Page 49 of The Whispering Night
Now here she is, on her only free two hours, between dinner and the fireworks. She wasted thirty minutes of that time navigating from the Sunday estate to her house—which would have taken even longer if Headmaster Gina hadn’t offered her a ride. Now she has wasted another fifteenminutes waiting on Mom, who had no shift today at the Daughter and so should be home by now.
Winnie debates cracking open a can of ginger ale. Then decides, no. Those are for special occasions only. Then she decides actually, never mind, she does want one because her pesto pasta dinner is threatening to reroute via her esophagus…
And that’s when the engine of the Volvo gurgles outside. A wyrm with indigestion to match Winnie’s. Seconds later, Mom is shoving in through the front door.
Winnie lurches to her feet. Her mouth is dry. Her teeth are like clattering typewriter keys. She kind of wants to run away. But instead, she makes herself sweep up the eight red envelopes on the kitchen table and hold them out like a fortune-teller with tarot cards.
Mom doesn’t notice when she first strides in. She still wears her driving glasses. “Hey, kiddo. How was the dinner at the Sunday… oh.”
Now she’s noticing.
Her face goes pale. Revenant pale. She drops the Volvo keys, and they thwack on the ground by her feet.
“Mom,” Winnie says, enunciating carefully, “what are these?”
“Oh dear.” Mom lets her purse slide off her shoulder to join the keys. “You’ve opened them.”
For half a heartbeat, Winnie feels bad about that. Then she shakes the guilt free. It’s not justified; Mom hid these for four years. “They have my name on them.”
“And… Darian’s cards? He knows too?”
Okay, now Winnie does feel crappy—but again, the emotion grips her for a mere split second before logic barrels in. “Darian doesn’t know these exist, Mom. And I had to open the envelopes because…” Here Winnie wavers. Not because she’s worried about the silencing spell or the factoids that will projectile out, but because in the four years since Dad vanished, Mom and Winnie have never talked about what happened.
Literally,never.
Mom and Darian have talked about it. Darian and Winnie have talked about it. But Mom and Winnie? No way, no how. They haven’t merely snuck around the subject, so much as hammered in stakes, draped tarps, and then unspooled some barbed wire.
Winnie’s teeth click twice. She watches as Mom rubs at her thigh—where an old banshee scar still gleams. She used to scratch at that thing all the time.
“Was Dad framed?” The question is a catapult, taking down barbed wire and a stretch of tarp in one blow.
Some stakes must still be standing, though, because Mom doesn’t answer. Instead, she asks: “What do the cards say?”
This is not what Winnie is expecting. She frowns. “Uh… they wish us happy birthday. Me and Darian.”
“Right.” A nod. Then, with visible yearning widening her pupils, Mom adds: “And nothing else? No other messages?” Unspoken:No messages for me?
Lots of other messages,Winnie thinks.The secret kind, and not for you.
“He drew pictures for Darian. Of the family.”
“Ah.” A protracted sigh slides out. Mom plods to the kitchen table, finally towing off her driving glasses. She sits. Winnie sits. And when Mom holds out a hand, Winnie slides one of Darian’s cards into it.
Paper crinkles as Mom tugs the card from its envelope. It is the most recent of Darian’s birthday cards, so the hand-drawn Winnie is all grown up in it.
“Oh,” Mom says, and her eyes redden as she takes in the sketch of the family. “It’s like the old photo that used to hang in our living room. Except… Bryant aged us up, didn’t he?” The question is rhetorical; Mom’s voice is distant, her gaze lost in an alternate timeline where Dad never disappeared.
Winnie answers anyway: “He talks about that photo in the cards to me.” She taps an envelope, but doesn’t withdraw the card. “But you took the picture down years ago.”
“I did.” Mom’s lips compress. She sets the card onto the table. “It’s in my office now. At the Wednesday estate. Because…” A pause here. A careful chewing that carves crow’s-feet into the skin around her eyes. “Because it’s not… I mean, there isn’t…” Another pause while Mom’s mouth bobs open. Bobs shut.
Winnie canseewords want to come, but it’s as if Mom’s lungs are black holes and no air can get past the event horizon.
Except that’s when it happens: enough speed for Mom’s words to break free from gravity. And so many, that once they start coming, they absolutelycannot stop. “Many aquatic nightmares will drag prey to depths where little light penetrates.”
“Huh?”
“When hunters get dragged into the Big Lake by such nightmares, they are often disoriented and lose track of where the surface is.”
