Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,83

at that time, I met a wonderful man, your grandfather, and we fell in love. I told him about the rhapsody, and I found that, with his help, I was able to control my urges. We were married and were very happy. Soon, I was expecting a baby, which would be the culmination of my joy. My husband’s name was Daniel, so we planned to name the baby Daniel if it was a boy, Danielle if it was a girl.”

I nodded. She meant my mother, Danielle. I continued to work on my hair, though it was already nearly a foot from my head now.

“And then, my husband was killed in an accident. I was all alone, frightened, no family, no friends. I only wanted to return to the one friend that had kept me company before, rhapsody. I had heard on the street of a secret place to get the drug underneath the Red Fox Inn. I went there, and I stole it. I was, of course, caught, and the owner, a man named Carl, said that he would tell the authorities, who would take my baby from me. I cried and cried, my remorse was so deep. Finally, he agreed to let me go. But he looked at the baby, who had such startling blue eyes, almost the color of rhapsody flowers themselves, and he said, ‘I have one condition. When she is seventeen, she must come here to work for me.’

“I looked at the man. He was very old with wrinkles upon wrinkles. I thought that by the time my child was seventeen, he would surely have died. Besides, I had no choice. I realized my mistake, and I wanted to leave right away. I agreed to bring her back when she was seventeen.”

I stared out at the sky, which had become gray with clouds, like a rain storm was coming.

“I raised my daughter, your mother, a wonderful little girl, and though it was hard, I never used rhapsody again. To do so would be to approach the place where I almost lost my daughter. That thought, alone, gave me strength. Gradually, I forgot all about it. But when Danielle was about to turn seventeen, I remembered the man’s strange request. I didn’t want to give her to him. I hoped he had died, but one day, when my daughter was at school, he came to my door, asking for her.”

“How old must he have been then?” I asked. “A hundred?”

“That was the strangest thing. He did not seem to have aged at all in seventeen years. If anything, he seemed younger. And when I refused to open my door, he pushed it in like it was nothing. I stared and stammered, pretending I didn’t know what he meant. Then, I said no. No, of course she can’t come. And yet, I had nowhere to go. I tried to keep her inside the house, so he wouldn’t be able to grab her. But a young girl does not want to stay inside.”

I nodded. I knew this was true.

“My Danielle,” Mama said. “She saw a boy in the garden, and she began to sneak off with him.”

I looked down. It was just what I had done with Wyatt.

“I did not find this out until later. At first, when she was gone, I thought she had been taken from me. I looked all over for her, cursing myself for not sprinting her away, not protecting her better. But then, she came back, and I thought it was all right. The boy had left her, it seemed. I learned that she was having a baby, and I didn’t care, didn’t fret as any other mother would. I just wanted her to stay with me. In fact, realizing my foolishness, I made plans to move across the country, to start a new life. And then, Danielle disappeared again, this time for good.”

I felt tears come into my eyes. Poor Mama! “How alone you must have been.”

“I was. And the police were no help. At first, they said that Danielle must have run away. She was a teenage girl. People had seen her with this boy, and he had disappeared, so they assumed she had run off with him. However, I continued to call the police, badger them. My daughter and I may have argued, but she would never have run away. Also, I began to hear stories of other young people disappearing, including another girl from town, Suzie Mills. When I told