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Go and ye will be found?
I’m running through an untamed forest with branches of anger, despair, and confusion clawing at my soul.
“Eala Duir?” I know enough Irish to translate the ridiculous name. Swan Oak sounds like a municipal cemetery. I’m not Eala Duir.
A slithering sensation runs along my spine.
But I am.
Was that the name my birth parents gave me? I leap to my feet and pace around the table.
“Too many secrets, Máthair.”
My gaze returns to the pile of papers. A bank statement pokes out. I grab it, crumbling the edges as I read the balance and process a crap ton of zeroes. Eala Duir is worth a hundred thousand dollars. There’s a post-it with a username and password. I punch the bank’s website and then the details into my phone, and there she is. There I am. Eala Duir owns a tidy nest egg, a far cry from scraping-out-a-living Ella. Is this the result of our frugal life of thrift store clothing and budget vacations? I’m sick. Did Máthair deprive herself to create a dragon’s hoard for me?
I back away from the table as if the papers will leap up and strangle me.
Shadows drape the apartment from a bank of gray clouds floating above the garden. Out the window, flickers from the gargantuan electronic billboards in Times Square reflect off greenhouse glass. Today, Éostre, the spring equinox, is supposed to herald the end of the dark part of the Celtic year, but for me, the darkness of the unknown is just beginning.
I stare at the unreadable words on the silver band around my finger. The woman who claimed I was her treasure left me nothing but an Irish inscription and an envelope packed with revelations.
The groan of the elevator snaps me from my daze. Colleen wheels a cart to the open apartment door. “Let’s get the party started. I coerced a couple of the bellhops to help…” She takes one look at my face and rushes over. “Oh, Ellie. I didn’t mean to be thoughtless. This must be shit for you.” Her arms wrap around me, and she squeezes as only Colleen can.
When she releases me, I point wordlessly at the papers.
“Your passport. Perfect.” She fans the air with it. “You can’t use a missing passport as an excuse not to go on the trip.”
“Open it.”
“Why? So I can tell you your picture isn’t as horrible as it probably is?” Colleen does a double take when she opens the passport. “What the hell?”
I flap the birth certificate at her. She snatches it from my hands. Her eyes widen as she reads it. Before she puts it down, I hand her Máthair’s note.
“Eala—ow-la.” She tastes the sound of my real name. “Guess I’ll have to call you Owlie now instead of Ellie.”
“Please don’t.” I study her as she continues to skim the paper. “I can’t believe she kept this from me.”
Colleen crinkles her lips. “Maybe she was waiting until you snagged the permanent position at Kennard Park to share this.” She drops into the chair opposite me and leans on her elbows to stare me down. “We all know you can only handle one life change at a time.”
“Who I really am isn’t a life change. It’s my life.” Lifting my hand close to her face, I show her the ring. “And then there’s this.”
Colleen grabs my hand and holds the silver band to the light, twisting it to read the engraving. “Teacht orm?”
“Do you know what it means?” Colleen, unlike me, was more attentive to her Irish language classes in high school and college.
Her face drains of color. “I do.”
“Tell me what it says. I think it could be something Máthair wanted me to know.”
Colleen’s gaze drops to the note from my grandmother and then slowly lifts to meet mine. My skin prickles at the intensity in her expression.
“It means find me.”
Chapter 3
The Swap
When I was six, Máthair took me to Vermont on one of our rare vacations out of the city. The maple syrup farm I loved. The converted toboggan run turned alpine slide terrified me. We slid and slid without any way to gauge how long it would be before hitting bottom. The same nauseating sensation claws at my chest now as our plane buffets its way across the North Atlantic. Each time I’m close to drifting off, a cart rattling down the aisle, or an overloud conversation snaps me back to the reality that I’m trapped in a metal tube playing chicken with gravity.
