Strange things are happening. My research points to a truth even I have trouble comprehending. Perhaps I should listen and leave Ireland with you. But I’m too close to the truth about myself to stop. If I am right, it could change everything we think we know about what it is to be human. Perhaps I’m too close to the truth about all of us to stop. As a scientist you must understand. No wondrous thing was ever discovered were it not for someone brave enough to seek it.
My biggest concern, and what prompts this letter, is our daughter. Promise me, a vow as sacred as the day we pledged our lives together, that if anything strange should happen, if I do not come home one day, you will take my little, dark Daisy and get out of Ireland immediately. Do not look for me. Trust me, I’ll be as lost as my parents.
The ones who disappear do so forever.
Go to our special place. You must hide what I’ve enclosed. Bury it under the ghost so no one will ever discover it. As badly as I want to expose the truth I believe it holds, I want your safety more. I will find you there if ever I can.
I weep as I write this, but you must do what I ask to keep her safe. Know that I can’t imagine a day when the two of you are not with me. But if that day ever comes, I will keep close the memory of your pure heart. How I could see your spirit the first time we met. You hid nothing from me (not that you could). And you gave me everything. Acceptance. A family. Boundless love that gives without fear of running dry. Ever.
And you gave me Daisy. I will long for the smell of her wild mane. The way her hands curl in her sleep like she’s ready for a fight. The way she is lit up from the inside out. Protect our little treasure, for she truly is rare and special. I love you both.
Yours,
Grace
I read the letter five times. Afterward, I’m sure it was a full ten minutes that I sat staring at nothing. I didn’t know whether to be grateful my father had apparently honored her wishes, or angry that something awful happened to my mother and he ran away.
But she didn’t abandon me.
She loved me.
I couldn’t pretend that the heart-sting I had lived with for so long had miraculously healed. It hurt differently. Cold fear pulsed through me. Regret at so many lost years. Anger that my mother chose some kind of research over her family. Even when she knew she was in danger. What truth could change our views of humanity itself? That’s not something you say lightly. My questions looped endlessly around themselves with no clear answer.
A car passing outside my window reminded me of the time. I hurried to copy the letter on the printer in Dad’s office so I could put all the items back in the treasure box. Then I rushed to get the ladder and replaced the box.
Mari answered her cell on the first ring. I could hear the noise of kids at school in the background.
“I need you.”
“I’m there.”
I peeked out my window when I heard Mari’s car pull up. Dun’s lanky figure unfolded from the passenger side of her little car.
“Hope you don’t mind me coming, too,” he said at the front door.
I fell into his chest for a much-needed hug. His sunny aura wrapped around me, enveloping me in its sweet warmth. “Shut up.”
“Shutting up,” Dun said with a big squeeze.
“I’ve never heard your voice so shaky,” Mari said. “If Cora’s rattled, the whole world must have tilted on its axis. You okay?”
“Not even.” I pulled them into my room and explained everything I’d discovered about my mother.
“You’re telling me,” Dun said, stretched out on my bed with his feet dangling off the end, his long black hair fanned out over my pillow, “that your mom was mixed up in some kind of crazy research, knew she was in danger, and told your dad to get you out of Ireland? And then he freaking did?”
“I’m not telling you that, she is,” I said, brandishing the copy of my mother’s letter in the air like exhibit A. “My dad never told me anything. He’s hidden this from me my whole life. I swear, I don’t know which reality is worse: her abandoning us or us abandoning her.”
“Reminder: we don’t know what happened,” Mari pointed out. “Only that she was worried when she wrote the letter and she’s been gone for a long time.”
“Maybe I’ve watched too much television,” Dun said, “but the question ought to be, what is this truth that someone would want to keep secret so badly?” He folded his hands over his chest and stared at the ceiling. “Not to be cold, but I doubt she’s alive. If she was, she would’ve come looking for you just like her letter said. Whatever she was scared would happen—dang girl, it musta happened.”
“What truth could my mother possibly have known that would ‘change everything we think we know of what it is to be human’?”
I stared at the letter again.
No wondrous thing was ever discovered were it not for someone brave enough to seek it.
“Guys, get me out of here. I can’t face my dad anytime soon. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. Everything’s a lie.”
“What will you do?” Mari asked.
“Dig up the truth.”
Fourteen
Mari drove us through the busy streets of Santa Cruz, past the boardwalk with its looming white roller coaster and candy-colored buildings, past the jagged knuckles of the cliffs on Highway 1. We had no destination. I needed to be out of my house and have a private place to make a plan.
I wanted to go to Ireland immediately, an idea Mari supported in the spirit that all quests were daring and noble, and if they weren’t, at least I would have an adventure for once in my sad, sheltered life. She offered to use the rest of her airline miles to get me a ticket, and we tallied my savings with a couple hundred dollars she was willing to lend me. If I stayed in youth hostels, it might buy me a couple of weeks to search for information.
Dun remained doubtful. “What, you’re going to roam the Irish countryside by yourself and go door-to-door asking if anyone knows anything about your mother?”
“Maybe she won’t go alone. Maybe Finnegan will escort her,” Mari teased.
Dun jumped in. “Oh, and rule number three of the Articles of Friendship states that when you go on your first date with Gorgeous O’Guinness, we have a debriefing. How’d it go?”
I tore my eyes from my mother’s letter once more, thinking of my afternoon with Finn in the forest. “You want to know what it was like? Surreal. We were a movie. We were my favorite book. Dreamlike. Sweet—and hot—and you guys will tease me for saying this, but I feel like I’ve known him forever.”
“Aaaah. Love and lightning,” Mari said with dramatic pause. She tucked her straight hair behind her ear and winked at me. “They both can strike sudden and hot.”
“And they can burn you crispy!” Dun shouted from the backseat.
“I still can’t believe it happened.” I exhaled. Truth.
Dun pinched the back of my neck. “So, the kissing didn’t suck?”
I shrugged him off. Now wasn’t the time to think of Finn and replay our spectacular kisses. I had work to do. I wanted to go straight to Ireland, try to find information on my mother, and arrange all my extremely confused feelings into tidy little mind-files.
Anger: that belonged with Dad for taking my mother’s love away by telling me she left us. He could at least have let me believe in her love for me. Anger had a subcategory for my mother, too, for forgetting that when you have children, you’re supposed to put them first.