Chapter 4 A Final Goodbye
A week later, Gabriel found me at the shop just after closing.
The sky had unleashed its torrent, and rain was coming down in fat droplets.
He walked into my shop soaking wet. His hair was matted and stuck to the side of his face.
He looked more like a bedraggled puppy than usual, and I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him.
“What are you doing out in this storm, Gabriel? Come in!” I pulled him into the store, the heat from his arm radiating through his soaked blazer.
“I needed to see you before you left,” he said through his misty glasses. They were fogging up from the change in temperature, and I instantly reached over to swipe them off his face to clean. He caught my hand, and despite the warmth of his grip around my wrist, a chill ran down my spine.
“You can’t go to Foresyth,” he said. His face was set and grim, and his features were so stiff that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Let me guess, you’ve unearthed their terrible lies and secrets. A sex cult powered by virgins’ blood? Or one of those voodoo sects that crucifies small animals?”
“Stop being so flippant and listen to me, Dahlia,” he said, reaching into his soaked satchel and pulling out a folio.
“I couldn’t find anything on Christopher Renate.
The archives are blank. Do you know how rare that is?
I even called the Library of Congress but couldn’t pin down a single fact about the man.
He must have bribed someone high up to erase his name from existence, or it’s a fake name. ”
“So, you didn’t find anything?” My hand drifted down, confusion flooding me.
“Not exactly. I found records on Foresyth dating back to the 1870s,” he said, unraveling the pages from his folio.
“The school was founded in 1872 by a Brit named Edmund W. Foresyth—look at this announcement in The Greenwich Observer: ‘Prestigious Academy opens in Enderly, enrollment welcome to women and all races,’ the title reads.”
“Supporting a diverse student body—what’s wrong with that?”
“I think it’s because they were struggling to assemble a student body. Look at this one from 1875: ‘School set on top of a mass grave, raises questions from locals. Enderly locals complain about strange noises near school.’”
My arms tingled with the familiar excitement that only came when I worked on a case with my father. I grabbed the old parchment, scanning it eagerly.
“And this one from 1893,” Gabriel continued. “‘Mysterious disappearance of terminally ill child, Elizabeth Svenski, eleven, in Concord’—a neighboring town.”
“1893 . . .” My heart skidded to a stop. “That’s one of the missing years from my father’s journals.”
“What?” Gabriel said, breaking his gaze from the papers and meeting mine.
“My father’s journals—his collection goes back decades. But there are three years missing: 1891, 1892, and 1893. My mother said he’d been investigating Foresyth sometime before his death. Could it have been that long ago? I don’t remember him looking into it while I was alive.”
“Maybe he was investigating Elizabeth Svenski’s disappearance.”
I pursed my lips but quickly broke into a smile. “This has been very helpful, Gabriel. I can’t thank you enough.”
His eyes darted to the counter of my bookstore, noticing my father’s old leather briefcase and my packed satchel.
“You can’t go, Dahlia. There’s something wrong with that place—I can feel it,” he said, gripping the folio so tightly that his fingers were turning white. I put my hands over his and lowered them.
“That’s precisely why I need to go. If there’s been a missing student, and now a dead one, there could be others who might get hurt.”
“I don’t care about anyone else getting hurt, I care about you. If it’s money you need, I could talk to my father at the treasury. We could arrange something,” he pleaded quickly.
Anger rose in my chest before I could snuff it out.
“Please, stop before you offend me. I don’t need anything from Mr. Lexor or the treasury.
It’s not just about money,” I said sternly.
“My father lived his life putting himself at risk in the pursuit of truth. And what have I been doing? Wasting my life away in bookstacks, selling stories to anyone na?ve enough to buy them.” Gabriel flinched, and I realized how my words hurt him.
How I was rejecting the life that he had set out, and accepted, for himself.
Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps this was the only way he could let me go.
“I refuse to live like this. I refuse to live in other people’s stories.” I motioned around the bookstore. “I appreciate you coming here, Gabriel,” I said, standing, “but it’s getting late, and I should bid you adieu. Thank you for the research file.”
“If you’re determined to go, then there’s something else you should know.” Gabriel fumbled in his satchel and pulled out another folio. “I didn’t know what this meant, but maybe it could help you.”
“What is it?”
“There are reservation files—there’s an entity called the Council that’s been reserving public grounds near Enderly since 1875.
I wouldn’t have traced them if they hadn’t slipped up once in 1881, logging their name as ‘The Council of Foresyth.’ They meet regularly, seemingly according to the lunar calendar, every twenty-eight days.
They’ve met everywhere from City Hall to Enderly Public Library. ”
My eyes widened at the information. “Gabriel, you sleuth! This is incredible,” I said, scanning the files.
“Like I said, I don’t know what it means, but maybe there’s a higher governing body at Foresyth. If there’s a string of unusual occurrences, maybe they’ll know something.” He stood stiffly then, picking up his satchel from the table.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye then,” he said, walking toward the door. I could sense the hurt in his voice. He turned to me, his eyes searching mine, as if he was trying to memorize my face. I puffed my chest out, ignoring the swelling pang of sadness from saying goodbye to my oldest friend.
“Goodbye, Gabriel. You’ve been a big help. I’ll write to you.” I knew he’d be safe here in Greenwich; that would be solace enough. He turned back before exiting into the torrent of rain and said, “Try to stay alive, will you?”
I smiled and nodded, and he disappeared into the whitewash of rain.