the weight

The lunch time rush seemed to finally be waning, thank God!

Olivia crowded her fingers into the half dozen beer glasses on a table that had been filled with reporters from the Daily only minutes ago. It should’ve surprised her how they’d managed to stagger back to their feet after what they’d managed to sink during their lunch break but in a town where it seemed at least half the residents were something more than you saw, it didn’t even raise a brow for her anymore. Those who weren’t blessed had probably been having liquid lunches since they wrote their first story up for the school paper. That was what the English guy had sworn to her last week at least.

Chuckling faintly, Olivia clucked her tongue as she put the glasses into the tub and went back for another handful – wine glasses – a twist of her hand added a shot glass to the haul. He’d been in at least three or four nights a week, mouth running hot as he’d lingered at the desk. Most had dismissed as just the chatty type, a harmless drunk, but she’d seen his eyes sharpen up the moment things had grown interesting. There was a story there somewhere, one he hadn’t shared while he’d told her about just about everything else under the sun. These days that kind left her at least a little wary.

She swept the emptying bar with a supposedly friendly glance as she headed back to the bar. Too many things had happened in town, to her family, for her to be able to entirely relax. Henrik’s aunt was still out there, undoubtedly still looking to come for what she saw as the price for her sister having been blessed with fertility. If Dahlia did stroll in the door she was gonna get a far colder welcome than anybody else who came to Campbell’s. For Dahlia Olivia would break her own rule and bury the woman so deep she’d have no chance of ever fighting her way free.

Jaw tight for a moment, Olivia set the tub down on the pass. The kitchen staff were taking a break in the kitchen, leaning back against the counters as though they’d just come out the other side of a war. ”No rush,” she assured them, breaking that tension with a grin. Soon as Raik started in an hour she’d take a break herself. Something to eat, a phone call to Henrik, even if it was just to voicemail. Checking in with her fiancée. Oh, that brought a genuine smile on as she turned back to the bar.

The ring on her finger caught the light as an Asian woman, about her own age approached the bar. Olivia drew herself up just a little straighter, the wattage on that smile turning up as she offered up a warm welcome to Campbell’s. ”Hi. What can I get you?” She liked to think she’d grown familiar with most almost everyone who’d been to Campbell’s more than once. These days she spent less time actually behind the bar than she had when she’d started but the place was still hers. It was supposed to be one of those places in town where people could gather, feeling like it was an extension of their own home. A safe harbour with that notice on the door.

Despite the sheriff’s attempts the town itself wasn’t always that. As the woman nudged a photograph towards her, fingers tapping on it, Olivia felt her stomach twist. How many mothers were looking for their sons and daughters here while they were cold in a morgue or out there alone? It was enough to have her shivering as she looked down at the photo. ”May I?” Olivia asked hoarsely. She slipped the photo towards herself, turning it around so that she could look at the boy in it. Probably only a handful of years older than Alice and Connor. ”Maybe,” she admitted, a sadness to her tone as she looked back up and shrugged. ”A lot of the kids from the college come here … when they’re old enough of course. Maybe he’s been in a time or two but I’m not sure. When … when did he go missing?” She wished she had a more definite answer. As a mother herself, the thought of her child being gone tore a hole right through her gut. If Alice or Connor had actually gone? Olivia let out a breath and pressed a hand to her stomach. She would have lost her mind.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 759

Every parent must’ve had at least one moment where they thought they’d lost their child. Little feet running too fast in a crowd, a game of hide and seek you hadn’t even known you were playing in a store, that twinkle of sunlight in your eyes in a playground that gave them an opportunity to duck behind something. It had been in a store with the twins. One of those big box store type places out of town when they hadn’t been more than two or three – not a real memory, Olivia knew it wasn’t because Henrik’s spell had condensed all that might’ve been into fake memories for them instead – she’d looked away for just one minute at some fruit bowl thing and when she’d looked back they were both gone. A band had tightened around her chest until her voice had been a shriek when it emerged. Most parents were worrying about weirdos, not an aunt full of magic who could probably literally spirit away the children she wanted to drain of their power.

This woman might’ve had a nightmare like that in her own past but it wasn’t a photo of a toddler she was pushing across the bar. Teenagers were a whole different ball game. Old enough to think that they knew better, selfish enough not to consider how them sneaking out of the house or not coming home from a friend’s place until well after curfew would panic their parents.

Olivia’s brows furrowed as she looked down at the photo, fingers barely brushing the edge as though she didn’t want to put fingerprints across the boy’s handsome face. He had his mum’s dark hair, something in his smile she thought might’ve come from her too. Something about him was familiar enough to whisper in the back of her head. Had she served him right before she’d vanished? Was this going to be one of the cases where it turned out she’d been the last person to see him alive? Good lord. She lifted her hand from the photo, fisting the towel she’d set down behind the counter earlier.

Hazel eyes were full of sympathy when they rose from the photo to the woman. Had something dimmed in her eyes while she’d been looking at it? Olivia hoped not, there was nothing worse than having that hope snuffed out. ”He seemed like a good boy … if it was him. Polite, sweet, not as rowdy as some of the others are.” She hoped she wasn’t laying it on too thickly but if it was him then maybe there had been a handful of times. Faces had always been something she was good with but when you had literally hundreds a week passing through some were hard to keep track of.

Releasing the towel, Olivia reached over the bar and squeezed the woman’s hand as her question seemed to rile her up. Too many was the truth, a new face seemed to end up on the front page of the newspaper at least once a week, but she wouldn’t want to hear that. ”Kids go missing everywhere,” she told her, glossing over it. ”Most come home again though. I’m sure he’s going to be one of those kids. He’ll come home and you’ll scald him for not texting you but then you’ll hold on so tightly because you don’t want to let go again.” Pulling away, Olivia started to pour the woman a soda, something to keep her hands busy. ”Did he move here for college alone? I never got to speak to him or his friends much, but it seems like some come to Whitmore from all the way across the country.” Leaving parents at home to worry what their kids were up to. She hoped that when the time came both Alice and Connor decided to stay close to home.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 644

Eleven pregnancies carried to term. Pretty good odds in a day where medicine was hit and miss. She’d not shied away from the losses, although Olivia thought she’d been fifteen or sixteen before they’d talked about it. Lil had just lost her first, had still been laying in the bed in the flat upstairs, pale as a ghost, as they’d sat around the kitchen table recovering from the shock of it. Even if you could get them through those first nine months there was no guarantee you could keep them. It was the way of the world then, vicious and fickle and ready to just about give their mum a heart attack when war had struck and nearly every single one of them had tried to sign up to do something.

A muddy field nearly a hundred miles from home, churned up the day before by the bomb that had dropped and somehow not killed them all. Her fingers had felt icy cold as she’d gripped the pen. How did you send a letter home and mention a word of that? In the end she hadn’t had to, the ministry had decided to give them a week’s break. Another group would take their spot, other people’s sons and daughters with their necks on the line. Relief had shone in her mum’s eyes when Olivia had found herself back on the doorstep. Those work reddened hands clutching at her so hard. The tears had come then for both of them. Another round arriving at the end of the war when they’d all gathered together in the tiny garden of the house, made even smaller by the Anderson shelter Jack had insisted on. Tears flowing as fast as the stout.

Olivia felt them burn the backs of her eyes now as she tried to reassure another woman that she would see her son again. There were no real wars here to take Baxter away but it didn’t mean there weren’t other horrors that her own heart filled with every time the twins walked out the door. Behind good in this town wasn’t a guarantee that you’d be left untouched by the violence that seemed here below the surface. Angels, the beings that should’ve been the best of them, had come after the father of her children for God’s sake.

Sympathy filled the pit of her stomach, laced heavily with empathy as she reached out a hand to squeeze the woman’s. She knew what it was like, knew how it had felt to find people who could help. If karma was feeling a little altruistic maybe what she told her would help now. Her smile was paper thin but she tried to pour hope in it, into the platitudes that she imagined wouldn’t have any real sort of effect to blow those worse case scenarios out of her head. ”You don’t have to thank me,” she assured her lightly. ”I’ve got my fingers crossed for you, for … Baxter.” Her eyes cut over the woman’s shoulder as another little bubble of people came in, office workers, not the college students who might’ve helped.

Letting out a small sigh, Olivia poured herself a soda, took a small sip of it as the woman began to explain how her son had ended up in town. They weren’t there with Alice and Connor yet, some part of her hoped they never were. Her kids being old enough to move out and live on their own was a scary prospect in more ways than one. ”It is these days,” Olivia promised, her mouth curling up at one corner. ”I ended up half a country away from my mum, I know she still worried. I don’t think it’s ever easy when your kids are away.” There was a pang in her chest at the question about her own kids. Not wanting too much of that feeling of absolute luck to bleed through, Olivia held her smile back just a little as she nodded. ”Two. They’re sixteen already and giving me grey hair every day. Is Baxter your only child?” God that would make it a thousand times worse. The one child you were blessed with gone as though he’d just been blinked out of existence.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 707