The Light Through the Leaves - Glendy Vanderah Page 0,3
want to sit in back!” he said.
“She said!”
“But first she said I had middle!”
The raven added its throaty kraa, kraa, kraa! in quick succession.
“Get in!” Ellis shouted.
River climbed in back. Jasper went to the middle. Ellis put the bag with the nets on the floor and held Jasper’s jar while he buckled his seat belt.
A howl rose out of the back seat. “My tadpoles!” River screamed.
Ellis set the baby carrier on the ground and leaned into the van, seeing River’s entire jar poured over the back seat, tadpoles wriggling in the thin veneer of water left.
“Why wasn’t the lid on?” she said.
“I was trying . . . I was trying to get that other thing out of there. That big, scary bug!” River cried.
Probably a dragonfly larva. The predatory insect was scary looking.
“Mom, they’re dying!” Jasper said. “Mom! Help them!”
Jasper’s pronouncement made River wail louder.
Ellis ran around to the other side of the van so she didn’t have to lean over Jasper. She grabbed Jasper’s jar, crawled over the middle seat, and tried to pick up the tadpoles. But she couldn’t get a grip on them.
Both boys yowled, the raven squawking along with them.
Using a rag from the supplies, Ellis swiped as many tadpoles as she could into Jasper’s jar. But some were beyond sight on the dark carpet. And one was wedged in the crack of the seat. If she tried to get it out, she’d probably squish it. Seeing it dead in the jar would upset the boys more. They protested loudly when she closed the jar.
“You didn’t get all of them!” River said.
“There’s one stuck in the seat!” Jasper said. “It’s dying! You have to get it out!”
“We’ll try to get it at home,” she said.
“It’ll die!”
“I want to go back and get more!” River said.
“No! You shouldn’t have taken the lid off. We’re going, and we still have plenty.”
“We don’t have enough!”
“There’re two on the floor!” Jasper shouted.
“Mom!”
The raven was still croaking along with the boys as Ellis started the van. When she turned out of the lot, River burst into melodramatic sobs.
“It’s okay,” Jasper told him. “Maybe they’ll still be alive when we get home.”
“They won’t!” River cried.
“If Dad is home, he’ll save them,” Jasper said with certainty.
Ellis could almost taste the bitterness of her thoughts. Why was Jonah their hero? How did being so rarely at home bestow him with noble qualities? Jasper wouldn’t be glorifying his father if he’d seen the son of a bitch kissing another woman that morning.
Ellis was dizzy thinking about what he’d done, what he’d been doing.
River’s crying ebbed by the time they came to the main road.
“Mom?” Jasper said.
“What?”
“You forgot Viola.”
Ellis pushed the brake and looked back. She stared at the empty seat next to Jasper. Not possible. She wouldn’t have left her baby behind. But the carrier wasn’t there. She’d forgotten to put the baby in the van when the tadpoles spilled.
Everything inside felt frozen. But it was more like she didn’t have a body. She couldn’t feel the steering wheel in her hands. She didn’t have a face or arms or legs.
Somehow, she’d turned the van around, and her foot must have been pressing the accelerator.
It’s okay. She’ll still be there, still sleeping. It’s okay. It’s okay.
She pressed harder on the pedal.
What she’d done was normal. She wasn’t used to putting a third child in the van. For more than four years, there had been only two. New parents did this. She’d heard stories about leaving the baby in the house. In the car. Just for a few minutes. Nothing dangerous. It would be okay.
The one and a half miles of winding road felt like ten.
What if she’d run her over as she pulled out? She might have killed her. What kind of mother did that?
She slowed at the sign for the forest preserve, turned into the trailhead parking lot. All was quiet, the raven flown from its branch. There were two cars in the lot, parked far from where the van had been. Ellis stared at the empty space her van had occupied.
No carrier. No baby.
She had a brief thought that she’d never had a third baby. Hadn’t it felt like that sometimes? As if this life, three kids, was all a dream? She shut her eyes, certain everything would return to whatever was normal, two kids or three, when she opened them.
“Mom?”
She opened her eyes.
“Where’s Viola?” Jasper asked.
The baby was gone. Someone had taken her daughter.