Wisteria Wonders by Angela Pepper

Author:Angela Pepper [Pepper, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

TWO HOURS LATER

“You broke her,” Zoey said. “I loaned you my mother, and you broke her.”

I was back in my house, sitting on the sofa, with only a dim recollection of how I'd gotten there.

“Give her some space,” Chet was saying to my daughter. “Get her some water, or something to eat. What's her favorite kind of food?”

“Cherry cheesecake,” I murmured.

Zoey clapped her hands. “She speaks! Mom, we don't have cheesecake, but would you settle for vanilla ice cream with maraschino cherries on top?”

I agreed, and she brought me a sundae with three kinds of cookies, a sliced banana, and ice cream covered in bright-red cherries. I forced it down like a champion.

The vision or dream state I'd entered at Chessa's bedside had been intense. I was still unraveling what all the imagery meant. The giant stone face had presumably represented her. I'd sensed she wanted to communicate with me, but I wasn't able to get her stone eyelids open before a malevolent force had opened the ground beneath me.

Back in the coma ward, as soon as I came out of the vision, I'd described everything to Chet, in ragged sobs.

I'd been crying. Devastated. Because for a brief moment, I'd felt the radiant goodness of Chessa, and when the darkness had swallowed me, I'd been torn apart by her absence, by the loss of her. The world was a darker place without her.

Chet had helped me to my feet and dragged me away from her bedside. I clung to the footboard of her bed, despondent. I didn't want to go. I told him that I understood finally how much he loved her, and why men would die for her. But I was weak, and finally, I let him pry my fingers from the bed frame.

I'd been inconsolable on the drive back home. Even now, my pink blouse was soaked from the ocean of tears I'd shed. My eyes, however, were dry now, and the pain had been replaced by numbness.

“Another sundae, please,” I said politely. Zoey was already bringing one from the kitchen. We'd run out of cherries, so this one was heaped with toasted nuts, butterscotch syrup, and those rubbery green and red squares—candied citrus rind—that we'd bought before Christmas with the intention of making fruitcake as a gag gift for friends. Doing magic ate up calories in the body, and the vision in the coma ward had been intense. These sundaes were medicinal.

“What did you do to her?” Zoey demanded of Chet.

Guiltily, Chet said, “Nothing.”

“Her eyes don't look right.”

“She's got normal eyes,” Chet said.

“Thanks,” I said flatly. “I've always dreamed of being told I have normal eyes.”

They continued talking, as though I'd said nothing.

“They keep changing,” Zoey said.

“That's what hazel eyes do,” Chet said. “They look brown one minute, green the next, sometimes blue or gray.”

“Her pupils are weird. They just shifted into keyholes, like goat eyes. You broke her!”

Chet said, “I don't see whatever it is you're seeing. But stop saying I broke your mother. I

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