Scrapped Page 15

“No surprise there.”

  “Seems that both girls had worked at Harmony Bakery.”

  “There’s not many places they can work up there. That may not mean anything at all.”

  “Except that Rebecca’s body was covered in flour,” Annie said.

  Chapter 40

  A great fluttering wind knocked Vera down. What was flapping? A huge bird? As she struggled to stand, she realized the stage was shaky, slippery, odd. One spotlight was beaming on her as she pointed her toe. A screaming violin. A pulsing harp.

  She looked up beyond the light and into the blackness of the audience. Was there one?

  She prepared for her pirouette, then lifted herself to her toe and spun around into dizziness. How did she forget to find her spot? She preached constantly to her young dancers, “Spot, spot, spot. Pick your spot, glue your eyes there as long as possible, now turn, and whip your head. Find your spot. You won’t get dizzy.”

  A pause in the music. She looked down at her feet. Sometimes a dance was all in the eyes—and a glance downward could be a powerful symbol. But the stage? Was it really a stage? It looked covered in paper. Suddenly, the light shone on a mounded spot on the floor. Vera climbed it—gracefully, of course, for they were all looking at her—her flowing pink chiffon costume brushing against her legs. She peered over the rounded edge onto the other side, which looked like the center of a huge book, where all the pages came together. Where was she? Was she onstage? Was she in a book?

  She spun around, feeling her clothing fall to the floor. She was completely naked now. She tried to cover herself with her arms. She heard the audience gasp. So there was an audience—hushed until this moment.

  “Dance!” a male voice rang out. It sounded familiar.

  “C’mon!” It was a voice with a Brooklyn accent. Tony?

  Instead, Vera froze, not knowing in which direction to turn, her heart beating so hard that she thought she could hear her pulse throbbing in her ears. She needed to get off the stage. She heard beautiful little bell-like sounds coming from the direction of the crevice. She looked over to it. It pulled her closer.

  God, if I could just disappear, she thought.

  “You can, my friend,” Cookie said to her.

  Cookie! She was standing there in her blue robes, holding out a glistening silver robe for Vera, who quickly slipped into it. The audience cheered.

  “Don’t mind them,” Cookie said, holding out her hand. “Take my hand. Let’s disappear together.”

  “Ah,” Vera said. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Cookie said and smiled, taking Vera’s hand. “Look, we are inside of a book.”

  It became clear to Vera then that she was dancing on a book, which she had thought was a stage.

  “Well,” Vera said.

  “Turn the page,” Cookie said and held on tightly to Vera. “Jump!”

  Vera and Cookie jumped together as the page flipped, but they stayed in the air, hovering above the book, its pages flipping quickly, dusty sparks flying from it, little creatures escaping from it and running off. Fairies? Well, they weren’t birds, were they? Vera became mesmerized by one of them and tried to see it more clearly, wanted to run after it.

  “You can never catch a fairy. Mischievous creatures. Difficult to harness and manage,” Cookie informed her.

  “Fairies?” Vera managed to say.

  “There’s so much about the world that humans never see. So much magic. So many creatures,” Cookie said wistfully.

  Vera pulled her robe closer to her, loving the soft cloth surrounding her body.

  “Do you see?” Cookie said.

  Photos were scattered on the pages. Elizabeth. Beatrice. Women that Vera didn’t know—but that looked vaguely familiar. They were suddenly in a cave full of a shiny rock. Quartz?

  “Calcite,” Cookie whispered, wrapping her arms around Vera, who was suddenly pulled into a thick gelatinous substance.

  “Cookie?”

  She was gone.

  Where was Vera now? She felt the warm, slimy substance surround her, and a hand covered her breast. A hard male body coming up behind her, his arms enveloping her, his legs wrapping around her. A shot of excitement rose through the center of her body.

  “Tony?” she said, trying to reach through the gel, kicking and reaching, their bodies coming together then, sliding apart—until she could no longer reach him.

  She awoke in her own bed, tangled in a sweaty mess, blankets askew. She glanced at the clock. Three a.m. What a dream. Damn.

  Annie was skinny-dipping in a cove. The water was luminous. The moon was full, reflecting on the warm water that circled her thin body. She lay back and floated, letting the moon shine on her as she closed her eyes. The water, the moon, the sky.

  In the distance she saw two redheaded young women swimming. Who were they with? Was that Zeb?

  Suddenly Annie popped out of the water, the air harsh in her throat and lungs. She was in a cave. She rubbed her eyes—there was some light and shadow playing with them. Was that a candle on a ledge? Was that a book? She struggled to lift herself out of the water, then plodded over to the ledge, where the book appeared to lift itself off of the rock it was on and opened itself.

  The pictures appeared to be etchings—a woman running toward a mountain, which morphed into her jumping into a pool of water, with a waterfall in the background. Then the black ink turned purple as a group of masked dancers danced across the page. The page turned, and there were pictures of her boys in their soccer uniforms.

  What was this? A scrapbook?

  The page turned again—on its own—and there was a beautifully illuminated page. Handwritten. Rich gold. Crimson. Purple. Gorgeous words that shimmered and lifted off the pages and wound themselves around her fingers, spinning, spinning, then traveled up her arms. Oh, these words! What were they? They seemed to seep into the pores of her skin, delivering energy and light to her.

  “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep,” a voice said to her from the corner.

  She recognized the voice.

  “Cookie?”

  Cookie stepped out of the shadows. Her hand against the calcite of the cave wall. She looked radiant in her blue robes, a gold chain around her neck and an amethyst hanging from it. Her eyes were made up with thick black eyeliner, slanting upward, giving Cookie an almost Asian appearance. Funny, Annie had never noticed that before. Was she Asian?

  Cookie nodded.

  “What’s going on here?” Annie asked.

  She smiled. “You are dreaming, my friend.”

  “That’s right. You’re in jail. I’m at home in bed with my husband. I can hear him snore.”

  His snoring became louder momentarily.

  Cookie laughed.

  Suddenly, she and Cookie were both in the water, Mike’s snoring getting softer and softer as they swam deeper and deeper. Annie was mesmerized by the colorful fish swimming around them, some of them coming up and gently biting her fingers. The colors! Magenta. Gold. Crimson. And the rocks and sand and plants, with beautiful exotic-shaped flowers. Oh, that deep orange strand floating there pulled her in to look closer.

  “No!” Cookie said.

  But why? Annie could not resist. She touched the orange strand and pulled it. She felt a heavy awkwardness to it and yanked harder. Out popped the head of Sarah. Eyes wide with fear, mouth gaping open, and still screaming.

  “Annie!”

  She was being shaken by someone. Cookie? Sarah’s screams were becoming her own.

  “Annie!”

  She opened her eyes to see Mike’s face close to hers.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  She didn’t know what to say. She grabbed her husband and wept into his shoulder.

  Beatrice fell asleep to the sound of rain on the window and roof. Thunder boomed. A blue-silver streak lit the sky. She sighed.

  There was a book on a rock, and it was getting soaked in the rain. Beatrice gra
bbed it and brought it under the shelter of her porch. She was in her bare feet and her favorite nightgown, a poet’s shirt nightdress that Ed bought her when they visited Williamsburg, Virginia.

  But wait. She hadn’t seen this nightdress in years. Was she dreaming?

  The book felt heavy with rain in her arms as she laid it down on her table. She took a seat, opened it, and was amazed to find that its pages were dry. Pictures of her mother and father set off by a lacy-paper frame stared back at her. She loved to look at these two; she was blessed with wonderful parents, though her father could be heavy-handed at times.

  She turned the page and found a page that held a mirror. She tried to look in it and found her reflection to be nonexistent. What was this? She turned the page again to another mirror. This time, she looked in the glassy, shiny page and found herself staring back. She ran her fingers over her firm, unaged cheek.

  Damn, I like this mirror. It makes me look young again.

  Her reflection smiled back at her. I could feel better about giving myself to Jon, or anybody, if I looked this good.

  Suddenly her husband appeared in the mirror. A flash. “You are beautiful. Any man is lucky to have you, no matter how old you are.”

  She slammed the book shut and stood up to reach for Ed. But he was gone.

  Damn him. Coming to me in a whisper of a dream.

  Thunder roared. Blankets of rain fell from her porch roof.

  She was still in her bare feet, and the wind blew her nightdress against her tight thighs. She had forgotten what firm thighs felt like. She ran her hands over them and then sat back down to investigate this book more closely.

  She looked back in the mirror, which was now full of mathematics computations. Mmm. Was this the theory of relativity? It could be—except that piece right there didn’t look quite correct.

  “It’s magic, you see,” Cookie said, suddenly standing next to Beatrice.

  “Magic? No, dear, it’s math. Beautifully done mathematics.”

  “Your math is my magic.”

  “I thought you said my prayers are your magic,” Beatrice said.

  “Yes. Same thing,” Cookie said and nodded. “Do you see?” She waved her hand across the crumbling pages, and the numbers began to move. They spun and spun themselves into a wind, flipping the pages back and forth. “What do you wish for, Beatrice? What is your deepest desire?”

  When Beatrice was younger, more driven, her first answer would have been for her theory of time travel to be proven, but at this point in her life, she knew it was accurate, knew it in her bones—and it didn’t matter what anybody else in the scientific community thought about it. Now she just wanted to be happy, for her family to be happy and healthy, and deep down inside, she knew that somehow her happiness was linked to Jon.

  The twirling tornado of numbers sparked into flame. The edges of the pages of the book became singed with the flame, and Beatrice reached for the book to save it from itself and burned her hand.

  “Damn!”

  Cookie was still there, and as Beatrice looked up into this younger woman’s face, so beautiful, so peaceful, the pain in her hand went away. Cookie smiled. She reached for Beatrice’s chin and held it firmly. “Stay with us, Bea,” she said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Cookie laughed.

  That was that. If there was any meaning in her statement, Beatrice would never know. Cookie vanished—but her laughter lingered in the chambers of Beatrice’s ears. Ed had vanished, too. Damn, what was with the people in her life, always leaving her?

  Chapter 41

  Vera thought she heard Elizabeth cry. She opened her heavy eyes and listened. There was the cry again—but it wasn’t Elizabeth. It was something outside. A cat?

  A loud banging at her door prompted her to look at her phone on the bedside table. Four o’clock. That couldn’t be good. Was she ever going to get some sleep this night? First, that odd dream, and now this. She reached for her robe, and her pulse quickened. She flew down the steps after reaching for her cell phone. It felt cold and hard in her hands. The blue light from her phone seemed more than enough to illuminate her way. She pressed the button for her mother’s phone number. She had yet to hit SEND when she heard a voice.

  “Vera! Open up! It’s me, Bill.”

  She unlocked the door. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered. She took one look at his red face, bloodshot eyes, and swaying body and knew he’d been drinking.

  “Vera, darlin’, there’s a baby on your porch,” he said.

  Behind him, a police car with flashing lights went by.

  “What?” Vera wondered if she was still awake or if she was dreaming.

  “Look,” he said and pointed.

  Vera cricked her head out the door and saw something move on her porch swing. She stepped out into the cool November air. Everything held a blue cast, even the grass. Between the streetlights and the night sky, blue light imbued her surroundings. She could see dust—or was it insects?—flying in streams beneath the streetlights. But mostly she saw a small baby wrapped in a white blanket, one fist poking out toward the moon. Was that a hospital bracelet? It cried again. She reached for the baby and scooped it up to her chest. It was ice-cold. She opened her robe, placed the baby close to her skin, and ran back in the house.

  “Bill, don’t just stand there. Call the police,” she said. “When you’re done with that, get a fire going and make yourself some coffee. You better get sobered up quick.”

  Vera reached for an afghan that had been thrown across the couch and sat in her rocking chair next to the fireplace. She could hear Bill on the phone in the kitchen, rattling around the coffeemaker.

  The baby fussed, as if she was going to cry a bit, but remained mostly quiet as she nuzzled into Vera, who was rocking her gently. She slid her hand over the baby’s arms and read the hospital bracelet—BABY JANE DOE, EVIDENCE. The baby was warming up quickly. Bill quietly wandered into the living room and started working on a fire. The fire ablaze in the fireplace, the room lit up from the glow, and the baby’s eyes closed. Her breathing was slow and steady.

  Vera looked at her cherubic face and nearly melted from the sweetness.

  It took only ten minutes for the police to arrive. Bill met them at the door and asked them to proceed quietly because there was another child upstairs, asleep.

  “As I said, I was walking by and heard this crying noise. I thought for a moment that Elizabeth had gotten out,” Bill told Detective Bryant.

  “And you picked up the baby and brought it inside?” Bryant looked at Vera.

  “Yes,” she said, not looking away from the baby.

  “Probably no evidence now,” he said, almost to himself.

  “Sorry about that, but the baby was cold,” she said. “My first instinct was to warm it up.”

  “It was a good instinct,” a slightly graying man told her, coming toward them.

  “Hey, Doctor,” Detective Bryant said.

  Vera thought she recognized him. Was he the ER doctor that worked on Beatrice’s neck?

  “It’s cold enough for any baby to die of exposure outside, let alone this one. She did the right thing.”

  “Yep, well, whatever,” Bryant said. Turning to Bill, he added, “I can smell you from here.”

  “I was trying to walk it off,” Bill said. “And I was walking, not driving.”

  The doctor came toward Vera and unwrapped the baby. He felt her pulse, listened to her heartbeat and lungs. “She seems fine,” he said with relief. “This poor kid. But I still don’t know how she got out of the hospital.”

  “We have police looking over the security tapes,” Bryant said. “We were already out looking for her. One of the nurses realized she was gone.”

  “I suppose I should take her back,” the doctor said reluctantly. “She’s a ward of the state, until things shake out.”

  “What things?” Vera asked.

  “Her parentage, for one. Who’s the father? And is
her family capable of taking care of her? I mean, they’ve had nothing to do with this baby, as far as I know,” the doctor responded.

  “Can’t you just run some of those DNA tests?” she asked, surprising herself that she was this sharp at this time of day, having been awakened in the wee hours.

  The doctor chuckled. “Yes. But this isn’t some television show. And which man in Cumberland Creek should we get DNA from? Besides, it takes a lot longer than you think—especially when there’s no insurance to speak of—since so much is up in the air. Hospitals. Insurance. What a pain. I remember when you could really practice medicine, back when my dad was still working.”

  “Mine too,” Vera said. “He worked right down the street.”

  The physician’s head tilted. “That’s right. You’re Doc Matthews’s daughter.”

  “You knew my father?”

  He nodded. “Of course, and my father practiced in Bluestone.”

  “Dr. Green? Yes. I vaguely remember him,” said Vera. His father was one of the few physicians her father had befriended. Her father thought very highly of Dr. Green and his family. They were similar to her own family, if she remembered correctly. They had only one child, and it also came later in life. Doc Green’s wife was a chemist.

  “Maybe we can break this little reunion up and get out here and leave these good people to get some rest,” the detective said sarcastically, leaving Vera to wonder where his “bedside” manner was—or if he even had any.

  “Why don’t you leave her here?” Vera said. “I mean, she’s sleeping so soundly, and I still have a bassinet in my room.”

  “She’s a ward of the state,” Bryant replied.

  “I think it would be fine, as long as you bring the baby back later this morning,” the doctor said. “Medically speaking, I think sleep is the best thing for her. I need to get some vitals, but I don’t think that’s even going to wake her up. She seems to be sleeping so soundly.”

  “The doc’s orders trump mine,” Bryant said, looking at the sleeping baby. A softness came over his face that almost left Vera breathless. “Bring her to the hospital later this morning.”