Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,84

the police this, they became annoyed. Suzie was an addict and probably dead of an overdose, they said. They had found out that Danielle was pregnant, and they accused me of killing her, because of my shame and anger. They threatened to arrest me, but I knew they had no proof because I hadn’t done it. Still, I gave up on calling them. I only hoped that, someday, she would come back.”

Mama slowed the car, and I knew why. The road was winding here, frightening. She was weeping and could probably barely see through her tears.

I heard her voice in the dark truck. “Then, two months after Danielle disappeared, there was a knock on my door. I opened it, hoping as I always did that it would be Danielle, returned to me. But when I looked outside, instead of Danielle, there was a blond young girl, cradling a tiny infant in a blanket.”

I knew that was me.

“It was Suzie, the girl who had disappeared. She was not dead, but she told me that Danielle was. She couldn’t tell me how she knew, but she knew. She thrust the baby at me and said to take it, keep it, that it was Danielle’s baby, and that the people who had killed Danielle had told her to take it and put it in the incinerator at her father’s veterinary office. She couldn’t do it. I took the child in my trembling arms, and listened as she babbled what sounded like nonsense. ‘Take the baby far away,’ Suzie said. For there was a prophecy that this baby, Danielle’s baby, would be the one to break a curse, to stop the rhapsody that had tainted the town for decades. She said that the baby’s father, whose name was Zach, had known that Danielle would be the mother of the baby that would bring it all down. He had come to her on purpose, impregnated my daughter—because his uncles were the ones who had the rhapsody. He knew how it had harmed people.

“Suzie told me that this baby could be the one to change everything. That is why they wanted her killed. She also told me that your name was Rachel.”

I shook my head. This was crazy. It was too much. And if I was the one who could do this, how was Wyatt involved? Why could I communicate with him, even when he wasn’t there?

“She begged me to take the baby and hide it. They must never know she hadn’t killed you as instructed. I did take the baby, you, away for eight long years, as I had planned to take Danielle. I took you all the way across the country and raised you. But even far away, I worried that someone would find you, take you away from me. So, finally, I brought you home, put you in a tower where no one would think to look, in the middle of the woods, and went back to my old house thinking that, when they saw I was all alone, they would leave me be. For eight years, they did. I wept every night because I could not have you with me, my granddaughter, the only one I had left, and I yearned to see you, yearned to have you in my house.”

I touched her hand. It was good to know that she too had missed me.

She said, “But then, one day, Danielle came to me in a dream. Or maybe I just dreamed about her. She said that her friend Emily’s baby, Wyatt, would be the one to break the spell with you, the one that could free them all. She made no sense, but she was my daughter, so I listened to her. She said that Wyatt must come to live here. Of course, I thought it was crazy. Emily would never agree. But the very next day, I received a call from Emily Hill. I didn’t know if it was merely coincidence, or if she had seen Danielle too, but she was asking me if Wyatt could come here, and I said yes.”

“That is incredible. Incredible.” I was finally warm, almost too warm. My face was flushed, and when I looked into the backseat, my hair filled the entire thing.

“I knew that he would find you. I encouraged it, allowing him to take my car every day, hoping he would have some sort of contact with you.”

“He did. I can hear him, in my head. I heard him a few minutes