Chapter 6
Transiting Mercury in Retrograde
Christabel’s phone buzzes, too. We exchange glances. It’s almost as if we walked out of one bubble of energy—or lack thereof—into another. We stop walking and dig furiously into our respective pockets, both of us fumbling with our phones.
“Wow,” Christabel says, unlocking hers before I can unlock mine. “You called like thirty times trying to get me to answer, didn’t you?”
I nod. “Yeah, and that was before my phone went dead.” I unlock my screen, and the phone blooms to life. The charge is full, exactly as it had been when I grabbed it back at the house.
On my screen, boxes of letters light up in my scroll with missed call after missed call and a dozen texts. I brush one fingertip across the glass. None of these numbers are familiar. Not a single one from Sonnet. One of the texts is from my mom.
I groan. No matter how long Quent and I have been divorced or how badly he treated me during our long marriage, my mom still adores him. She had always been completely, utterly, hoodwinked by his charm. Even when he used to leave her side to ridicule her in private to me, she still gave him all the credit for any successes I had and thought I should have remained married to him. My own first marriage had resembled too closely her marriage, and seeing me walk away from years of being with Quent, a man who was more controlling roommate than loving life partner, made her realize what she could have done as well but never had the guts to do. Not that it was easy for me or that I learned my own lessons in short order. Somehow, my first marriage validated my mother’s decision to stay in a loveless marriage.
I retrieve my voice messages and cringe as I listen. Each message my mom left—exactly five minutes apart—sounds increasingly more anxious. A casual call to give me her new phone number, though why she needed a new one was unclear. Then surprise that I didn’t answer her first call. Then wondering where I was. Within fifteen minutes, she’d worked herself into a tizzy. By twenty, she was threatening to get in her car to drive to me because I was obviously dead in a ditch somewhere and needed her help.
Before I can respond, the phone rings in my hand.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Oh, thank the Lord! I’ve been trying to reach you for at least the last hour. I just wanted you to know I have a new phone and—”
Why does my mom sound so distraught? No doubt, my dad has egged on her anxiety and convinced her to contact Quent, no matter how much my mom would insist on not “bothering” my ex unless it’s for good cause. I, on the other hand, am on call 24/7 to be “bothered” and suspect if I don’t answer immediately. But if anyone is fonder of Quent than my mom, it’s Daddy. Probably because they’re enough alike to be father and son except that Quent prefers tongue lashings to picking up a limb in the backyard and beating the crap out of my brother or me for looking at him wrong. His borderline personality disorder is usually sated only by how much he can jack up someone else’s emotions, no matter how peaceful life may be, he’ll find a way to put you on an emotional rollercoaster.
“Whoa, wait. Mama, stop.”
She doesn’t stop, though. She’s crying.
“Lauren, I know you don’t like for me to call Quentin, but I was just so worried about you. It’s not like you to not answer the phone.”
Christabel and I exchange looks, and she half-snickers in pity.
“Mama, I’m okay. My phone died. Okay?”
She mumbles a few more words before my assurances sink in. The tension in her voice drains. “It’s just not like you not to answer me.”
I visualize beating my head against a wall. I’ve always been the good daughter, and I’ve spoiled my parents, especially my mother, with the instant gratification of knowing I’m safe or traveling or any response that she might demand at a moment’s notice. My dad says things to upset her, intentionally, and so I always try to counter by being extra available to her and saying things to calm her down.
It’s emotional labor for me. Not that I can’t walk away from it or set that boundary, but because I can’t bear to add to the heaviness of her life’s suffering. It’s a flaw in me that I’m content to live with if it makes the hard life she’s had any less strenuous.
“I’m okay, Mama. I promise.”
I pause. Am I lying? My mom has always had subtle psychic abilities and always seems to know if something is wrong. Or maybe it’s just maternal instinct. I don’t know. Until I joined the Grand Coven, I really couldn’t tell the difference myself.
“Mama?” I choose my words carefully so that I neither hurt her feelings nor cause her to shut down. “What exactly did you tell Quent?”
“Oh, nothing,” she says in that meek voice that tells me she said something she definitely shouldn’t have. “I just told him I had one of my bad feelings that something was really wrong, and I was trying to reach you, and I couldn’t get you and—”
I groan. Has she made my tenuous relationship with my ex even worse? Quent doesn’t believe in women’s intuition, psychic abilities, empathic gifts, or witchcraft, and I’m positive he’s laughing at her “bad feelings.” Is she taking a tiny molehill of fear and, as usual, manifesting it into a mountain, all in the name of her excellent intuition? Sometimes it’s hard for me to hear about her intuitive abilities and remember how oblivious she always seemed to the family pedophile’s attention on me as a preteen. Then again, something about being in my dad’s presence dampened her psychic abilities exactly as my being with Quent smothered my own innate talents. One day, I’ll have to work through those shadows of my youth to heal those oldest wounds, but I’m not yet ready. Healing can’t be forced.
“Mama? What did Quent say back?”
“Oh, nothing.” Her voice relaxes, no longer trying to hide anything from me. Whatever Quent said to her, she’s now reporting his words exactly. “He said it was fine. He said he would be in touch with you and for me not to worry my heart over it. But you know I always worry about you.”
“I know, Mama.”
I promise to call her over the weekend, hang up, and punch Sonnet’s number. Under other circumstances, I would text her, but I need to hear her voice. Her phone goes straight to voicemail.
“Sonnet, it’s Mom.” Too late. I catch myself. She’ll tease me later about not having to identify myself because she not only recognizes my voice, but her phone tells her it’s my number. Old habits die hard. “Call me as soon as you get this. Love you.”
I don’t want to turn into my mother, having to know every minute of the day where my child is or telling her I trust her when I don’t. However, it’s unusual that Sonnet hasn’t texted me or tried to call. It’s past time for her to leave her job at the ice cream cake shop tonight. She never knows exactly what time her shift ends because some of the other teen employees don’t show up and she volunteers to work extra so she can save for her senior trip next year. The ice cream cake shop sits next to a cinema and strip mall, five miles away on the other side of a bridge that Sonnet hates to cross at night. We have a deal, one she initiated, that she’ll call me when she leaves the shop so that she can safely get to her car in the cinema parking lot, safely over the bridge, and safely home. Sonnet knows that, if she’s not home within ten minutes of her call, I—like my own mother—will go looking for her.
“Is everything okay?” Christabel asks, glancing up from her own phone as she texts madly.
My phone rings, and I answer on speakerphone without looking. “Sonnet?”
“No.” A wave of angry energy blasts into my ear. “Is this Sonnet’s mom? This is Hank at the ice cream shop. She’s not answering her phone, so I have a message for her. You can tell your daughter she’s fired. She’s always been reliable, but I can’t be stuck here holding down the shop all by myself again, and I won’t risk it. She’s a nice kid, but she needs to grow up and learn to be responsible. It’s her first mistake, but I can’t afford a second one.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up!” I know he is going to. “I can’t reach Sonnet. Are you telling me she didn’t show up tonight and didn’t call in?”
“Oh, she showed up. Then right in the middle of movie rush hour, she got a call and ran out of here, leaving me by myself. She never came back. You know how these teenage girls are. Always so boy-crazy.”
Sonnet is anything but boy-crazy, but before I can protest, her boss adds, “You just tell her to find someplace else to work, and she can forget about getting a good recommendation from me.” The phone clicks in my ear.
My throat tightens. I reach out empathically, feeling around the ether for her. She is muted, quiet, distant, as though she is behind some kind of force field. Unreachable.
I can’t breathe.
I stare at my phone, trying to get my head together. If Sonnet has left the ice cream cake shop, why isn’t she answering my calls? I could understand if she wasn’t answering calls during her shift—Hank doesn’t like that. What are the names of the kids who usually work the same shift as Sonnet? Occasionally, I’ve given them all rides to work, and Sonnet often drops them off on her way home. Before I bought her a clunker of a car, I used to haul them all over to work if they shared a shift. Sonnet having a car of her own had given me back my freedom except on rare occasions where I still need to chauffer her somewhere.
It takes me a few seconds to find Miriam’s name. She doesn’t answer. I may have her name in my contact list, but she probably doesn’t recognize the number. Many people don’t pick up unfamiliar numbers any longer.
I tap out a quick message.
I wait only seconds for the response.
The stream of words goes still on my phone. I can’t entirely trust that Miriam is being truthful with me. Sonnet’s past traumas with her dad and his family have made it hard for her to make friends, so the few she does have are extremely devoted to her, as much as she is to them.
Then a second message pops up.
Ah. That explains the shop being shorthanded and Hank being short-fused.
Next, I call Paulina, who works at the cinema that shares a parking lot with Hank’s eatery. I’ve picked up both girls from work on several occasions, and while Sonnet always smells like waffle cones and strawberry ice cream, Paulina reeks of popcorn, butter, salt, and grilled wieners. Paulina has been hoping for a job at the ice cream shop, with Sonnet using her influence as a reference. That teenage dream is probably gone now, though.
To my surprise, Paulina answers on the first ring.
“Hey, Miss L. I was just about to call you. Sonnet was supposed to give me a ride home, but she’s not here. I mean her car is still in the lot. I can see it from in front of the theater here. But she left. Should I call my big brother to pick me up instead?”
“If her car is still there, how do you know she left?”
Hesitation. “I… I don’t want to get Sonnet in trouble….”
“I appreciate your loyalty to your friend, but you are not going to get Sonnet in any more trouble than she’s already in. I already know that she left work. I need to know where she is now and if she’s okay.”
More hesitation. Then finally, “I was taking tickets for the nine o’clock showing, up at the front window. We usually take our breaks together, after the movie starts here and when it’s slowest over there. So, I was watching for her. She came running out, and I thought she was coming over to see me, but she ran right past my window. Didn’t even wave. Then she met up with some guy in a big car and got in with him and drove away.”
My heart sinks. This isn’t like Sonnet. I know lots of moms with teenage girls would say that, but it’s just not something Sonnet would do. Like my mom, I’m the one with the bad feeling.
“What kind of car was it?”
“Um, I don’t really know makes and models and that kind of thing. It was black. Or maybe navy. Or maybe even a dark red because I couldn’t see that well. The streetlight is out in that area of the parking lot. It wasn’t, like, white or yellow though.”
Christabel glances over at me, a worried look on her face. She pats my shoulder as if she is the maternal influence here.
“Paulina, is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so. Hey, can you come get me? My mom is going to be worried if I’m not home on time, and if I ask my brother, I’ll owe him.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. My car won’t start. If it did, I’d already be headed your way.” Something twitches in the back of my brain. “Paulina, are you certain there’s nothing else you can remember? What the guy looked like, or anything?”
“Not really. I mean, he did get out and wave to her, and that’s when she headed in his direction. But I can’t tell anything about him except that he was old.”
“Old? Like grandfather-old? Gray hair?”
Anything, Paulina, I will her. Anything.
“No, not old like grandfather-old. Old like you.”
Gee, thanks. Age is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
Sonnet would never in a million years get into a car with an old man or a strange man. Or any man, for that matter. As a preadolescent, she had stumbled into her dad’s porn stash. He may have preferred men and had a deep-seated disgust with women in general, but he had never been able to admit it. Not to me, not to himself. If he had, we might still be married, or at least friends. I would never hold his sexual preferences against him, but I am still bitter at times about all the lies. I will always take authenticity over appearance and social acceptability.
I understand it better now. Quent couldn’t acknowledge his authentic self to himself, let alone to me and to the rest of the world. He still hasn’t. Toward the end of our marriage, he sank heavily into a heterosexual porn addiction, trying to ignite something in himself that passed as what his family considered being acceptable. That addiction and his lies were both contributors to my finally leaving him and starting a new life. I had lived in a pool of hurt and low self-esteem for years because I didn’t know that part of him that he refused to show to me.
The one who had suffered the most, and in ways that weren’t immediately evident, was Sonnet. She had been a child at the time she found his repository. I had left my little girl under his supervision, and he had left her alone. She’d spent hours upon hours looking through a hardcore website, watching horrible videos—horrible for any age, but life-changing for a child. She had lost trust in her father after that, but also in anyone else with a penis.
There is no way that Sonnet would have willingly gotten into any car with any man whether she knew him or not, of any age. It’s the reason she won’t date boys. It’s the reason she has been in trouble at school time and again for refusing to have a conversation with a male principal or any male teacher. I had to have a long, very private talk with the school administrators to convince them that because of past trauma, she should be under the instruction of only female teachers and therapists. I’d had to provide more personal information about my marriage than I’d wanted. They had scoffed at first and told me what a nice man Quent seemed to be and how mistaken I must be—until I threatened to pull Sonnet out of school. I’d been willing to resort to magick, but instead I had threatened to make it public that they would not accommodate sexual assault victims. Even though no one had ever physically touched Sonnet, she had been psychologically scarred for life.
Could it be possible that the dark emissary stalking me has somehow convinced my daughter to change her mind? I can’t imagine it.
“Paulina? Is it possible that the car she got into was dark green?”
“Um, maybe. Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Oh, and there was a decal on the passenger window, like a barcode.”
Like the kind of decal that the gate to a certain upscale community scans to allow in residents?
I groan aloud. Christabel squeezes my shoulder for support.
There’s only one man that Sonnet would ever get into a car with and only because she’s legally required to.
Quent.
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