Hide Yourself Away by Mary Jane Clark

was lucky, I had her while I was growing up. When I look at my own daughter, I can’t imagine her not having a mother.”
    Madeleine nodded, understanding that Grace was acknowledging the loss that had permeated Madeleine’s childhood. “My father has done the best he could all these years, raising me with love and tenderness while all the gossips in this town sniped about him. And my aunt Agatha has showered me with all the affection she could, considering her fragile state. I love them both so much for what they’ve endured.
    “But I’ve dreamt about my mother all these years, you know.”
    “Happy dreams?” Grace asked.
    “Sometimes happy, mostly troubled.” Madeleine hiccuped.
    Grace didn’t want to push. She waited for Madeleine to continue if she chose.
    “There’s one that I have over and over. It’s always the same. And I don’t know which part is real and which part is the dream. It’s about the last night I was with her, the night Aunt Agatha was babysitting for me while my parents were at the party. I know that part of it is real, because I remember waking up at Shepherd’s Point that night and seeing my mother writing in her diary. I watched her take off her wedding ring and rub her favorite lotion on her hands. In the dream it’s the same. I go in and find my mother writing at the desk in her old room at Aunt Agatha’s. She looks like a fairy princess, with her hair all piled up on the top of her head andwearing a beautiful golden gown. When she sees me, she stops writing and brings me back to bed and tucks me in. I look up at her face and notice one of her earrings is missing, and I tell her so. She takes the other earring off and slips it in the pocket of her gown. Then the phone rings and she goes to answer it.”
    “Who is on the phone?”
    “I don’t know. But I get up out of bed and follow her back to her room. She sees me and puts her finger up to her lips, wordlessly instructing me to keep quiet. And I hear her say into the phone, ‘I’ll meet you at the gate.’ Then she hangs up the telephone and tells me to get back into bed.”
    “And do you?”
    “In the dream, I always have. And that’s what I told the police at the time. That my mother must have driven off with whoever she met at the gate. But since the bones were found in the tunnel, the dreams I’ve been having are different. Last night’s dream was so vivid, I woke up in a cold sweat.”
    “Because?” Grace couldn’t help but prod now.
    “Because I dreamt that I followed my mother down to the gate.”
    “And?”
    “And, I don’t know.” Madeleine shook her head, trying to recall. “There were headlights in the dream, and my mother stood in front of them and waited for someone to get out of the car.”
    “Who was it? Could you tell who got out of the car?”
    “No. That’s when I woke up.”
    They sat quietly for a few moments until Grace broke the silence.“I don’t know all that much about it, but you were a very little girl when your mother disappeared. Maybe things that you saw back then have been buried deep inside all this time. Maybe your subconscious is ready to let them come out.”
    “Do you think I could know who my mother’s killer is?”
    “Anything is possible.”
    “I know anything is possible. But do you think I do?”
    “I don’t know, Madeleine. I have no idea.”
    “What should I do, Grace?” She looked insistently into the intern’s eyes. “What would you do?”
    Grace saw the anguish in the young woman’s face and struggled to think of the right thing to say. “Well, I guess I would wait and see if more came back to me in my dreams, or maybe I would try hypnosis and see if anything came out that way. I can’t really tell you what to do, Madeleine. I’m not a trained professional.”
    “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re Grace Callahan, a TV news person.” Madeleine groaned, her demeanor changing in an instant. “How could I have forgotten? How stupid of me, spilling