A Heartbeat Away. Eleanor Jones

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      “Everything will be all right, lovey, you’ll see,” she told me. I hugged her back and breathed in the scent of violets as hard as I could, right down into my lungs so that her fragrance would become a part of me forever.

      When her gentle footsteps faded down the stairs, I curled up into a tight little ball, wrapping my arms around my pillow and trying to remember about my mom and my dad, and how things used to be before he went away. But I couldn’t get past the memory of my mom’s wild eyes, blazing like coals amid the dead pallor of her face. All I could recall were the bad times, and I quaked in fear of the tomorrows. And then I heard a knock, just the gentlest tap, and a shadow fell across the beam of light from the half-open doorway, Daniel’s shadow.

      “You okay?” he whispered. I uncurled myself and smiled through my tears.

      “I am now,” I told him.

      For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, then he tiptoed over and perched on the side of my bed, saying nothing, not needing words. And when I awoke next morning, he was gone. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that he had been there, and always would be there when I needed him. It made me feel safe again, I suppose.

      CHAPTER 5

      Christmas. It figured higher on my undulating tide of memories than any other time. It was almost Christmas when my mom arrived home, a poor sad shadow of the person who’d gone away, and it was Christmas when my dad returned to haunt her.

      We lived just down the lane from the Browns now, at Box Tree Cottage. My mom had said that we had to move because my dad lost our other house, but that can’t have been true because it was still there; I saw it every morning on my way to school. I liked Box Tree Cottage, though. You could see the fells from my bedroom window.

      I had only one present on our first Christmas there. It was from my mom, and it lay beneath the tree that Mr. Brown had brought us. Mrs. Brown and Daniel had helped decorate it on Christmas Eve. While we two children hung baubles on its spiky branches and breathed in the scent of fresh pine, the excitement that only Christmas can kindle bubbled up inside us, turning the sparkling decorations into something truly magical.

      Mrs. Brown stood on a wooden chair to put tinsel right at the top of the tree, then she jumped down, rummaged in the big box of decorations and withdrew a small figure all dressed in silvery white, with gossamer wings and golden hair.

      “Come on, Mary,” she insisted, holding the decoration out toward my mom. “Why don’t you put the fairy on the top.”

      My mom was sitting in her high-backed chair, staring into the crackling flames of the fire with a distant expression in her eyes. It was nothing, though, compared with the pinched anger they had used to show, and anything was better than the wild desperation that had been so frightening just before she went away. So I didn’t mind a bit—at least she didn’t shout at me anymore—and sometimes I almost felt sorry for her she looked so sad and gray.

      

      Mrs. Brown had arrived with Daniel shortly after the lunchtime program on TV finished, to find my mom sitting in the cold dark living room while I galloped around the house in my bare feet, on a broom that I pretended was Chocolate. Her voice was quiet and calm, but I could see the dismay in her eyes as she took in the clutter of our living room. She ordered me upstairs to get dressed and sent Daniel outside to fetch coal for the fire.

      By the time I came back down the steep narrow staircase, flames were roaring up the chimney and my mom was settled in front of their cozy glow with a mug of tea. I smiled gratefully at Mrs. Brown when she handed me a piece of thickly buttered toast with strawberry jam. As I nibbled it contentedly, she and Daniel unpacked the box of goodies they had brought us.

      Sparkling tinsel, gaudy baubles, a present for me that Mrs. Brown said she had collected for my mom and a beautiful Christmas cake with an angel on it, just like the one she was trying to get her to place on the tree.

      “Come on, Mary,” she pleaded with her lovely voice.

      I felt angry when my mom just sat with that vacant look in her eyes, staring into the fire, so I set down my plate and ran across to shake her arm. “Put it on,” I yelled. It mattered so much to me that my mom join in our excitement.

      But Mrs. Brown took a gentle hold of my shoulders and pulled me toward her. “It’s all right, Lucy,” she said quietly. “The doctor told us that your mother would need to rest, and Daniel and I are here to keep an eye on you both, so just leave her be and she’ll come around…you’ll see.”

      I relaxed against the warmth of her pale blue woolen sweater, clinging to the comfort she offered and smiling contentedly, knowing I was safe within her violet scent. It made me feel good inside to know that I was safe.

      “I’ll keep an eye on her, as well, shall I?” I offered gravely.

      She nodded in agreement. “Good idea, for she’ll be well again in no time if we both watch out for her.”

      I believed then that Mrs. Brown’s magic was working already, for my mom slipped into one of her more lucid periods. Sometimes they only lasted minutes before she drifted back into her cloudy-eyed apathy, but this time her lucidity went on and on and she gazed at Mrs. Brown with real emotion in her gray eyes.

      “Edna,” my mother suddenly said. “Whatever am I going to do?”

      I hadn’t known that Mrs. Brown was named Edna until that moment. Mr. Brown called her Mother, Daniel called her Mom, and I just called her Mrs. Brown, so hearing her first name made me stand and gawk for a moment, until Daniel grabbed my arm.

      “Can we go outside for a bit?” he asked. Mrs. Brown smiled and made a shooing motion.

      “Make sure you put your coats on and don’t go out of the garden,” she yelled after us as we raced into the tiny kitchen to get our boots.

      We built a den in the shed that day, Daniel and I. He said it was our headquarters and we had to sit at the pretend table and make our plans, but we couldn’t think what to plan. Then he had one of his good ideas.

      He screwed up his face, just as he always did when he was thinking, and ran his fingers through his tufty blond hair, which I liked so much.

      “We’ll plan a trip,” he said. “A trip to the…to the circus. I’ll be a lion tamer and you can—”

      “I’ll ride the horses,” I cut in, excitement buzzing through me.

      Daniel was always contriving crazy things to do. We spent hours making plans that amounted to nothing, but we both understood that it was just a matter of time. One day, once we were grown up, we would fulfill all our dreams.

      When we went back into the cozy warmth of the house, the living room seemed taken up by the tree. The gaudy baubles sparkled in the light from the fire, and its golden glow turned the silver tinsel to flickering orange. The bowl on our small scratched coffee table was filled with fruit and two brightly colored presents now lay beneath the canopy of green branches. One had no name on it, and Mrs. Brown said that she had bought it for me to give to my mom, so I filled in the card she handed me, meticulously writing my name in big letters and putting lots of kisses at the bottom, before arranging it carefully underneath the tree, next to the one from my mom to me. In that moment my world seemed complete and I turned to look at Mrs. Brown with tears of happiness in my eyes.

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