Echoes by Kristen Heitzmann Read Free Book Online Page B

Star?"
    "Lance healed him."
    Great .
    Matt cocked his head. "Healed him?"
    "He does that," Star said. "Fixes people."
    Lance tried to catch her eye and limit the damage, but she stubbornly avoided looking at him.
    "Fixes them how?"
    "However they need fixing."
    Matt probably thought he'd landed in some Jonesian cult that required impressionable girls to donate babies. The charismatic male with his female devotees. Rese stared her down, but the damage was done, and he suspected Star enjoyed that.
    Matt directed his attention back to him. "Did Maria think you cured the baby?"
    Lance sighed. "She's overwhelmed."
    "The midwife examined the infant? She noted his cleft palate?"
    Rese planted her hands on her hips. "She wasn't here. She came after."
    "After Lance miraculously healed the infant."
    Lance expelled a breath. "I didn't—"
    "Does Maria think you worked a miracle?"
    "I don't know what she thinks."
    "She thinks he walks on water," Star said.
    Matt Hammond turned and fixed her with a probing look. "And does he?"
    Star formed a secret smile. " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' "

C HAPTER S IX
    R ese silently groaned when her mother took that moment to come downstairs. Her prematurely white hair sprang out of its straight below-the-ear cut as though she'd rubbed it with a balloon. Why hadn't Star stayed upstairs with her?
    Surprised into motion, Matt Hammond got to his feet and held out his hand. "Hello, I'm—"
    Mom swept past him with her jerky gait as though he were as invisible as Walter had been to everyone else. Clozapine kept Mom's hallucination away, but her other symptoms were unmistakable. She went to the window and murmured, "Gone, gone, gone."
    Rese drew herself up. "That's my mother, Elaine. I'm her legal guardian." That should be all he needed to know.
    Matt stepped toward the window. "Who's gone, Elaine?"
    Rese almost pointed out the obvious, but Lance touched her hand. She ached in silence as Matt Hammond prodded.
    "Is someone gone?"
    Her mother looked into his face. "They took her away. They always take them away."
    He would realize her confusion. And what difference did it make? He was concerned with the baby's welfare, not Maria's. And certainly not Elaine Barrett's. Mom had barely known the baby was there.
    "Did you see something, Elaine? Something in the yard?"
    "They aren't nice, you know. You have to be careful. She wasn't careful and now she's gone. Gone, gone. They took her and she's gone. They're all gone. All gone."
    Rese clenched her jaw, ashamed and embarrassed, and angry with herself for both. Mom couldn't help her delusions any more than she could help trying to kill her only daughter, but that particular episode still colored their interactions. Maybe that was why she'd said yes to Brad's offer, why she'd surrendered the daughter role to Star, who had no blood tie whatsoever.
    She glanced at the friend she'd had since they were little girls. Though two months older, Star had always seemed like a little sister, running to her to make things right, to take away the hurt, to help her go on. And even though she'd sometimes resented Star's self-centered tunnel vision, she had liked being the strong one. Only in these last months had they found a different balance.
    With Mom, Star seemed to thrive for the first time on responsibility, to see outside herself to someone else's needs. They talked nonsense together, and Rese would hear them laughing in the attic like the Looney Tunes she and Star had been called by unkind classmates.
    As Matt Hammond questioned her mother, Rese drew herself up. "She's probably said all she knows."
    He turned. "Anyone else see someone taken from the front yard?"
    She opened her mouth to explain, then caught Mom's face at the window. Why steal her moment? Why say aloud that her word was worthless? Or was it?
    "Star?" Matt Hammond moved from folly to foolishness.
    " 'Let every eye negotiate for itself.' Mine saw