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Goose Chase
by Danielle Ice
Second Place
Cindy stared hard out the window of her bedroom and into the driveway, inspecting the cars stationed in front of her house. There was a bright red, cool-looking car, and that meant Uncle Drew and cousin Flora were downstairs. Given the little kid shriek she just heard that wasn’t her sister’s, she gave herself an invisible five dollars. Aunt Penelope was probably downstairs too, helping Cindy’s mom organize the snacks. And likely stealing some deviled eggs, hoping no one would notice.
The next car in her sights was a boring, gray truck, letting her know that mom’s boring work friend Chase was probably also downstairs. He might have driven some of mom’s other work friends too, but she wasn’t willing to bet her only invisible five bucks on that. She was only willing to bet that he was likely flirting with her mom and she rolled her eyes. There was no way her mom would ever go for someone like him, even if she wasn’t already dating Henry, who had the dark blue car with a slight crack on one of the headlights.
Her Grandma and Grandpa Young lived in California, and coming to Michigan to celebrate Egg Day was too hard for “their old bones” as they liked to tell her on FaceTime. The irony of their name was never lost on her ever since she finally understood what the word irony meant in middle school this year, and she wasn’t stupid: their old bones never complained before four years ago. They just never visit anymore because…
She shut that thought down and distracted herself by looking down at her nails. Her periphery caught the mint green of her dress as a backdrop to the eccentric patterns she had painted on her nails. The bright pastels shapes on her white nails made it seem like miniature Easter eggs decorated her hands, but the patterns weren’t just plain old polka dots. No, those were way too easy for her anymore. They were kind of hard when she was 12, but had a whole year of practice to perfect multiple colors within zig zags, small chickens, and spirals within spirals.
Art had been an escape and distraction since she was 10, and she was really good at distracting herself. Whenever her mom wouldn’t stop talking about her marketing job, she thought of nail patterns in her head. When her sister Tara would ramble on about her dolls, she would mentally review YouTube tutorials about blending paint colors. When Henry gushed too much about her mom, art was her way to throw her emotions and thoughts onto a brainwave canvas.
This skill particularly came in handy when her grandparents would talk about her dad.
She jolted when she heard ferocious thumping on her door, and she was able to figure out very quickly who it was.
“Mommy says come downstairs!” Tara yelled, as if the door between them was a 100-foot tunnel and not a flimsy piece of plywood.
“I’m coming,” Cindy said, “hold your horses.”
She opened the door to find that Tara had already run back downstairs, likely chasing Flora around. A wave of laughing grown-ups trickled up the stairs and she fluffed her dress as she went downstairs, ready to take part in the adults’ conversations until they asked if she wanted to go and have fun with her sister.
That was the thing with grown-ups, they had no clue that them being here was one of the few times she got away from Tara’s grubby hands; she would much rather pretend to care as Chase bragged about his boring, gray truck. Besides, she was more of a grown-up than a kid anymore.
“Hey there, Cynthia!” Chase called out with a red cup in his hand as he hovered too close to her mom.
“It’s Cindy,” she said, forcing a smile even if her eyes weren’t in it.
She telepathically tried to force him to at least give her some space if he couldn’t take a hint. She’d even call it a small victory if he quit it with that same look she was giving him: a smile with no happiness in it.
“Hey, have no shame in your name!” he called out brightly, raising his cup like it was a golden goblet.
“No really, Chase, her name is Cindy. It’s not short for anything,” Henry corrected him as he was on the other side of her mom, eating an egg muffin her mom baked that morning.
He was right, her name was just Cindy. She was glad he stood up for her, but that’s where her gratitude ended. He stood at her mom’s side easily like they were a perfect fit, but it was like they were puzzle pieces that were close enough to being perfect that were forced together.
He was still a way better fit than that jerk, Chase, though.
As if Chase didn’t hear Henry correct him, which she knew perfectly well he did, he complimented her mom, “Valerie, you always throw the best Egg Day parties.”
“She’s the only one who throws Egg Day parties,” Uncle Drew said, expertly stepping back as Flora ran screaming where he was only a second ago to escape Tara as she ran after her, “but still, my sis-in-law knows how to lean into a theme.”
He gestured to her pink dress with Easter eggs printed all over it, and he didn’t need to mention the egg-themed snacks or repurposed Easter decorations. Cindy’s family wasn’t religious, but her dad had always loved the idea of egg hunts and bright colors.
“The bright colors of the season just give me a spring in my step!” he’d tell her, and then heel click like it was the period of his sentence.
She would have given anything to shake her head at his dad jokes the last several years and secretly think his jokes weren’t all that bad.
“Considering only half the deviled eggs are left, I’d have to say my wife thinks the food is just as good,” Uncle Drew teased.
As if on cue, Aunt Penelope whipped around, caught with a deviled egg mid-bite in her mouth.
“Whu?” she asked, “I couldn’t hear you over how good this egg is,” she mumbled, her eyes still wide from getting caught.
Cindy laughed.
The other adults that came along with Chase started to take over the conversation, and the minute she heard Chase say, “customer insights,” she was ready to imagine how her mint green dress might look if she contrasted it with orange stripes and some white designs thrown in.
She could talk with the adults, but she wanted to talk more about her nails than marketing stuff she heard her mom talk about all the time.
“Hey, Cindy!” Henry called from her mom’s side, waving her over.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I need your help with something,” he said, “I prepped some eggs for the egg hunt for your sister and Flora, but you and I both know you’re way better at hiding those eggs than I am.”
“That, and you know I can’t stand Chase,” she said slyly, knowing full well that he was trying to offer her an escape.
“Nothing gets past you,” he smirked back at her, “so can I count on you?”
Her eyes darted to Tara as she and Flora were running yet another lap around the downstairs and playing tag, completely oblivious to the fact that she was going to hide the eggs so well that even the grown-ups wouldn’t be able to find them.
She started plotting the perfect hiding places when Henry said, “Hey, I see that glint in your eye. Just remember they’re kindergarteners.”
She let out an indignant puff of air.
“But they need to learn sometime to hunt for harder eggs!” she protested.
“You’re right, but I’m not sure they need to learn that lesson yet when they’re still trying to figure out that two plus two equals four,” he countered.
“Ugh, whatever,” she said, crossing her arms, “I’ll take it easy, I guess.”
“You don’t have to make it so easy that they’re just lying on the ground, but don’t go hiding them where they can’t see or reach them,” he said, handing her a small bag with colorful plastic eggs.
“I’ll keep them distracted down here while you hide them all upstairs,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“They’re too distracted running around to know what I’m doing,” she said as she made her way up the stairs as he followed close behind.
She wasn’t sure if for once Tara was actually listening, if Flora saw the bag, or if they were magnetically drawn to the sound of wrapped chocolate shifting inside plastic egg containers, but when she was halfway upstairs, both girls stopped and gasped.
Flora pointed a tiny finger at her, momentarily freezing Cindy in her tracks.
“Get her!” Tara screamed and charged with Flora at her heels.
Cindy’s grip on the bag tightened, startled by their sudden frenzy, but Henry jumped to the bottom of the stairs and blocked their path. They tried so hard to squeeze past him, but he easily scooped them up, one crazy kid under each arm, and threw them onto the couch.
“Run, Cindy!” Henry called in mock fear after her as the kids flew off the couch to go after her again, but he caught them easily enough and threw them lightly back onto the couch, “save yourself!”
She shook her head at him and went the rest of the way up, taking her dear sweet time, knowing her sister and cousin weren’t going to come up after her. They were giggling hard each time they were thrown onto the couch again and again, and she knew he’d keep them busy enough until she hid them.
However, she did figure out that the longer he was distracting them, the less he was around her mom and keeping Chase away.
She grimaced and went to work. She went into Tara’s room first and hid some eggs between pillows, in the laps of some of her stuffed animals, and on the windowsill. She passed by her room because there was no way she was letting little kids into her room, and went into the bathroom, putting one on top of the bar soap, and hiding another behind the slightly ajar door. The next room was her mom’s study, and she realized she was already down to half of the eggs. She made quick work of hiding some of them in a pair of her shoes by the door, around the fake trees and plants dotting the room, and lastly in her office chair.
One room remained: her mom’s bedroom. There were only a couple eggs left, so she was confident she could easily find some hiding places for them and then go downstairs to send Henry to save her mom.
She opened the door to her room to find three baskets sitting on her bed.
“Hm,” she hummed aloud, knowing immediately that two of them were for her and Tara.
Each basket had chocolate bunnies in it, but there were specific gifts that gave it away: Tara’s basket had a small plush unicorn on it, and hers had a collection of neon nail polish poking out from the paper straw.
The last basket was a mystery though. The basket had things she knew her mom liked, including some perfume and bath bombs, but she had no idea why her mom would make a basket to give to herself.
It was a short-lived mystery as Cindy saw a small, colorful card. She opened it and saw it had Love, Henry on the bottom.
An egg-shaped thing formed in her throat. She knew they’d been dating for years, but it never occurred to her that he would have said he loved her. There was only one grown-up guy who could say he loved mom in that special way, but he wasn’t around anymore.
A fraction of the forbidden memory came back before she could distract herself with some mental artwork. She remembered the rainy day at the cemetery, and her mind nearly rewound all the way back to seeing her mom’s tear-stricken face. Before she could see it in her mind though, her heart broke all over again, the cold rain from that day seeping into the cracks before she could quickly glue the pieces back together.
She took a shuddered breath and shoved her hand into the bag for the last eggs, desperate for some proof that she wasn’t four years ago. The eggs were slimy in her sweaty hands, but she cleared her throat and tossed a couple onto the ground, not caring that Tara would say they were too easy to find. One last egg was left in the bag and went to her mom’s bedside table, placing it on top of her alarm clock.
She was ready to make a quick exit when something gold caught her eye in the basket that belonged to her mom: it was a golden egg.
Curiosity got the better of her as she picked it up and shook the plastic egg spray-painted to look like it was hiding something super special. Something hard rattled on the inside and before remembering that it was rude to look through stuff that wasn’t hers, she cracked it open.
She stopped breathing, frozen in time as the mystery gift inside had fallen with a silk thud onto her mom’s bed. It was very shiny and it was very bright from the sunlight that came into the room, but she wasn’t transfixed by the piece of art in front of her, she was scared stiff at what the sparkly thing meant.
It was a diamond ring that glinted, feigning friendliness, pretending to be inviting and alluring. But all she saw was a piece of jewelry that threatened her dad to stay where he was: always in the ground and never spoken of again.
She gingerly grabbed the ring, placed it back inside the egg, and clamped it shut with a click. Her heart raced as faster than her sister likely was downstairs, and she shoved the egg into the pocket of her dress.
She let her feet lead her out of the room, her mind completely blank. There were no colors or fun designs on the canvas in her mind, just a white, empty space as she walked down the hallway. It remained spotless as she mechanically stepped down the stairs, and it continued its impression of a snowy blanket when Henry approached her from his post at the bottom of the stairs and asked if the eggs were hidden.
She nodded solemnly and put the empty bag in his giddy, outstretched hand.
“Hey, no need to be so glum. I promise you can hide the eggs in harder places when they get to grade school,” he said.
Without wasting any more time, he announced to the girls that they could go upstairs and try and find the eggs.
“Hang on!” Uncle Drew called from the kitchen, “I need to make sure my munchkin doesn’t tear any rooms up”
“Oh yeah, good idea!” Henry called after him as he ran up the stairs after Flora, who was already laying siege to Tara’s room with Tara yelling at her to not throw her plushies around.
Guilt gnawed at her for a split second, causing her canvas to wilt at the edges, but she forced herself to go to get a snack with her hands firmly in her pockets and one of them with a death grip on the egg with the ring in it.
It wasn’t until she got to the snack table that she realized she was going to need to take her hand out of her pockets to grab some food. She wasn’t too motivated to actually eat anything, but she knew she had to try and blend in and all the adults were snacking and talking at the same time. She swallowed as she tried to decide which snack would make her look the most innocent.
“Hey, kiddo,” Henry said behind her.
She jumped and her reflexes forced her to shove her hands even farther into her pockets, nearly ripping them out at the bottoms.
“Easy there, you’re not in trouble from grabbing food. I just wanted to ask if you hid eggs in your mom’s room.”
Her eyes widened.
“So you did see the baskets in there. I realized too late I needed to hide them from you and Tara. I was going to surprise you with them after the party was over.”
Henry rubbed the back of his head with a sigh.
“I really goofed on that one,” he said, looking down at the floor with his hands on his hips.
“Yeah, you did,” she said, but it came out harsher than she meant, which made him pick his eyes from the floor to her.
A moment of ice-cold silence filled the air between them amidst the sunny conversations around them. He was confused and looked a bit hurt, while she was trying to backpedal, desperate to not give away that she knew that he had been planning to ask her mom to marry him.
If she couldn’t have her dad back, she wanted things to at least stay the way they were. She wanted to see her mom stare at the picture of her dad still in her wallet when she thought her daughters were busy doing other things. She wanted her aunt and uncle to remind her that her dad would be proud of her. She wanted to talk about the funny jokes and stories her dad would tell to Tara because she was too young to remember them.
More than anything, even if he wasn’t alive anymore, she wanted his memory to be. And if her mom married Henry…
“Everything okay, you two?” Cindy’s mom asked.
“I think we’re good, I think Cindy’s upset she got a surprise spoiled for her because she was doing me a favor,” Henry said, his peppy demeanor springing back.
“Aw, I’m really sorry honey,” she said, “I really wanted to see the look at your face when you saw your nail polish. Henry triple checked with me to make sure you didn’t have those colors before he bought them for you.”
Cindy offered a weak smile, hiding behind it.
“And I think you’re going to like what’s in yours,” Henry said, pulling her mom in for a side hug.
“You’re always so good at gift-giving, I can only guess what’s in it!” she exclaimed.
I really don’t think you’ll be able to, mom, she thought bitterly.
“Oh, oh! You can tell me if you can’t tell her!” Aunt Penelope said, unsurprisingly wielding yet another deviled egg.
She wanted to bet her invisible five bucks that it was probably the last one.
“Well… I can’t tell you what’s in it, but there’s a special egg in Valerie’s basket.”
Henry had to talk louder at the end of his sentence because the girls had come crashing down the stairs, evidently done with their egg raid.
“What about Valerie’s basket?” Uncle Drew asked over the girls immediately cracking the eggs open and sharing their spoils, and making trades as necessary.
“Henry had a golden egg in Valerie’s basket,” Aunt Penelope with an eyebrow wiggle as she popped the deviled egg in her mouth.
Uncle Drew’s eyebrows knit together as the girls moved their operation into the living room and out of the kitchen.
“I didn’t see a golden egg up there,” he said.
“Huh?” Henry asked.
“I promise I didn’t mean to be nosy, but I peeked into the baskets while the girls were in her room, and I didn’t see any egg in her basket. It wasn’t hiding under all the straw was it? I didn’t go digging.”
Henry bit his lip for a second and excused himself to go upstairs.
Damn.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Cindy said quietly and excused herself, walking out of the kitchen but then sprinting up the stairs when none of the grown-ups were watching. She caught a glimpse of Henry’s back hunched over her mom’s basket at the end of the hall as she ran and then slammed the bathroom door shut behind her.
She immediately pulled the egg out of her pocket and cracked it open as quietly as she could, staring hard at the shining thing that was causing her so much trouble. She didn’t want Henry to ask her mom to marry him, but she also knew she couldn’t be caught with the ring. The grown-ups would surround her and other than obviously getting grounded, they’d ask her over and over why she did it.
Her eyesight got fuzzy with tears and she blinked them back as she looked at the ring pinched between her fingers in her hand and then at herself in the mirror. She just wanted the problem to go away, but she couldn’t think of anything, and her mind continued to spin. It spun even harder when she heard the grown-ups out in the hallway.
“-girls didn’t pick it up, I watched them,” she heard Uncle Drew say as he passed outside the bathroom.
They were all on the hunt for the golden egg, but it was lying in two pieces on the bathroom sink and no one knew but her.
She snapped her head from the door back to her reflection in the mirror when the perfect solution came to mind.
She eyed the toilet’s reflection in the mirror, and then flicked her eyes back to the ring. She put the ring back into the egg and her eyes darted from the toilet to the egg one more time. She held her hand over the only way she could see herself getting out of the situation without needing to explain herself.
All she needed to do was just tilt her hand a tiny bit, and then it would fall in. A quick flush would make it disappear and she could walk out and the memory of her dad would be safe.
But why wasn’t she just doing it already? Her brain was telling her to tilt her hand, but it wasn’t budging. She knew she wanted to drop it, but apparently her hand didn’t. Even when she did finally fight against her muscles enough to move her hand slightly, her fingers wrapped around the egg like a safety net.
“Damn!” she said aloud, only because she knew her mom wouldn’t yell at her since she wasn’t close by.
But she knew she’d get in even worse trouble if she or Henry ever found out that she was seriously considering flushing a ring down the toilet.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Cindy?”
Her heart pounded so hard she nearly lost her grip on the egg and she pulled it close to her chest and turned to the door. There was no way anyone heard her swear! Or at least she hoped no one had.
“Yeah?” she responded, recognizing over her timpani heartbeat that it was her mom at the door.
“I just wanted to let you know that we’re all going to go down into the basement in case it somehow ended up down there, so don’t panic if you don’t see anyone whenever you come out of the bathroom.”
She let out a sigh and the gears in her mind whirred at full speed. While everyone was downstairs, she could sneak into her room and hide the egg if they’d already been looking around upstairs. She wasn’t about to let Henry propose by putting it back into the basket in her room, but hiding it for now would give her just a little more time to figure out what to do.
“Okay!” she called out, standing stock still with the egg still firmly encased in her grip, as if her moving an inch would give away her guilt.
She listened intently to the sound of her mom’s footsteps creaking on the staircase and she waited until she couldn’t hear any more creaking for several of her panicked breaths. She faintly heard voices and a door open, but she didn’t dare move until she heard a door close and the voices stop.
She put the egg back in her pocket and opened the bathroom door, poking her head out to scan both directions. No one on the left, and no one on the right. With no one in sight, she tip-toed into her bedroom a few rooms down.
She pulled the egg out of her pocket and looked hard around her room for a decent enough hiding place. It was too bad she was too old to have a bunch of plushies like Tara had in her room, otherwise she would have hid the egg there. Her mom went into her closet too much to put clothes away, so that wasn’t a good spot. Same with anywhere near her bed, or her dresser. She rotated the egg in her hands as she scanned for anywhere in her room where her mom wouldn’t accidentally find it, but no luck.
Clearly, her room wasn’t the best place to hide the egg, but maybe she could scan Tara’s room, and-
She turned around and yelped when she saw Henry standing in her doorway.
She froze, eyes wide, and she braced herself. She knew he was going to yell at her, why wouldn’t he? She was in huge trouble, and she-
“I promise I’m not going to propose today, but can I have the egg back?”
She didn’t understand, why wasn’t he screaming at her and telling her mom what she did? Why wasn’t he mad at her?
She had no idea how long she stood frozen like a pastel statue, almost too afraid to breathe when Henry added with a small nod, “Turns out I’m not ready yet.”
“Why?” she asked, amazing herself at her own question: she didn’t want him to marry her mom, so why did she care?
“I got so excited thinking about proposing to your mom on one of her favorite days that I didn’t even think about how you or your sister would handle it.”
He hovered at the entrance to her room, looking down at the floor after his explanation and she looked down with him. The canvas in her mind was painting pictures of happy times with her dad smiling, but she knew at that moment that her dad wouldn’t be smiling at her. She knew deep down that he would be disappointed that she stole something and that made her eyes start to swim.
“Tell you what, how about we make a deal?”
Cindy was silent and not optimistic, sure that he was going to make a one-sided deal like grown-ups did sometimes.
“How about you give me the egg, and I don’t give it to your mom, at least not yet. But this time next year, we see how you feel about it. How does that sound?”
She was relieved for a second, but she had her reservations. She was scared at first, but she rationalized that if he hadn’t yelled at her when he caught her red-handed, then maybe he wouldn’t be mad with her next question.
“But what if I’m not ready then?” she decided to ask, testing the waters.
Henry chuffed to himself with a sideways smile, “then I’ll just ask again the year after that. I’ll keep it up until you’re 60 if I have to.”
“Then you’d be really old,” she teased like she normally would, but then sucked in her lips, remembering the tenseness of the moment before.
“Ancient, even,” he replied, playing along.
She looked down at the egg, and she found that her fingers weren’t as tight around it anymore.
“I don’t know when I’ll be ready, if ever,” she said.
“I hope you know I won’t replace your dad.”
“I don’t want to forget my dad,” she corrected him, and surprised herself with her own honesty.
A uncharacteristically sage knowing passed across his face, like something had clicked into place.
“You couldn’t forget your dad even if you tried, kiddo,” he said, “He’s in your sister and your mom. The man even gave us Egg Day! And he helped make you, let’s not forget that either.”
Cindy smirked.
“But no matter what, I figure if I’m with your mom, you, and your sister while you decide, it’ll have been time well-spent. But, for now, I do need that back.”
He motioned toward the egg and she had almost forgotten she still had it. She took several steps closer to him and offered it to him, ready to let it go, at least this year.
“Deal,” she said as seriously as she could muster.
He took the egg out of her hand and put it in his pocket.
“No hard feelings?” he asked, holding a hand out for her to shake.
She was relieved when she took his hand and shook it like her dad taught: firmly but not too hard.
“So how about we join the goose chase in the basement? Could be fun,” he said, stepping away and allowing her to pass.
“Sure,” she shrugged and went downstairs.
She had her hand on the banister as she went down and Henry said behind her, “Really nice nails, by the way.”
She smiled to herself, glad that a grown-up finally noticed.
“Thanks, but I think I’m going to paint them gold every year from now on.”
“For no good reason, I assume?” he teased.
“Nothing gets past you,” she said, parroting him from earlier.
Winning pieces are published as received.
Fiction Potluck
January 2025
Second Place Winner:
Danielle Ice
Danielle Ice was bit by the writing bug in elementary school and still hasn’t recovered. She’s been published in several literary magazines and has a space opera trilogy available on Amazon. When she isn’t writing, she’s daydreaming while walking in her neighborhood, gaming, or spending time with family. Or petting her cat, Dave.
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