Garden Spells Read Online Free PDF Page A

the moment she let go of trying to be her mother. Her mother had tried to be a decent person, but she had never been a good mother. She had left her daughters with no explanation, and she never came back. Sydney was going to be a good mother, and good mothers protected their children. It had taken her a year, but she finally realized that she didn’t have to stay because she had Bay. She could take Bay with her .
    She’d been so good at running in the past that she’d been lulled into a false sense of security, because no one had ever come after her. She actually made it through beauty school before walking out of the salon in Boise where she’d gotten her first job and finding David in the parking lot. Before she noticed him standing there by his car, she remembered turning her face into the wind and smelling lavender and thinking she hadn’t smelled that since Bascom. The scent seemed to be coming from the salon itself, as if trying to get her to follow it back in.
    But then she saw David and he dragged her to his car. She was surprised but didn’t struggle, because she didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her new friends in the salon. David drove off and parked behind a fast-food restaurant, where he hit her with his fists so many times she lost consciousness, and she woke up while he was fucking her in the backseat. He rented a motel room afterward and let her clean up, telling her how it was all her fault as she spit a tooth into the bathroom sink. They later went to pick up Bay at daycare, where David had discovered Bay was enrolled and was how he found them. He was charming and the teachers believed him when he said Sydney had been in a car accident.
    Back in Seattle, his anger would come on so suddenly. Bay would be in the next room and Sydney would be making her a peanut butter sandwich, or she’d be in the shower, and suddenly David would appear and hit her in the stomach or pin her against the counter and rip down her shorts, then he’d pound into her, telling her she would never leave him again.
    For the past two years, ever since he’d dragged her back from Boise, Sydney would walk into a room and smell roses, or she would wake up and taste honeysuckle in the air. The scents always seemed to be coming from a window or a doorway, a way out.
    It was only one night while watching Bay sleep, crying quietly and wondering how she was going to keep her child safe when they were in danger if they stayed and in danger if they left, that it suddenly made sense.
    She’d been smelling home.
    They had to go home.
    She and Bay walked silently downstairs in the predawn dark. Susan next door could see both the front and back doors, so they went to the window in the living room that overlooked the small strip of side yard that Susan couldn’t see. Sydney had earlier popped out the screen, so all she had to do was quietly open the window and lower Bay out first. Next she tossed down her tote bag, another suitcase she’d packed, and Bay’s small backpack, which she’d let Bay pack on her own, full of secret things that brought her comfort. Sydney crawled out and led Bay through the hydrangea bushes and into the parking lot by their house. Greta from the park said she was going to leave the Subaru in front of the 100 block of town houses one street over. She was going to put the keys above the visor. No insurance and a dead tag, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it would get them away.
    It was drizzling as she and Bay jogged along the sidewalk, skirting the shine of the streetlights.
    Sydney’s bangs were dripping into her eyes when they finally stopped at the 100 block of town houses. Her eyes darted around. Where was it? She left Bay and ran up and down the parking lot. There was only one Subaru, but it was too nice to be worth only three hundred dollars. It was locked too, and there were papers and an Eddie Bauer coffee mug inside. It belonged to someone else.
    She ran around the parking