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The darkness from the town couldn’t touch us in our secret world.
“Oh, yes, a pirate with a real eye patch. We shared so many secrets, Alina, my pirate and me. They were like our treasure. His and mine. No one could know about our treasure, he told me.”
“Did he have a ship? Traveling to all the magical places all over the world?”
Her hand stilled as she thought over my question before a bright smile crept across her face as if the memory had been a happy one. “Of course he did, silly girl. What kind of pirate doesn’t have a ship?”
“Where is he now? Did he sail away looking for more treasure?” I asked, intrigued by her story of pirates and the unknown world outside our own.
“Dead, my angel. I think I killed him.” Her eyes were unfocused as she stared off into the distance. Her voice was distracted, as if she were only talking to herself. “He didn’t sail away. No.”
Tucking my legs under me, I sat up. “Momma, you killed him?” I was confused. Never before had any of her stories involved a death or murder. They had always been the opposite—sunshine, sparkling jewels, mermaids, and unbridled magic.
She looked at me like I had appeared suddenly, her hand flying up to cover her mouth as if in a moment of clarity like she realized she’d revealed too much.
“Momma?” My voice began to pitch and quake.
She opened her mouth and closed it quickly, her eyes telling me more of the regret she felt than words would explain.
In the still air, the voices of the men carried to us. My mother scrambled to her feet, twisting her head this way and that in search of an escape. “They’re here. They weren’t supposed to come yet, Alina. We can’t be found.”
She pulled me up, my hands still in hers. The look in her eyes would forever be etched into my memory. The fear that filled her beautiful blue eyes frightened me. “Tell them it was you, please, Alina. Just say you did it,” she pleaded with me, but I didn’t know what it was she was asking me to confess to.
All I saw was her and the fear in her eyes.
Abruptly, she was pulled back from my grasp. My outstretched hands hung in the air, with my mother just out of reach. She was growing hysterical, wracked with sobs and fat tears.
There was an exchange of words when the men reached us. Not a single one made any sense. Taking her hands behind her back, her wrists were captured in their metal cage.
She was screaming for me to help her, but I couldn’t move. My feet were anchored to the place where she’d been ripped from my hands.
“Help me, Alina. Tell them it was you.”
* * *
It was days before I saw her again. She had refused food and legal assistance and had barely spoken to anyone.
A policewoman came to our door the fourth night after they’d taken her. “Maybe you can talk to her?” she asked as I kept the screen door between us closed, scared she was here to drag me away with her too. “Get her to see sense. She’s going to jail for a very long time if she doesn’t help herself, Alina. Do you understand?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. The tears had long ago dried up, but the lump remained in my throat as I moved around the house in a trance. I hadn’t been to school for two days, which I doubted anyone had even noticed or cared.
* * *
The room was stark, with gray walls and a metal table in the center.
My mother had been shackled by the wrists and chained to the table. The sight of her had broken my heart. She was thin, thinner than I had ever seen, and the light in her eyes had dimmed so much it was hardly there at all.
“Momma?” I’d felt like I was talking to a ghost. She was a mere shell of the woman I had last seen days before. Her glassy gaze met mine, only a flicker of a smile on her lips when she recognized me.
“Alina. Hello, my angel. Did you come to take me home?”
“No, Momma. They told me you won’t eat anything.” I slid onto the cold chair opposite her, keeping my eyes trained on her face while doing the best I could to ignore the handcuffs holding her there.
She drummed her fingers against the table at a rapid pace, suddenly giddy with a wide grin.
“Chocolate cake, with those rainbow sprinkles like I made for your tenth birthday. You could bring me some of that cake. That’s a good idea, don’t you think?” she asked, hopeful.
“I’ll ask, but in the meantime, we need to get a lawyer, and you need to eat something. They said you stabbed a man, Momma. That you killed him.”
