A Child's Wish

“Really.”

Her arms barely caught the little girl as she threw herself against Barbie—a feeling that was so good she could hardly bear to experience it.

“Oh, Mommy,” Kelsey breathed against her. “I’d love that. I would really, really love that.”

“Then we’ll make it happen.”

And Mark Shepherd be damned.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MEREDITH SAT behind the steering wheel of her Mustang, driving calmly. The top was down, and although she knew that she’d never put her top down if this weren’t a dream, she also noticed and enjoyed the breeze against her heated face, her heated body. Why was she so hot? It was March. She shouldn’t be hot. The entire car was hot, almost burning up, but she couldn’t stop to find out why, to help herself. She was being pulled along by speeding traffic that moved faster and faster, the curves on the road becoming sharper. Someone was in the car with her. Her mother. She needed help. Meredith reached out a hand but couldn’t reach her. She was right there next to her, and still she couldn’t reach her. Her hand flew back to the wheel as another curve suddenly appeared. She skated the side of the road, gravel flying, overcompensated and the car tilted slightly as her tires started up the walled embankment on the other side and then returned to the road.

Past the curve she glanced over at her mother, and a child was there, needing help. The child laughed at her hand, which couldn’t reach… And waited for her to figure it out. Meredith didn’t know what she was supposed to figure out. She meant to ask, but another curve was upon her. More speed. Faster. She was dizzy, could hardly breathe. She was going to crash. Braced herself and knew the absolute horror of imminent death. But first there was a van ahead, on the side of the road. While her car still sped along with her at the wheel, Meredith was somehow also beside the van, staring in the passenger window. Her father was there—alive again. He needed her to help him. She was the only one. He called out to her. His seat was going to explode any second and he couldn’t get out. Meredith got the door open, saw the unfastened seat belt…and fastened it. But the sound of it clicking closed wasn’t the sound of a seat belt. It was the lock on her hotel room door—opening. She stood on the inside, staring as it opened as far as the safety chain would allow. There was another open door in front of her, leading into a room that connected with hers. She knew the people in that room; was there with them. A child stood in the doorway and she tried to speak to him, telling him to call an adult male who was in the bathroom shaving. The child called out, but the adult didn’t hear.

Fingers slid beneath the hotel room door, and Meredith thought about the bills that normally entered hotel rooms that way. She tried to speak with the child again, but the child couldn’t hear her. He just stood there, glancing into his room as if watching television. Big male fingers appeared around the side of her door, pushing by the chain until a full hand was in her room. The fingers were going to break the chain. She screamed for the adult in the adjoining room, but no sound came out. Her throat was numb, wouldn’t move to make sound. As the lock started to give she screamed again and again, straining her throat until it was raw….

DARKNESS WAS A RELIEF. Meredith slowly came to an awareness that she was alive. In her bed. In her house. Safe and secure. But she felt neither safe nor secure. Dread filled her, turning her inside out, chafing as it continued to course through her veins. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it—and hear its rapid rhythm in her ears. Her pillow and the back of her gown were soaked with sweat. Hot and cold at the same time, she lay there, opening her eyes and then—fearing the world around her—closing them.

Her interior world, containing that hand, her father careening to her death, was no comfort. Her eyes snapped open again.

She had to figure out what it meant. There would be no peace until she knew. Was her soul sending her a message? That could explain some of the dream, but what unresolved issues could she have about her father? He’d been a stern man, but good to her. He’d died of kidney failure ten years ago.

So had she been, in her relaxed state of sleep, open to someone else’s torture? Or had it just been a crazy nightmare?

“Meredith?” The small voice startled her, and she gasped. And then she remembered that she wasn’t alone.

Glancing toward the open door in the moonlight, she could make out the shadow of her pajama-clad houseguest.

“Kelsey! Come in. What’s wrong, sweetie?” She sat up, turning over her pillow before she propped it and its mate behind her, then patting the top of her down comforter. “Did you have a bad dream?”

The little girl shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t remember. I just woke up scared and thought I heard you choking.”

“Yeah, I just woke myself up,” Meredith said, finding a grin and hoping it would precipitate a lightening of the tension inside. “Guess I need a drink.” Reaching for the water bottle she always kept beside her bed, she took a long swallow as Kelsey crawled in beside her.

“It’s dark and kind of creepy in that other room by myself. Can I stay here with you?” she asked, her feet already beneath the covers.

“Of course.” Meredith capped the bottle, resisting the urge to pull the little girl into her arms and promise that things that go bump in the night would never harm her.

Because she knew better.

“When I was a little girl I used to have really scary dreams sometimes,” Meredith said now, sliding back under the covers herself. “I wasn’t allowed to sleep in my parents’ bed, but I’d sneak into their room and lie down on the floor by my mother’s side and fall asleep. I can still remember the feeling of that shag carpet under my cheek.”

Kelsey turned her head toward Meredith, her eyes mere dots in the darkness. “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

“Nope,” Meredith stared at the ceiling and then turned back to the child. “I was an only child, just like you.”

“Did your mother ever know you were sleeping there?” Kelsey’s childish voice was precious to her, like peace in a turbulent world, solace in the dark of the night.

“I didn’t think so at the time,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t really sleep all that much because I knew I had to sneak back into my room before she woke up.” The memory was bittersweet. She’d spent much of her childhood afraid. And had rarely understood why. “Several years ago she told me she’d known I was there,” she added now.

“She had?”

“Mmm-hmm. But she didn’t say anything because she knew my dad would’ve made me go back to my own room. He was a stickler for rules.”

“And she wanted you there.” Kelsey’s voice was filled with reverence.

“Yeah.” Evelyn Foster had been her champion her entire life. It had just taken her a while to figure that out.