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CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
* * * * * *
2000
SCENARIOS RAN IN my head as I careened to a stop outside the house where Della Mclary waited for me to fix what I’d broken.
Midmorning meant people inside would be awake. Bright sunlight meant I wouldn’t go u
I could wait until darkness and steal her back, but then I ran the risk of stumbling into the wrong bedroom and being caught. I could wait until Social Services arrived tomorrow and grab her, but then I ran the risk of being grabbed myself.
Or—and this was really my only option—I could march up to the front door, knock, and demand Della be given back to me.
I looked over my shoulder at the forest in the distance, seeing my dream of living alone vanishing bit by bit.
I wasn’t afraid of darkness or predators or being completely vulnerable with no one to rely on but myself. But I was afraid of taking Della to such a place.
She was useless.
She was a baby.
I already knew she didn’t fare well in the wild thanks to the previous few weeks we’d survived. She’d inched closer toward death every day.
Only because you weren’t prepared for her.
Only because you didn’t take what you needed.
It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to live off the land, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t provide for us.
She’d been a surprise.
And this time…I had shelter, tools, and equipment that meant we’d flourish not perish.
She wouldn’t be a death sentence anymore, merely a complication I willingly chose.
I stepped back from the house.
Wait, did I willingly choose this, or was I doing it out of fear? Was living with me better or worse than living with another? Just because I’d been sold and the girls sharing the barn with me cried themselves to sleep every night, didn’t mean that would happen to Della.
Perhaps the best thing for her would be to wait for a foster family to take her, love her, house her in a pretty little home and feed her with supermarket purchased food instead of being carried for miles by a boy then bedding down in a tent with a belly full of hunted rabbit.
After all, wasn’t that what I tried to do by leaving her with a family who already had a baby? Why didn’t they want her? They already had one. What was the difference in raising two?
Mclary had sixteen and managed.
The sun beat down on my head, making my back sweat against my pilfered gear. I had to make a decision. I had to leave town before I was noticed—before the owner of the camping store saw his merchandise walking down the streets unpaid for; before the supermarket manager noticed his broken window.
But…Della.
My eyes shot back to the house.
The front door swung open, revealing a woman with a lemon dress and a blue dish cloth in her hands. Her brown hair hung down her back while pink spots decorated her cheeks from chores.
I froze.
We stared at each other.
We stared some more.
Slowly, she lowered the dish towel and stepped off her porch then down the pebbled path to the front gate.
My knees jiggled to sprint. My thighs bunched to flee.
She smiled, cocked her head, and said, “Hello.”
I swallowed.
I hadn’t spoken in days. I’d almost forgotten how. Before I could be polite, she added, “I saw you in the window. Are you okay? Are you lost?” Her gaze landed on my backpack, questions scrolling over her face. “What’s your name?”
Her questions were landmines, and I didn’t want to get blown up.
Looping my fingers under the straps of my bag, I raised my chin, narrowed my gaze, and said coldly, “You have something of mine.”
“Excuse me?”
“I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I left something behind.”
She frowned. “Left what—” Realization widened her eyes. “Wait, are you talking about—”
“Della Mclary.” I nodded sternly. “She’s mine. I want her back.”
I noticed my stupid error too late.
I’d given her true name.
I’d revealed her family—the name co
“Give her to me.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Now.”
Her gaze slid over me from head to toe. “But…but you’re a kid. What do you mean, she’s yours?”
My heart sped up. I hadn’t thought this through. How could I tell a stranger the truth of how Della and I ended up as a we?
The reality…I couldn’t.
So, I told the first lie of many.
I boldly looked into a stranger’s face and spun the begi
“She’s my sister. And I want her back.”
* * * * *
It took what I assumed was fifteen minutes or thereabouts.
I couldn’t tell the time, but the sun’s shadow didn’t move from the begi
The woman was home alone with two of her own children, harried and split in all directions, so I was yet another mess to her already messy morning.
A boy about half my age drew on the walls with her pink lipstick—only for her to scream at him to stop. Another boy, a little older than Della, tossed his mug of milk from his booster seat, spraying the kitchen and his mother with white.
Two little devils, undeserving of love and protection and a life littered with possibilities.
They didn’t know how lucky they were.
They didn’t know how evil the outside world could be.
And then, there was Della.
Forgotten and alone on the very same rug where I’d placed her, her little shoulders sank almost to her tiny hips. She was a puddle of despair, and it tore me up inside.
Her hair was cleaner than I’d last seen but not sparkling like the two boys causing mayhem. Her cheeks were a little fuller, but her colour wasn’t perky, just blue.
Blue eyes, blue heart, blue aching sadness.
Left behind and unwanted, she sat sadly, silently, staring at the rug with no toys in front of her, no cat to cuddle, no fish to coo at, no love or friendship or company.
And I’d done that to her.
My feet glued to the kitchen floor as an axe cracked through my ribcage. I wasn’t much older than the boy ru
A man who’d made a terrible, heart-clenching mistake. A man who’d left behind a baby but had returned for a friend.
The woman said something, but I didn’t hear her. All I could hear was the eternal emptiness, the sucking vacuum, the crippling need to fix all the pain I’d caused little Della.
My backpack crashed to the floor, clanking and clunking, uncared for as I took my first step toward a future that would mean a life of struggle, hardship, unpredictability, uncertainty, and an unbelievable consequences.
She looked up as my newly booted feet stomped onto the rug.
For a moment, she stared at me blankly. Her mouth pressed together, her blue eyes distrusting, wary, and hurt.
But then a change happened in her.
A change that stole the sun and radiated from her every golden strand and poured from every infant pore.
Something physical slammed into my chest.
Something unmentionable and powerful and so damn pure, I’d never felt anything like it before.