“It won’t be long before I’ll see you again,” Father says. Miles sets his chin but then drops his bag and throws his arms around our father in a hard hug. “It’s only temporary,” Father says. He swallows, his voice catching. He lets go of Miles and leans down to whisper in my ear, “My little elf.”
Miles and I board the train, and Cass stands just below the window, tears streaming down her face. She’s tied my ribbon into her hair. As the porter loads my suitcase, its tag turns over like a browned leaf and I catch the swirl of my mother’s handwriting.
I wave to my father, but he has already turned away. Now there is not a doubt left that I will see him again. This can’t be my final memory of him, his shoulders weighted under a sky the color of graphite, my reflection flickering and fading as I wait for him to turn back one last time and watch us go.
The train ride north to Sterling is four hours. I don’t mean to fall asleep, but halfway there I do. My neck has a crick in it when I jerk awake. Every dream is the same: the bright puffs of flowers around Mother’s bed; how still she is, her hands like marble when I reach up to touch them; and then the chill that echoes through to my bones until I gasp awake.
For a moment I think we’ve missed our stop, but Miles is sitting across from me, sketching, and there’s nothing out the window but fields and sky.
I reach for the hidden tip of my knobby right ear, a habit of childish comfort I’ve been trying to give up. I can tell that Miles notices by the way he smirks down at the notepad in his lap. His fingers guide various pencils over the page until the familiar curve of our mother’s headstone appears, wreathed with a rainbow of flowers.
It’s all he draws lately, the same picture repeating, just like my dream. I wonder which one of us will stop first.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, unwrapping the peanut butter sandwiches Mrs. Reid packed and handing a half-smashed one to Miles. The train car is almost empty now. We eat without talking, and when I tire of staring out the window, I pull out the Shakespeare book.
The cover is thick, bound with burgundy leather. I flip through the pages, wondering where to start. There are pen markings under certain lines, and she’s written nonsensical notes in the margins, circling words like nose-herb and scribbling Sounds like Var’s . . .
The play Twelfth Night seems to have the most markings. Some of the pages are bent, and the ink is smeared. I flip to the end again, but this time I ignore the envelope. The back cover is lined with velvet, and my fingertips leave patterns on it the way they would on a frosted window.
And then I notice the smallest tear fraying at the corner.
I glance at Miles. He is absorbed with drawing the yellow burst of a sunflower, so I pull on the cover’s thread. It comes away, and I realize it’s been sewn on in faint stitches. My curiosity catches like a white flame, and I work out the stitches with my nail, staring out the window so that I won’t draw Miles’s attention. When the flap is loosened enough, I slide the book back into my knapsack to hide it. Then I sweep my fingers into the opening.
Even before my fingertips feel glass, I know it.
There’s something hidden inside.
Chapter Two
I tear the opening a little more to give my fingers space to work. Whatever is hidden there feels cold and smooth. I draw it out and examine it in the palm of my hand.
It is a colorless jewel, as clear as water, with a teardrop suspended inside, set in a gold band. The familiar chill from my dream suddenly seeps through my fingertips. It’s my mother’s ring. I never saw her right hand without it, and I assumed it had been buried with her. Her rings were usually caked with dirt from her garden, but this one looks as though it’s been thoroughly cleaned. It stings a little to see it now. This is what I would have wanted to take with me if she had given me the choice. Why would she hide it in a book and plan to send it off to some stranger named Stefen?
I slip the stone onto my finger, but it’s too big, so I hold it in my palm. It takes not half a minute for Miles to notice.
“What’s that?” He looks up from his drawing, his eyebrows knitting.
“It’s Mother’s ring. She gave it to me,” I lie, and hurriedly unclasp my necklace, exchanging my small heart pendant for the stone. It clinks against the buttons lining my dress.
“Next stop is yours,” says a gruff voice behind me, so near that I jump. The conductor’s breath is stale with coffee, staining the air around us. I haven’t seen any signs of a town since I jerked awake from my dream, and fields stretch out endlessly from beyond the window, only occasionally split by a farmhouse or barn. Gardner had been a small town to grow up in, but this feels like being dropped in the middle of an ocean. An ocean of cornstalks burnt gold by the sun.
“The finishing word,” Miles says, putting his boots up on the seat next to me and closing his notepad. “Go.”
I play with the clasp of my tortoiseshell barrette. The finishing word was Mother’s game, and I’m not sure I ever want to play it again. Every mile on this train, every minute that passes is taking me farther away from my old life. The life I still want to be living.
A thought comes to me gently, and it is in my mother’s voice: That ship has sailed, honey. Now you can either drown or hitch a ride on the next one.
Will anyone put flowers on her grave while we are all away?
Even though I’m only half thinking, I have a stroke of genius. “My finishing word is palimpsest,” I say. I snap the hair clip triumphantly.
Miles slumps back in his seat. “I’ve never heard of that word. You probably made it up.”
“No, I didn’t. You know tabula rasa?”
He gives me a vacant stare.
“We’re starting over with a blank slate, but we haven’t completely left our past.”
