Ellis recoiled a little when she said my mother. “Then maybe she’d like the idea that you’re named for the genus of that flower.”
“She might have liked that, but she would want me to keep the name she gave me.”
Ellis’s gaze hardened. “She had no right to rename another person’s baby.”
“I wasn’t yours anymore when she named me. I was hers. I was given to her.”
“What do you mean given? She stole you from me!”
“Not stole. You left me all alone, and she found me. She dreamed of having a baby for a long time. And there I was. That was no accident. There must have been a reason.”
“How dare you say that!” Ellis shouted. “Do you have any idea how much pain this woman you call Mother has caused me and my family? You have to deal with the reality that you were abducted. What she did was wrong. She’d still be in jail now if they’d caught her.”
“But she wasn’t caught. Why was that?”
Ellis trembled. “What, you think some divine intervention helped her escape with you?”
“I think there must have been a reason.”
“What reason?”
Raven couldn’t say she believed earth spirits had helped her. That was a forbidden topic.
“Did she tell you why she named you Raven?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Everyone now knew Raven hadn’t been born of Audrey Lind’s body. She could tell Ellis the truth. “She told me she heard a raven calling to her in a forest. When she went to see what it wanted, there I was, a baby girl with raven eyes and hair—exactly what she wanted. She named me for the raven that brought us together.”
“Oh my god,” Ellis whispered. “You’ve known all along she didn’t give birth to you? You never told anyone?”
“What did it matter that I didn’t come from her body? I was born to be with her.”
“You were born to be with me!” Ellis shouted. “And with your father and brothers!”
“No, I met them. And that horrible grandmother. I was never meant to be with them. Or in that ugly house. My spirit would have gotten sick and maybe died if I lived with them. I think that’s why you left, too.”
Ellis stared at her openmouthed.
“If you like a pretty place like this, that house and those people were killing your spirit. You weren’t meant to be there either. But I’m sorry I had to be taken away from you for you to see that.”
Ellis held on to the counter and slid down to the floor. Raven must have hit on the truth.
“Are you for real? Am I imagining this?” Ellis said.
Raven smiled for the first time in many days. “I’m real.” She sat on the wood planks next to Ellis. She took her hand in both of hers. “I never meant to make you sad. I didn’t want to come here either. But I’m glad I got to meet the person who gave birth to me.”
“I can’t do this,” Ellis said. “You have to go live with your father.”
“I told you. I can’t live there.”
“Then go back to Washington.”
“Can you make them let me?”
“No. I have no say in that.”
Raven looked down at their entwined hands. Raven’s skin was a little lighter tan than hers. “Can I please live here for a while? Maybe you could just call me R instead of Raven.”
“It’s about so much more than your name. It’s just . . . you need more than I can give you.”
“I don’t need anything. Please let me stay here if I can’t go home.”
Tears dripped out of Ellis’s eyes. “I mean it. I can’t be here for you.”
“That’s okay,” Raven said. “I’m used to that.”
4
ELLIS
Over ninety degrees as the sun was setting. On June first. She would have to water the pots that didn’t get irrigation again. When she walked over to the nursery, she saw Max. She’d just finished watering.
Max made two familiar gestures, a flying motion and a signal that indicated a question. The flying sign was her way of saying Raven. She wanted to know where Raven was. Usually she helped water with a second hose.
Ellis gestured that she didn’t know. Max nodded as she coiled the hose. Ellis knew her well enough to see she was disappointed. Max and Raven had been drawn to each other almost from the moment they met. Max didn’t usually go for buddy stuff, but she was more aware of Raven when she was in her presence than she was of anyone, even Ellis.
Ellis continued the conversation with signs she and Max had perfected over the years. She told her she’d finished the bookkeeping and everything looked good. She said Tom would be coming for another load of plants in three days and asked how the remodeling of her house was going.
Max said the work was going well and told Ellis to say hello to Raven.
When Ellis returned to the house, Raven wasn’t there. She was as independent as Ellis had been when she wandered the Wild Wood behind the trailer park. But Ellis was a little worried; she hadn’t seen Raven since breakfast.
She called Quercus. He leaped up, tail wagging, immediately sensing they were going for a walk. They went east. The land gently sloped from the house on the wooded hill, through old pastures, a wet meadow and bottomland forest, and finally to a marsh at the far end of the property. The marsh had increased in size and depth from heavy rains. When they arrived at the water’s edge, Quercus trotted to something white and sniffed it.
Raven’s T-shirt, and underneath it her hiking pants and shoes.
Ellis stared out at the silent marsh water. Had she drowned herself? The abyss, the moment she had discovered her baby was taken, was swallowing her whole again. Why had they trusted her with the girl? Had Ellis not proven she couldn’t be a mother?
A splash.
“Raven?” Ellis called out.
Insects thrummed. Distant cranes cried.
“Raven! Are you there?” she shouted.
Raven rose out of the deeper
