Chapter Twelve
I’m surprised Antonia’s wife, Wren, invited us in. We’re strangers, after all. Boxes populate most of the floor of the apartment. The steaming mug of cocoa in my hands is warm and comforting after a morning of playing cat and mouse with our stalkers. I’m sitting next to Marek on a sofa so small there isn’t a gap between us.
The place smells like she’s just cleaned the apartment. Probably for her appointment. There’s ticking somewhere, and I search the room for what’s making the noise. A box the size of a coffin lies open on the floor by the open window. I can barely make out the face of a grandfather clock.
I feel for Wren. I’ve been where she is now. It’s hard packing up the memories of a lost life. Not the deceased loved one’s lost life, but yours. The life you knew with them in it.
Pushing the thought away, I take another sip of cocoa. I’m trying to play it cool. Acting as if it doesn’t freak me out that Wren knew my name. But the cocoa sloshing back and forth inside my mug is a dead giveaway that it does.
A woman outside yells something in Italian, breaking the silence of the apartment. A second or so later, a young boy answers her.
Wren sits down on a chair across from Marek and me with a mug of her own. “Sorry, I haven’t much to offer. The lemon cookies are tasty, if a bit stale. Just dunk it in the cocoa. Softens it up some.”
I’d better get this going. We need to be back before sleeping beauty and her troll wake up and find we’re not at the hotel. Though I don’t know why I care. Shona’s not the boss of this operation. “How long were you and Antonia married?”
“A little over a year.” She sips her cocoa. Her eyes turn glossy, and she looks away for a second. She returns her gaze to me. “When’s the last time you saw her?”
“It’s been ages,” I say, hating the fact that I’m lying to her. She seems like a sweet woman.
I spot a photograph of Wren with a gorgeous-looking Italian woman. They’re all smiles and dimples, both wearing white dresses and holding up champagne flutes. It must’ve been their wedding day.
A sadness pains my heart, and now my eyes are glossing, too. It’s the only photo left out. Wren probably couldn’t pack it yet, wanting to keep Antonia with her.
Wren pops up to her feet. “Silly me. I forgot. There’s a picture of you with her.” She hurries into the other room and calls, “And she left you a box.”
I slide Marek a look. His eyes are as wide as mine are. I’m not sure I heard Wren right. Did she say there was a picture that exists of me with a woman I never met? Or don’t remember meeting, anyway.
Marek adjusts on the seat to face me and confirms what I thought I heard. “A picture of you? How can she have a picture of you?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t remember her.” I put my mug on the glass coffee table. “It has to be someone who looks like me.”
“But she knew your name,” Marek says. “It has to be you.”
Wren comes back carrying a medium-sized box. She sets it down and picks up a picture frame that’s resting on top. “There you are,” she says, turning it around so I can see and stabbing the little girl’s face in the photo with her pointer finger. The girl’s sitting on her dad’s lap, who is beside Antonia on a porch swing.
I stare a long while at the photograph, letting my brain catch up to what I see.
“She said the man in the photo is Eli,” Wren says.
My dad.
And me.
I’m about three or four in the photograph. I want to hurl, but I push it down. Marek grasps my hand to hide the fact that it’s shaking.
Marek stands and brings me up with him. “Sorry, but we have to go. We promised some friends we’d meet them.”
“Oh yes, I’m so sorry—” Wren is in the middle of saying when the intercom by the door buzzes. “And there’s my appointment.”
It’s as if she doesn’t know what to do. Answer the door or not.
I don’t know what to do, either. My brain’s clamped shut, and I don’t know how to operate without it.
Marek saves us both. “You should get that. Thanks for seeing us and for the hot chocolate.”
“Yes. It was my pleasure. Well then, this box is yours.” She picks it up and hands it to me. “I was going to mail it, but I thought I’d bring it to the States. Cheaper to mail.”
My name and address are neatly printed in the middle of the box. Antonia knew where I lived. It’s unreasonable to feel the way I do right now about someone I never even knew. But there’s a sadness settling inside me, gnawing at my gut.
The buzzer goes off again.
Wren hustles to the door, presses a button, and speaks something in Italian into it. She picks up a marker from the counter separating the living room from the tiny kitchen and comes over to me. Scribbling numbers on the top of the box, she says, “If you need anything, call me. A ride. Money. I’ll be here another week. Okay?”
“Okay.” Now tears are running down my face. It feels like I’ve known Wren forever.
She hugs me, the box between us. “I know. I loved her, too.”
We release each other.
Marek smiles at her. “It was nice meeting you.”
“You, as well,” Wren returns.
“Thank you,” I say and follow Marek out the door. “Goodbye.”
We pass a young Italian couple ascending the stairs as we’re going down. They’re all smiles, and she’s wearing a big diamond wedding band. They look like newlyweds, and I imagine Wren and Antonia with the same excitement on their faces as they shopped for their first apartment together.
But of course, I’m assuming. They could have already been living together before their wedding.
At the bottom of the staircase, an older man with curly white hair and a worn-out sweater is locking the door to his apartment.
“Excuse me,” I say, startling him.
He drops his keys, and Marek quickly picks them up.
Marek places them in the man’s wrinkled hand. “Here you go. Sorry we startled you.”
“English?” I ask.
“Do you know how the woman in 3A died?”
He sighs deeply, which he follows with a tsking sound. “Such tragedy. So young. She was on her…how you say…bicycle, yes?”
I nod this time. “Yes.”
He continues, “Went around a corner. A truck he hits her. Never wakes up again.”
We thank him and leave the building. It’s as if a dark cloud follows me, sucking out my energy, drenching me with sorrow.
“How come I can’t remember Antonia?” I say more to myself than to Marek. “I never saw any photographs around the house of her. If she was a relative, wouldn’t they have mentioned her or have pictures?”
“Maybe there was a falling out?”
“Maybe.” If that was the case, it doesn’t make sense. Dad was always forgiving. Even to people who probably didn’t deserve it.
“I wonder what’s in the box,” Marek asks, rushing down the street beside me.
I’m silent. My mind’s still processing everything. I hug the box tight to my chest. My Vans pound the cobblestones. Antonia was on the list. She knew my dad. Took a photograph with me. There wasn’t a line through her name like my parents’.
I stop.
That list.
They’re all on it. My dad, birth parents, and Antonia.
All of them died suddenly.
Oh God.
They were murdered. I’m sure of it.
But they didn’t look like murders. An aneurism took my dad, my parents died in a boating accident, and a car hit Antonia on her bike. Could someone have planned all that? I don’t know. I don’t do spy games or anything that could help me analyze it. All I have is a gut feeling.
And my gut tells me there’s no way their deaths are a coincidence.
It takes Marek several steps before he realizes I’m not beside him anymore.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” He removes the box that’s threatening to tip over from my arms. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t think my dad’s death was an accident. He’s crossed off that list.”
“You said it was an aneurysm.”
“I know. But what if the autopsy got it wrong.” The street is too vacant. A man in a long gray dress coat with a bolt of silver streaking his black, tousled hair and a beard that comes to a point at his chin passes us. An uneasy feeling settles into my gut, and I keep my eyes on him until he turns a corner.
Marek shakes the box slightly, and the contents thump a little. “Maybe the answers are in here.”
…
Cain and Shona aren’t in the hotel room when we return. A note is on the desk saying they went shopping with Sid.
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the box.
Just staring.
Marek crosses his ankles and watches from his reclined position on the bed. “Not going to know what’s inside until it’s opened.”
I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to open the box for nearly fifteen minutes. Whatever is inside could change my life. Ruin my life. End it.
“I’m not sure about this,” I say, my gaze lifting to Marek’s stare. “I’m scared.”
He sits up, slides over, and hangs his legs over the bed, with the box between us.
“Let’s do this together,” he says, stabbing the packing tape with a butter knife from the service tray left behind with Shona and Cain’s breakfast remains on it. That’s why the room smells like old eggs and some sort of spice I can’t place.
The dull blade runs across the tape, causing a scratching sound to fill the room. My eyes follow the shiny, rose-engraved metal releasing what I hope are answers to my family’s secrets.
Marek lifts one flap, two, three, and four. He stops before continuing. “Are you ready?”
I take a deep breath and push it out through my nose. “Ready.”
He looks inside, screws up his face, and reaches in, pulling out folded up poster boards. Four of them. Held together by tons of masking tape. Setting it aside on the bed, he glances at me.
“This was attached to a wall or something. Seems odd she’d remove it and pack it up.” Marek takes out a photo album and some papers from the box. “It’s as if she was preparing to die. Like she knew it was going to happen.”
The top page of the stack of loose papers catches my attention, and I pick it up. “It’s the list. The same one as your grandfather’s.”
Marek places the box on the floor and scoots closer to me, the bed shaking with his movement. We read the list, me holding one side, him the other. A line is drawn through most of the names, just like the one that belonged to Adam Conte. In the margin beside each one is a notation.
Left a message.
Barista at Café on Santa Maria.
Can’t locate
No answer.
And so on.
By Shona’s name there’s a notation dated three years ago, and it says, always in trouble, now homeschooled.
My name is untouched.
“There’s no notation on mine,” I mumble, rubbing an itch from my nose.
I stop on my parents’ names. Did Antonia know them, too?
Marek removes his jacket and tosses it on the bed behind him. “Probably because she knew where you were.”
“Probably.” It’s getting warm, so I take off my coat and lay it on the footboard of the bed.
“Let’s see what’s on the posters.” Marek pushes up from the bed and gathers them up. “The tape’s still good.” He unfolds the connected pieces and sticks them to the wall across from us. Attached to the fronts are pieces of paper, sticky notes, and a world map. Holes dot all the countries where pushpins used to be.
We both lean forward at the same time, elbows on knees, chins resting on hands, studying the macramé of information. Each hole on the map has a number, one through twenty-six, along with a date printed in a blue marker and either the letter “D” or “M” beside it.
“Those numbers must match the names on the list,” I say, plucking it up. “The names on this are listed in numerical order. Mine is, anyway. See the one marking Philadelphia? That’s my home. Number sixteen. Same as on the list. But there’s no date beside it.”
Marek leans over my arm to view the list. “Shona’s matches the one on the map also. And there’s no date on hers. Let’s call all the numbers. See what we can find out.”
“Okay.”
Marek grabs the phone. I sit in the middle of the bed and pull my legs into a pretzel. He plops down in front of me and reaches the phone out to me. “You should make the call. It would be less threatening.”
“What do I say? No one’s going to just give information to a stranger.”
“Fake it. Say you’re a claims agent for an insurance company. That way we can find out if they’re dead or alive.”
I take the phone from him and punch in the first number. It rings several times before a woman answers. She sounds Irish.
“Hello. Um… Um, this is…Sharon…Sharon Knox. I’m a claims agent with…Transcontinental Insurance. Is this the family of Jack O’Neill?”
“With whom am I speaking?”
“His mother.”
“Okay, well, he had a small policy with us, and I need to verify if…um.” I widen my eyes at Marek.
“If he qualifies,” he whispers.
“If he qualifies,” I repeat. “First, what’s the date he died?”
A sob comes over the phone. Well, he’s definitely in the hereafter. Another sob reverberates against my ear. My heart sinks to a new low. I should’ve warmed the woman up first. Asked how she was doing. Said I was sorry for her loss.
I do better on the next call. And the next. And so on.
Marek takes notes on the back of the list, registering the answers and using the photo album as a desk. It takes nearly two hours to make all the calls.
With each one, the news gets harder to take.
Deceased. Eleven, including my three parents.
Two didn’t speak English.
A hang-up.
Missing. Six.
Three no answers.
And then there’s Shona and me.
I feel the world drop away from me. It’s as if I’m riding waves on the bed. Blood pulses in my ears, loud and disturbing.
If it’s a hit list, we’re next.