old—her blond hair swirling around her in wavy clumps entangled with seaweed. “Bella!” she tried to yell, but no sound came out. She swam toward the girl, but no matter how fast or hard she went, Bella kept drifting out of her grasp. Just then, the little girl began to struggle and twirled to face her. Raena saw the look of terror in her blue eyes—already beginning to bulge.
"Bella!” Rae yelled, and sat straight up in her bed. She was sweating and panting as her eyes adjusted to the dim light in her bedroom. Her cat, the Dodger, sat staring at her from the foot of her bed. She picked him up for comfort and held him to her. “What is going on with me?” she whispered to herself. “I haven't dreamt that since Bella was a baby."
Bella was adopted. When her parents brought her home at the age of one year old, they had told the twins, then eight, that Isabella's biological parents could contest the adoption for up to one year. So the girls lived with the fear that Bella could be taken at any moment. They would hurry home from school each day, neither admitting why they were running flat-out on a fine autumn day instead of lingering as all their friends were.
They would reach the kitchen door, see Bella smiling in her playpen, and breathe a sigh of relief. Isabella's biological parents were quite poor, had a brood of children and were trying to give their youngest daughter a better life. Anna MacBeth rarely spoke of the experience, but one night after a bottle of her favorite port, her Scottish brogue more pronounced than usual, had confided in Rae. “The house was freezing and I could see the children's breath. She looked up at me with that angelic smile, and put up her arms for me to pick her up. She was the youngest of seven, so I think she would have taken any attention she could get."
Thus, the recurring dream—making sure Bella was safe. The dreams started in the year Bella entered their home. She awoke much as she had this morning, and snuck down to Bella's nursery. The little girl was sleeping on her stomach in her crib. She was barely perceptible, except for the tuft of blond hair sticking out over the top of her blanket. Eight year old Rae was not satisfied—so she put her hand between the crib slats and placed her hand on the baby's back till she felt the rise and fall of her breathing.
Raena was shook out of her reverie by the sounds of chaos from underneath her—the shuffling of feet, the tinkling of the inn's front door bell, opening and closing of doors, and the sound of children .
"Oh, I'll slay the pair of them,” she said aloud and sprang out of bed. Looking over her shoulder at her bedside clock, which read eight twenty-five, she began to throw her clothes off and bolted for her bathroom.
"Sorry, Twist,” she called to the other cat as he ran out of her path. Rae stepped into the clawfooted tub as fast as she dared and turned the water on. She washed quickly and opened her closet full of an entire set of Victorian age dresses. “Couldn't we look like normal people for just one day?” she said offhandedly and donned a green gown with antique lace.
* * * *
The inn was alive with activity. The dining room was half filled with patrons beginning breakfast; the library had a few children already sitting at the story table with their parents. Raena bypassed all this and headed directly for the kitchen and flung open the swinging door hard as the hired help scurried out of her way.
"Rachael! Where are you?"
"What?” came the sarcastic reply from the other side of the kitchen. Rachael stood over a waffle iron supervising the help's progress with breakfast. Her dark hair was pulled into a clip and she was not yet in Victorian attire. Her sister's blue eyes blazed as she prepared for the verbal onslaught.
"Don't work yourself into a frenzy. It's only eight forty-five and you're just angry because you thought you would miss something!"
"No. I'm angry because today was my library day and