“Where’s your daddy?” Jane asks her.
Opal shrugs. Jane looks down the hall, where the bedroom is dark. “I’ll be right back,” she tells Callie. “Can you…” she nods at Opal.
Callie pulls out the chair next to her, starts matching opened markers to their caps. “Opes, tell me what you are coloring.”
“The snake man,” she says, her tongue poking from her mouth as she concentrates.
Callie makes out the circle of a head, the stick of a body, two arms and two legs. Opal grabs for the black marker and makes a fat scribble along the man’s arm.
“He came to the house today. Daddy is afraid of him.”
“He sounds pretty scary.” Raised voices from the bedroom. Callie can’t make anything out—Jane must have closed the door behind her. Opal looks up at Callie and Callie has to resist the urge to clap her hands over the girl’s ears.
“Want to go look for magic rocks outside?” Callie asks. Opals nods and puts her hand in Callie’s. It’s warm and small and she still has indents at her knuckles.
Outside Opal isstill quiet, serious, as she turns over rocks, brushes dirt from their undersides. “They fight when the snake man comes.”
Callie wonders if the snake man is one of those childish projections, someone to blame for whatever scares them. Bogeyman, ghosts.
She crouches. “Hey, Opal. Check this one out.” She picks the first rock she sees, a little tan pebble veined with gray.
“That one isn’t special. It isn’t even pretty.”
“No, but it is magic. You want to hold it?”
Opal looks skeptical. “What kind of magic does it have?”
“It makes you brave. All you have to do is give it a squeeze when you need a little extra courage.”
The girl takes the stone so solemnly, squeezes it so hard in her palm that Callie wants to tell her the truth. That she made it all up. But then Opal looks up at her with such delight on her face, a smile that looks so much like Jane that it makes her chest ache.
“It’s working!” Opal says. “Let’s find more magic ones.” She turns and races along the edge of the driveway, comparing every pebble to the one in her hand.
She holds the stones Opal hands her, runs her fingers over them, turns back to the house, sees movement behind the glass. A moment later Damien comes out. He makes no pretense of exchanging pleasantries. Does not thank Callie for taking Jane out, for watching Opal.
“She’s laying down.”
“She okay?”
“Just tired. I think today was a lot for her.”
Callie ignores the dig. “I’ll get going then, unless you need me to stay.”
“I’ve got it under control.”
Do you?Callie wants to ask.Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re falling apart.She fights the urge to rip the green baggie out of her wallet, shove it into his chest.
“Opes, I’m going to hit the road.”
“No! I want you to stay, to find more stones with me. We didn’t get all the magic ones yet.”
“Next time I come back we will find more. And you’ve got the most important one of all. Take good care of it, okay?”
Opal nods. Callie crouches in front of her, wraps her in a hug. Smells her little-girl smell of dirt and shampoo and applesauce. She counts to three before she forces herself to let go.
“See you soon,” she says to Damien.
His lips are tight and he only nods at her in way of goodbye.
