She walks decisively to a shelf near the front, which contains all the yearbooks from years past. Mrs. Calloway removes one with a spine that saysClass of 1995.
The year my mother attended.
She sets it on top of the waist-high shelf and opens to the index, searching for Green, Clara. Her finger stops on the name, and I’m excited to see there are three page numbers. Mrs. Calloway gives my shoulder a squeeze, and, understanding thatJude and I might want some privacy, excuses herself to the main office.
I blink down at my mother’s name, proof that she’s been here this whole time. A part of this school. She walked these halls. Sat in these classrooms. Gazed out the windows, daydreaming of Simon and the Vandenberg estate and probably, the rift. With a shaky exhale, I turn to the page listed first. Her yearbook picture. In it, her nose is sun-kissed, her ears pierced, her eyes not so haunted. I capture it on my phone, then turn to the next page listed in the index. This one, a short write-up about the high school’s first poetry club, with Clara Green listed as one of its members.
“She wrote poetry,” I say, more a question than a statement.
I didn’t know she wrote anything.
I capture this, too, then turn to the final page, this one a collection of pictures taken at a pep rally. In one of them, my mother smiles tentatively with a group of girls. I stare at her face, as mesmerized as I’ve ever been, when Jude points to her clavicle. She’s wearing a v-neck shirt. Her collarbones are pronounced like my own. And what he has noticed takes my breath away.
The symbol.
A tad grainy, but unmistakable.
It’s not etched on a locket. Or sketched in some corner. It’s right there, beneath her left collarbone, like a tattoo on her skin.
After school, I show my dad the picture, zooming in on the mark in question.
“That was her birthmark,” Dad says.
We’re standing in the rose garden in the back lawn, to the right of the hedge maze.
“A birthmark?”
He lifts his ball cap to wipe his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel. The temperature is mild, but the sun has come out, and my dad’s a hard worker. “I thought it looked more like a tattoo, but she always said it was a birthmark.”
So then, this explains it. Why the symbol has always struck a familiar cord. I must have seen it on my own mother, a “birthmark” on her skin. This mysterious mark has become a web of gossamer, connecting one mystery to the other—the portrait and the cold case, confirming what I’ve already begun to suspect. The two aren’t separate mysteries at all, but one.
“You doing okay, kiddo?” Dad asks.
When I look up at him, his eyes are concerned.
“I know this is a lot to take in. A really bizarre coincidence, if you ask me. Moving here, of all places.” He rubs his chin. “You know I’m not much of a believer when it comes to all that supernatural stuff. But with the way you took to this place, it always felt like, I don’t know. Fate. I would hate for this discovery to …” His words fall away with a frown.
Towhat, I wonder.
Undo me?
Send me back to therapy?
Dad looks so stressed. And for just a moment, I’m tempted to show him everything.Ezra’s Obsession. The drawing of the locket with my mother’s “birthmark” drawn in the corner. Her visit to Tulane five years ago. Simon’s journal entries.
I try to imagine what he might say. How he would respond. And I know, deep in my bones, it would be too much. Especially when he’s already wrestling with worry. And perhaps—a flare-up of grief?
“I’m okay, Dad,” I say with a smile. “It’s kinda cool, if you think about it. I’m going to school where she went to school. I’m friends with a Vandenberg, just like she was.”
I’m laying it on a little too thick. Saying the wrong words, probably. Mom didn’t have a happy ending in Foggy Hollow. Her best friend disappeared, and she was sent away, and eventually admitted into afacility. I wonder if Dad knows about the psych ward. I’m afraid to ask. So I just kiss his cheek and tell him not to worry.
A couple hours later, I’m sitting in the Calloway’s dining room, listening as Twig and Naomi tell us everything about their time at CMU. When dinner is over and Naomi goes home, we slip into his bedroom, and I tell him everything that happened while he was gone. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. He’s not upset that I didn’ttell him sooner. He understands why I didn’t want to get into it on the phone.
That night, exhaustion steamrolls me.
I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.
I have dreams.
