Terry Brooks - Angel Fire East

Nest got up and brought over the hot water and fresh tea bags. She poured them both another cup, then sat down again. "Are you better now?" she asked.

Bennett laughed bitterly. "Better? No, I'm not better! I'll never ever be better! I'm an addict, and addicts don't get better!"

She glared at Nest angrily, defiantly. Nest waited a moment, then said, "You know what I mean."

Bennett's sigh was sad and empty. "Sorry. I'm not mad at you. Really, I'm not. I'm mad at me. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year long, I'm mad at me. Loser me." She shrugged. "Anyway, I'm not better. I'm 'between treatments' again. I stay good for a while, then I fall off the wagon. Look under relapse in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of me. It's pitiful. I don't want it to happen, but I'm just not strong enough to stop it. Each time I go in for help, I think maybe this is the time I'll get off drugs for good. But I can never quite manage it."

"I guess it's not easy," Nest said.

Bennett Scott smiled. "Nope." She exhaled sharply and set down the tea. "It wasn't so much of a problem when it was just me. But now there's Harper, and she's almost three, and she hasn't ever seen me clean for more than a few months in a row. First year or so, I got into rehabs where they'd let me keep her with me. Now they won't do that. I don't have many friends so I have to leave her with anyone who will take her."

She looked down at her hands where they rested on the tabletop. They were cracked and dry, and the nails were dirty. She folded them together self-consciously. "I just got out again a couple of weeks ago. I don't plan on going back."

"If you needed to," Nest said quietly, "you could leave Harper with me."

Bennett's eyes lifted. For a moment, she didn't say anything. "Thanks, Nest. That's nice of you to offer."

"She would be safe here."

"I know that."

Nest looked out the window into the crisp black night. It was almost five in the afternoon. "Would you like to stay for dinner?" she asked.

Bennett Scott looked down again at her hands. "We wouldn't want to be any trouble."

In those few words, Nest heard a plea so desperate that she knew things were much worse than she believed. Then she remembered the dilapidated satchel Bennett was carrying. It was sitting inside the back door where Bennett had left it. Nest had thought it was just a baby bag, but now she wondered if it might not contain everything they had.

"Maybe you'd like to stay over for the night, too," she said carefully, feeling her way across this treacherous ground. "Is someone else expecting you? Are you visiting anyone here?"

Bennett shook her head. "No. No one." She was quiet for a long moment, as if she were making up her mind about something, and then she looked up. "The truth is, Harper and me came here because we don't have anywhere else to go."

Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes, and she looked down again quickly. Nest reached across the table and put her hand over Bennett's. "I'm glad you came. You're welcome to stay as long as you need to."

She rose and walked around the table. "Come on," she urged, gently drawing the other to her feet. "I want you to go in and take a long, hot bath, soak everything out, just let it all go. I'll look after Harper. When you're done, we'll talk some more."

She walked Bennett into the guest bathroom, helped her out of her clothes, and deposited her in the big claw-foot tub that used to be Gran's. Leaving Bennett to soak, she looked in on Harper, then went back out into the kitchen to clean up. Feeling as she did about herself, it must have taken a strong mix of courage and desperation for Bennett to come back to her after all this time. It made Nest wonder how much of what had happened to her she couldn't bring herself to talk about and was keeping hidden somewhere deep inside.

When she finished the dishes, she began preparing dinner. She put together a tuna and noodle casserole and stuck it in the refrigerator so Bennett could heat it up later on. Nest had agreed to accompany the church youth group as a chaperone while they went caroling to the elderly sick and shut-in, and she would have to leave soon. She would get herself something to eat when she returned.

Finished with her preparations, she stood at the sink and stared out the window at the darkness. The park lay directly in front of her, just across the backyard, but the moon and stars were masked by clouds, so there was little to see. The temperature had dropped to well below freezing, and she doubted that it would snow tonight. When she lifted her hand and placed her fingers against the window glass, the cold pierced her skin like needles.

How did Pick stay warm on a night like this? Did he burrow down in a tree somewhere or was his bark skin impervious to cold? She had never asked him. She must remember to do so.

She thought about the ways in which magic ruled both their lives, its influence pervasive and inexorable. Sometimes she wished she could talk about it with someone, but for the whole of her life there had been only Pick and Gran. Gran had been willing, but Pick regarded talk of magic the same way he regarded talk about the weather—a pointless exercise. He would instruct, but he didn't know how to empathize. Having magic didn't mean the same thing to him that it did to her. To him, it was a natural condition of who and what he was. To her, in spite of her heritage, it was an aberration.

The back porch light clicked on at the Peterson house, and she was reminded of her promise to herself to look in on them. She walked to the kitchen doorway and listened down the hall for signs of stirring from Bennett or Harper. All was quiet, so she went back into the kitchen and set about baking sugar cookies. Gran had taught her how to cook when Nest was still a girl, and she had made it a point to stay in practice even after she was living alone. She baked all the time for the church and the neighbors. There was something comforting and satisfying in baking; it always left her feeling good about herself.

The cookie sheets went into the oven, and the sweet, doughy smell wafted through the kitchen. She took down the red and green sprinkles and set them on the counter. Hawkeye came in through the cat door and padded to his food bowl, pointedly ignoring her. He ate noisily, tossing bits of food around as he nosed about his bowl, chewing each bit loudly. When he was done, he left the way he had come without so much as a glance in her direction.

Moments later, Harper Scott appeared in the kitchen doorway, all sleepy-eyed and lost-looking. "Mommy?" she asked.

Nest walked over and gathered her up. "Mommy's taking a bath, pumpkin. She'll be right out. How would you like a fresh-baked sugar cookie while you're waiting?"

Great dark eyes regarded her solemnly. A small nod followed. Nest sat her down at the table, poured milk into her baby cup, and went to work on the first batch of cookies, taking them from the oven and off the cookie sheet, stacking them on a plate. She gave one to Harper when it had cooled enough to hold and watched the little girl nibble around the edges as she held the cookie carefully in both hands.

Oh, child, child.

Fifteen years ago, she had saved Bennett Scott's life when the feeders had lured the frightened sleepy child to the top of the bluffs at the turnaround. When Pick and Nest found her, she had been close to walking off the edge of the cliffs. Terrified and confused, the little girl had barely known where she was.

That was a long time ago, Nest thought, watching Harper eat her cookie. Bennett hadn't been much older than her daughter then—just a little girl herself. It was hard to reconcile the grownup with the child. She remembered how Bennett had looked back then and how she had looked an hour earlier when Nest had helped her step into the old bathtub. How had Bennett gotten so far away from herself? Oh, it was easy to rationalize when you factored in drug usage and child abuse. But it was emotionally jarring nevertheless; the memory of who she had been was not easy to dismiss.