Spellbound

Chapter 2-2

Joseph Wilcox also didn’t put up any roadblocks, except to say that Danica should call him if she found anything at the cabin that needed fixing. “It should be fine, but your cousin Cody was out there with some of his college buddies last, so God only knows what shape they left it in.”

A warning Danica appreciated. Cody definitely knew how to party.

Her cousin Lucas was the keeper of the key to the cabin, so after she’d loaded up the Land Rover with enough changes of clothes and supplies to last her for a few days, she swung by his house first. She felt weird about calling, and figured someone should be around. It turned out Lucas wasn’t home, but his wife Margot answered the door. At her side was their little girl Mia, who was probably the most beautiful child Danica had ever seen. And well-behaved, too, unlike Angela and Connor’s hellions. Okay, Ian and Emily weren’t exactly hellions, but they did tend to keep their parents on their toes.

“I’ll get the key,” Margot said, stepping aside so Danica could come inside the entryway. Her gaze was curious but friendly. “So you’re going up to the cabin?”

“Just for a few days,” Danica hedged, since she really didn’t feel like going into any detail.

“It should be pretty right now,” Margot replied, somewhat diplomatically, since it was a little early to be going out there to see the fall foliage. Even at this elevation, the trees didn’t really start to turn until the end of September.

“I think so.”

Margot seemed content to leave the matter there for the moment, because she excused herself to get the key from Lucas’ study. As Danica waited, she tried not to be too put off by the way little Mia just stood there and stared up at her with big brown eyes. The girl was only around two, but she seemed awfully serene for a two-year-old.

“Um, hi, Mia,” Danica said.

Mia blinked, then extended the stuffed rabbit she held in one hand. “Bunny?”

“Yes, that’s a bunny.”

The little girl shook her head. “No, bunny.”

Even spending time with her cousins’ myriad offspring hadn’t made Danica entirely comfortable around very small children. She was okay once they were old enough to more or less talk to, but toddlers were an entirely different matter altogether.

“It’s a very nice bunny,” Danica offered. Well, in actual truth, it was looking a little shopworn, but she supposed that tended to be the fate of most stuffed animals.

Mia shook her head, then marched over to Danica and pushed the toy up against her nearest hand. “Bunny.”

Oh, lord. Danica took the stuffed animal, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. But what if Mia started to cry once she realized she wasn’t holding on to her beloved toy?

Luckily, Margot reappeared at that moment. Obviously fighting back a smile, she said, “I see that Mia’s given you her bunny.”

“Yeah, she seemed kind of insistent about it.”

“Well, it’s no ordinary rabbit. It’s magical.”

Of course it is, Danica thought wryly. From the twinkle in Margot’s dark eyes, she guessed that the other woman was playing along with some fantasy of her daughter’s. “That’s great, but, um…why did she give it to me?”

“Obviously, she thinks you need it.”

Maybe I do need a magical bunny. That wouldn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened to me lately.

But Danica knew she couldn’t drag Mia’s stuffed animal along with her to the cabin. The kid would probably start crying the moment she realized the bunny wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

Crouching down, she held the toy out to Mia, saying, “Thank you for the bunny, Mia, but I’m going to be staying up at the cabin for a few days. There are bears out in those woods, so I think the bunny might be safer here with you.”

Mia’s big brown eyes widened, and she reached out and snatched the bunny back with surprising force. “Bunny.”

“That’s right. You keep the bunny safe.” Danica straightened, and Margot handed her a brass key on a woven lanyard.

“Just bring it back when you’re ready. Lucas had a clean-up crew in there after Cody was done with the place, so everything should be in order.”

“I hope he sent Aunt Diane and Uncle Chris the bill,” Danica said darkly. Not that Lucas couldn’t afford to absorb the cost, but come on.

“Oh, he did,” Margot replied, her mouth curving in amusement. “They weren’t exactly thrilled.”

Served them right for letting Cody get away with murder. But Danica wasn’t going to worry about that. Cody was his parents’ problem, not hers.

Now she merely itched to get away and up to the cabin. What Caitlin had seen for her there, Danica didn’t know for sure. But there was only one way to find out.

She thanked Margot and left, giving Mia one last wave before she headed down the walkway to where she’d left her SUV. Starting a family had been the last thing on her mind even before the Matías incident, but Danica thought she wouldn’t mind too much, if it meant she could have a daughter as cute as Mia one day.

The route to the cabin actually took her through the heart of town, so Danica stopped at the grocery store to get a few things on her way out there. Usually the pantry at the cabin was kept decently stocked with canned food, but the frozen stuff was a lot tastier. She also got a sandwich from the store’s deli section for that night, and a couple bottles of wine. True, she generally drank a glass at a time, but she’d just put the corks back in the bottles when she was done and make them last that much longer.

After that stop, she headed out on Fort Valley Road. By then it was a little past three in the afternoon, but Danica wasn’t too worried about the time of day. There’d still be plenty of daylight for her to get settled, even with bumping the couple of miles over dirt roads to get to the border of the property. All around it was Forest Service land, and she wondered how her family had managed to hang on to its little piece of the woods for all these years.

Well, that wasn’t too much of a mystery, she supposed. The Wilcox clan did have a long history of getting its own way.

The Land Rover soldiered along over the rutted road, and then she was turning onto the narrow lane that led to the cabin itself. All around her was the stillness of the pine forest, which was broken occasionally by stands of oak and sycamore, along with groups of aspen trees, their leaves shimmering in the afternoon breeze. Already she could feel herself relaxing. She might have been the only person for a hundred miles, even though she knew the main road wasn’t that far off, and that there were plenty of houses nearby with people in them, should she need any assistance.

But why would she? Despite what she’d told Mia, these woods were perfectly safe. Maybe a black bear would amble by every once in a while, but in all the years she’d been coming up here, she had yet to see one. Deer and elk and squirrels and rabbits, sure. One time when Danica was around ten, she’d spotted a fox and nearly burst from excitement. But that had been it for anything remotely resembling a predator, unless you counted the hawks and the occasional eagle.

She came to a stop next to the cabin in a sputter of gravel. The property didn’t have a true garage, only a storage shed, and so she’d have to leave the SUV outside the whole time she was here. No biggie; it was already in need of a wash after that trip down to Tucson.

Moving her belongings and the items she’d picked up at the grocery store from the Land Rover to the cabin took less time than she’d thought. And it was just as Margot had assured her — the place seemed to be in more or less perfect condition, except for a little dust.

As she made her inspection, Danica reflected that none of her Wilcox ancestors probably would have recognized the place. It had become sort of a family tradition to update the property once every decade or so, and Lucas had been in charge of the last round of renovations. Not much could be done about the awkward shape of the cabin itself — it had begun life as a simple square and then had rooms added on as needed, before the Wilcox clan abandoned it altogether for a series of impressive houses closer to downtown — but now the interior walls had been covered in thick plaster and painted a warm parchment yellow, and the floors were gleaming new cherry wood.

Not exactly roughing it, but Danica was okay with that. She dropped her two weekender bags near the entrance to the kitchen and proceeded to put the food she’d bought in the shining stainless-steel refrigerator. That didn’t take much time, either, so after that she took her bags to the master bedroom. She’d never slept there before, since in the past she’d always come to the cabin with her family. It would be a luxury to have that big king-size bed to herself. And the days had been mild, but maybe it would get cold enough to justify having a fire in the bedroom’s stone hearth. The shed always had a good supply of wood, because even during summer visits people liked to sit out on the expansive patio to the rear of the cabin and gather around the outdoor fireplace there.

Once everything was settled, Danica went out to the porch and stood there for a long moment, letting the cool breeze wash over her face and tug at her long, loose hair. So very quiet here, except for the ever-present soughing of the pines, and the long, falling cry of a hawk high overhead.

Something within her seemed to relax, a tension she’d been carrying for so long she hadn’t even realized it was there leaving her shoulders and neck. Up here, she wouldn’t have to worry about her parents giving her the side-eye, or the awkwardness of running into friends at the store or at the mall and having them ask why she’d left school so abruptly. She’d more or less gone dark on f*******:, except to lurk, and she left texts and emails and phone calls mostly unanswered, but there wasn’t much you could do about randomly running into people on the street.

She wouldn’t have to worry about any of that here, though. The food she’d brought would last about four or five days, and then she could decide if she wanted to stay or whether solitude was something to be enjoyed in smaller doses.

Not that she would really lack for entertainment. Of course the cabin had electricity — she’d always wondered how much it had cost to run a line all the way out to the property — and satellite TV, along with some painfully slow Internet. And she knew the trails around here by heart, since she’d come out to the cabin with her family ever since she was old enough to walk. About a half-mile up the hill, you would come to a narrow ravine with a creek running through it, a creek that flowed year-round. She couldn’t paint like Connor or write like Caitlin, but she could still go there with a book and sit and read while the water rustled away in the background.

Yes, this could work.