Through the Door (3 page)

Cedar blinked a few times, and then said, “I have no idea what to do.” She closed and opened the door again, but Eden’s bedroom did not reappear. The pyramids were still there.

“Let me try!” Eden said, and before Cedar could stop her, she reached through the shimmering air and pulled the door closed. When she opened it again, the pyramids were gone,
and they were greeted with the familiar sight of pink walls and a fluffy speckled carpet.

Cedar stared at her daughter. Something inside her shifted again.

Eden scowled at the interior of her room as she entered it. She sat down on the edge of her frilly bed, then got up and crossed the room back out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. “What are you doing?” asked Cedar, who was still standing in the hallway. Eden stood staring at the door, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Then she opened it. Cedar gaped.

“Eden!” she said. She looked at her daughter as if she had sprouted wings or turned into a frog, both possibilities as likely as what she was now seeing through the doorway. Instead of white sand or girlish decor, she was looking at a small rustic cottage and the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean behind it. Cedar recognized it immediately as the cabin on Cape Breton Island that Maeve had rented for two weeks last summer. Eden had spent the whole time there, but Cedar had only been able to join them for less than a week because of work. The sky around the cabin was the deepening blue of early evening, just as it was outside the windows of their apartment.

The look on Eden’s face was one of sheer delight. “This is so cool! Mum, look!” she said.

“Yeah, I can see,” Cedar said, dumbfounded. “How are you doing this?”

Eden shrugged. “I dunno.” She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers. “My hands feel kind of tingly.”

Cedar’s mind was still whirling and churning, searching for an explanation. Eden, however, wasn’t nearly as concerned with finding an explanation as she was with discovering more
about this newfound ability of hers. She gave her mother a grin and said, “Wheee!” before bounding through the open door onto the lawn of the cottage.

“Eden!” Cedar shouted, and then ran through after her. Immediately her senses were assailed—the cool ocean breeze on her face, the intoxicating smell of the salt air, the sight of the ocean stretching out in front of her and, when she turned and looked behind her, the gentle mountains of the Cape Breton coast. Eden was doing cartwheels on the lawn, squealing with joy.

“Shh!” Cedar said, looking around frantically. “There are probably people living here right now! Come here!”

Eden finished a cartwheel and ran over to Cedar, who was standing just in front of the disembodied doorway. “What if someone sees us? How are we going to explain this?” she asked, gesturing at the door. “We need to get out of here.”

Eden reluctantly followed her back through the door. Again, Cedar tried closing it, but when she opened it, the cottage was still there. Then Eden closed and reopened it, and her bedroom reappeared. They sat down on the bed together. Cedar put her arm around Eden. “Eden, this isn’t normal. How do you feel?”

Eden sprung off the bed. “Great!” Her eyes grew wide and sparkled almost as much as the air through which they had traveled. “I’m magic!”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Cedar said weakly.

Eden ignored her. “Let’s try your room!” she said as she dashed down the hall. Cedar felt as if she should stop her, but in all honesty, she, too, wanted to see what would happen. So she followed her daughter, who had closed Cedar’s bedroom door and was standing outside it, face screwed up tight.

“You’re sure you feel okay?” Cedar asked, her voice anxious. “You don’t feel sick or anything?”

“Nope!” Eden answered.

“Okay,” Cedar said slowly. “Where to this time?”

“Gran’s house!” Eden replied.

“No!” Cedar said quickly. “We don’t want Gran to know about this. I mean, we don’t want to freak her out, okay? Let’s pick a place where there probably won’t be a lot of people.” She searched her brain for a suitable location. “How about the library? It should be closed by now.”

Eden rolled her eyes at her mother, but then closed them in concentration and reached for the doorknob. A second later, the stacks of the local library were dimly visible through the open door. They stepped inside and Eden started to move toward one of the shelves, when the ear-piercing wail of an alarm went off, causing both of them to jump and scream.

“Dammit! The alarm!” Cedar said as she grabbed Eden by the arm and they hurled themselves both back through the doorway. Eden slammed the door shut. They stood there for a moment, hearts racing, and then Eden burst into giggles. Cedar pressed her hand against her heart, but then a grin cracked her face and soon both of them had collapsed on the floor, laughing.

“Note to self,” Cedar said. “Don’t go to places that have alarms.” Eden giggled again.

Cedar shook her head at her daughter. “This is insane.”

They spent the next hour opening doors all over the house to see where Eden could take them. They took the scenic calendar of Atlantic Canada off the wall in the kitchen and flipped through the pages for inspiration. They went to Green Gables on Prince Edward Island, the Bay of Fundy in New
Brunswick, and a remote lighthouse in Newfoundland. They never stayed for longer than a moment, but with each new foray, the reality of what was happening sank in a little deeper.

The only hiccup occurred when Eden wanted to try creating a doorway to a place she’d never seen before, not even in pictures. Cedar suggested Stanley Park in Vancouver, where she had spent many glorious afternoons during university. She tried to describe it to Eden, but when Eden swung open the bathroom door, nothing happened. Cedar grabbed a pencil and paper and made a quick sketch of her favorite beach in the park. She drew the huge driftwood logs spread across the sand, the sailboats and freighters dotting the distant horizon, and even a few tiny sea stars clinging to the rocks. She couldn’t help but smile as she drew—it had been a long time since she had created something other than a client’s new logo. She showed the sketch to Eden, who examined it closely. But when she tried to take them there, it still didn’t work.

“Huh. Well, it’s just a sketch, and not a very good one. Maybe it doesn’t work if you haven’t been there?” Cedar said, squinting at the door. “But you haven’t been to Egypt or Newfoundland either…”

Eden wasn’t listening. She was looking at her fingers and pulling on each one as if she could activate the magic that way. Then she said in a voice so low Cedar could hardly hear her, “Was my dad magic too?”

Cedar felt as if the room had grown several times larger. She felt very, very small. She sat on the floor and pulled Eden onto her lap. “I don’t know, Eden. I don’t know why you can do this. Your father used to talk about magic sometimes, but I thought it was only talk. Now, I just don’t know. Maybe. We’ll find out what’s going on, okay? You and me, together.
We’ll figure it out.” Cedar wrapped her arms tightly around her daughter and buried her hands in the wavy brown hair that reminded her so much of the man she had loved.

I wish you were here,
she thought.
I wish you could see her, and know her, and help me take care of her.

As if Eden could read her thoughts, she suddenly lifted her head from Cedar’s shoulder and said, “I know! We can find him! We can go anywhere! We can start right now!”

Cedar’s eyes widened in alarm. “No, Eden! You can’t go opening these portals or whatever they are all over the place to look for him, especially when I’m not with you. You could get lost or hurt or trapped somewhere. Remember when we were at the mall and you couldn’t find me? Do you remember how scared you were? This would be a thousand times worse. I wouldn’t know where you were, where to go looking for you.”

Eden started to pout. Cedar put her hands on either side of Eden’s face and looked directly into the mutinous golden eyes. “I know you are very excited right now, but you have to listen to me. This is very important. If people find out what you can do, I can’t even imagine what will happen to you. They might take you away; they might do experiments on you, like Hannah said—not because you don’t have a dad, but because you can do this. I don’t know what would happen, but it would be bad. You can’t tell anyone what you can do until we figure out what’s going on. Not even Gran, not your friends, no one.” Cedar’s mind was reeling with all the things that could go wrong. She didn’t want to scare her daughter, but she didn’t know how else to protect her. She couldn’t be with Eden all the time. In fact, she was hardly with Eden at all. “We’ll figure this out, I promise. But don’t go anywhere unless I’m with you.”

Several hours later, Cedar sat on the sofa nursing a Manhattan and staring at the screen of her laptop in frustration. The Internet was, for once, failing her. She had tried a number of searches, but subtle search terms such as “children with special abilities” led her to teachers’ resources or websites about autism. More direct attempts like “warp zone” or “opening a portal” led her to sites about
Super Mario, World of Warcraft,
or lists of sci-fi/fantasy tropes. She found some unhelpful information about spiritual portals on a few astrology sites, and came to the conclusion that far too many charities used the phrase “opening doors” as their slogan.

The only remotely helpful thing she managed to dig up was an article on “Real-Life People with Mutant Superpowers.” The article described the superhuman abilities of several people: a baby boy with bulging muscles, a woman who could not feel pain, a blind man who used echolocation, and a man who could eat and digest almost anything, including an entire airplane. As fascinating as all this was, the only thing Cedar took away from it was the possibility that Eden’s “superpower” had something to do with genetics, a thought that had already occurred to her. Her best friend, Jane, had dragged her to the X-Men movies, after all. But if genetics were the cause, Cedar was pretty sure Eden’s ability didn’t come from her side of the family.

She leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. This was getting her nowhere. She needed help; she had to talk to someone. She picked up the phone and called her mother.

“Did I wake you?” Cedar asked when Maeve picked up.

“Of course not. What’s wrong?” Maeve asked.

Maybe I’m just calling to chat,
Cedar thought, but didn’t say. She never called just to chat.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Cedar lied. “It’s just that Eden has been asking me a lot of questions lately…about Finn.”

There was silence at the end of the phone, and Cedar’s stomach squirmed. Maeve’s voice was terse when she answered, “I see. And what have you been telling her?”

“Nothing,” Cedar said. “Only that she looks like him, and that I don’t know where he is.”

“She doesn’t need to know that she looks like him. She doesn’t need to know anything about him at all. You’ll only make it worse for her if you feed her little tidbits. She’ll start to imagine him in her mind; she’ll be looking for a grown man who looks like her. You’re only setting her up for more pain.”

“I’m not trying to make it worse for her. I just thought it would be better if I answered some of her questions, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s not better. What would be better is if the two of you forgot that he ever existed. Don’t you remember what he put you through? You couldn’t function for months. I had to practically peel you off the floor with a spatula. Don’t go raising her hopes that she’ll find him someday. I told you from the very beginning he was nothing but trouble. You chose not to listen, but for pity’s sake, tell me you learned from your mistake and aren’t going to subject your daughter to the same lesson.”

There was another pause, this time on Cedar’s end. Then she said, “You hated Finn before he even left me. I really don’t think you’re the most objective person—”

“Of course I’m not objective!” Maeve interrupted. “This is my only grandchild we’re talking about! Maybe you need to be a little
less
objective. Try spending more time with her.”

“Mum, how many times do we have to have this conversation? I
want
to spend more time with her, but I’m only human. I can’t earn enough to pay the bills
and
be a stay-at-home mom. I think your expectations are a little too high sometimes.”

“Or maybe yours are too low,” Maeve sniffed. “Anyway, let’s not quarrel, dear. I need to get to bed, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Cedar wasn’t sure what made her say it, but she blurted out, “Actually, that’s why I was calling. Eden’s running a fever, so I’m taking the day off tomorrow to stay home with her. You don’t need to come.”

There was a beat of silence, then a surprised “Oh” from Maeve. Cedar felt a bizarre sense of satisfaction. “Well, that’s good of you, dear,” Maeve said. “But are you sure? I really don’t mind taking care of Eden when she’s sick.”

“You just said you thought I should spend more time with her. Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” Cedar said. “I’ll let you know how she’s doing tomorrow and whether or not I’ll take the next day off too.”