Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER TWELVE

From downstairs in the kitchen at Tammy and Derrick's house, Rosalyn heard the fire alarm echo across the town, seep through the wood of the bungalow.

"That's the worst thing about having a newborn here," Tammy said. "That bloody mill catches on fire almost every day now."

They sat opposite each other at the table. Rosalyn was silent. She tried to remember if the sound of the mill catching fire had been that bad at the Norriswood she had just left. The siren had certainly been a sound she'd grown up with, the thing cutting in when she was in elementary school, and sending half the children there into a fright, wondering if their parents who worked there were OK.

Tammy had offered Rosalyn a cup of chamomile tea, but the mug sat cold, and half-drunk on the wooden table.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay here the night?" Tammy asked.

The thing was, Rosalyn wasn't sure. The past three days' worth of stress, anxiety cramped in the driver's seat, and then belting it through a thicket of forest had finally caught up to her body. The familiar smells of her parents house coaxed her into some kind of habitual, relaxed state. Her eyelids began to droop down, like the tired, closing curtains of a theatre, and she wondered what would happen tomorrow if she opened her eyes and was still here, still in this strange house, so much like her own. Would she stay? Would she stay and watch baby Rosalyn grow, whispering into her ears the keys to preventing all the same mistakes she'd made herself.

Derrick came down the stairs in the living room, and emerged a moment later in the kitchen. He placed the baby monitor on the table, and Rosalyn could hear little Rosalyn's breathing. A faint hiccup as she stirred, something upsetting her. Then steady, even breathing again.

"I could probably fall asleep to that, if I wasn't careful," Rosalyn said. Tammy laughed.

"It's peaceful," Tammy said.

"We could put some blankets on the couch for you, if you'd like," Derrick said. "Tammy got a nice quilt she made – I'm sure it'd be just like home."

Rosalyn wanted to tell him that he'd had no idea how true that was.

"Yes, stay," Tammy said. "I'll make you breakfast in the morning, and you can get up and leave whenever."

Rosalyn could smell her mother's omelets then, the combination of grease sizzling away, and fresh onion, red pepper, plucked from the garden, the chopped dill scattered on top. But as she leaned her head onto the kitchen table, already giving into the temptation of sleep, she heard something vibrate against the floor, in the living room.

Baby Rosalyn's breathing sharpened then, her breathes coming in harsher.

"That's my friend's cellphone," she said, and stood up from the table. She jogged into the living room, and picked it up.

"Hello," she said.

"Rosalyn," Tara said. But the timbre of her voice sounded different, rose higher in pitch, and thinner, frail.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm with Terry, and – his girlfriend, Hardy. Terry says he has a place for us to stay tonight. He wants to pick you up."

"Oh, that's good."

"Where are you? We can come get you –" there was a sound on the other line then, like the sound a firework makes when it's released upwards into the sky. Then loud voices, voices that pushed Tara's own voice out of the way. Rosalyn heard a loud scuffling sound, like the phone had been dropped, scraped through the ground.

"Tara?" she said. The fire alarm of the mill went off again, and then baby Rosalyn began to cry, her howling flying down the stairs and coming through the baby monitor in the kitchen at the same time. Tammy was already out of her chair, her footsteps pressing into the hardwood. She passed Rosalyn on her way up the stairs.

"R-Rosalyn. Something's really wrong here. We're coming to get you right now. Where are you?"

"Tara, I'm at...I'm at my house."

There was silence on Tara's end then. Rosalyn thought she could hear car doors slamming, an engine cough, and rev, awaken.

"We'll be there soon," Tara said. "Hang tight."

Rosalyn sat in the living room, and waited for baby Rosalyn to calm down. She could hear Tammy above, rocking her back and forth in her arms and shush shush shushing her. After several long minutes, Tammy's spider-thin legs crept down the stairs.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" She said. Rosalyn nodded.

"I think Rosalyn knows you're leaving, too," Tammy said.

From the kitchen, Rosalyn could hear the baby cough through the monitor.

"You've been more than hospitable," Rosalyn said. "And I wish I could stay. But I must leave." Tammy came forward, and held her. A shiver slipped up Rosalyn's spine. She wanted to ask who are you? who are you? over and over, until something unfurled within this woman and came out an answer, an explanation for her own existence.

"I have my own Tammy and Derrick to get back to," Rosalyn said, and wondered if Tammy knew that it really was the truth. Tammy's face was so close now, she could see the wiry purple veins beneath her skin.

"Yes. You're somebody else's baby Rosalyn."

Then their heads cranked in synchronicity to the window. From outside on the street somewhere a voice rang out amplified, the sound of the human voice through a bullhorn. The sound of police sirens catching fire from the distance, and then Tammy's arms were around her again.

"Be safe, Rosalyn. I cannot lose you again."