13 New Published Books to Rock Your New Years –– January 2020

Rosella

My mother told me once that being an Oliva meant measuring our lives in lengths of red thread. And probably, that was true.

But growing up in Briar Meadow meant I measured mine by the glimmer that appeared over the reservoir every year.

That was what they called the strangeness that settled onto our town for a week each October, a glimmer. Both for the wavering light that hovered above the water, and because it seemed like the right word for the flicker of magic that came with it.

One year, the glimmer stirred the air between neighbors who hated each other. Families who’d become enemies over fence lines and tree roots suddenly burst into each other’s kitchens, trading long-secret recipes for tomato sauce or spice cookies.

Another year, it was icicles that tasted like rose candies. My mother and I ate them all week, licking them like paletas, and tried to save some in our freezer. When the glimmer left at the end of the week, we found them vanished from between the frozen peas and waffles, and managed to be surprised. (My abuela called us fools for thinking we could hold on to Briar Meadow’s magic any longer than the glimmer let us.)

And once, it was the thorns on the trees and bushes around town. They grew so fast even I could sit still long enough to watch them. The wood twisted into shapes, some simple as a corkscrew curl, others intricate as the figurine of a deer, others as sharp as little knives. Sometimes we woke up to find blood dripping down the points, and we couldn’t be sure if someone had pricked their fingers, or if the thorns themselves were bleeding.

And maybe my mother was right about measuring our lives in red thread, because those drops of blood looked, to me, like the beads on the most beautiful shoes my family made. Red shoes, the kind everyone knew us for.

They bought other colors, of course, but it was the red ones that carried the whisper of a magic not so different from the glimmer. Our red shoes bore the hint of something forbidden and a little scandalous. Parents bought them for anxious brides, who then kissed their grooms with enough passion to make the wedding guests blush. Women had pairs made for class reunions, strutting into the tinsel-draped auditorium like queens. Husbands gave them to their wives before trips meant to celebrate twenty- or thirty-year anniversaries, and the couple always came back with their eyes glinting, as though they’d just met.

Well-crafted seams and delicate beading gave my family a trade and a living. But red shoes gave us a name. They made us infamous. They made us brazen.

Until they came for us.

Except that’s not quite true.

They didn’t come for us.

They came for me.

Strasbourg, 1507

The first time Lala catches Alifair on the land, he is stealing crab apples from a tree that belongs to her and her aunt. Though, as it turns out, he will come to be theirs far more than the tree, or the land, ever will. The crab apple tree, along with all others on the plot, belongs to them no more than the house, each paid for by the month.

When Lala and her aunt first arrived in Strasbourg, they found that the stature and upkeep of the shabby wattle and daub had been much exaggerated by the friend of a friend. Lala stood in the shade of the roof, staring into the house’s face. The thatch hung so far past the walls that the whole structure seemed to be frowning.

We are new women here, Tante Dorenia told her. We bring with us nothing of who we were.

Nothing of who we were means Tante will not wear the dikhle, the pretty head covering of married women, not just because she is unmarried but because the gadje must find no sign that they are Romnia. It is for the same reason that Lala cannot even be called Lala, the name she has heard since the time she could speak. Now she is Lala only in Tante’s house and in her own thoughts. Everywhere else she must be Lavinia, her full name, prim and uncomfortable as a starched dress.

Whenever Lala asks why they left the hills outside Riquewihr, left where they buried her mother and father, Tante says, What we are, they have made it a crime in our own country. So we will go somewhere no one knows us.

When Lala weeps for her mother and father, as though she might call them from across the weed-tangled land, Tante whispers, We will always love them. We will mourn them. But we will not speak of them. We will hold them in our hearts but not on our tongues, yes? We will keep an altar for them and let their souls rest, will we not?

To all this, Tante is quick to add, We will not lose ourselves here. Because there is work we will do here. Not only for our vitsa, but for others.

The day Alifair appears, Lala spots him first. She shrieks a moment before realizing the moving figure in the branches is not a young wolf or a hawk but a boy. Older than Lala’s five years but still a child.

Tante runs out from the house, wiping her onion-damp hands on her apron and telling Lala to stop carrying on every time she sees a badger, that truly they won’t hurt her if she doesn’t bother them.

Tante stands beneath the tree.

“Don’t look at him,” Lala whispers, trying not to stare herself.

“Oh?” Tante asks. “And why not?”

“They’ll think we’re trying to steal him.” Lala keeps her whisper low, even if Tante won’t match it.

Lala may be small, but she’s old enough to listen. She knows how many gadje mothers and fathers suspect Romnia of being witches who have nothing better to do than steal their children.

Tante tilts her head to look at Lala. “And who exactly will think that?”

With a prickling of guilt, Lala realizes there is a reason Tante does not ask if the boy is lost, or if anyone is missing him. It is clear from his dirt-stained clothes and hungry look that he is on his own.

The boy’s eyes shine out from the crab apple branches, more feral than frightened, like a cat caught in a lantern’s light.

Lala barely knows anything of their neighbors, or of this place her aunt has brought her. But it seems enough like Riquewihr that she knows what would happen to this boy, or what already has. Farmers’ wives chasing him off. Merchants beating him to make sure he never comes back.

Tante sets her hands on her hips, tilts her face up to the tree, and asks the boy, “And what are you good for?”

Not a taunt.

A true question.

Without hesitating, the boy comes down from the crab apple tree. He has hardly set his bare, dirt-grayed feet to the ground when he climbs the great oak next.

Lala watches at Tante’s skirt. She winces as the boy ascends into the clouds of wasps that fill the space between boughs.

He plunges his arms into those swarms and grabs handfuls of oak galls, not once being stung.

He climbs down, jumping from the lowest branch.

Soon, Lala and Tante will learn that this boy knows how to keep secrets. Theirs, and his own. As young as he is, he knows how to fold away the things the world would punish him for.

He holds the oak galls out to Tante Dorenia.

Tante looks between the boy and the tree.

“Now that,” she says, “is worth something.”

My banged-up spoon scrapes the bottom of a barrel that should’ve held enough dried beans to last for three more months.

No, no, no.

There has to be more. 

Sickness churns my stomach, and my knuckles brush against bare wood as I coax a handful of shriveled beans into a half-empty bag. I wipe my dirty hands against my white trousers and ignore the sweat dripping down my neck. The kingdom of Inkasisa is in the middle of her stifling wet season. Even though it’s nigh, there’s no escaping the muggy heat.

“Something wrong, Condensa?” asks the next person in line waiting for their ration. 

Yes, in fact. We’re all going to starve. Not that I can say this out loud. It goes against everything I know to do as their leader : A condensa should never show fear. 

I school my features into what I hope is a pleasant expression, then turn to face the long line of Illustrians waiting for their evening portions. Drawn faces stare back at me. White clothes hang off gaunt frames, loose and big like the tents the Illustrians sleep in next to the keep. 

My whole life, I’ve trained for situations like this: manage expectations, soothe people’s worries, feed them. It’s the condense’s job. 

We’re standing in the round storage building with the door propped open, allowing for people to crowd around as I sort through the provisions. Luna’s light casts rectangular patterns on the dozens of empty barrels piled on their sides, while a rickety wooden staircase leads up to the armory housing swords, shields, and bundled arrows. All we could carry when we fled for our lives the day La Ciudad Blanca fell.

What would Ana, our general, want me to say ? Manage them. You’re in charge. Don’t forget what’s at stake. We need to survive until we can take back the throne. 

I glance at the door, half expecting to find Ana’s broad shoulders leaning against the frame, moonlight reflecting off the silver wisps in her hair. But she’s not there. Ana left four days ago on a mission to chase a rumor about Aroc, the false Llacsan king––a rumor that, if true, guarantees our victory. 

She promised to be back by yesterday.

An arm brushes against mine. Catalina, silently reminding me of her presence. The knot in my chest unwinds slightly. I forgot she was standing behind me, ever helpful. 

“Bring me the wheat, por favor.” I gesture toward the wall the barrels of rations are lined against. “And the cloth bags over on that shelf.”

She obeys, grabbing the supplies off the shelf first and handing them to me, her dark eyes lowered. Then she darts toward the barrel. 

“Condensa?” the woman asks. “Is this all that’s left?”

I hesitate; the lie waiting on the tip of my tongue tastes sour and wrong. My gaze returns to the dwindling piles of food at my feet: husked corn, a half-filled bag of rice, and an almost empty basked of bread. Not nearly enough.

A lie won’t feed all these people. 

“We’re short on some supplies,” I say with a tight smile. “No beans, I’m afraid, but––”

Next to me Catalina stiffens, pausing in her attempt to drag the wheat barrel to my side. Normally, it takes the effort of two people, but somehow she manage by herself. Which mean this barrel isn’t full either.

The woman’s mouth drops open. “No beans? ¿No hay comida?”

“That’s not what I said.” I force my smile to remain in place as I come to a split-second decision––our best and only option. “We have to be careful with what we have. So here’s what’s going to happen: Starting immediately, everyone will receive less than half their usual ration, per family. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s either that or we starve,” I say bluntly. “Your pick.”

Voices rise up. 

“Less than half?”

“Not ideal?”

Another woman shouts, “How can there be no food left?”

A headache press against my temple. “We do have some food––”

But the woman’s words travel down the line, catching fire in the dark, until fifty people clamor for attention, wanting answers, wanting their rations. They wave their empty baskets in the air. Their loud cries boom like thunder in my ears. I want to duck for cover. But if I don’t do something, I’m going to have a full-blown riot on my hands. 

Wednesday, February 19

I scan the half-off clothing rack next to me with a feeling of existential dread. I hate department stores. They’re too bright, too loud, and too crammed full of junk that nobody needs. Whenever I’m forced to spend time in one I start thinking about how consumer culture is just one long, expensive, planet-killing distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die eventually.

Then I suck down the last of my six-dollar iced coffee, because I’m nothing if not a willing participant in the charade.

“That’ll be forty-two sixty, hon,” the woman behind the counter says when it’s my turn. I’m picking up a new wallet for my mother, and I hope I got it right. Even with her detailed written instructions, it still looks like twelve other black wallets. I spent too long debating between them, and now I’m running late for work.

It probably doesn’t matter, since Eli Kleinfelter doesn’t pay me or, most days, even notice I’m there. Still, I pick up my pace after leaving the Bayview Mall, following a sidewalk behind the building until it narrows to nothing but asphalt. Then, after a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure no one’s watching, I approach the flimsy chain-link fence surrounding an empty construction site.

There’s supposed to be a new parking garage going into the hillside behind the mall, but the company building it went bankrupt after they’d started. A bunch of construction companies are bidding to take over, including my dad’s. Until then, the site is cutting off what used to be a path between the mall and Bayview Center. Now you have to walk all the way around the building and down a main road, which takes ten times as long.

I duck under a giant gap in the fence and skirt around a half-dozen orange-and-white barrels until I’m overlooking a partially constructed garage and what was supposed to become its roof. The whole thing is covered with thick plastic tarp, except for a wooden landing with a set of metal stairs along one side, leading to part of the hill that hasn’t been dug into yet.

I don’t know who at Bayview High first had the bright idea to jump the five-foot drop onto the landing, but now it’s a well-known shortcut from the mall to downtown. Which, to be clear, my dad would kill me for taking. But he’s not here and even if he were, he pays less attention to me than Eli does. So I brace myself against one of the construction barrels and look down.

There’s just one problem.

It’s not that I’m afraid of heights. It’s more that I have a preference for firm ground. When I played Peter Pan at drama camp last summer, I got so freaked out about getting flown around on a pulley that they had to lower me to barely two feet off the stage. “You’re not flying, Knox,” the production manager grumbled every time I swung past him. “You’re skimming at best.”

All right. I’m afraid of heights. But I’m trying to get over it. I stare down at the wooden planks below me. They look twenty feet away. Did someone lower the roof?

“It’s a great day for someone to die. Just not me,” I mutter like I’m Dax Reaper, the most ruthless bounty hunter in Bounty Wars. Because the only way I can make this nervous hovering even more pathetic is to quote a video game character.

I can’t do it. Not a real jump, anyway. I sit at the edge, squeeze my eyes shut, and push off so that I slither down the last few feet like a cowardly snake. I land awkwardly, wincing on impact and stumbling across the uneven wooden planks. Athletic, I am not.

I manage to regain my balance and limp toward the stairs. The lightweight metal clangs loudly with every step as I make my way down. I heave a sigh of relief once I hit solid ground and follow what’s left of the hillside path to the bottom fence. People used to climb over it until somebody broke the lock. I slip through the gate and into the tree grove at the edge of Bayview Center. The number 11 bus to downtown San Diego is idling at the depot in front of Town Hall, and I jog across the street to the still-open doors.

There’s a loud sniff beside me. “Those things are practically part of your hand nowadays, aren’t they? My grandson won’t put his down. I suggested he leave it behind the last time I took him out to eat, and you would have thought I’d threatened him with bodily harm.”

I look up to a pair of watery blue eyes behind bifocals. Of course. It never fails: any time I’m out in public and there’s an old woman nearby, she starts up a conversation with me. Maeve calls it the Nice Young Man Factor. “You have one of those faces,” she says. “They can tell you won’t be rude.”

I call it the Knox Myers Curse: irresistible to octogenarians, invisible to girls my own age. During the Cal State Fullerton season opener at Café Contigo, Phoebe Lawton literally tripped over me to get to Brandon Weber when he sauntered in at the end of the night.

I should keep scrolling and pretend I didn’t hear, like Brandon would. What Would Brandon Do is a terrible life mantra, since he’s a soul-sucking waste of space who skates through life on good hair, symmetrical features, and the ability to throw a perfect spiral — but he also gets whatever he wants and is probably never trapped in awkward geriatric bus conversations.

So, yeah. Selective hearing loss for the next fifteen minutes would be the way to go. Instead, I find myself saying, “There’s a word for that. Nomophobia. Fear of being without your phone.”

“Is that right?” she asks, and now I’ve done it. The floodgates are open. By the time we reach downtown I know all about her six grandkids and her hip replacement surgery. It’s not until I get off the bus a block from Eli’s office that I can go back to what I was doing on my phone in the first place — checking to see if there’s another text from whoever sent the Truth or Dare rules yesterday.

I should pretend I never saw it. Everyone at Bayview High should. But we don’t. After what happened with Simon, it’s baked into our collective DNA to be morbidly fascinated with this stuff.

It was raining that morning, ten months ago. I remember because I’d gotten up early, hoping to go for a run. But it was already 8:15, and I was still waiting for the weather to clear. The streets were covered in puddles, and I’d recently gotten new running shoes—purple Nikes with lime-green swooshes and thick pink treads. Funny to think about them now, that I’d been so concerned about protecting my shoes, I’d let nearly a year of my life slip away.

Already dressed in my running gear, I turned from the window, knowing the clouds weren’t going to suddenly part. The sun wasn’t going to magically appear. The oil-stained puddles, with their spirals of blue and green, wouldn’t be evaporating anytime soon.

I’d wanted to be on the road by eight o’nothing. There was a cute runner boy I’d been hoping to see. We had this thing where we nodded to one another each time we passed, usually by the water fountain and always around 8:30. What were the odds that he’d be running in the rain? Should I just suck it up and wear old shoes?

I went to go grab a pair when my phone quacked with a text. From Shelley: Surprise! I’m home from Camping Hell a day early. Long story short: I rly need 2cu. Can we meet @9? Eggs & Stuff? Let’s salvage my bday disaster.

My gut reaction? Excitement. I hadn’t seen Shelley, my best friend, in over a week. But not two seconds later, my brain took over and I remembered: I’d left her birthday present at work.

Can we meet a little L8R? I texted back. I’m going for a run.

Pleeeeeease, she typed, adding a bunch of frowny-face emoticons.

I didn’t want to let her down. Her summer had sucked harder than leeches, and having to spend her seventeenth birthday on a camping trip with her show-tune-singing fam, with no cell phone reception whatsoever, was sure to have been no exception.

Ru there? she continued to type.

I looked at the clock. If I left now, I could open the store, grab the gift, and still have ample time to make it to Eggs & Stuff by 9:00. Cu then, I typed back.

Mom was already up, sitting at the kitchen table in her snowflake-printed bathrobe (even though it was summer). “Hey there.” She peeked up from her magazine—Knit Wit. The cover featured a dazed-looking chicken knitting a scarf that reminded me of candy corn. “Going for a run?”

“Not anymore.”

“Great, we can chat over coffee.”

“Sorry, no time. You’ll have to chat with Dad.”

“Except Dad’s still in bed—that sleepyhead.” She grimaced. “Seems our days of Sunday brunch are a thing of the past.”

“Time to wake him up?”

“I already tried. But he worked late last night … didn’t get in until well past midnight.”

“I’d stay,” I told her. “But I promised Shelley I’d meet her for breakfast.”

“She’s home already?”

“Yes, so I need to get her birthday present—stat.”

“Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. I have plenty of gifts.”

I didn’t want to argue, but when it came to gift-giving, my mother and I were from two entirely different planets. While she resided on Planet I-got-this-on-sale-but-have-no-real-use- for-it-and-so-it-goes-into-an-already-overflowing-bin- of-tacky-random-stuff, I lived on Planet My-friends-are-my-family-and-so-each-gift-has-been-carefully-hand-selected.

Still, Mom popped up from the table and bounded across the kitchen, en route to the linen closet, where she stored her trove of “treasures.” The idea of turning over some of the stuff in her stash was evidently far more enlivening than the dark-roasted coffee beans my dad had imported from New Guinea.

She came back a few moments later with a bin full of her finds and pulled out a baseball cap with melon-patterned fabric. “This would look adorable on Shelley, with her heart-shaped face.”

What melons had to do with hearts, I had absolutely no idea. Mom could sense my inner snub and dove back into the bin, producing a snowball-maker (!), faux-fur glovelettes, and a turquoise watch that screamed old lady.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked, reading the repulsion on my face.

I bit my tongue in lieu of commenting. “I already bought a gift. I just left it at Norma’s. Can I borrow the car to go pick it up?”

Mom gazed out the window, and the corners of her mouth turned downward. She has this weird hang-up about letting me drive in rain or snow (not to mention fog, slush, sleet, hail, and darkness).

“You could bring me yourself,” I suggested, fairly confident she wouldn’t take the bait. “As long as you’re okay with waiting while I wrap the gift, and then driving me to Eggs & Stuff right after. I can text you to pick me up, unless of course you’d be willing to drive Shelley and me to the mall or a movie aft—”

“Take the car,” she said, cutting me off. “Just drive carefully.”

“Thanks,” I perked, snagging the keys from the hook.

When I finally made it home, nearly seven months to the day later, my pretty purple running shoes—with the lime-green swooshes and the thick pink treads—were still fully intact, sitting in the hallway closet, spared from the wretched rain puddles.

While I, on the other hand, was far beyond repair.

Nearly broken.

In every.

Way.

There’s a body on the Gurney Street tracks. Female, age unclear, probable overdose, says the dispatcher.

Kacey, I think. This is a twitch, a reflex, something sharp and subconscious that lives inside me and sends the same message racing to the same base part of my brain every time a female is reported. Then the more rational part of me comes plodding along, lethargic, uninspired, a dutiful dull soldier here to remind me about odds and statistics: nine hundred overdose victims in Kensington last year. Not one of them Kacey. Furthermore, this sentry reproves me, you seem to have forgotten the importance of being a professional. Straighten your shoulders. Smile a little. Keep your face relaxed, your eyebrows unfurrowed, your chin untucked. Do your job. 

All day, I’ve been having Lafferty respond to calls for us for further practice. Now, I nod to him, and her clears his throat and wipes his mouth. Nervous.

––2613, he says. 

Our vehicle number. Correct.

Dispatch continues. The RP is anonymous. The call came in from a payphone, one of several that still line Kensington Avenue and, as far as I know, the only one of those that still works. 

Lafferty looks at me. I look at him. I gesture to him. More. Ask for more. 

––Got it, says Lafferty into his radio. Over.

Incorrect, I raise mine to my mouth. I speak clearly.

––Any further information on locations? I say.

–––––––

After I end the call, I gave Lafferty a few pointers, reminding him not to be afraid to speak plainly to Dispatch––many rookie officers have the habit of speaking in a kind of stilted, masculine manner they have most likely picked up form films or television––and reminding him, too, to extract from Dispatch as many details as he can. 

But before I’ve finished speaking, Lafferty says, again, Got it. 

I look at him. Excellent, I say. I’m glad.

I’ve only known him an hour, but I’m getting a sense for him. He likes to talk––already I know more about him than he’ll ever know about me––and he’s a pretender. An aspirant. In other words, a phony. Someone so terrified of being called poor, or weak, or stupid, that he won’t even admit to what deficits he does have in those regards. I, on the other hand, am well aware that I’m poor. More so than ever now that Simon’s checks have stopped coming. Am I weak? Probably in some ways: stubborn, maybe, obstinate, mulish, reluctant to accept help even when it would serve me. Physically afraid, too: not the first officer to throw herself in front of a bullet for a friend, nor the first officer to throw herself into traffic in pursuit of some vanishing perpetrator. Poor: yes. Weak: yes. Stupid: no. I’m not stupid. 

North Carolina Correctional Facility for Women Raleigh, North Carolina

June 8, 2018

This hallway always felt cold to me, no matter the time of year. Cinder-block walls, a linoleum floor that squeaked beneath my prison-issue shoes. You wouldn’t know what season it was from this hallway. Wouldn’t know it was June outside, that things were blooming and summer was on its way. It was on its way for those outside, anyway. I was facing my second summer inside these cinder-block walls and tried not to think about it.

“Who’s here?” I asked the guard walking by my side. I never had visitors. I’d given up expecting one of my parents to show up, and that was fine with me. My father came once after I’d been here a couple of weeks, but he was already wasted, although it wasn’t yet noon, and all he did was yell. Then he cried those sloppy drunk tears that always embarrassed me. My mother hadn’t come at all. My arrest held a mirror up to their flaws and now they were as finished with me as I was with them.

“Dunno who it is, Blondie,” the guard said. She was new and I didn’t know her name and couldn’t read the name tag hanging around her neck, but she’d obviously already learned my prison nickname. And while she might have been new to the NCCFW, I could tell she wasn’t new to prison work. She moved too easily down this hallway, and the burned-out, bored, bitter look in her dark eyes gave her away.

I headed for the door to the visiting room, but the guard grabbed my arm.

“Uh-uh,” she said. “Not that way. S’posed to take you in here today.” She turned me in the direction of the private visiting room, and I was instantly on guard. Why the private room? Couldn’t be good news.

I walked into the small room to find two women sitting at one side of a table. Both of them were somewhere between forty and fifty. No prison uniforms. They were dressed for business in suits, one navy, the other tan. They looked up at me, unsmiling, their dark-skinned faces unreadable. I kept my gaze on them as I sat down at the other side of the table. Did they see the anxiety in my eyes? I’d learned to trust no one in this place.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

The woman in the tan suit sat forward, manicured hands folded neatly on the table. “My name is Lisa Williams,” she said. She had a pin on her lapel in the shape of a house, and she reminded me a little of Michelle Obama. Shoulder-length hair. Perfectly shaped eyebrows. But she didn’t have Michelle Obama’s ready smile. This woman’s expression was somewhere between boredom and apprehension. “And this is Andrea Fuller. She’s an attorney.”

Andrea Fuller nodded at me. She was older than I’d thought. Fifty-something. Maybe even sixty. She wore her hair in a short, no-nonsense Afro sprinkled with gray. Her lipstick was a deep red.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said, looking from one woman to the other. “Why did you want to see me?”

“Andrea and I are here to offer you a way out of this place,” the woman named Lisa said. Her gaze darted to my lacy tattoo where it peeked out from beneath the short sleeve of my pale blue prison shirt. I’d designed the intricate tattoo myself—black lace crisscrossed with strings of tiny pearls and chandelier jewelry. Lisa lifted her gaze to mine again. “As of next week, you’ve served your minimum sentence. One year, right?” she asked.

I half nodded, waiting. Yes, I’d served my one-year minimum, but the maximum was three years, and from everything I’d been told, I wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.

“We … Andrea and I … have been working on getting you released,” Lisa said.

I stared at her blankly. “Why?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.” I knew there was some sort of program where law students tried to free prisoners who had been wrongly imprisoned, but I was the only person who seemed to think my imprisonment had been a mistake.

Andrea Fuller cleared her throat and spoke for the first time. “We’ve made the case that you’re uniquely qualified for some work Lisa would like you to do. Your release depends on your willingness to do that work and—”

“In a timely fashion,” Lisa interrupted.

“Yes, there’s a deadline for the completion of the work,” Andrea said. “And of course you’ll be under the supervision of a parole officer during that time, and you’ll also be paying restitution to the family of the girl you injured—the Maxwell family, and—”

“Wait.” I held up my hand. I was surprised to see that my fingers trembled and I dropped my hand to my lap. “Please slow down,” I said. “I’m not following you at all.” I was overwhelmed by the way the two women hopped around in their conversation. What work was I uniquely qualified to do? I’d worked in the laundry here at the prison, learning to fold sheets into perfect squares, and I’d washed dishes in hot chlorine-scented water until my eyes stung. They were the only unique qualifications I could think of.

Lisa lifted her own hands, palms forward, to stop the conversation. “It’s like this,” she said, her gaze steady on me. “Do you know who Jesse Jameson Williams was?”

Everyone knew who Jesse Jameson Williams was. The name instantly transported me to one of the rooms in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Four years ago now. No, five. I’d been seventeen on a high school trip. My classmates had been ready to leave the museum, but I’d wanted to stay, smitten by the contemporary art, so I hid in the restroom while my class headed out of the building. I didn’t know or care where they were going. I knew I’d get in trouble, but I would deal with that later. So I was alone when I saw my first Jesse Jameson Williams. The painting quite literally stole my breath, and I lowered myself to the sole bench in the gallery to study it. The Look, it was called. It was a tall painting, six feet at least, and quite narrow. A man and woman dressed in black evening clothes stood back-to-back against a glittery silver background, their bodies so close it was impossible to separate his black jacket from her black dress. They were both brown skinned, though the woman was several shades darker than the man. His eyes were downcast, as if the man were trying to look behind himself at the woman, but her eyes were wide open, looking out at the viewer—at me—as though she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be in the painting at all. As though she might be saying, Help me. When I could breathe again, I searched the walls for more of Jesse Jameson Williams’s work and found several pieces. Then, in the museum shop, I paged through a coffee table book of his paintings, wishing I could afford its seventy-five-dollar price tag.

“He’s one of my favorite artists,” I answered Lisa.

“Ah.” For the first time, Lisa smiled, or nearly so, anyway. “That’s very good to hear, because he has a lot to do with my proposal.”

“I don’t understand,” I said again. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” I’d read about his death in the paper in the prison library. He’d been ninety-five and had certainly led a productive life, yet I’d still felt a wave of loss wash over me when I read the news.

“He died in January,” Lisa said, then added, “Jesse Williams was my father.”

“Really!” I sat up straighter.

“For the last twenty-five years of his life, he dedicated himself to helping young artists,” Lisa said.

I nodded. I’d read about his charitable work.

“Artists he thought had promise but were having a hard time with school or family or maybe just heading down the wrong path.”

Was she talking about me? Could Jesse Williams have seen my work someplace and thought there was something promising in it, something that my professors had missed? “I remember reading about some teenaged boy he helped a few years ago,” I said. “I don’t know where I—”

“It could have been any number of boys.” Lisa waved an impatient hand through the air. “He’d focus on one young man—or young woman—at a time. Make sure they had the money and support necessary to get the education they needed. He’d show their work or do whatever he saw fit to give them a boost.” She cocked her head. “He was a very generous man, but also a manipulative one,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Shortly before he died, he became interested in you,” Lisa said. “You were going to be his next project.”

“Me?” I frowned. “I never even met him. And I’m white.” I lifted a strand of my straight, pale blond hair as if to prove my point. “Aren’t all the people he helped African American?”

Lisa shook her head. “Most, but definitely not all,” she said with a shrug. “And to be frank, I have no idea why he zeroed in on you. He often helped North Carolina artists, so that’s one reason—you’re from Cary, right?—but there are plenty of others he could have chosen. Why you were on his Good Samaritan radar is anyone’s guess.”

This made no sense. “Isn’t anything he had planned for me … or for anyone … didn’t his plans die with him?”

“I wish,” Lisa said. She smoothed a strand of her Michelle Obama hair behind her ear with a tired gesture. “My father’s still controlling things from the grave.” She glanced at Andrea with a shake of her head, while I waited, hands clutched together in my lap, not sure I liked this woman. “I lived with him,” Lisa continued. “I was his main caretaker and he was getting very feeble. He knew he was nearing the end and he met with his lawyer”—she nodded toward Andrea—“and updated his will. He was in the process of building a gallery in Edenton. An art gallery to feature his paintings and those of some other artists as well as some student work.”

“Oh,” I said, still puzzled. “Did he want to put one of my pieces in it?” Maybe that was it. Had he somehow heard about me and wanted to give my career—such as it was—a boost through exposure in his gallery? Ridiculous. How would he have heard about me? I couldn’t picture any of my professors at UNC singing my praises. And what on earth would I put in his gallery? My mind zigzagged through my paintings, all of them at my parents’ house … unless my parents had gotten rid of them, which wouldn’t have surprised me.

“Nothing that simple,” Lisa said. “He wanted you to restore an old 1940s mural, and he stipulated that the gallery can’t be opened until the restored mural is in place in the foyer. And the date of the gallery opening is August fifth.”

This had to be a mistake. They had to be looking for someone else, and I felt my chance at freedom slipping away. Restore a mural? In two months? First, I had no experience in art conservation, and second, I’d worked on exactly one mural in my nearly three years in college and that had been a simple four-by-eight-foot abstract I’d painted with another student my freshman year. “Are you sure he meant me?” I asked.

“Definitely.”

“Why does he … why would he think I’m ‘uniquely qualified’ to do this?” I asked, remembering the phrase. “How did he even know I exist?”

“Who knows?” Lisa said, obviously annoyed by her father’s eccentricities. “All I know is you’re now my problem.”

I bristled at her attitude, but kept my mouth shut. If the two of them could actually help me get out of here, I couldn’t afford to alienate them.

“I suppose he thought you were qualified by virtue of your art education,” Andrea said. “You were an art major, correct?”

I nodded. I’d been an art major, yes, but that had nothing to do with restoration. Restoration required an entirely different set of skills from the creation of art. Plus, I hadn’t been the most dedicated student that last year. I’d let myself get sucked in by Trey instead of my studies. He’d absorbed my time and energy. I’d been nauseatingly smitten, drawn in by his attention and the future we were planning together. He’d told me about his late grandmother’s engagement ring, hinting that it would soon be mine. I’d thought he was so wonderful. Pre-law. Sweet. Amazing to look at. I’d been a fool. But I knew better than to say anything about lack of qualifications to these two women when they were talking about getting me out of here.

“So … where’s this mural?” I asked.

“In Edenton. You’d have to live in Edenton,” Lisa said. “With me. My house—my father’s house, actually—is big. We won’t be tripping over each other.”

I could barely believe my ears. I’d not only get out of prison but I’d live in Jesse Jameson Williams’s house? I felt the unexpected threat of tears. Oh God, how I needed to get out of here! In the last miserable year, I’d been bruised, cut, and battered. I’d learned to fight back, yes, but that was not who I was. I was no brawler. My fellow inmates mocked me for my youth, my slender build, my platinum hair. I lived in a state of perpetual fear. Even in my cell, I felt unsafe. My cellmate was a woman who didn’t talk. Literally. I’d never heard a word from her mouth, but her expression carried disdain. I barely slept, one eye open, expecting to have my throat slit with a stolen knife sometime during the night.

And then there were the nightmares about Emily Maxwell, but I supposed I would bring them with me no matter where I went.

‘You wanted to talk about the Other People.’

So it was straight down to business. Sometimes, Gabe wondered if his perception of their friendship was more one-sided than he cared to admit.

‘You’ve heard the name?’

‘How did you hear it?’

Gabe fumbled in his bag and took out the notebook. He showed the Samaritan the page with the traced words.

‘I found it written here. I wasn’t sure if it meant anything, but . . .’

‘Burn it.’

‘What?’

‘Take the notebook, burn it and forget you ever saw those words.’

Gabe stared at the Samaritan. It was the first time he had ever seen him anything less than composed. He was almost – and the idea seemed scarcely believable – rattled. The thought disturbed him.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because you do not want to go anywhere near that shit, trust me.’

‘I do if it will help me find Izzy.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You were sure you wanted to jump, too.’

‘This is different.’

‘It really ain’t.’

‘I told you, I always thought Harry must have been mistaken about the identification. Now I’m sure he deliberately lied. He’s still lying. He may even know who took Izzy. But I don’t have any proof. If this is somehow connected, if it can help me make sense of anything, I need to know.’

Another long pause. The Samaritan picked up his coffee and took a sip. He sighed.

‘You heard of the Dark Web?’

Gabe felt his skin bristle. Of course he had. Every parent or relative who has lost someone would, at some point, hear about the Dark Web. The vast sub-surface of the internet, encompassing everything that’s not crawled by conventional search engines. The hidden place beneath the sheen of the official Web.

It was often used by people who simply didn’t trust the normal Web. But it was also used by those who wished to operate outside of the law. Like any deep, dark place, it was where the filth and sediment settled. Child porn. Paedophilia websites. Even snuff movies.

It was the place that every parent who has lost a child feared they might end up. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t that difficult to access. You just needed something called a Tor bundle (a way of hiding your ISP). But once in, you needed to know what you were looking for. Specific links that might just be a cluster of random letters and numbers. It was a bit like searching for a house without a number, street name or key in a neighbourhood full of dead-end streets and locked, steel-reinforced doors behind which who knew what horrors lurked.

‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘It’s where you’ll find the Other People.’

‘It’s a website?’

‘More a community where you can connect with like-minded people.’

‘What sort of like-minded people?’

‘People who have lost loved ones.’

Gabe frowned. That wasn’t what he had expected.

‘So why is it on the Dark Web?’

‘Imagine the police found the person who killed your wife, kidnapped your daughter. Imagine that he gets off, on a technicality. He’s walking around out there, guilty as hell. What are you going to do?’

‘I’d probably want to kill him.’

The Samaritan nodded. ‘But you wouldn’t. Because you’re not a killer. So, you feel angry, powerless, helpless. Lots of people feel like that. Maybe a guy raped your daughter but the police say it was consensual. Maybe a driver mowed down your mum but all that happens is he loses his licence. Maybe a doctor is negligent and your child dies but he just gets a slap on the wrist. Life ain’t fair. Ordinary people don’t always get justice.

‘Now imagine someone offers you a chance to put that right. A way to make those people pay, make them hurt like you do. You never get your hands dirty. You’ll never be connected.’

Gabe’s throat felt dry. He took a sip of coffee. ‘So it’s a place where you can hire vigilantes, hitmen?’

‘In a way. Some of the people involved are professionals. But money rarely changes hands. It’s more like payment in kind. Quid pro quo. You ask for a favour, you owe a favour in return.’

Gabe thought about this, let the concept settle.

‘Like Strangers on a Train?’

‘What?’

‘It’s a film where two strangers meet by chance and agree to commit a murder for each other. They’ll both have an alibi. No one will connect a random stranger to the crime.’

‘Kind of the deal. Except we’re talking about hundreds of random strangers. Everyone has a use, and everyone has a price. That’s how the Other People work. You ask for their help, you’ll be asked to do something in return. It might be something small. They might not even call in the favour right away. But they will. They always do. And you’d better be damn sure you’re up to returning it.’

Gabe thought about the underlined Bible passages again:

‘You shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’

‘What happens if you don’t?’

The Samaritan’s gaze punctured him like a bullet. ‘You run. As far and as fast as you can.’

One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn’t immediately understand that it’s a bullet at all, and it’s only luck that it doesn’t strike him between the eyes. Luca hardly registers the mild noise it makes as it flies past and lodges into the tiled wall behind him. But the wash of bullets that follows is loud, booming, and thudding, clack-clacking with helicopter speed. There is a raft of screams, too, but that noise is short-­lived, soon exterminated by the gunfire. Before Luca can zip his pants, lower the lid, climb up to look out, before he has time to verify the source of that terrible clamor, the bathroom door swings open and Mami is there.

“Mijo, ven,” she says, so quietly that Luca doesn’t hear her.

Her hands are not gentle; she propels him toward the shower. He trips on the raised tile step and falls forward onto his hands. Mami lands on top of him and his teeth pierce his lip in the tumble. He tastes blood. One dark droplet makes a tiny circle of red against the bright green shower tile. Mami shoves Luca into the corner. There’s no door on this shower, no curtain. It’s only a corner of his abuela’s bathroom, with a third tiled wall built to suggest a stall. This wall is around five and a half feet high and three feet long—just large enough, with some luck, to shield Luca and his mother from sight. Luca’s back is wedged, his small shoulders touching both walls. His knees are drawn up to his chin, and Mami is clinched around him like a tortoiseshell. The door of the bathroom remains open, which worries Luca, though he can’t see it beyond the shield of his mother’s body, behind the half-­barricade of his abuela’s shower wall. He’d like to wriggle out and tip that door lightly with his finger. He’d like to swing it shut. He doesn’t know that his mother left it open on purpose. That a closed door only invites closer scrutiny.

The clatter of gunfire outside continues, joined by an odor of charcoal and burning meat. Papi is grilling carne asada out there and Luca’s favorite chicken drumsticks. He likes them only a tiny bit blackened, the crispy tang of the skins. His mother pulls her head up long enough to look him in the eye. She puts her hands on both sides of his face and tries to cover his ears. Outside, the gunfire slows. It ceases and then returns in short bursts, mirroring, Luca thinks, the sporadic and wild rhythm of his heart. In between the racket, Luca can still hear the radio, a woman’s voice announcing ¡La Mejor 100.1 FM Acapulco! followed by Banda MS singing about how happy they are to be in love. Someone shoots the radio, and then there’s laughter. Men’s voices. Two or three, Luca can’t tell. Hard bootsteps on Abuela’s patio.

“Is he here?” One of the voices is just outside the window.

“Here.”

“What about the kid?”

“Mira, there’s a boy here. This him?”

Luca’s cousin, Adrián. He’s wearing cleats and his Hernández jersey. Adrián can juggle a balón de fútbol on his knees forty- seven times without dropping it.

“I don’t know. Looks the right age. Take a picture.”

“Hey, chicken!” another voice says. “Man, this looks good. You want some chicken?”

Luca’s head is beneath his mami’s chin, her body knotted tightly around him.

“Forget the chicken, pendejo. Check the house.”

Luca’s mami rocks in her squatting position, pushing Luca even harder into the tiled wall. She squeezes against him, and together they hear the squeak and bang of the back door. Footsteps in the kitchen. The intermittent rattle of bullets in the house. Mami turns her head and notices, vivid against the tile floor, the lone spot of Luca’s blood, illuminated by the slant of light from the window. Luca feels her breath snag in her chest. The house is quiet now. The hallway that ends at the door of this bathroom is carpeted. Mami tugs her shirtsleeve over her hand, and Luca watches in horror as she leans away from him, toward that telltale splatter of blood. She runs her sleeve over it, leaving behind only a faint smear, and then pitches back to him just as the man in the hallway uses the butt of his AK-47 to nudge the door the rest of the way open.

There must be three of them because Luca can still hear two voices in the yard. On the other side of the shower wall, the third man unzips his pants and empties his bladder into Abuela’s toilet. Luca does not breathe. Mami does not breathe. Their eyes are closed, their bodies motionless, even their adrenaline is suspended within the calcified will of their stillness. The man hiccups, flushes, washes his hands. He dries them on Abuela’s good yellow towel, the one she puts out only for parties.

They don’t move after the man leaves. Even after they hear the squeak and bang, once more, of the kitchen door. They stay there, fixed in their tight knot of arms and legs and knees and chins and clenched eyelids and locked fingers, even after they hear the man join his compatriots outside, after they hear him announce that the house is clear and he’s going to eat some chicken now, because there’s no excuse for letting good barbecue go to waste, not when there are children starving in Africa. The man is still close enough outside the window that Luca can hear the moist, rubbery smacking sounds his mouth makes with the chicken. Luca concentrates on breathing, in and out, without sound. He tells himself that this is just a bad dream, a terrible dream, but one he’s had many times before. He always awakens, heart pounding, and finds himself flooded with relief. It was just a dream. Because these are the modern bogeymen of urban Mexico. Because even children whose parents take care not to discuss the violence in front of them, to change the radio station when there’s news of another shooting, to conceal the worst of their own fears, cannot prevent their children from talking to other children. On the swings, at the fútbol field, in the boys’ bathroom at school, the gruesome stories gather and swell. These kids, rich, poor, middle class, have all seen bodies in the streets. Casual murder. And they know from talking to one another that there’s a hierarchy of danger, that some families are at greater risk than others. So although Luca never saw the least scrap of evidence of that risk from his parents, even though they demonstrated their courage impeccably before their son, he knew—he knew this day would come. But that truth does nothing to soften its arrival. It’s a long, long while before Luca’s mother removes the clamp of her hand from the back of his neck, before she leans back far enough for him to notice that the angle of light falling through the bathroom window has changed.

There’s a blessing in the moments after terror and before confirmation. When at last he moves his body, Luca experiences a brief, lurching exhilaration at the very fact of his being alive. For a moment he enjoys the ragged passage of breath through his chest. He places his palms flat to feel the cool press of tiles beneath his skin. Mami collapses against the wall across from him and works her jaw in a way that reveals the dimple in her left cheek. It’s weird to see her good church shoes in the shower. Luca touches the cut on his lip. The blood has dried there, but he scratches it with his teeth, and it opens again. He understands that, were this a dream, he would not taste blood.

At length, Mami stands. “Stay here,” she instructs him in a whisper. “Don’t move until I come back for you. Don’t make a sound, you understand?”

Luca lunges for her hand. “Mami, don’t go.”

“Mijo, I will be right back, okay? You stay here.” Mami pries Luca’s fingers from her hand. “Don’t move,” she says again. “Good boy.”

Luca finds it easy to obey his mother’s directive, not so much because he’s an obedient child, but because he doesn’t want to see. His whole family out there, in Abuela’s backyard. Today is Saturday, April 7, his cousin Yénifer’s quinceañera, her fifteenth birthday party. She’s wearing a long white dress. Her father and mother are there, Tío Alex and Tía Yemi, and Yénifer’s younger brother, Adrián, who, because he already turned nine, likes to say he’s a year older than Luca, even though they’re really only four months apart.

Before Luca had to pee, he and Adrián had been kicking the balón around with their other primos. The mothers had been sitting around the table at the patio, their iced palomas sweating on their napkins. The last time they were all together at Abuela’s house, Yénifer had accidentally walked in on Luca in the bathroom, and Luca was so mortified that today he made Mami come with him and stand guard outside the door. Abuela didn’t like it; she told Mami she was coddling him, that a boy his age should be able to go to the bathroom by himself, but Luca is an only child, so he gets away with things other kids don’t.

In any case, Luca is alone in the bathroom now, and he tries not to think it, but the thought swarms up unbidden: those irritable words Mami and Abuela exchanged were perhaps the very last ones between them, ever. Luca had approached the table wriggling, whispered into Mami’s ear, and Abuela, seeing this, had shaken her head, wagged an admonishing finger at them both, passed her remarks. She had a way of smiling when she criticized. But Mami was always on Luca’s side. She rolled her eyes and pushed her chair back from the table anyway, ignoring her mother’s disapproval. When was that—ten minutes ago? Two hours? Luca feels unmoored from the boundaries of time that have always existed.

Outside the window he hears Mami’s tentative footsteps, the soft scuff of her shoe through the remnants of something broken. A solitary gasp, too windy to be called a sob. Then a quickening of sound as she crosses the patio with purpose, depresses the keys on her phone. When she speaks, her voice has a stretched quality that Luca has never heard before, high and tight in the back of her throat.

“Send help.”

I was awakened by the sound of the heavy slap of something hitting the table by my head.  My head jerked up, and I regretted the quick movement as my neck revolted from being in an awkward position all night.  My lap was cold, my canine companion having long since deserted me to the more comfortable confines of his bed and was enjoying the heat of the cast-iron stove that had apparently been lit.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping in the kitchen, Mrs. Langford. It’s not proper.”

I blinked up into the pinched face of Mrs. Finch, the housekeeper’s eyes enlarged by the thick lenses of her glasses causing her face to resemble her namesake.  She was of an indeterminate age, the tightly permed hair and shapeless house dresses giving no clue as to her exact age.  Mrs. Finch’s mother had been the housekeeper at Langford Hall for years until she’d moved to a cottage closer to the village and Mrs. Finch had taken over. Her mother had been called Mrs. Finch, too, and I rather hoped it was because the name came with the position rather than because of any improprieties in the family tree.

I blinked again, staring at the stack of post that had been dropped on the table beside me.  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Finch.  I just wanted to rest my eyes for a moment…”

“You were up wandering again, is more like,” Mrs. Finch said between tight lips.  She jutted a pointed chin at the post.  “That’s been piling up for a week now.  I’ll put the kettle on and bring your tea and toast to the breakfast room where you’ll be more comfortable sorting through it all.”

The kitchen was Mrs. Finch’s domain and she resented any interlopers, including the mistress of the house.  I could manage an entire cadre of forceful women in the Women’s Institute, supervise dozens of small children and live barnyard creatures for the Nativity play at the local church, as well as organize the annual gymkhana on the grounds at Langford Hall with ease and aplomb, but I couldn’t bear to argue with Mrs. Finch.  Maybe it was because I always suspected that Mrs. Finch thought that Kit could have done better in choosing a wife.  Someone who retained her good looks and youthful bloom and “didn’t let herself go” as my sister called my lack of interest in clothes and other feminine things meant to retain one’s attractiveness post-children.  And maybe it was because I knew that she Mrs. Finch was probably right.

“Yes, of course,” I said, looking down at my lap, mortified to see that I still wore Kit’s navy blue dressing gown.  “I suppose I should wash and dress first.”

Mrs. Finch looked at me with what could only be called disappointment and gave me a brief nod.

I grabbed the stack of envelopes on my way out of the kitchen, walking slowly toward the stairs as I flipped through each one to see if there was anything more interesting besides the usual bills and the slightly threatening overdue notices that had been coming in with an alarming frequency since Kit’s death.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of handling the family finances, it’s just that Kit had always taken care of things.  Even my father had told me that I was very clever with maths, something that had made my perfect older sister, Diana, positively green with envy. As if having all the poise and fashion flair in the family hadn’t been enough.  I made a promise to myself that I’d finally sit down at Kit’s desk and open up all the account books to see what was what.  Soon.  When I could summon the energy.  I was just so tired all the time now.  So tired of hoping each day I’d feel better, that there would be some hope or purpose on the horizon.  That I’d rekindle the joy I’d once had in the busyness of my old life.

I stopped, noticing an unusual postage stamp on one of the envelopes.  It was a red US Air Mail eight cent stamp showing a picture of aviatrix Amelia Earhart.  My name and address had been scribbled in barely comprehensible letters on the front in bold, black ink.  Definitely not a graduate of a British boarding school, then, so perhaps not a school friend of Kit’s offering condolences.

I looked at the top left corner to read the return address.  A. Bowdoin, Esq., Willig Williams & White, 5 Wall Street, New York, New York. I assumed Bowdoin was either a funeral director or a lawyer, having never clearly understood the difference between the two when it came to death and taxes.

Climbing the stairs, I slid my finger under the flap and began tearing the envelope, not wanting to go through the bother of retrieving a letter opener.  Tucking the rest of the post under one arm, I pulled out a piece of letterhead paper and began to read.

Dear Mrs. Langford,

My condolences on the death of your late husband, Christopher Langford.  I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but my father, Walter, was a huge admirer and shared with me many stories of your husband’s bravery and courage during the war.

We only recently became aware of your husband’s passing when an old war friend of my father’s mailed him the obituary fromThe Times.   It took a while to find us which is why it has taken me so long to contact you.  I realize my letter might be a surprise, and might even be an imposition at best.  But I hope you will bear with me so that I might explain myself, and to perhaps even enlist your assistance.

In the obituary, it mentioned your husband’s brave exploits in France during the war as well as his involvement with the French Resistance fighter known only as La Fleur.  As you may or may not be aware, she has reached nearly mythical proportions in French lore—to the point where some even say she never really existed.

My slow progress up the stars halted, and I grabbed the banister, the other envelopes slipping from their hold under my arm before gently cascading down the steps.  La Fleur.  I closed my eyes in an attempt to regulate my breath before I passed out.  Of course I’d heard the name before.  But not from a history book or news article about the French resistance.  I’d once heard it on Kip’s lips, when he was quite out of his head after his return when I wasn’t sure if he planned to live or die, wasn’t even sure which he’d prefer. My Floweris what he’d said in a near whisper, the words spoken as one would speak to a lover.  I’d seen the name written, too.  In another letter.

I leaned against the wall, listening to the sounds of Mrs. Finch in the kitchen and my own breathing skittering from my lungs like angry bees.  Opening my eyes again, I raised the letter and forced myself to continue reading.

My father has had a stroke which makes communicating difficult as he can barely speak or write.  But when I read the obituary to him and mentioned La Fleur he became quite agitated and upset.  After I’d calmed him down, I was able to understand that my father had reason to believe that La Fleur was no hero but the grandest traitor of them all—and especially to my father.  She ruined his life—something I’ve only just begun attempting to understand.

My father was OSS during the war and was scheduled to receive an important drop from La Fleur.  He was told only that he was to receive something very valuable to the Resistance, something containing rare and expensive diamonds and rubies.  It was not explained exactly what he should be looking for as it would be too dangerous, and was told only in a message from La Fleur to look for the ‘wolf with a cross.’

La Fleur never appeared that night, leaving my father empty-handed. A few months later, however, the wives of Nazi officers began appearing in public with beautiful diamond and ruby jewelry leaving many to speculate that my father had lied, and had profited from the treasure meant for the Resistance.

He was questioned relentlessly and his reputation permanently damaged, yet he consistently maintained his innocence.  For all these years he has been dogged by not only La Fleur’s betrayal, but how he himself was forced into the position of being hailed a traitor and a thief.  Unbeknownst to me, he has unsuccessfully spent his entire life attempting to clear his name, and find the illusive La Fleur.  I’m afraid my father is near the end of his life, and it is his last wish that I might be able to succeed where he has failed.

I have sent many inquiries to various government offices both here in the states and in France for more information and have hit a brick wall as many records from the war are still confidential.  However, after doing quite a bit of research as well as trying to piece together my father’s story, I came to understand that at least part of the answer might well be with your husband’s effects, or even in any of the stories he might have shared with you of his war years.

I apologize if this letter is unwelcome during this time of your grief, but a part of me hopes that you are not only able to assist me, but also willing to revisit some of your husband’s past.

I have arranged to be assigned to my firm’s Paris office for a brief period of time starting April 20^th.  I understand that this is short notice and you most likely have a very busy life and would be unable to make the trip across the Channel.  Yet I feel compelled to at least ask—very brazen and American of me, I know.  But I believe that being in Paris while searching for La Fleur is what I must do, and it is my strongest wish that you might be able to join me in this quest. My father never met you, but he was certain that the woman Kit Langford married had to be a force to be reckoned with. I’m not a betting man, but I’d like to wager that he is right.

I will be staying at the Ritz and you may address any correspondence there as they have instructions to forward to my office if a letter arrives prior to my own arrival.  I look forward to hearing from you or, even better, meeting you in Paris.

Yours truly,

Andrew Bowdoin, Esq.

My hands shook when I read the letter again, and then a third time.  Then, carefully, I refolded the letter and returned it to its torn envelope. Ignoring the rest of the post scattered on the steps, I climbed the remaining stairs and headed down the long hallway to the door at the end, each step more purposeful than the last, my anger at the enigmatic woman I had been forced to share my husband with for almost twenty years growing with each step.  The grandest traitor of them all.

The office is cool and sparsely decorated. I count the plants (three), watch the second hand of the brass clock on the bookshelf make two full circles on its axis, stare at the large canvas on the wall, a lone red smear of paint in the center. I look anywhere but directly at Nora, the pristine, chignoned, straight-​ backed woman sitting in the executive chair across the desk from me—​ not because she’s flipping through my portfolio and I’ve never quite gotten comfortable with witnessing the judgment of my work, but because she’s wearing a neck scarf. Just seeing it, wrapped tightly like a noose, knotted right at her clavicle, makes my skin crawl with anxiety. How do people wear things wrapped around their throats? I’ve never understood it. Even as a kid, if my mom put me in a turtleneck, I would grasp at it, wheezing and crying and carrying on until she let me change.

I’m pretty sure I was strangled to death in a previous life.

Harrison says that’s morbid, but I once heard one of those late-night television psychics say that a lot of the fears we’re born with stem from events in our past lives. Like, if you are terrified of swimming in the ocean, maybe you drowned or were ravaged by a school of piranha or something.

Harrison also says I should stop watching so many of those late-night television psychic shows.

The room is silent, save the sharp machine-​ gun-​ fire rapping of Nora’s pen against the desktop. A pattern has emerged. She pauses the pen when she turns a page and then resumes as she gazes—​ thoughtfully, I hope—​ at the photos of my paintings.

There are thirteen art galleries in Hope Springs, Pennsylvania (excessive for a town with two thousand inhabitants, if you ask me, and I’m an artist). Only three show contemporary work, this one, and two others who have already turned down my paintings. Translation? This is kind of my last shot. But I’m hopeful, because at least here, I actually have a third-​ degree personal connection—​ my old college professor Rick Haymond called in a favor to a friend, who in turn called Nora, and now here I am.

“Mia?”

“Yes?” I say, meeting her eyes.

“Is this a portrait of . . . Keanu Reeves?”

I clear my throat. “Um . . . yes.”

Her pen stills. She looks up at me, expectantly.

“That was part of my latest series.”

She waits, and I clear my throat again.

“Have you ever watched The $25,000 Pyramid?” I ask.

“I’m sorry?”

“The game show.”

“I—​ I believe so.” She narrows her eyes, unsure of where this is going.

“You know how the celebrities start saying a bunch of random words, like ‘wheels, buttons, beach balls,’ and then the contestant has to guess what the category is—​ like, in this example: Things That Are Round?”

“OK.”

“Well, I find that fascinating—​ the groupings of seemingly unrelated things that actually do have something in common. That’s how I choose the themes for my series.”

She continues to stare at me, and I can’t decide if she’s perplexed or bored. “And Keanu Reeves?”

“The theme was: Things That Are Mediocre.”

Her eyes remain locked on mine, but she doesn’t respond. She reminds me of a detective on one of those cop shows, the patient one, willing to wait out the suspect. I cave. I would be a terrible criminal. “Also in that series is the orange Tootsie Pop.”

“The orange Tootsie Pop,” she repeats.

“Right, because orange isn’t bad, but it’s nobody’s favorite, right? And then, let’s see, Capri pants, store-​ bought tomatoes—​ that’s why I painted them with the sticker still on—​ Easter . . .” She breaks eye contact as I’m speaking so I trail off.

Then, more to the desk than to me, she says: “How . . . interesting.” But the way Nora’s voice goes down at the end and not up in praise is how I know she doesn’t really think it is interesting. And how I know that I’m not going to get a showing at this gallery, either.

When I step back out into the midday June heat, I nearly run smack into two guys linked arm in arm. The one in man sandals and teal gingham shorts pulls the other back to let me pass. “I’m so sorry,” I say, as my hand goes to my stomach, a protective mother’s instinct for the fetus currently residing there, then I scoot around the men and out onto the street. Dodging in and out of other well-​ dressed tourists, I pass a chocolatier, an olive oil boutique and a store that sells nothing but spices. Seventeen kinds of salt! I whispered to Harrison when we, too, were another one of those tourist couples five months ago, and ducked in to look around. I never knew there was more than one. Having known me and my lack of culinary skills for the better part of eight years, this did not surprise him.

On Mechanic Street, the cell in my shoulder bag vibrates and I dig it out. A text from Harrison.

How’d it go?

I scroll through my gifs until I find a picture of an army tank and text it back.

That bad? Did you wear the lucky dress?

I hold the phone at arm’s length, making sure my prize possession—​ a yellow wrap dress I scored at a thrift store and was wearing the night I met Harrison—​ is in the frame and press send. Not so lucky, I guess.

I slip the phone into the front pocket of my portfolio case, exchanging it for my car keys. Then I unlock the door to my Toyota, get in, turn the key and start the fifteen-​ minute trek home.

Five months ago, Harrison and I decided to move to this tiny town on a whim, which sounds like something I would do, but not Harrison. It was January, in Philadelphia, and it was snowing. Again. The kind of cold, wet snow that seeps into your clothes and your bones and makes you want to never leave your apartment, and if you do, makes you feel like you’re never going to be warm again.

“Let’s get out of here,” Harrison said one Friday afternoon, when he got home from an extra-​ long shift at the hospital. He had had a tough few weeks, long hours on top of losing an eight-​ year-​ old boy during a routine emergency appendectomy. He didn’t talk about it much—​ he never does—​ but I could tell it affected him.

“And go where?” I asked.

“Anywhere but here,” he said.

I’ve heard it said that life is about choices. Paths stretch out ahead of us––sometimes, we make conscious decisions and other times, fate intervenes and chooses for us. Had I known my life was about to take a sharp turn in those early hours or morning, I might have walked Sunny in a different direction. We would have taken the shortcut to the market on Overseas Highway and been in and out of the store minutes sooner. But then he would have missed exercising and swatting his golden tail at the mosquitos that dove inside his shiny fur. And I might have missed dawn scraping at the early morning sky, while the clapboard homes along Old Highway sprang to life. 

But we didn’t know, and we didn’t take the shortcut. 

Passing through the market’s doors at the exact time as a young boy and his father, we arrived just as a crusty Lucille was complaining about the Florida heat. The little boy, about nine or ten, grasped my eyes inches, asking me with their speckled green if he could pet my dog. 

“His name’s Sunny,” I said while he man hovered in that slightly awkward way that sends the retriever into a tailspin. “Let him sniff your hand first.” There was no rational way to predict who the temperamental dog would warm up to. It was a logic none of us had figured out. He didn’t like most anyone getting near me. Not other dogs. Not other people. And while he was a gift from Philip, he mostly didn’t like Philip. I pulled hard on his lead, and he sat, letting the boy stroke his thick fur. The man hid his eyes beneath a Cowboys baseball cap, though I could see tendrils of brown hair stuck to his neck.

All I needed was honey, a spoonful of sugar for my daily dose of hot lemon water. I should’ve been able to ask a neighbor, but that all changed when Hurricane Irma bucked Islamorada last year with a vicious roar, and our neighbor’s home was leveled. That our future home was spared was a stroke of luck. 

The man and the boy took off inside the market’s narrow corridors, and I kept Sunny close, silently thanking him for not making a scene. I studied the variety of honeys––organic, raw, avocado, pasteurized––impressed that a local market would have enough options to fog anyone’s brain, when Sunny tugged. I paid no attention, tugging back. He tugged harder, dragging me down the aisle.

“Sunny!”

His force sent the honey jar in my hand, a teddy bear with its belly fully of sweetness, to the floor. 

Sunny raced towards Lucille, who was handing out sample cups filled with morning snack. The little boy, the one who moments ago had been stroking Sunny’s fur, reached for his own throat.

“C’mon, Sunny,” I said, though I was fixed on the boy who appeared to be gasping, his fingers clutching his neck. The boy’s father was nowhere in sight, and my chest tightened. Sunny was hell-bent on hauling me across the aisle.

The boy fell to the ground, his backpack crumpling beside him, and the next sixty seconds were a blur. Like staring out the window of a fast moving train, the images spliced into one another. His dad rounded the corner, a green plastic basket crashing to the floor. the contents spilled down the aisle. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. A carton of milk.

The shiny metal bracelet dangling from the boy’s wrist screamed emergency. Severe allergies. The man peered inside the white cup and reached for his son, whose pupils had folded back into his head.

Fumbling inside the nearby bag, he pulled out an EpiPen. 

His fingers trembled as he ripped the top off. I was on the floor beside him, waiting for him to penetrate the skin, but he stopped, suddenly going stiff. Around us, his son’s shallow breaths formed an eerie cackle.

Instinct took over as customers gathered nearby. I ripped the EpiPen out of the man’s hands while he cradled the boy’s head. We worked in tandem, shoulder to shoulder, as though we’d done this before. The boy’s skinny legs jutted out of his shorts and I didn’t think about what I was doing. I jabbed the EpiPen against his thigh and head the snick of the needle.