Page 41 of What Doesn't Kill Her
“Um...” Rae squirmed. “Sometimes I go visit my friend Chloe. Her babysitter lets us watch.”
“What else does she let you do?” Kellen ran.
“Eat Fruit Roll-Ups!” Rae shouted right in Kellen’s ear.
“Okay. That was loud. If you promise not to shout again—” at least for the next ten minutes “—I promise I won’t tell Grandma about the cartoons and the Fruit Roll-Ups.”
Rae kept her voice polite and sedate. “Thank you, Mommy.”
Kellen avoided the paths, using the sun as guidance, heading deeper and higher into the wilderness to put some space between her and the guys in the slick suits and the city shoes.
Rae drooped and slept, then roused and in an excited voice said, “Mommy, stop. Stop!”
Kellen was glad to. Her back was creaking, Rae was squirming, and surely they had put any search parties behind. She pulled off the poncho. “Do you need to go potty again?”
“No. No! Huckleberries. We found huckleberries!” Rae hopped around the six-foot-tall sprawling dark green hedge, collecting the dark purplish fruit with wild abandon.
Kellen followed in alarm. “Are you sure these are edible?”
Rae looked a question.
“Not poisonous. If we eat them, will we die?”
“No! They’rehuckleberries!” Rae acted as if Kellen was an idiot.
Not in a mean way, Kellen realized, but in total surprise, as if she expected Kellen to know everything.
Kellen took another look at Rae. Oh, no. Shedidexpect Kellen to know everything.
Rae popped the handful of berries in her mouth.
Kellen lunged to stop her, but it was too late. Was Rae going to die from eating poisoned berries? Should Kellen stick her finger down Rae’s throat?
She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Rae seemed so sure, and Kellen didn’t know a thing about Pacific Northwest berries, and she couldn’t traumatize the child any further on a vague fear. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d eaten poisoned mushrooms...
There was only one thing to do. Kellen ate a handful of berries, too.
They were fabulous. If they were going to die, they were going to die together and die happy, too. “How do you know about huckleberries?” she asked as she picked more and ate them.
“Mrs. Maniscaldo lived down the road from the winery. She was old.” Rae’s shaking voice dramatically indicated Mrs. Maniscaldo’s age. “Grandma and me used to go down to her house to help her pick her raspberries and blueberries. Grandma would make jam, and we’d keep some, and she’d give the rest to Mrs. Maniscaldo, who gave it out as Christmas presents. I’d go down there and eat it with her on fried bread. Last summer, me and Daddy and Grandma took Mrs. Maniscaldo up in the mountains. Because she’s from the mountains, but she was so old she couldn’t live up there anymore. She showed us huckleberries and how to pick them, and she yelled at Daddy on the other side of the thicket to start picking the berries and stop eating them, and when we walked around so she could yell at him again, it wasn’t Daddy.”
“Who was it?”
“It was abear. I saw it. It was big and black!”
Fascinated, Kellen kept popping berries in her mouth. “What happened?”
“She yelled at the bear and waved her arms and it ran off. She laughed and laughed, and sat down, and Daddy had to help her get up. She said she was scared the bear would get us, but I didn’t know it. She yelled right at him!”
“Mrs. Maniscaldo sounds like quite a woman.”
“She was nice. She died.”
Whoa. Kellen hadn’t seen that coming. She stopped eating. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Grandma didn’t want me to go to the funeral, but I wanted to see her again, so Daddy took me.”
To Kellen’s relief, Rae didn’t look sad. She looked, well, philosophical. For a kid, that was quite an expression. Kellen asked, “What did you think?”
