I hung my head out the window, waving until Sandy was a dot in the distance. On the trip in, I barely listened to Gran and Dee’s chatter. I wanted silence… quiet… and the luxury of being able to cry. But none of that was possible. There was too much to do.
When we got to the apartment, Mr. Eskew and Pops were already there. Earlier the building maintenance guys had packed up all of Gran and Pops’s things and moved them into the larger place. Dumped them, was more like it. The apartment looked more like a storage unit than a home.
I helped Sandy’s dad get the trannie unloaded. I never liked him much, especially not the way he looked at Sandy, but I still thanked him for the help. Watching him drive away, the full force of the situation hit me. Ginnie was gone. My life would never be the same again.
After a dinner of nut butter sandwiches and soy milk—Gran hadn’t been shopping and the cook center hadn’t been programmed yet—Gran put us all to work setting the apartment in order. I was unpacking one of their boxes marked Living Room when I came across a handful of books.
I turned one over and over in my hand. “B.O.S.S. took all our books,” I said. “I still don’t understand why they went through all of our stuff. Ginnie wasn’t the criminal, she was the victim. Do they always do stuff like that?”
“They do whatever they want,” Gran said.
“Couldn’t have stopped ’em if you’d tried,” Pops said. “Nothing to find, though, was there? As if poor Ginnie had anything to hide.”
Gran didn’t respond, but I knew something was up from her expression, and I’d have given anything to know what she was thinking. Sometimes, when we’d all visited in the past, she and Ginnie would go into the kitchen and talk alone. They didn’t think I’d noticed that whenever I walked in on them, they’d change the subject. I used to think they were talking about things that they didn’t want a little kid to hear, but now I wondered if it was something completely different. Maybe even something that could get someone killed.
“Come on, Deedles.” Pops grabbed Dee’s hand. “Let’s get busy on your room.”
“But I’m going to sleep with Nina.” The rims of Dee’s eyes reddened.
Before she could start crying, I said, “Of course you are, but you might want to have a place to put some of the things you don’t need all the time.”
Pops winked over her shoulder at me. “She’s right, Deedles. It’ll almost be like you’ve got two rooms. That’s better than me. I’m stuck with her”—he jerked his thumb at Gran—“for the rest of my life.”
“Which won’t be very much longer if you keep that up, old man.” Gran wagged her finger at him. “Now the two of you git!”
When they were out of earshot, I decided to risk it. “Gran, did Ginnie have a friend named Rita?”
Gran peered over her glasses. “Hmm, I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”
“When I was packing, I found a piece of paper with her name on it. I never met anyone she knew named Rita.”
Gran pulled on her lower lip for a minute. Finally, she said, “The only Rita I recall was a high school friend of Ginnie’s. She was a couple of years older than your mom and dad were. I think she was related to…” She stopped to pick a piece of lint from her sleeve. “Nope, can’t remember the name. Seems like she was another of Ginnie and Alan’s friends’ sister. As I recall, she was in one of the early groups of girls chosen when the FeLS program started some thirty-odd years ago. Strangest thing, if it’s the same girl I’m thinking of, she disappeared on the way out to O’Hare to catch the space station shuttle for FeLS training. Never seen or heard from again.” Gran shook her head. “Some thought it was her plan all along to get out of going, but I think she was kidnapped, plain and simple. She wasn’t the only one of your father’s acquaintances to drop out of sight over the next several years.”
Ginnie never told me anything like that—friends disappearing. I was sure Gran knew more stories about my father and Ginnie that I’d never heard. I stopped myself from telling her about the book and my father being alive. I needed to look at Dee’s baby book more closely first and make sure this was real. No sense in getting Gran’s hopes up if all of this was the result of some medically caused hallucination.
“There’s something else, Gran. Your name was on that same piece of paper, along with a note about my FeLS contract.”
“Ah yes, Ginnie bought it out, dear, and sent it to me for safekeeping. She was worried that Ed might get his hands on it. He has quotas to make, and I’m not sure she trusted that he would leave you alone if he was short Chosens.”
“Or if he was mad at her,” I muttered.
Gran gave me a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“Last summer, Ed told Dee that he was going to move us to the tier-five flats on the west side of Cementville. She was so excited. We all were. Then one night Ginnie came home with bruises all over her arms. Next day, Ed told Dee that because of her mother we’d be staying right where we belonged, in low-tier mods. She was crushed.”
Gran scowled. “There’s something seriously wrong with that man. Who would do such a thing? And to his own daughter. I hope he doesn’t come around here wanting to see her. Although, he very well might. He’s got his rights.” Her scowl turned to a frown.
My stomach knotted. “What if he wanted Dee as a Cinderella girl?”
“Ginnie made sure that if anything happened to her, your grandfather and I would become your legal guardians. He can’t touch Dee.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “No sense in borrowing tomorrow’s troubles, dear. Let’s focus on getting this house in order.” She bent down and took a few knickknacks out of the box I’d been unpacking. “Put these over there.”
I arranged things under Gran’s direction and the knot in my stomach loosened a bit. I didn’t trust Ed, but with Gran and Pops as Dee’s legal guardians, he wouldn’t be able to take her away. At least not without a fight.
But still, I was 99 percent sure that it had been Ed at the hospital. Which made me think he knew what had happened to Ginnie before it hit the news. I wondered if I would ever know what really happened to her. Anger surged through me. I wanted whoever killed her caught.
Gran’s PAV beeped. “Oh, that’s Harriet. I’d better make sure she’s all right. She’s not been well since they took Johnny away. You tell your sister it’s time for you both to get ready for bed.”
Lying on my new bed, an inflato-mat Gran had borrowed from Harriet, I stared out the window. Dee was across the room, asleep on Pops’s old army cot. The rhythm of her breathing was occasionally interrupted by a catch—she’d been crying herself to sleep every night, still. The only crying I’d done was after the B.O.S.S. agents left. Since then, I’d willed every tear to stay inside me. Dee needed me to be strong. And so I was.
Squeezed between the buildings across the way, the night sky provided a backdrop for a pale quarter moon. I wondered if somewhere in Chicago my father, Alan Oberon, was looking at that same moon.
All these years he’d been alive, but he’d never tried to see me or contact me. How could he do that? Even harder to comprehend was the reality that Ginnie had known the truth, but let me believe a lie. She always said that he had been her one true love. I couldn’t imagine he didn’t still love her, too. Was it because of me that he wasn’t there? Did he not want me? I had so many questions and no answers.
I knew I had to find him and give him that book. Not for him, not for me, but for Ginnie.