Saving Grace by Debbie Babitt

Author:Debbie Babitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Published: 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Mary Grace’s first pitch is too high, but Felicity’s ready. She raises her bat. The ball thwacks against the wood and goes flying over the outfield. It bounces off the grass at the edge of the field, then rolls downhill and disappears.

“Mom!” Felicity yells from across the field as she tags third base, then starts running for home. “Get the ball!”

Mary Grace stands rooted to the spot.

“Mom! Jesus!”

Mary Grace opens her mouth to remind her not to swear, but nothing comes out. She’s staring down at the thicket of pines she hasn’t gone near in twenty-four years and where no natural light ever finds its way in. Felicity runs over, giving her one of her looks. Then she clambers down the slope before she can stop her and vanishes into the pines.

If she squints, Mary Grace can just make out the tree where Nadia carved their initials. The one with the deep hollow where Nadia stashed pot and cigarettes and other things she didn’t want anyone to find.

She can see her next to their tree, dark eyes glittering with secrets. Hearing that twig snap, Nadia yelling at Madison to get lost. Both of them expecting to see an overweight eleven-year-old girl emerge from the darkness.

“Cousin Noah! What were you doing back there?”

Mary Grace blinks. Felicity’s standing there. Not Nadia. And there’s no sign of a raccoon, like the one that scampered out of the brush that long-ago day. Just her mind playing tricks.

Noah’s laughing as he comes out from behind a tall pine. “I scared you good, didn’t I? Bet you thought I was a big black bear.”

“I did not! And I’m not scared of any old bear.”

“You should be.”

Felicity stares at him, the softballs in her hands glowing in the dark. Trust her to find all those missing balls, Mary Grace thinks as her daughter tosses her long dark hair over her shoulder just like Nadia used to do. “I’m not scared of you, either,” she tells Noah. “I’m not scared of anything.” Then she scrambles up the slope and runs back across the field.

Noah shades his eyes from the sun as he looks up. “Well, if it isn’t cousin Mary Grace. Been a while. You don’t come around as often as you used to. Guess that happens when you’re the law in town. You must be pretty busy keeping folks safe.”

There’s that undercurrent she always hears in his voice. As if beneath the words he’s saying something else. He’s part of the reason she hates coming here. “Don’t you have anything better to do than frighten little girls?”

“Didn’t you hear her? She’s not scared of anything.” Noah climbs up the slope, gangly as ever. “What about you, Mary Grace? Are you afraid?”

She takes a step back, heart hammering away. Hating herself for letting him get to her. “I have nothing to be afraid of.”

“Don’t you?” He stands a few feet away. The stringy, too-long hair now a fashionable buzz cut, pockmarks from his youthful acne barely visible. But the eyes are the same: cold and cruel.

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