Page 17 of Woods of the Raven

“I bet you both did this when you were little, and that was a bit of whimsy, thinking maybe that with that much wind around you, you could fly,” I murmured. “And some of that was your ancestors speaking to you.”

“I don’t think—” Cass began.

“No, I can see that,” Delia assured her friend. “My mother was always saying to listen to the universe, that it would never steer me wrong.”

“It won’t,” I agreed. “Your mother sounds like a very wise woman.”

She nodded quickly, looking ready to cry again.

“I promise. You’ll feel better.”

Cass gave me a shrug like she wasn’t sure.

We stood there together on the patio, arms out, letting the wind do its job. After several moments, Cass smiled at me.

“That’s crazy, but I do feel better.”

Delia sighed. “Me too.”

“Wind chimes are good for this as well,” I told them. “I stand on my back porch and listen to the wind and my chimes, and it’s healing, I promise you.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Delia said.

“Okay, now tell me what happened after you lost your folks.”

She explained how at first she went to live with her aunt Chantal, her father’s sister, but she had younger kids and her husband was super strict, and very quickly the situation became untenable. She started ditching school and staying out all night, acting out, and no one knew how to deal with that. They took her to the emergency room when she had alcohol poisoning and had the medical staff place her on a seventy-two-hour psych hold to determine if she was suicidal.

“I was not suicidal,” she assured me.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I just didn’t know what to do with missing my folks, and Chantal and Brent wanted me to be all happy all the time around their kids.”

“I understand.”

“After they put me in the hospital, I couldn’t go back and live with them. No way. Screw that. I mean, I didn’t trust them, and they didn’t want me anyway. They thought I was a bad influence on their kids.” She looked at her feet. “So they called Troy and Rita because I wasn’t going back home with them.”

“Rita was your mom’s sister, right?”

She nodded.

“Does she look like your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“How come you went with Chantal and Brent first?”

“They lived close to us, in San Diego, where I’m from, and everyone thought it would be better not to move me.”

“And your friends?”

She shrugged. “People get really sick of being around someone who’s sad all the time. My friends bailed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“It was hard there,” I summed up, “and it’s hard here too because Troy and Rita are different from your folks.”