“Well, where the heck did they come from?” she asked.
“The letters were in there.” I pointed at the guitar case. “It was under my mom’s bed.”
My friends exchanged glances, and Boomer said, “So…she was hiding them from you?”
“No,” I fired back, hating that way my voice had risen. “That’snotpossible. If Rose contacted us, my mom would’ve told me.”
There was a long pause. Asha thumbed her ear, and after a few more drawn-out seconds, she asked, “Are you sure?” It was obvious from her tone that she was skeptical, that she thought my mom was behind this.
But Asha was wrong. Wasn’t she?
She had to be.
I shook my head again, trying to dislodge the doubt that was creeping into my thoughts. “My mom wouldnothide something like this. You don’t understand what it was like for her when Rose left. First her husband, then her daughter. It was as if our whole family was leaving her one by one.”
“Okay,” Asha said, showing both her palms. “But how did the letters end up here?”
“I don’t know. There has to be some sort of explanation.”
“Like what? Magical letter-bearing elves?” Boomer said, and Asha elbowed him in the side for a second time.
I tugged my lip in thought.He has a point.
There didn’t seem to be a plausible answer for how the letters had ended up in my mom’s room other than the obvious one, but I refused to believe she had anything to do with it. That she’d been hiding my sister from me.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Asha suggested as I continued to wrestle with the mystery of it all.
Duh, Felicity.
I felt stupid for not thinking of that myself. The only way to know for sure was to confront her about the letters, so I punched in a number I knew by heart and waited. My mom was pretty good about answering her phone, even when she was at work, but today my call went straight to voice mail. There didn’t seem to be a proper way to phrase my question in a message, so I sighed and hung up.
“No luck?” Asha asked.
Shaking my head, I said, “It doesn’t make sense. Even if my momislying to me, how could she intercept every letter Rose sent? I’m the one who collects the mail.”
“Look at the recipient address though.” Boomer pointed at the envelope. “It’s a PO box.”
He was right. All the envelopes had the same address printed in Rose’s loopy script, a box at our local post office. Why would she send letters to a place where I’d never receive them? I was about ready to throw my hands up at the absurdity of the situation, but as I stared down at the mess of paper spread out on the floor, itoccurred to me there was another way to get my answers.
“The letters,” I said and shuffled through the pile. “Help me find the most recent one.”
We spent a minute searching through the mail.
“Here,” Asha said, holding up one of the thicker envelopes. “Sent a week ago.”
“From where?” I asked. There were so many different return addresses that I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn I saw one from California. The chance that it was her latest letter was slim to none, but…
“San Francisco,” she answered.
“Yes!” After gathering up the rest of the letters and shoving the guitar case back under the bed, I shot to my feet. “This is perfect. Rose might be right here in California. I’m going to go find her.”
“Um, okay…but how are you going to get there?” Asha asked as we exited my mom’s room and made our way back to mine.
I turned to Boomer. He was the only one of us who had a car, an ancient pickup with a muffler louder than he was.
“Sorry, Fel,” he said, his face dropping when he realized what I was thinking. “I wish I could drive you, but I don’t think my truck can make that kind of trip. We’d be on the side of the highway calling for a tow in three hours flat.”
Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. Older than Michael James, Boomer’s ride needed constant attention. He was always popping the hood and whispering words of encouragement as he fiddled with the engine when it wouldn’t start.
