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“I know you want to do this, because it’s something that still connects you to your mother. I just don’t want you to get disappointed, because we might find nothing there. We might make all that trip for nothing, and I don’t want you to get depressed over it.”
“I won’t,” she assured him, speaking like a little child who really wanted it right now.
“You say that now,” Hyde sighed.
“Let her have this one,” Jesse urged. “We’ll arrange our work so that we can go with her and she won’t be in any kind of danger. We won’t even say who she is.”
“But, they might recognize us,” Hyde was weary.
“Culore is dead,” Jesse shrugged his shoulders. “Who is there left to be afraid of?”
“What if Ozul told them what happened?” Hyde wondered.
“I’m almost sure he did. But, that doesn’t matter. That can only work in our favor, making people get out of our way.”
“We don’t even need to stay too long. Only a day or two,” Rene added, seeing that Hyde was slowly starting to change his mind.
“The weekend,” Jesse chimed in. “We’ll be done before you know it.”
“And, if we don’t find the well, or the box, I’ll still be happy that I got to see where I come from. It will still bring me closer to my mother, whether or not I find that mysterious box.”
Two sets of hopeful eyes were watching Hyde, pleading that he would agree to come with them.
“I won’t hear the end of this unless I agree, right?”
“Right,” Rene and Jesse replied at the same time.
“Fine,” Hyde snorted, “let’s just get this over with.”
Rene smiled, raising her glass again. One chapter of her life was closing, but there were so many left, and she was about to embark on a new one.
Chapter 21
The flight to Bucharest was uneventful. Rene found out that she couldn’t sleep on the plane, even though that didn’t seem to pose a problem for either Hyde or Jesse. They started on Friday morning and were hoping to get back on Wednesday evening. Judging from all the stories her mother once told her, Rene was sure that she would enjoy the beautiful nature and, hopefully, she might be able to brush up on her rusty Romanian. Her mother used to speak Romanian to her, when Rene was a child, but after a while, all that remained was English and, hopefully, Romanian that she would find easy to brush up on.
In Bucharest, they rented a car for the next few days and immediately started towards Sirnea. The road signs were easy to follow and every once in a while they would see a herd of sheep, peacefully grazing in the green fields that spread out before them, as far as the eye could see.
“Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Rene was in awe of the n
ature around her, the majestic mountains and lush greenery.
She almost couldn’t believe that places such as this one still existed in the 21st century, when everything was modernized. These people still upheld the old way of life and they seemed happy to do it. Rene wondered how they survived without electricity or the Internet.
A few hours later, they finally reached a small guest house on the very entrance to Sirnea and stopped there to ask if they had any free rooms.
The empty space in front of the guest house was supposed to serve as a parking lot, so Hyde parked right in the middle. All three got out and an elderly woman walked out to greet them, wiping her hands on her apron. She addressed them in Romanian.
“Hello there!” she smiled, and a row of tanned wrinkles immediately appeared on her face. “Do you need rooms?”
“Good day!” Hyde replied first. “Yes, we do. Do you have any?”
“There is no one here but me, so you are welcome to stay as long as you’d like. Two rooms or three?” she wondered.
Rene figured it would be best for everyone to be in a separate room. These people were proud of their old-fashioned values, and the fact that Rene wasn’t married to either of them might pose an issue that could easily be avoided, simply by getting separate rooms for everyone.
“Three, please,” she addressed the woman, in Romanian.
The woman eyed her, shielding her eyes from the sun, in an effort to take a better look at the girl.
