Belladonna
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Jenna Ryan
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16.5K
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21
Prologue
“Lona, please, you have to help me.”
The woman’s voice on the Alaska phone line crackled. Yet even accounting for that, Lona Conlan was certain she didn’t recognize the caller. “Who is this?” she demanded. Clamping one sturdy hand over the end of her long gray plait, she tightened the other on the receiver. “Do you realize that it’s the middle of the night?”
“Yes, yes, I know.” The woman’s tone verged on desperation. “I’ve been driving forever, all the way from Seattle in a malfunctioning Subaru. Before that it was buses, trains and planes, even a boat. We sailed from Dover to—” The line snapped, causing Lona to pull the earpiece away. “I had to escape somehow, some way. Any way. Please, Lona, there’s no one else I can turn to.”
“Who are you?” Lona repeated, unmoved.
“Amanda.” The woman had to shout above the rising static. “I’m Geraldine Johnson’s daughter. You must remember Geraldine.”
Geraldine Johnson. Of course. Amanda was her only child. Why, Lona hadn’t seen Geraldine for thirty years or more, about ten years before she’d died. But she did remember her, and fondly so. Lona’s manner softened instantly. “What is it, my dear? What has you so frightened?”
“I can hardly hear you,” Amanda shouted. “Oh, Lona, please, you have to help me help my little girl. There was trouble…. I couldn’t get… out. I’m sure we were seen They’ll be after us by now. But I have to try, have to be smart…. It’s too important. I can’t leave—”
Confused, Lona interrupted her. “Can’t leave what? Who’ll be after you? Amanda? Amanda!”
“Knows I ran…took Bella… Couldn’t get… No time…completely single-minded, Lona… and evil.”
Although she strained to hear, Lona caught only snatches of Amanda’s sentences. Something about her child and someone pursuing them—a husband, perhaps.
Wind whipped December snowflakes around the window, the Christmas window that Lona lit day and night for the twelve days of Christmas, a tradition started by her Norwegian grandmother. “Can you come to me?” she asked in her soft Nordic accent. “Can you get here from where you are?”
“I think so.” Amanda’s voice faded. “I’ll come tonight, or try… Have to get Bella to safety, before I…”
“Before you what?”
But Amanda’s answer, if indeed she offered one, was swallowed up in a loud burst of static.
Wind rattled the panes of Lona’s large home, as if mocking the circumstances under which she had chosen to live.
“I burned our papers.” Amanda was yelling now. “No identification…too dangerous…hope you’ll recognize me. I’ve no proof.”
“I’m sure I’ll recognize you well enough,” Lona answered. Running a capable hand around the back of her neck, she massaged a rheumatic kink. “You and young Bella come to me. We’ll talk then.”
Amanda protested, “No time… so powerful…. Please
take care of Bella.”
“Who is this person after you?” Lona demanded.
A sob reached her ears, surprisingly clear over the crackling line. “Not a person anymore, Lona, a monster… wants to control everyone. Gave a poisoned nickname to my ba… Like Romaine, only worse. Deadly nightshade, a deadly poisonous flower. I should have seen it, should have realized the truth behind Romaine. Deadly nightshade. Oh God, it is, it’s just like Romaine….”
A series of pops came on the line. Just like Romaine? Deadly nightshade? What did she mean? Lona compressed her lips. She would wait for Amanda to arrive with her daughter, Bella. Then the story would come out.
“I’ll be here, Amanda,” she promised. “You’ll need chains for the roads and a good four-wheel-drive vehicle. Do you have these things? Amanda? Can you hear me?”
But although she repeated herself three times, she heard nothing except the brittle sound of static on the line and the taunting howl of winter wind about the windowpanes.
Resting the phone against her shoulder, Lona moved her eyes to the frosted glass. Snowflakes bobbed like Russian dancers about the Christmas lights, then swirled off into the darkness. A treacherous winter darkness through which a distraught young woman and her daughter would soon be traveling. With what tale to tell? Lona wondered, and what form of danger following in their wake?
A chill feathered along her spine as the old woman settled herself on the pink-and-black-flowered sofa. Pulling her rose-patterned shawl tight, she watched the snow with wary eyes and waited.
“YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER? Hell on wheels, you sure about that, Lona?” The sheriff scratched his grizzled head. “You ain’t even seen the girl yet. Or the accident scene, either, for that matter. Come to think of it, how’d you hear about this mess? Power’s out all over town.” When she didn’t reply, he grunted. “She’s cute, you know. Pretty and quiet. Maybe eight, nine years old. Hasn’t said two words since Daly found her huddled next to that snowdrift. Old Polly reckons she has amnesia.” He pronounced the last two letters separately. “Don’t know how she got out of the car before it went over, but it’s a good thing she did. Can you imagine anyone stupid enough to drive a junker Subaru with bald tires on these roads? It was her mother driving, you say? Well, so far we can’t find hide nor hair of her. Saw a dead raven, of all things, near the cliff, but so far no mother.”
Lona held tight to her composure. “May I please see Bella, Win?”
“That her name? What is she, Italian?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” Lona lied again. “Bella’s father died when she was born. My daughter, A—” She started to say Amanda, checked herself and substituted firmly, “My daughter was bringing her to live with me.”
“Is that so?” The sheriff nodded. “Funny you never mentioned having a daughter before.”
Lona forced a smile, gathering her cabbage-rose shawl tighter. “I haven’t mentioned many things, Win. May I see the girl now? Alone,” she added, when he would have accompanied her to the back room.
“Well…”
“Please.” She laid a beseeching hand on his arm. “If it’s as you say, she’ll be terribly frightened.”
The sheriff hesitated, then nodded in agreement. Lona gave a nod of her own and started for the rear of the jail, where apparently the little girl had spent the night with old Polly, the retired nurse who’d spotted her next to that snowdrift. With the roads so bad she hadn’t been able to make it home.
Giving the door a firm thrust, Lona entered the room. It smelled faintly of wood smoke and was lit with four fat red candles that had been placed in a green bowl. The girl sat in a stuffed chair between wood stove and bowl. Old Polly was gone; the girl was alone. Alone and staring unblinking at Lona.
She was pretty indeed, Lona acknowledged, summoning an encouraging smile. Quite beautiful, really. Fine featured and delicate looking, but no doubt as wiry as a Gumby doll. Her eyes were very large, very dark and highly mistrustful. Her small chin was thrust out at a determined angle. Lona would have called it a defiant angle had it not been for the telltale quiver of her lower lip.
She greeted the girl with a blend of compassion and brisk efficiency. “Hello, Bella. I’m your grandmother, Lona. Your mother was bringing you to me. Do you remember that?”
The girl stared intently for several seconds, then slowly shook her head.
Relief coursed through Lona’s body. She stepped closer, one sturdy hand extended, palm up. “You must trust me, Bella,” she said. “You must let me help you, yes?”
It might have been her face—she’d been told she resembled an old-style European grandmother—or merely the absolute conviction in her tone. Whatever the case, the child responded. Tentatively at first, she inched slowly forward in her seat.
“Come to me, Bella,” Lona coaxed. “I will tell you the story of your life as only I know it.”
An ironic statement, given the circumstances, but Lona didn’t think that was what made the little girl suddenly stop moving. Her dark eyes lit up, looked away, then returned to Lona’s face. “Bella,” she said carefully. She had a slight English accent. “Bella—donna. Belladonna!”
Amanda’s words roared back into Lona’s mind. “A poisoned nickname,” she’d said. “Deadly nightshade—just like Romaine.”
At the little girl’s uncomprehending look, Lona gave an emphatic nod. “Belladonna Conlan, that’s your name. But I will call you Bella. There will be no poison in your life, child, as long as I am a part of it.”
