“Yep,” I say back, searching for an outlet so we can plug in the phonograph to see if it works. Imove aside a taxidermy fox and a velvet-upholstered chair chewed by mice.
“So … where’s your mom?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” I say, all false bravado. “She took off when I was nine. At least, that’s what my dad says. And Dr. Penny.”
“Dr. Penny?”
“My therapist. After my mom left, my dad was worried about me, so I had the privilege of sitting on her couch for awhile.” I brave a look, and discover Jude standing very still, watching me—shadows beneath his eyes, that bruise along his jaw, his tie loose and ever so slightly crooked.
“I had a dream before she disappeared. The night before, actually. She got swallowed up by a black hole. Dr. Penny said it was trauma, manifesting itself in sleep. My mom was troubled. She grew up in foster care. And somewhere along the line, she became an addict. Her presence in my life was pretty unstable, so Dr. Penny’s diagnosis makes sense, I guess. It’s just kind of weird, because after that dream, I never saw or heard from her again. Not a phone call. Not a card or a letter. She just … vanished.”
Jude is looking at me like something has clicked into place, like suddenly he understands why I am the way I am. Annoyed, I scoot the parlor table closer to the outlet I’ve found. “What aboutyourparents?”
“They’re dead,” he says.
My heart twists.
Jude plugs in the phonograph’s cord and flips the switch. The turntable comes to life with a quiet crackle.
It still works.
He sets the vinyl into place, lifts the lever, and lowers the needle.
Music fills the room.
The witchy aesthetic combined with Stevie’s ethereal voice has a smile whispering across my lips. For a moment, Jude and I stare at one another. And I want to tell him I’m sorry. That his parents are dead. That he had to move away from his boarding school. That he’s stuck here with a stepmother he doesn’t seem to like very much and a cousin he likes even less. But before I can get any words out, he rubs the back of his neck and opens a nearby trunk.
It’s filled with old books and journals and several random odds and ends, including a crystal ball with a dead spider inside. I remove it and set it aside, then pick up one of the books—The Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald. There’s a stack of letters underneath, bound in twine. “They’re addressed to Enoch,” I say.
“My one-eyed uncle.” Jude picks up a gold pocket compass and flips it open.
“Your one-eyed uncle?”
“Great, great uncle, if you want to get technical. He died before I was born, but my dad told me stories. His stuff must have been sent to the estate after he passed.”
A tube made of leather rests at the bottom of the trunk, spanning its length. I pull it out, take off its tarnished brass cap, and remove a long roll of aged parchment from inside. It resists unrolling, stiff from years in its cylindrical case. But as it slowly unfurls, breathing fresh air for the first time in decades, names and dates begin to appear.
We have just uncovered a Vandenberg family tree.
15
A FAMILY TREE
The hefty parchment doesn’t want to stay flat. The bottom half keeps curling up into a roll. So, with Stevie Nicks playing in the background, we bring the document to an old drafting table, where we force it into submission.
I setThe Great Gatsbyon its top edge,The Maltese Falconon the bottom, and take in the familiar family crest and the elegant handwriting. Bold flourishes and graceful loops, the ink faded to a rusty-brown. Further down, the handwriting changes to something more utilitarian, but with the same measured care.
At the top, there are two names—Andreas and Catherine Vandenberg, who, according to the tree, migrated to America from the Netherlands in the mid eighteenth century with their two sons, Ezra and Raphael. At the bottom, there’s a postscript.Compiled by Isaiah Vandenberg, Anno Domini 1890.Underneath it, in that utilitarian scrawl,Continued in faithful record by Enoch Vandenberg.And smack dab in the parchment’s center is a blackened scorch mark.
Jude brushes his finger over the spot.
The missing name is surrounded by other Vandenbergs whose identities remain intact. The scorch mark had a wife and three children, one of whom was Isaiah, the original author of the tree. I take in the brittle hole with its charred edges, an open wound in the family’s past, and wonder why. What offense would erase a person so violently?
I do a quick count of the generations descending from Ezra’s line. There are eight including himself, with Simon and Lily—the teenage siblings from the cold case—at the bottom. On Raphael’s side, I count only three, each one with increasingly less information.
A symptom of Ezra and Raphael’s long-standing enmity, perhaps? Or maybe it’s simply the natural fallout of so much distance, for at some point in time, Raphael moved to Winchester, England, where he married, had children, and died. Whatever the reason, the original author of the tree stopped keeping track of Raphael’s lineage. Under the third generation, a foursome of disconnected names is scrawled in Enoch’s hand. A question mark follows each one, as if he knew of their existence, but didn’t know where to place them.
Three of the four set off a chorus of bells in my mind.
