Let Me Be A Mother Again

AN: Wow! My 62nd story, which is going to be a long-ish one-shot. Enjoy :)

Amy's POV

I hadn't gone to sleep after my bath. I'd turned on my little green glass lamp and picked out a book in order to read myself to sleep. It was a secret I'd kept from my parents, although Grace knew, and now, someone else does too.

So, I had heard the sound of visitors arriving, and a murmur of voices, even hers. Then everyone's voices were raised. I got up and listened, and I was wearing my newest nightgown which had koalas on it, which my parents had bought for me from their trip to Australia.

My parents voices were different. They were cold and brittle, as if they had just swallowed coins. I had crept downstairs and then down the hall to my father's study. I couldn't see my parents, as they were surrounded by people I now know, but at the time, they were all strangers to me. The lights were low, but the fire blazed in the hearth.

I heard bursts of words, and snippets of conversation such as,

The violation of the strongholds...

Where did you go...

My father said, "Our travels are our business, not yours.

Let's all calm down. We only want what is ours.

Where did you go...

Tell us or...

"Or what?" My mother had snapped. "You are standing in my home and you dare to threaten me?"

My mother's voice scared me, and I ran through the circle, yelling "Mommy!"

But before my mother could pick me up, Isabel Kabra did. She was wearing some posh perfume, and her lips were a ruby red. Fire from the hearth had been reflected in her honey colored eyes.

She asked me who I was, and talked about the koalas on my nightgown, but she called them teddy bears. I corrected her, and she asked if my parents had brought it back with them.

I went back to bed, and some time later, my house was ablaze, and a woman, who is now our adopted mother, rescued me and my brother.

Irina's POV

"Well, it's obvious that they've been to Australia in search of Robert Cahill Henderson." Isabel said, and I nodded in agreement.

"That much is obvious, Isabel." I sneered back, my KGB coat rippling in the breeze. "Tell me something I don't know."

"This," she said, pointing at the Cahill's house, "has to be taken care of tonight. We can find the clues that they no doubt found another way. Tonight, all four of them will die in a tragic house fire."

There were explosions of rage from everyone apart from me and Vikram, Isabel's husband. Obviously, the others hadn't realised that we needed to finish them off.

But then I thought, hang on, all four of them?

I turned to Isabel, and quietly said, "Nyet."

Isabel's eyebrow raised a fraction. "What did you just say?"

"I said "nyet." I won't let you murder two innocent children."

Isabel glared at me, pulling from her pants pocket a knife, which she then aimed at my chest. Smiling a syrupy smile, she said, "What's come over you, cousin dearest?"

My eyes narrowed, and I snapped, "Need I remind you that I have lost a child of my own?" Then I heard myself say the last thing I expected to ever come out of my mouth. "Let me be a mother again."

Personally, I thought, It would be better if she didn't kill them, as I can be a lot more frightening when it comes to making people talk. I wasn't in the KGB for nothing.

Isabel frowned and said "Absolutely not."

I frowned too, and said, "Isabel, you are also a mother. You have two children that the same age as Amelia and Daniel. If I was come by with the intentions of killing them, wouldn't you try to protect them?"

Isabel's eyes widened, as if I was threatening her children's lives right now. Then she pursed her lips and said, "Very well, you may save them."

Then she said, "I will only be ten minutes in getting the firelighters. That's how long you have."

Page Break

Racing back inside the Cahill's home, I was automatically cornered by Hope and Arthur, both of them glaring at me. For the slightest of moments I glared back, before long forgotten paternal instincts kicked in, and I blurted out "Isabel is going to kill you and your children. Please, let me help you."

They stared at me for some seconds, wondering if I was, I think they call it, stealing the mouse.

"Are you?" Hope began, but I cut her off. "Nyet, I'm not stealing the mouse."

She looked at me, baffled, before rolling her eyes and said, "You mean, taking the Mickey."

"Well, Da, but, no. I'm not joking. Isabel won't let you two get out alive, but I can adopt your children, because for some reason due to the Clue Hunt, Grace won't, and I won't let them stay with Beatrice."

"You want to adopt my children? You've never had children in your life."

With a sigh of memories from the past, I pulled out a photo of my little boy from my pocket, and handed it to Hope. "Yes, I have."

Hope frowned at me for a moment, before hurrying away. She came back some moments later, holding an ornately decorated box and a photo album.

"If you do raise my children as your own, Irina, I have some conditions for you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"One, don't kill them or I will haunt you for the rest of your life. Two, there are pieces of jewelry in this box that both Amy and Dan love. Give it to them when you feel the time is right. Three, let them have photos of us. Four, tell about why we died and what we died for."

I nodded, just as the smell of smoke assaulted my sinuses, and realised the house was on fire. They hurried into the office in order to find whatever it was, and I hurried upstairs to rescue my soon to be adopted children.

I aroused Amelia and Daniel, holding the girl's hand and carrying the boy one handedly in my arms.

As we passed by the office, Amy screamed out for her parents, but they smiled at her, and said gently, "Go with Aunty Irina."

Moments later, now holding a still intact jewelry box and a photo album, and thoroughly bemused that I had been referred to as an aunt, we all lay on the grass, panting and watching as the fire department tended to the blaze.

Some moments later, fire officers spoke to Amy and Dan, gently telling them that their parents would never return. I pipped up and said I had permission to be their guardian.

Grace was thoroughly shocked when I told her, but she let it go in the end.

Amy's POV (again)

I sat up in bed, gasping with tears running down my face. Irina never would have adopted us, and Isabel would never have murdered our parents if I hadn't said that I had koalas on my nightgown. I had grown out of said nightgown, which was now on a collector's doll, one that Irina had given me for my 9th birthday.

A sudden rumble shock me out of my horrid thoughts, and with the falsest, cheeriest smile I could muster, I slid down the banister to the door that led to the dining room.

Irina was already there, whistling the Russian National Anthem, which was what she did every morning, apart from birthdays and Christmas. We had lived in St. Petersburg with her since I was eight and a half, and Dan about five and a half.

She had told us about the Clue Hunt, and how the world was split into branches: Lucian (Her branch), Ekaterina (she denies that she's in love with him of course, but her boyfriend, Alistair Oh is in this branch.) Then there's Janus, and a famous cousin and singer, Jonah Wizard, is in this one, as well as the Tomas branch, in which our rather buff cousins, the Holts, are in.

Also, there's the Madrigal branch, which Irina told us was originally said to be made up of rogue Cahills, but was in fact, an actual branch. Our 25th great grandmother or so Olivia Cahill, was pregnant with a fifth child when her other children, Luke, Katherine, Thomas, and Jane ran away from home after a fire that had taken the life of their father, Gideon.

Irina now glanced up at me, and smiled. "Ah, Dobraye Ootra, Amelia. Are you ready to go back to America?"

I was puzzled for a moment, before I remembered that my grandmother, Grace, was holding another ten day get together. The nightmare of last night had definitely taken everything else from my mind, but not wanting my darling adopted mother who I adored, to know that I was as good as a killer, I just nodded and helped myself to some toast, just as my brother came in, hugging Irina and grinning broadly at me.

I smiled back, but just then, Irina flipped open the newspaper and muttered, "Some bastard murdered a koala last night in some Australian zoo."

My throat became very dry, and I muttered, "This wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me."

Irina's head snapped up, and said, "Whatever are you talking about?" In the harshest tone I've ever heard her use.

She's a lot nicer now that she has us, but she did tell us stories of how she had lost her son, and at the same time, her soul. She only uses that particular tone when she means business.

"I'm a murderer, because I murdered my parents." I said in a small voice.

"Whatever makes you think that?" Irina asked sharply.

"Well, the night of the fire, I was still awake when the strangers came. I could hear them downstairs, and I sort of eavesdropped. They were asking Mom and Dad over and over where they went, and I was scared. I went in, but it wasn't Mom who picked me up, it was Isabel."

"I remember that." Irina said.

I nodded in agreement, but then said, "Isabel talked about the teddy bears on my night-gown, and I corrected her by saying they were koalas. When I said that, everyone worked it out."

"Worked out what?" Dan asked.

"They then knew that Mom and Dad had gone to Australia in search of Robert Cahill Henderson, and they must have figured that they brought something back. Because later that night, Isabel said, they traced him to Australia, didn't they? This has to taken care of tonight."

"Do you think they brought something back, and that's what they were looking for?" Dan said.

"What do you do when your house is on fire?"I asked.

"You run for the most valuable thing." Dan and Irina said together.

Then Irina added, "So I ran for you two, as well as a jewelry box and a photo album, and your parents ran for whatever it was."I nodded. When she spoke again, her voice wasn't as steady.

"Maybe someone set the fire so they could see what happened. Maybe something went wrong. But I do know that the fire wouldn't have been set if I hadn't briefly turned into Hermione Granger, being such a know-it-all!"

With that, I buried my face in my hands, and started to bawl with shame and guilt, tears running like a river.

"Look at me, Amelia Hope Cahill," Irina ordered, and my jade green eyes met her Arctic blue ones. "You are NOT responsible for the death of your parents. You did NOT light that match. Just because you said koalas, you did not change anything. All of that lies in the hands of your parents' killer."

I sniffed back tears, but I could smile properly now. If Irina, my mother didn't think I was to blame, then perhaps I wasn't.

Feeling as though a great load had been lifted from my shoulders, I hurried away to pack the last few things for my trip to Massachusetts.