I used the stopper on the back of my skates to keep my balance, and pushed the heavy door open. I held my arms out for balance and stepped onto the asphalt in my rented skates.
The first thing I noticed was how bright the streetlights were. The parking lot was crowded, filled with familiar cars, so I didn’t feel uneasy as I hobbled out a few steps in my skates and pushed “SEND” to call Lana.
In the semi-darkness, my screen glowed brilliant green. Just like my shoes, I remember thinking pointlessly.
The phone rang three times before Holt picked up.
I heard Lana sobbing in the background.
And that was all, because the next second, the door of a SUV parked very close to me opened. A figure rushed at me, and something stung my arm.
The something was a Taser, I learned later. It didn’t just sting, it shocked me into brief unconsciousness.
As soon as I crumpled, Mother reeled me in the back door of her SUV and wrapped me up in tape and rope, like a spider dressing a captured fly.
I woke up in the back of her Ford Expedition with an awful headache and the need to puke.
I did, and she laughed lightly, the sound of it carried over the leather seats, in the stale air from her heater. “Look who’s up now. Sleeping Beauty. That’s not your name, though, is it darling?”
I was confused, of course—this was heightened by the blaring country music—but it didn’t take her long to turn down the Garth Brooks and explain.
Lana had probably called because Laura had been hit by a car. This car, in fact. Mother had tried to take my sister first, but Laura ran into some woods near the high school, where she’d been one of the last people leaving band practice, and managed to hide.
When she couldn’t take Laura, she went after me.
“I know all three of you dearies. Pretty little blonde girls. That’s what I needed. A pretty little blonde to be my Gretel.”
It didn’t make sense at first, but she explained as she drove—as the lights of Boulder dimmed and I saw the Flatirons go by, and eventually, my ears started popping as we drove west on 285, toward the high Rockies, and the little towns of Conifer, Bailey, Jefferson, and finally Fairplay.
“I’m Mother, Gretel. I’m your Mother Goose.” She laughed. “It’s a little unconventional, I know that, but I think you’ll like The House. It’s not a cottage, like the story, and there’s not a lot of candy. It’s a mansion. Much nicer than that little match box you live in. Some of my windows have a view of Mount Bierstadt. Snowy now up there.”
She told me how she was born to be a mother. It was her calling, but her husband, Ben, had died in some sort of accident.
“I never got to bear the fruit of my own womb, but this is better. You’ll see. Pretty soon you will tell me how it’s better.”
She told me I would have my own bedroom. She had already decorated it. And next door, Hansel.
“Your rooms look almost just alike. You’re brother and sister.”
On the other side of me was Sleeping Beauty, she said. Across the hall, Rapunzel. Red Riding Hood had “picture perfect” auburn hair, and Little Boy Blue wasn’t as little as she’d wanted. He was twelve, so young enough, she guessed.
“I had Snow White,” she said, but… “I don’t figure we need to talk about her. She’s gone now. I’ll be replacing her when you get settled.”
I croaked out questions, which she answered readily, telling me, in her high-pitched, almost chirpy voice, how she had rescued “her” children.
“They were all unwanted. All but you. I had some trouble finding a suitable Gretel—you know, blonde, with blue eyes and a delicate, Germanic sort of face. I saw your family one day, oh I’d say a month or two ago, down at that Home Depot south of Boulder. I was buying…well, it doesn’t matter. Did you know that I get nervous when I leave The House? If I were never to return, well…I don’t know what. My children would perish, I believe. Stuck in their rooms, the poor dearies.”
She sounded resigned to the possibility. I almost puked again.
“I did a good thing, really, when you think about it. With the other children, most of them were re-homed. That means they had been adopted, but they weren’t wanted. I helped them, welcomed them into my nice, big home. But I couldn’t find a Gretel. No Gretel near here, in Nevada, Utah, or anywhere that I could drive. When I saw you—the three of you—I knew. Your parents have three. I took only one.”
Weeks later, it’s her voice that haunts me most as I lie on the cot in my room.
How, even when I kicked and cried and screamed and cussed, as she hauled me out of the car and threw me on a rug that she rolled over me, she never got too worked up. She sounded happy and content.