Make you mine

A shriek of terror

But do not fear.

A face like a heart will lead you here.

Soft and silent, follow my path

Across the acres, the pine tree swath.

I’d spotted the small black notebook nestled with dust bunnies under her bed, the page flipped open to the verse written in beautiful, spidery calligraphy.

My strength suddenly drained, I closed the book and ran a finger across its smooth surface. My baby’s writings; my magical angel, my all-seeing fairy. My finger hesitated over the page and turned to another, and then dropped away as if it was bit by flame. I couldn’t do it. If I read her words, her thoughts, her stories and poems, it would crush me right now. I wasn’t ready.

Another reminder, another razor slice to the heart. Would it ever end?

My baby had been murdered six weeks ago.

That was the refrain, the sick headline, the repetitive chant in my head every day that crowded out all other sound. My baby had been murdered. It chugged like a train on a track, clackety clack. My baby had been murdered. It was distant from me, this couldn’t have been me, this happened to someone else. Sometimes, I had to stifle a laugh. Your baby has been murdered.

Nobody knew who did it. Not Lucy’s stoic boyfriend Lane, not her fast-talking, whip-smart best friend Claire (or “clairvoyant”, Lucy called her jokingly, affectionate in their shared intuitiveness), not her writing group, not her horse-riding instructor, Lindey.

Things came effortlessly to my Lucy, because she saw right through the blueprints and was already years ahead by the time someone tried to teach her. If she heard a song once, she sang it perfectly. The first time on her horse Indigo, she cantered. Her third eye was deep and knowing.

Her room smelled of extinguished candles and incense. I set the notebook, heavy with her reflections and shadows, softly on her bed.

Riley, my bold and empathetic firstborn, brought me the same notebook a few days later. “Mom. I found this in Lucy’s room.”

I looked into her troubled eyes and nodded. “I know.”

“Did you read it?”

“Honey… I just can’t right now…”

“You need to read it.” Riley’s determined voice trampled me. She held the book out to me, the page opened to a different verse:

On the darkest night of the year

What I want will soon appear.

By the power of these words you’ll find

I will not, cannot, leave your mind.

My only wish is this, you see

That you will want no one but me.

“What does this mean? It’s like she…cast a spell on someone. Mom?”

“I have to think…” I stammered, re-reading the words, their ominousness seemingly softened by the innocent penciled execution.

“I’m texting Claire,” Riley said. “I have to show her this. Maybe she’ll know.”

I was suddenly exhausted from an onslaught of information that didn’t compute. When Claire finally arrived, bringing in an outdoor chill and her capable confidence, I listened to her and Riley’s conversation as a child does when falling asleep listening to their parents’ low chatter, warm and muted.

“Why would she write this about Lane?” Riley was saying. “She already had him.”

“The darkest night of the year…” Claire mused.

The girls locked eyes.

“December 21,” they said together.

The universe seemed to wait for us as we did the mental math. Riley’s body had been found in a metropark on January 8. This wish, this incantation, had been written just over 2 weeks beforehand.

So who was the object of Lucy’s affection…obsession?

Outside the high school, I waited for Lane McMahon.

At first, he looked startled – he whipped his head around behind him, as if I was there for someone else—and then he smiled tentatively and headed toward me. “Hey, Miz Ford…Kate.”

“How are you, Lane?”

The wrinkle of confusion remained on his face as he said, “I mean… not well… of course…”

“Join me at Starbucks?” I asked. “Please?”

With a resigned mix of politeness and dread, he said, “Sure… okay.”

We sat at a table in the front window, the winter sun brilliant in the cold blue sky.

“Lane, I know we’ve talked a million times, and you’ve already told the police what you know… but we found a notebook of Lucy’s and I have more questions. Did she act ANY different to you? At all? In the months or weeks before she…” I swallowed.

“No,” he said. “Seriously…I mean… Like I said, I was annoyed at Thanksgiving when she left my family dinner to go check on her horse, but that was just her. You know how she was when she wanted to do something…”

“Thanksgiving.” I grabbed onto a fluttering thought. “She just…. left?”

“She said she got a call from Lindey—that Indigo seemed lame. So she left. Right after the pie.”

My wounded, catastrophically-altered brain had been my worst enemy in the wake of Lucy’s death. Instead of helping me, being its sharpest when I needed it to be, it was mud. I couldn’t connect dots; nothing made sense. So now, when something flickered to the surface, I closed my eyes in concentration, willing clarity. The timing of Lucy’s solstice spell had tapped something loose. I now had context. Had she acted different around that time?

“So how did she act after Thanksgiving?” I persisted.

“Miz… Kate… I answered all of this. The last time I saw her, I surprised her at the barn and we hung out until she got ready to ride. Then she told me I had to go because she had to prepare for a really difficult lesson. That was December 15. I know the date because it’s my mom’s birthday. I hadn’t gotten her a gift so I hurried to get her one at the mall after I left. Around 3.”

I snatched my phone and looked at my calendar, scrolling to December 15.

Haircut- Lucy and me. 6:30.

I jerked back as if blown by a cosmic gust.

Lucy hadn’t shown. I had sat in the chair, miffed and appalled that she had blown me off, my texts unanswered.

And then. Rolling in at 11:30, she had been manic, her chest burning a bright red, laughing: “Omg, I am soooo sorry, Mom! I was with Lane. We hung out after my lesson and my phone died.”

At the time, I hadn’t thought any more of it than being annoyed at a flaky teenager, not that she had lied about her whereabouts.

I explained her behavior that night as Lane listened intently. “So…she said she was with me?” he said slowly.

“Yes. But she was acting wild. She was…lit up. Do you remember anything else about that day?”

“No,” he sighed. “Ask Lindey? Maybe she remembers what Lucy did after I left.”

WILDFLOWER FARMS declared the faded wooden sign, and I navigated the dusty gravel pathway up to the big white farmhouse. Freshly painted, its porch was wide and welcoming, adorned with four perfectly-crafted rocking chairs and terracotta pots of zinnia and geraniums and petunias in the summer. I knocked on the door.

No answer.

I headed to the barn, lured by the scent of horses and hay. I walked in, greeted by low rumbly nickers, and went to Lucy’s leased horse’s stall. Indigo. 16 hands and jet black, almost blue. I rubbed his velvety nose, prickled through with whiskers, and stifled a sob. I hadn’t seen him since…

My hands drifted across his withers, his thick shoulders, his tangled mane, breathing in Lucy as much as I was breathing in the animal.

“Some new lil girl’s got him now,” said a voice behind me, and a leathery, gray haired woman pushed past me with a wheelbarrow. “So sad what happened to the other one…”

“I’m her mom,” I gushed eagerly—almost proudly.

“Oh!” The woman stopped in her tracks. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. Oh, so sorry. What a sweet girl she was. Only saw her a few times cuz I just started working here—helping out with Lindey and Mr. Miles. I’m Rachel.”

“Is Lindey here?”

“Around here somewhere. Anything I can help you with?”

“My daughter…did you notice anything about her? How did she…seem?”

“That lil Lucy? Oh, she was a real beam of light. Everyone loved her. She had a real draw to her. Magnetic-like. We all said so.”

My mind tripped over the word “all.” In Lucy’s two years of riding, I only knew of Lindey.

“Did you ever hear her say anything? Maybe about a man….?”

“No man. She brought a boy to watch her a few times but didn’t pay him no mind. Just seemed to show off to everyone else…”

“Showing off to who?” I asked.

“Mrs. Ford!” came a warm voice, and there was Lindey herself, proprietor and instructor of Wildflower Farms.

I prepped myself to assail her with questions: Who may have been here that my daughter was showing off for as she paid Lane “no mind”?

And then a sound came that seemed to shatter the earth; a shriek that made my blood run cold, the sound of a murdered woman herself. I steadied myself against the stall behind me.

“For the love of…” Rachel gasped.

There came a flutter, a purr of silken wings, and I was staring into the pure snowy face of an owl.

Its beautiful, ethereal face looked like a heart, its wings speckled with chestnut streaks. It blinked at me.

Heart shaped face…

It was as if I was jarred to life.

I grabbed my phone out of my purse, pulling up the screenshot I’d taken of Riley’s mysterious verse.

Soft and silent follow my path…

The bird seemed to nod to me, the go-ahead. Rachel and Lindey stared at me as it took flight and I ran out of the stable behind it.

It flew low and graceful, and I ran. Fields stretched behind the farm, and I ran.

Pine trees clustered behind the farm, and I ran.

Pine tree swath.

I tripped down hollows and uneven ground, I sprinted across flat earth, I felt an earring fly out of my ear. My eyes never veered from the bird.

Calligraphy.

I had bought Lucy the calligraphy set for Christmas, but she’d never opened it. It remained, still sealed, on her bedroom desk.

So how had this particular verse been written with a calligraphy pen she had never used?

At the edge of the field stood a small, weathered barn, gray and caving in on itself. A barn possibly built with the original property, left to decay.

The brilliant flash of the owl guided me toward it.

Panting, I entered the structure as the owl soared up into the hayloft and perched, observant.

I ran through the barn, heart racing, taking it all in. Just neglected stalls, old pails, broken windows.

In the back, a tack room stood empty.

Except for one corner

Where piles of messy blankets curled

And lanterns and candles sat—like a love nest

And on the floor dark speckles dribbled like maroon paint.

Paint?

“May I help you?” came a voice, a voice like molten gold; rich and irresistible, and I spun around to look into the eyes of a beautiful man. A man whose crystal eyes cut through a tanned face, a languid body dominating the space. I took him in in a second. My intimidation and attraction was immediate—as I imagine anyone’s would be. This, I thought, was a man who could ruin you.

“Hello.” I raised myself up to full height, the goddamn grieving mother I was, and said, “You may. Did you know my daughter?” My heart beat in my throat – so violently I was sure he could see it. “I think that you do.”

He looked at me and a slow grin spread across his face. “Now, how would I know who your daughter is?”