, maybe she could try to stop the hurtling speed of the whole vehicle with a second bubble-cushion. If she tried arresting the speed now, they might flip tail over nose.
“Seatbelt tight?” was the last clear thing she was sure she said.
Maggie couldn’t turn the wheel in time, couldn’t get around the curve. There was a clarity, an icicle moment of stabbing comprehension, when she realized there was no way to avoid the accident. They’d gone too close to the berm. The side of the vehicle slammed into a guardrail with a screech of metal sliding along metal. The SUV flipped side-over-top, rolling like one of Craig’s toy cars when he was a toddler.
This is where we die, she thought.
They were careening toward the bottom of a ravine, battered about as thick-needled trees sort of slowed them. They rolled down an embankment and landed with a shudder against a row of old trees. One branch jutted through the back window, and all she could smell was pine sap, overheating engine, and someone’s blood. My blood. She knew with a sudden certainty that Craig was safe. She had always known when he was safe or in peril. Craig isn’t hurt.
“Mom? Mom!” Craig sounded scared.
“It’s all right.” Maggie tried to reach out to him, to comfort him. He was alive. That was all that mattered now. She felt through whatever mom-knowing she had with Craig, had always had with him, that he was okay.
Copyright © 2024 by Melissa Marr
