But gently, with all the tenderness in the world. He places Simon’s journal in my hand with the picture of my mother tucked inside. “You should have this.”
30
PIECES OF THE SAME PUZZLE
Itoss and turn and doze a little. But slumber eludes me. So I stare at the ceiling through the dark, listening to the sounds outside my window. The creak of tree branches. The rustle of leaves. The dull clank of the iron gate as the roof groans overhead. Somewhere further away, a train horn echoes through the hollow—a drawn out, lonely sound.
I can’t stop thinking about her, living in this town. Friends with Simon when the Vandenbergs disappeared. Then sent away.
Why?
Why did they send her away, and why did she come back five years ago? And why did she make an effort to see an old man from her past, but none at all to see her daughter or her husband?
Maybe Jude’s right. Maybe she had no ideaDad and I lived here. And maybe that should make me feel better somehow.
But it doesn’t. Not even a little.
Because in some small, honest, private part of my brain, I’ve always imagined her keeping track of me. Paying attention to my whereabouts. Following my endeavors. Maybe even listening to my podcast? If she didn’t know I was living in Foggy Hollow then she never bothered to look me up, and somehow, that hurts more than any of the other possibilities my imagination has conjured.
I blink at my ceiling.
Maybe she didn’t know.
Maybe she did.
Maybe it’s better thinking she’s dead. Easier to believe she isn’t out there at all, than to believe she is, choosing to stay away.
I turn on my side.
Questions and scenarios tumble about like clothes in a dryer. I wish I could shut off my brain, but it refuses to settle.
I turn onto my other side.
The clock reads 5:18 a.m.
With a huff, I sit up in bed and kick off my covers and wave the white flag. Insomnia has won. Fighting it this late in the game feels futile. With my elbows on my knees, I rub my eyes with the heel of my palms. When I look up, my attention settles on the bottom drawer of my writing desk where I keep the memory box and two of her favorite books—one became a bedtime storybirthday tradition, and the other brought me and Twig together in fourth grade.
I pad across the creaky floorboards. I pull open the drawer, remove the box and the birthday book, turn on my lamp, and settle back into bed. I open the story about the boy in the wolf suit and flip through the pages, stopping on the one where love sounds like hunger, and the monsters beg Max to stay. She always read this page best, with her arm pulling me in extra tight. And I wonder, was my mother a wild thing? Or was she Max, and the wild thing was me, begging her to stay?
I set the book aside and open the box, beholding the collection within. Faded postcards written in guilt. The letters, too. I take them out, searching for clues in the tear-stained words. Something—anything—that might reference Simon Vandenberg or this rift they traveled through. I find nothing but apologies and empty promises.
But there is the front page of aNational Enquirer, a magazine she could never quite resist. In hindsight, it almost feels like a clue. I read the headline—Vampire Baby Born in Idaho, Doctors Baffled—while imagining another.Family Disappears Through Inter-dimensional Portal, Girlfriend Left Behind. Did she believe these wild stories? Was she searching for one similar to her own?
I move aside the sour cream container and the empty pill bottle and the Chinese finger trap, my intention set upon the photographs.
But those intentions are thwarted.
I freeze, staring down into the box where rosary beads have tangled with the antique necklace she was always wearing. A skeleton key on a chain. I pick it up and measure the weight of it in my palm—this thin, oblong object with a handle like a clover and a small rectangle on the end that engages with the lock.
I snag my phone and take a picture.
Not thinking of the time, I text it immediately to Jude.
Insomnia must have gotten the best of him, too. Because as soon as the picture goes through, a scrolling ellipse appears on my screen.
The house is asleep, wrapped in a hush as I follow Jude through the east-wing corridor lined with looming marble statues. He speaks in a low voice, as if not to disturb them. We’re less inclined to run into Isabel in the east wing, he tells me. When she wakes up, she’ll head to the dining hall where Tulane will bring her coffee and breakfast. We slip inside a room I’ve never been in before.
Jude closes the doors behind us.
