Hidden by Marianne Curley Read Free Book Online Page B

scepticism and a fair measure of disgust. ‘You decided to keep me because you were promised I would be some kind of lucky charm for the valley? As if that could even be possible? What about the non-belief system by which you raised me?’
    ‘Don’t put it like that, Ebony,’ Mum scolds, and mutters, ‘You’re too intelligent for your own good.’
    Dad explains. ‘Banks were foreclosing on properties that had been in the families of this community for generations. Everyone was suffering livestock losses and declining incomes. The longest drought in living memory ensured no one could even grow a cash crop to tide them over. Everyone’s dams and all the creeks were bone dry.’ He takes a breath. ‘Zavier promised that your birth had broken the drought. He was very convincing. He assured us rain would follow at regular intervals for as long as you …’
    ‘As long as I what, Dad?’
    He glances at Mum as if asking her permission. With her eyes still wider than usual, and looking at me as if she’s scared I’m about to bolt for the door, she takes over: ‘As long as you never leave the valley. He insisted that on no account could we take you beyond the valley’s boundaries before your eighteenth birthday. It didn’t seem like such a big demand at the time, when you were so small.’
    ‘Now I’m nearing eighteen and you’re worried about something.’
    Neither answers. Neither looks me in the eye.
    ‘I’m curious, Mum … Dad. If I didn’t stay, would the bubonic plague be unleashed across the valley?’
    They’re unhappy with my sarcasm, and for a few moments we just sit and look anywhere around the room except at each other. ‘I can’t believe you two actually believed the baloney coming out of that man’s mouth.’
    ‘Darling, we had just buried a child – a little boy I held in my arms for less than an hour. I felt his heart beat rapidly against my chest as he struggled to live. His blue eyes looked at me as if he understood our time together would be brief. And then, just like that, his heart stopped.’ She takes a breath, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘The following day a man offered us an orphaned baby girl. And yes, it was unusual and highly suspicious. We didn’t know why he chose us. But at the time we didn’t care. And we didn’t ask questions in case it made him change his mind.’ Mum reaches across and takes my hand. ‘Darling, you were our miracle baby.’
    I can see how, in their dark distress, they would willingly swallow the story the stranger told them, but something isn’t adding up. ‘What are you leaving out?’
    They look uneasy and Dad says, ‘What are you talking about, love?’
    ‘Well, for starters, we’re atheists. We don’t believe in miracles, so how can you refer to me as your “miracle baby”?’
    They glance at each other like high-school kids caught making out behind the toilet block. Mum looks away first, leaving it up to Dad to explain. ‘It’s just an expression for something difficult to explain in the logical sense.’
    ‘An odd expression for an atheist, Dad,’ I insist.
    ‘I suppose, but you did bring us good luck. We prospered,just like everyone else has around here, from the very day you came into our lives.’
    I look around at our modest home, with the same furniture that’s been here all my childhood, but decide not to ask what they did with their bounty. ‘Do you have any names other than “Zavier”? It would give me a starting point.’
    ‘Starting point?’
    ‘I promise you both it won’t change our relationship, but you know me. You raised me to accept nothing less than facts substantiated by a second source.’
    Dad jumps back in his seat crying out, ‘No, Ebony, you mustn’t!’
    Mum begins to wail with her hands covering her eyes. She’s actually wailing!
    Stunned by their reactions, I wait until they calm down. Mum collects herself first. ‘I knew this would happen,’ she says, still sniffling. ‘I knew