A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (7 page)

“All right, that was really weird.” Grace came back into the kitchen, flipping her blonde hair out from under the collar of a turquoise shirt.

“I don’t understand why you’re not burned,” Natalya admitted, rocking back on her heels.

“I don’t understand why you spilled coffee on me,” Grace said, accusation in her voice. “What’s up with that?”

“That, too.” Natalya let her hair fall across her face, ignoring the way the dark straight strands dropped into the coffee puddle on the floor.

“Nat?” Grace sounded worried. “Are you okay?”

“It’s a long story.” Natalya stood, pieces of glass cradled in her hand and then paused. She was standing barefoot among broken glass. And she didn’t know whether she would cut herself. Damn it. She didn’t like this. “I’ll tell you the whole thing after I get some shoes on, finish cleaning up this mess, and, please God, have a cup of coffee.”

Grace chuckled. “All right, I’ll give you a hand.”

Natalya dumped the glass into the trash can and navigated the floor, avoiding coffee and glass, as Grace grabbed a mass of paper towels. Heading for the front door, where she typically left her shoes, she added a task to her list: check on the little girl.

Her cottage wasn’t very big. There weren’t too many places a child could hide. But Natalya didn’t see her in the living room as she crossed to the front door and grabbed her sandals. Slipping her feet into the flat-soled slides, she let her eyes skim over the comfortable, overstuffed furniture and under the tables, before stepping back to the door by the front bedroom where the child had slept.

Most of the room was her studio, a paint-splattered tarp spread across the floor, canvasses piled against the walls. A seldom-used bed was shoved against one wall, sheets neatly pulled up, comforter folded at the foot of the bed. And there the girl was, crouched in the corner next to a wooden table holding paints and brushes, linseed oil and sketchbooks. Her eyes were closed, her thin arms wrapped around her knees, her head bent.

“It’s okay.” Natalya kept her voice gentle and didn’t move from her spot in the doorway. “Grace is fine and we’re cleaning up the mess. You didn’t step on any glass, did you?”

The girl lifted her head. On her pale face, the shadows under her blue eyes looked almost like bruises. Her fear was palpable.

There is more troubling this child than a day or two lost in the woods, Natalya realized with a jolt. “Can you tell me why you’re afraid?” she asked.

The girl didn’t answer. Her stare was so blank she might not even have understood the question.

Natalya sat down where she stood, crossing her legs and propping her elbow on her thigh, her face on her fist, as if she planned to stay there awhile.

She wasn’t a trained therapist. The child needed to talk to a forensic psychologist, someone with experience in asking the right questions, providing the right reassurances. But Natalya couldn’t leave her hiding in a corner.

She thought back to the foster parent training she’d taken, but she’d had no intention of becoming a foster parent and much of it had to do with the rules and regulations and procedures. Still, help the child feel safe—that was pretty basic.

“Grace was trying to guess your name, and you weren’t answering,” she said slowly. “But I need something to call you. Is it okay if I give you a name? Just for now?”

No response. Natalya hadn’t really expected one.

“Kenzi,” Natalya said. Now where the hell had that come from? Oh, right. Television. “Can I call you Kenzi?”

The girl's eyes opened wide and then she blinked twice in rapid succession.

Natalya decided to take that as a yes. Carefully, picking her words with caution, she continued, “Okay, Kenzi, here’s the deal. I’m a doctor. That means sometimes I have to hurt people, like when I cleaned up your feet last night and it stung a little.”

She waited but got no response, so she went on. “But doctors swear an oath.” She paused, suddenly doubtful, as she asked, “Do you know what that is?”

Kenzi didn’t move but something about her air of tension looked uncertain to Natalya, so she explained. “It’s a promise. A really serious, really important promise. The most important promise a doctor makes is to do no harm. Do you understand what that means?”

Natalya hoped for a nod, at least one of the tiny inclinations the girl had managed the previous evening, but Kenzi just looked at her, unblinking.

Natalya sat up straighter, resting her hands on her knees, and wished she knew what she was doing. “It means I will do my best never to hurt you on purpose. If you do something wrong, I won’t hurt you. If you do something bad, I won’t hurt you. If you make me really, really mad—which is pretty hard to do, I don’t get angry easily—but if you do, I might yell a little, but I won’t hurt you. You’re safe here. I don’t know why you’re scared or what you’re scared of, but I promise, you you’re safe with me and safe here in my house.”

She waited. Two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds, and then Kenzi took a deep breath and let it out on a shaky exhale, the kind that said tears might be close to the surface.

Good enough. Natalya didn’t know whether she should follow up and try to get the girl to talk or leave her in peace. Best bet, though, would be to leave the talking to the professionals.

Gently, Natalya said, “You can stay where you are if you want or you can come back and finish your granola.” She pushed herself up, off the floor, tugging her robe back around her. “Or maybe have something else to eat, some fruit? Or eggs if you like eggs?”

Kenzi stayed motionless in the corner, so Natalya added, “All right, I’m going to get my breakfast. You come whenever you’re ready.”

As she headed back to the kitchen, she frowned with worry. She didn’t feel qualified to analyze a troubled child. But why was Kenzi so frightened? Grace hadn’t scared her. She’d been eating breakfast quite peacefully. Could it have been the crash of the glass? But why had she come back and then run away again?

Grace was almost finished cleaning the floor, wiping a damp paper towel across it in wide swathes. “Everything okay?”

Natalya grabbed her mug of coffee and took a cautious sip, then a larger swallow. “I wish I knew.”

Grace tossed the towel into the trash and sat down at the table. “Talk,” she ordered. “What’s going on?”

Kenzi’s bowl was in front of the chair Natalya usually sat in, so with a sigh, Natalya slipped into the corner seat, back to the window. “Last night was the night I found Colin.”

Grace looked blank for a moment and then understanding and immediate sympathy darkened her eyes. She started to rise, reaching out to her sister, saying, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry—”

Natalya waved her off before Grace could finish. “No, no, it didn’t—he didn’t—it went wrong. Or right. Or—I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

Grace sank back down in her seat. “You saved him?”

“No.” Natalya shook her head. She stared down at the black surface of her coffee. “No,” she repeated more quietly.

“Well, Nat, damn it, you should have called. You shouldn’t have had to go through that alone.” Grace was on her feet again. She reached across the table to put a hand on Natalya’s shoulder. “We would all have come, you know that. Did you let Lucas know? He’ll want to fly back from North Carolina today.”

“No, no,” Natalya protested again, putting her hand up and over her sister’s. “I’m sorry. I’m not explaining this right. Colin’s fine. He’s alive and well and based on the scan I did, in perfect health. Likely to live for years.”

Grace put her hands on her hips. “Okay, you’re not making any sense at all,” she said bluntly. “Was last night the night Colin died or wasn’t it?”

“Sit.” Natalya waved at Grace’s chair. “Let me tell it my way.”

Obediently, Grace took her seat as Natalya gathered her thoughts. Grace knew about her premonition, of course. The whole family did and probably half the town. Natalya and Colin’s break-up had been the hot topic of gossip in Tassamara for a solid six months, only diminishing with Natalya’s unexpected departure for medical school. So she started with the drive. “It was exactly like I’d seen it.”

She told Grace almost the whole story, skipping only a few details. Like that heated kiss by the side of the road. The rush of desire that filled her in the exam room. The question he’d asked and her angry response. The unimportant stuff.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re not telling me everything?” Grace mused when she’d almost finished.

Natalya could feel a prickle of heat along her cheekbones but she ignored the question. “And my vision is gone.”

“The vision of Colin?” Grace asked, puzzled.

“No, I mean my foresight. It’s gone.”

“Gone, how? Gone like you can’t see anything about Colin any more or gone like—”

“Like I’m blind,” Natalya interrupted her.

“Future blind.” Grace seemed to be turning the idea over in her head and not liking it.

“Actually, it feels more like I’d imagine amnesia feels. There are things I should know, things I used to know, that are just… gone. And I keep reaching for them. Trying to remember. But there’s nothing there.”

“That sounds unpleasant.” Grace’s eyes were worried, her brows drawn down.

“It’s different, anyway.” Natalya forced a chuckle. How many times in her life had she asked for just this? Knowing the future had never felt like a gift to her. She’d become practiced at not thinking about it, at living in the present moment and appreciating where she was while accepting that the future was not hers to control. She hadn’t realized how much she took her foreknowledge for granted. Serenity, it turned out, came easier when you knew exactly how your day would flow.

“So you don’t know anything about the little girl?”

Natalya glanced at the clock on her microwave. Almost ten. “Colin said they’d start a real search at daylight. They’re trying to track her path back through the forest, and the rangers are driving all the back roads, looking for an accident.”

“It’s a big forest.”

“Yeah, but she’s a little girl. She couldn’t have gone too far.”

“And she won’t talk.” Grace’s voice was thoughtful. “Did you see if she could write? What does she do with a pen and paper?”

Natalya felt stupid.

“It was late,” she said. The excuse sounded weak. But the girl had been sleepy and hungry, had needed her scrapes bandaged, a hot shower, clean clothes—Natalya had been so focused on the priorities of the moment that she hadn’t even thought about other methods of communication. Still, given that they knew the girl could talk and wouldn’t, how likely was it she’d be willing to write?

She gulped down the rest of her coffee and stood. Grace had shoved another mug under the dripping filter. It was half-full, so she switched mugs, and took a sip from the fresh one. “Oh, sorry,” she said, realizing she was being rude. “Do you want coffee?”

“Not the way you make it,” Grace answered.

“Snob,” Natalya retorted mildly. “Lighter roast has more caffeine.”

“And less taste. Stop stalling. Do you want to try this or what?”

Natalya leaned against the sink. They should leave the questions to the psychologist Kenzi would surely see within a few hours. But asking if she’d write her name—how could that hurt?

“All right,” she said. Automatically, without even thinking about it, she tried to look into the future, to see the outcome of this choice. Not knowing felt uncomfortable, like an itch she couldn’t reach to scratch. “If she’s willing.”

Setting her coffee cup down on the counter, she crossed to the living room. “Kenzi? Will you come here, please?”

“Kenzi?” Grace asked from behind her.

Natalya shrugged, watching the door to her studio. “I needed something to call her.”

“Isn’t Bo the lost one?”

“Matter of opinion, I guess.” Natalya looked over her shoulder at her sister with a smile until a shuffle of noise drew her attention back to the front rooms. Kenzi stood in the doorway of the studio, looking at her warily.

Natalya’s smile didn’t change. She tilted her head toward the kitchen to let Kenzi know she wanted her to join them, then turned and went back to the kitchen table. Kenzi would either come or not. The choice was up to her. But it was only a few seconds before the little girl appeared at the door.

“Cool,” Grace said cheerfully. She hopped up and rummaged in the junk drawer by Natalya’s phone, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. Crossing to the little girl, she set the pad down on the countertop next to her. “Here,” she said, handing her the pen. “Can you write your name for us?”

Kenzi didn’t refuse to take the pen and she wasn’t running, but she didn’t look eager to cooperate, either. Her eyes flickered from one of them to the other as if she were trapped.

“Hmm.” Grace crossed her arms, looking down on Kenzi speculatively.

“Gently, Grace,” Natalya cautioned her sister softly. They had no idea what sort of trauma this child had experienced. She didn’t want to push.

“How about we negotiate?” Grace said to Kenzi.

A flicker of doubt creased Kenzi’s forehead.

“A deal,” Grace said. “We’ll make a deal.”

Kenzi licked her lips. Natalya’s curved up in reluctant appreciation. Grace was CEO of the family company. Trust her to think of problems in terms of business.

“Which do you like better, clothes or toys?” Grace asked.

Kenzi blinked at her, her uncertainty obvious.

“Hang on.” Grace stepped past Kenzi and disappeared into the living room. Kenzi glanced at Natalya and Natalya shrugged as Grace returned, smart phone already in hand, head down. “No, not that one,” Grace muttered. “No, no, ick, no. Ah… okay, that’ll do.” She turned the phone around and showed Kenzi the screen. “What do you think?”

Kenzi’s eyes widened. She looked up at Grace.

“You write your name on this piece of paper,” Grace said, pushing the pad closer to the edge of the counter. “And I’ll buy you that doll. I’ll even pay for overnight shipping so you get it tomorrow.”

Kenzi looked torn. Her fingers tightened on the pen in her hand. But she didn’t make any move to write.

“Tough bargainer, eh?” Grace said. “All right, I’ll also buy you a new dress. Pink. With ruffles. And lace. And glitter.” She left a pause between each new addition to the dress’s description.