Wherever I was, wherever I spent the night, I pretended I still belonged.
I pretended that everything was normal.
It made it easier somehow. Or at least less awful as I waited.
Waited for an end to the misery.
I never expected any of this would stick. Never thought this—my condition—would become permanent. Never did I think my fifteenth birthday would come and go and I would still be this way.
And yet I was. I went from fourteen to fifteen in a blink.
Linnea made a cake. She and her mother brought it over. The wary looks they exchanged with each other on that day told me they did not know whether it was the right thing to do or not, but they came.
My father accepted it with a curt thank-you.
My friend lingered, wringing her hands, her pretty face twisting with unshed tears beneath her headscarf. Her mother turned away, tugging on her daughter’s sleeve to follow, but still Linnea lingered. “She visits me,” Linnea blurted. “In my dreams.”
My father froze.
As did I, shaken by the declaration. Because Ididvisit her as she slept on those nights I wandered.
I would watch Linnea ready for bed, brushing out her auburn hair in front of her mirror; I stayed with her as she settled beneath her covers and fell asleep. I talked to her even if it was a wholly one-sided conversation. Could she have sensed me?Heardme on some level?
“Arden is gone,” Da finally pronounced, his voice flat. Turning, he stepped back inside the house, closing the door on Linnea and her mother.
“Come, Linny,” her mother admonished, taking her hand. “Leave him be. This can’t be a good day for him. You bring only painful memories.”
“But they are memories of Arden. She should not be forgotten.”
I nodded, blinded by my tears, overwhelmed with gratitude forher words...for Linnea’s determination to remember me when it seemed everyone else was intent on forgetting.
Linnea’s mother put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, leading her away. I watched them for a moment before venturing back inside my house.
At first, I did not spot my father in the dim interior.
“Da,” I whispered, my gaze adjusting to the gloom. The day was almost too warm, the sun shining, eating through the fog, but inside it was all shadows and murk, the only light that which trickled in through the partially shuttered windows.
He wasn’t in the kitchen or on the cushioned bench before the hearth.
“Da?” I called out as I made my way up the stairs. I peered inside his bedchamber. Empty. I searched the other chambers, coming to mine last. The door was cracked open. Usually, it remained closed. Whenever I passed in and out of the room, the door, of course, never budged.
I didn’t think anyone had entered its small space since I went missing—except me. But I found my father there now, sitting on my neatly made bed, staring straight ahead, the cake Linnea made him balanced on his lap. I could smell its sweet icing, and my stomach growled, reminding me I was hungry.
I joined him, easing down on the bed next to him. I folded my hands tightly together in my lap. In the thick air, we sat like that for a long time. Unmoving. Unspeaking. Until his voice reached me, a rough scratch of friction between us.
“I’m sorry, Arden. I should have let you go with Henrik. I knew it then. It was the right thing to do.” His shoulders sank, hunkering low, and for the first time ever my father looked small and old. “I was selfish, keeping you here for myself because I didn’t want to lose you.” He made a sound—part grunt, part sob. “And now...I’ve lost you anyway.”
I shook my head, his pain my pain,myloss, strangling my voice as I choked out, “It wasn’t your fault, Da.”
Almost as though he heard me, he said, “It is my fault.”
“No. A witch did this. It’s her fault and no one else’s.” My hands clenched tighter, nails digging tiny half-moons into my flesh.
A witch did this. And I would find her and make her undo it. I reached for his shoulder to comfort him, but my hand never touched him, landing instead at my side, on the bed, ineffective as a dead fish. My fingers flexed, digging into the mattress. “Don’t worry, Da. I’ll fix this.”
7
A Reliable Horse
