"You can't—"
"I think we'll leave that for a judge to decide."
He ignored her then. Crouching down beside the little girl, he said, "I'm here to help you— do you understand? No one's going to hurt you anymore."
"If I... he said if I tell—"
"Debra!"
Dennison shot the mother an angry look. "I'm losing my patience with you, lady. Look at your daughter. Look at those bruises. Is that the kind of childhood you meant for your child?"
Her defiance crumbled under his glare and she slowly shook her head.
"Go pack a bag," he told the woman. "For both of you."
As she slowly walked down the hall, Dennison returned his attention to the little girl. This could all go to hell in a hand basket if the wasn't careful. There were certain standard procedures to deal with this kind of a situation and badgering the girl's mother the way he had been wasn't one of them. But he was damned if he wasn't going to give it his best shot.
"Do you understand what's happening?" he asked the girl. "I'm going to take you and your mother someplace where you'll be safe."
She looked up at him, those so-familiar grey-green eyes wide and teary. "I'm scared."
Dennison nodded. "It's a scary situation. But tell you what. On the way to the shelter, maybe we get you a treat. What would you like?"
For one long moment the girl's gaze settled on his. She seemed to be considering whether she could trust him not. He must have come up positive, because after that moment's hesitation, she opened right up.
"For there still to be trees when I grow up," she said. "I want to be a forest ranger. Sometimes when I'm sleeping, I wake up and I hear the trees crying because their daddies are being mean to them, I guess, and are hurting them and I just want to help stop it."
Dennison remembered himself saying to the older Debra, Trees don't cry. Kids do. And then Debra's response.
Maybe you just can't hear them.
Jesus, it wasn't possible, was it? But then how could they look so similar, the differences caused by the passage of years, not genetics. And the eyes— the eyes were exactly the same. And how could the old Debra have known the address, the phone number—
He got up and went over to the phone he could see sitting on a TV tray beside the battered sofa. The number was the same as on the scrap of paper in his pocket. He lifted the receiver, but there was no dial tone.
"I... I've packed a... bag."
Debra's mother stood in the hallway beside her daughter, looking as lost as the little girl did. But there was something they both had— there was a glimmer of hope in their eyes. He'd put that there. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to keep it there.
"Whose phone can we use to call a cab?" he asked.
"Laurie— she's down the hall in number six. She'd let us use her phone."
"Well, let's get going."
As he ushered them into the hall, he was no longer thinking about tendering his resignation. He had no doubt the feeling that he had to quit would rise again, but when that happened he was going to remember a girl with grey-green eyes and the woman she might grow up to be. He was going to remember the wheels that connect everything, cogs interlocked and turning to create a harmonious whole. He was going to remember the power of good vibes.
He was going to learn to believe.
I believe it. I learned that from a man that I came to love very much. I didn't believe him when he told me, either, but now I know it's true.
But most of all he was going to make sure that he earned the respect of the angel that had visited him from the days still to come.
Dennison knew there was probably a more rational explanation for it all, but right then, he wanted to believe in angels.
The Wishing Well
Do you think it's better to do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason?
Beyond the mountains, more mountains.
1
There are always ghosts in the well. I can't call them echoes, because the sounds I hear all were made too long ago.
The splash of coins in the water.
Voices whispering their wishes.
Secrets.
Nobody was supposed to hear them.
But I do.
2
"It's been almost two weeks," Brenda said, "and he still hasn't called."
She butted out a cigarette in the ashtray on the table between them and immediately lit another. Wendy sighed, but didn't say anything about her friend's chain-smoking. If you listened to Brenda, there was always something going wrong in her life, so Wendy had long ago decided that there was no point in getting on her case about yet one more negative aspect of it. Besides, she already knew the argument Brenda would counter with: "Right, quit smoking and gain twenty pounds. As if I don't already look like a pig."
Self-esteem wasn't Brenda's strong point. She was an attractive woman, overweight only in the sense that everyone was when compared to all those models who seemed to exist only in the pages of a fashion magazine. But that didn't stop Brenda from constantly worrying over her weight. Wendy never had to read the supermarket tabloids to find out about the latest diet fad— Brenda was sure to tell her about it, often before it appeared in newsprint along with stories of recent Elvis sightings, Bigfoot's genealogy and the like.
Sometimes it all drove Wendy a little crazy. In her unending quest for the perfect dress size, what Brenda seemed to forget was her gorgeous green eyes, the mane of naturally curly red-gold hair and the perfect complexion that people would kill for. She had a good job, she dressed well— perhaps too well, since her credit cards were invariably approaching, if not over, their limit— and when she wasn't beating on herself, she was fun to be around. Except Brenda just didn't see it that way, and so she invariably tried too hard. To be liked. To look better. To get a man.
"Was this the guy you met at the bus stop?" Wendy asked.
Brenda nodded. "He was so nice. He called me a couple of days later and we went out for dinner and a movie. I thought we had a great time."
"And I suppose you sent him flowers?"
Sending small gifts to men she'd just met was Brenda's thing. Usually it was flowers.
"I just wanted to let Jim know that I had a good time when we went out," Brenda said, "so I sent him a half-dozen roses. What's so wrong about that?"
Wendy set down her wine glass. "Nothing. It's just that you— I think maybe you come on too strong and scare guys off, that's all."
"I can't help it. I get compulsive."
"Obsessively so."
Brenda looked at the end of her cigarette, took a final drag, then ground it out. She dropped the butt on top of the half-dozen others already in the ashtray.
"I just want to be in love," she said. "I just want a guy to be in love with me."
"I know," Wendy replied, her voice gentle. "But it's never going to happen if you're always trying too hard."
"I'm starting to get old," Brenda said. "I'm almost thirty-five."
"Definitely middle-aged," Wendy teased.
"That's not funny."
"No. I guess it's not. It's just—"
"I know. I have stop coming on so strong. Except with the nice guys, it seems like the woman always has to make the first move."
"This is too true."