Page 8 of Crossroads Magic
Ghaliya finally answered. “I think I forgave you about a week after I left, Mom,” she said softly. “I just didn’t…couldn’t…”
“Too much pride, huh?” I asked, keeping my voice casual and my tone breezy. I turned and got down the herbs and spices I’d need, which put my back to her.
“Yeah,” Ghaliya said heavily. “I was embarrassed. When I left,whyI left – well you know why. I didn’t understand why you and dad were ruining my life. And you seemed so…socoolabout it all. I figured it was all your fault. A week on my own, listening to the other women at the coffee shop talk…something clicked. And I realized how,god, how selfish I’d been.”
I kept my head down and kneaded the meatball mixture. “You’re young, still. Being selfish is part of the package. I didn’t properly grow up until I was quite a bit older than you. I made…” I looked up and smiled at her. “I made some pretty embarrassing mistakes of my own, at your age.”
Ghaliya smiled wanly. “I guess you need to forgive me, not the other way around.”
“Nothing to forgive,” I told her. My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I paused, my fingers buried in meat and onions.
My heart gave out a hard, heavy knock. And a small pain began to thud in my temple.
“Want me to answer it?” Ghaliya asked.
“No…” I said softly. “He’ll leave a message.” I pulled my hands out of the bowl and moved to the sink to wash them.
“He?” Ghaliya said, her voice lifting. “You know the ring tone? It’s someone…special?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know who it is,” I admitted.
The phone in my pocket stopped chiming.
“So you’re assuming,” Ghaliya said.
“It’s about Nanna,” I said. Even to me, my voice sounded strained.
“Nanna?” Ghaliya repeated, her voice rising even more. “How can you possibly know that?”
“I’m guessing,” I admitted and shook off my hands to make them dry. I hated using the tea towel for that.
The sensation of certainty remained, despite my guess. I’d never been so sure of something as I was about this. That the caller was a man, and the message he was leaving was about my mother.
Ghaliya pressed her lips together, making their fullness thin and white. “How long is it since you’ve talked to her, Mom?”
“You know Nanna. It’s been a few months.” My mother had never embraced technology, so emails were out of the question. And she said she was too busy to write letters.
That left phone calls. When we did connect by phone, the calls were…well, they were nice. My mother was a good conversationalist, and told great stories about the little town where she lived, Haigton Crossing. And she listened to my news with just as much interest.
Over the years, I’d stayed in contact with the phone calls, but they had grown further apart, and my mother had not seemed to mind the lengthening intervals.
It’s not that we’d stopped talking to each other. We just had separate lives.
My hands were dry enough. I pulled out my phone and sat down.
“Did they leave a message?” Ghaliya asked, her tone curious.
“Yes.” I connected to the voicemail box and tapped the numbers to hear the message.
“My name is Benedict Marcus.” The man sounded mature—certainly not in his twenties, anyway. I wasn’t certain, but I thought he had a very mild accent. It was too faint for me to figure out what it was. “I have news about your mother, Thamina Crackstone.It’s very important that I speak to you, Please call me back as soon as you get this message.”
I deleted the message, then flipped back to the phone screen, pulled up the last call and hit the number to dial it. The area code was the same as my mother’s.
“What is it, Mom?” Ghaliya asked. She sounded afraid.
I looked at her as the call went through. “I think something has happened to Nanna. Something…not good.” I didn’t voice the rest of my thoughts, because they were bleak. The same certainty was gripping me, even though I had absolutely nothing upon which to base such certainty. Yet I knew my mother was dead. I was as certain of it as I was about Ghaliya being left-handed.
“Ben Marcus,” the man said into my ear. “Ms. Crackstone?”
