a clean cloth and a bowl of warm water. And a blanket. Light the fire in the kitchen hearth.”
He rolled his eyes behind her back, but obeyed.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Caitlyn.”
“Caitlyn, that’s pretty. I’m going to clean this cut on your arm first. I don’t think it needs stitches.” She smiled as she spoke.
Her eyes had a lot of gold in them, but there was green, too, like the boy’s. Like Dillon’s, Cate remembered.
“While I’m fixing you up, why don’t you tell me what happened. Dillon, pour Caitlyn a glass of that milk before you put it away.”
“I don’t want milk. They tried to give me milk but it was wrong. I don’t want milk.”
“All right. How about—”
She broke off as Cate jolted. And Maggie Hudson came down the stairs. Maggie took one look at Cate, tipped her head. “I wondered what all this noise was. Looks like we’ve got company.”
She had blond hair, too, but lighter than Dillon’s and his mom’s. Blue streaked through it on its way to her shoulders.
She wore a T-shirt with a picture of a woman with lots and lots of curly hair that said JANIS under it and a pair of flowered pajama pants.
“This is my mom,” Julia told her as she cleaned the slices on Cate’s arm. “Put the blanket over Caitlyn’s shoulders, Dillon. She’s cold.”
“Let’s get a fire going in here, too.”
“I’m working on it, Gram.” The aggrieved boy came through, but she only gave his hair a stroke as she stepped toward the table. “I’m Maggie Hudson, but you can call me Gram. You look like a girl in need of hot chocolate. I’ve got my own secret recipe.”
She reached in a cupboard, took out a package of Swiss Miss, then sent Cate a wink.
“This is Caitlyn, Mom. She was about to tell us what happened. Can you do that, Caitlyn?”
“We were playing hide-and-seek after the life celebration for my great-grandda, and I went to the tree beside the garage to climb it and hide, and there was a man and he stuck me with something and I woke up somewhere else.”
The words tumbled out as Maggie put a big mug in the microwave, as Julia dabbed ointment on the cuts, as Dillon, crouched down to light the kitchen fire, goggled.
“They had masks like a mean clown and a werewolf, and said they’d break my fingers if I didn’t do what they said. And the clown one had a gun, and he said he’d shoot me. But I didn’t eat the soup or drink the milk because it tasted funny. They put drugs to make you sleep in things, bad guys do that, so I poured it down the toilet and pretended to sleep.”
“Holy crap!”
Julia merely shot Dillon a look to shut him up.
“That was smart. Honey, did they hurt you?”
“They knocked me down when they opened the door hard, and the bad clown pulled my hair really, really hard. But then they thought I was asleep, and one of them—it was the wolfman—came in and talked on the phone. I kept pretending and fooled him. I kept the spoon from the soup, and I used it to get the nails out of the window lock. One of them drove away. I could hear them talking outside, and he drove away, and that’s when I got the window open enough to get out, but it was too high to jump.”
The microwave went off, but Caitlyn kept looking right into Julia’s eyes. It seemed safe there in the gold and the green. In the kindness.
“I tied the sheets together. I couldn’t tear them, but I tied them, and then the one came back, and I was scared because if he came in, he’d see and he’d break my fingers.”
“No one’s going to hurt you now, baby girl.” Maggie set the hot chocolate on the table.
“I had to climb down, and my hands kept slipping, and there were lights on downstairs, and the sheets weren’t long enough so I had to jump. I hurt my ankle a little, but I ran. There were trees, a lot of trees, so I ran there and ran, and fell and hurt my knee, but I ran. I didn’t know where I was.”
Tears rolled now, tears Julia gently wiped away.
“Then I heard the ocean, a little, then more. And I saw the light. You had the light on, and I followed the light, and saw the cows, and the house, and the light. But I was afraid you