Mack picked it up, but as he drew it away, it caught on the skeleton’s neck.
Without thinking, Mack took out his pocketknife and sliced the leather strap.
Misty crept closer, emitting her low growl.
“Shh… just taking a look here,” he told her, prising open the little bag. A series of flat white stones lay within the pouch.
Behind Mack, a twig cracked and he jumped, whirling around as two squirrels chased each other between the trees. Misty took off after them.
“Misty, no,” he shouted, running to catch up with her.
She followed them a few more yards, but they darted up an oak and out of sight.
He caught up to his dog and grabbed her collar.
“Best if we get to a cop shop,” he said, leading her back toward the cabin.
He was halfway back when he realized he still held the satchel in his hands. He paused, considered returning to drop it in the grave, and decided against it. He could just hand it over to the police - easier that way.
Chapter 4
Liv
It was strange how time shifted. One morning, Liv gazed at a bright-eyed eighteen-year-old in the mirror, and the next a woman of nearly forty stared back at her. Through her eyes, not much had changed. The same brown eyes watched her from beneath unruly blonde hair that she’d never so much as trimmed.
She might have left George that fall in 1945, left everything, as it were; but she’d held onto his stories, and his magic.
Most people thought her young. She’d never married or had children, the things she now attributed to aging a woman. All those years carrying babies and then bearing them into the world. Cleaning, scrubbing, ironing, fretting, fearing for their safety.
Though it was more than that, she thought. The magic that had made George look young years beyond his prime flowed in her blood.
She’d never borne children, and yet they’d become the center her life. She was fast approaching seventeen years at Helping Hands Orphanage. Several years before, they’d offered her the position of Head Mother. She’d turned it down. The Head Mother did not hold the children or chase them in the play-yard. She didn’t nurse the sick ones and soothe the fearful. Liv’s purpose was to heal. George had told her as much when she was but a tiny girl, helping him collect wild rose for tea.
She took the bus as she did every morning to the stop on Tenth Street. From there, she ducked into the bakery and bought a bun and a box of cookies for the little ones.
When she arrived at the orphanage, the children ran from the breakfast room to greet her. They swarmed her legs, tugging on her skirt to tell her of their dreams and to beg for cookies.
“Miss Livvy, I dreamed last night I rode on a giant pink balloon,” a little girl with white-blonde hair squealed.
Tanner, a swarthy boy with thick auburn curls, called out that he’d dreamed of a cockroach as big as a bus.
Lucas, her favorite of the children — though she’d never tell them that — stood in the back of the pack, his cheeks sunken in his angular face. Large, watery blue eyes stared up at her from beneath a sheaf of coal black hair.
“And what did you dream, Lucas?”
The seven-year-old dreamed every night. Sometimes they were nightmares of the train car he’d lived in before Helping Hands found him. Except it was not Helping Hands that found him, but Liv.
Liv knew where the wayward children dwelled. She sensed them from miles away. On her days off, she walked the city for hours, visiting the abandoned children and trying to draw them to the warmth and safety of her orphanage.
“I dreamed of George,” he murmured, eyes cast toward the floor.
Liv’s head shot up at the name.
She nudged the other children aside and squatted in front of Lucas.
“What did you say?”
Lucas looked up at her, his little mouth turned down.
“The man with the stones. Like yours.”
Lucas pointed at the single hag stone that hung on a length of leather around Liv’s neck.
Her fingers trembled as she brushed the dark hair from his eyes.
“What was George doing in the dream?” she asked. Her head had grown light, and she shifted from squatting to sitting on her knees.
“He was trying to get out of the hole in the ground.”
Liv blinked at the little boy.
“Here, honey.” She pressed a shortbread cookie into his hand and stood shakily.
Rather than pass the cookies out as she usually did, she handed the tin to Paulette, the oldest girl in the orphanage at fifteen, and allowed her to give each child a treat.
Liv retreated to the hall closet and hung her coat. As she stood at the rack, she put a hand to the stone at her chest.
She searched for George. She rarely reached out for him.
Energy is instant, George used to say. He knew when she thought of him, longed for him, dreamed of him. He taught her to attune to those sensations as well, but like everything else, she’d shut it off when she fled Michigan all those years ago. She’d rarely sought George in the intervening years, believing it better not to reignite that connection. She didn’t want to give him access to her, for fear of what he’d see.
As she stood in the black, cramped closet, a void met her searching heart.
She could not feel him in the world.
Liv reached into the crib and lifted the wailing baby out.
His diaper was wet. Sad brown eyes gazed up at her from his round, red face.
“Shh… hush now, little sweet. I’ve got you.”
She walked him to the changing table and unclasped the safety pin on his diaper. Lifting his legs to pull the damp cloth away, she blew on his face. He paused for a moment in his crying to gaze at the stone dangling from her neck.
Liv reached for the baby powder.
Barney grabbed hold of her necklace. Ferociously, he jerked her toward the table. Liv’s head smacked the rail as the leather on the necklace snapped.
“Ouch,” she cried, jumping back and putting a hand to her brow.
She stared at the baby. His eyes had gone black and empty. He held the stone clutched in his pudgy hand, the broken leather dangling below it.
As quickly as the change had come, the darkness fled from him. He was Barney once more. Big brown eyes, tiny pink lips blowing a bubble. He waved the stone around before dropping it to clutch his toes, which he stretched up and stuck in his mouth.
Liv took a tentative step back to the changing table, reaching out to retrieve the necklace. She tucked it into the pocket of her skirt and returned Barney to his crib.
It was near dark when Liv left the orphanage to catch the bus home. As she stepped onto the front walkway, she paused, her heart skipping a beat.
Hundreds of flowers lay scattered in the grass.
Liv’s eyes flicked to the graveyard that butted the property of the orphanage. The headstones were empty of their flowers. They had all blown onto the grounds of the orphanage, and yet Liv did not remember ever hearing a wind that day as she cared for the children. Just the opposite, in fact; it had been an abnormally quiet day. Even the children seemed subdued.
As Liv walked, a flower crunched beneath her. She looked down to see a dark purple dahlia flattened beneath her shoe.
That night she dreamed for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Liv walked through a familiar forest. Maple trees glittered gold in autumn. Beech, birch, oaks. She whispered the names as she walked.