CHAPTER 8
Cat dropped the heavy cardboard box into the back of the van and went back to the house for another.
She and Harper were moving into an apartment in town.
They could afford that now. In addition to the windfall that came from their father’s painting, the money from the da Vinci and Escher sketches had come in, and thanks to Sonja’s wise negotiating, it was a fortune.
After a lifetime of living out of duffle bags, they now had whole boxes’ worth of possessions, and yet their lives didn’t seem any fuller.
There was a hole. There would always be a hole until Bristol returned.
Cat and Harper passed each other several times on the old creaking porch as they loaded boxes.
Harper was not happy about the move, but the apartment was far more practical and safer.
With Cat commuting long hours to the music institute now—they had welcomed her back—she didn’t want to worry about Harper riding her bike back and forth along deserted country roads to school.
Especially not the one where their father had died—or at least disappeared.
Enough people had disappeared from Cat’s life. She wouldn’t lose Harper too.
“Hey, don’t look so glum,” she said, ruffling Harper’s hair as she dropped another box into the van. “There’s a pool at the new place. And the library is only a block away. You’re going to love it.”
“Yeah.” Harper sighed. “I just worry. What if she comes back and we’re not here? What if—”
Cat looped her arm around Harper’s shoulder. “Come on.” She walked her to the mudroom where the portal had once been. “Look. She is not going to miss that note, or the card. With all the tape you used to fix them to the washing machine, they’re not going anywhere.”
They stared at the cheery envelope that Harper had illustrated months ago with balloons and a birthday cake for Bristol’s twenty-second birthday.
Blocking most of the floor in the mudroom in front of the washing machine was the gift they had planned to surprise Bristol with before she left unexpectedly.
It was a new bike to replace her rusted one.
It had shiny baby blue fenders and a basket filled with a new hoodie.
The bike was secondhand, but they had saved like crazy to buy it for her.
“I promise you, Harper, we will never touch this house or that bike until she returns. It will always be here for her.”
“Did you know, Cat? Tell me. Did you know what they were?”
What they were. Cat had shed so many tears over what had transpired, she didn’t think she had any more, but she felt her eyes welling, still feeling the guilt. Would it ever go away?
She had already told Harper what she knew. But maybe sometimes the truth had to be revisited more than once, especially when so much of your life had been a lie.
“I swear, I didn’t think Daddy was telling the truth.
Would you have believed him? After Mother died, he wasn’t the same.
You know that. When he called me at school with this wild story about Elphame and leaving to find Mother, I thought he had finally lost it.
And when he warned me about Bristol and her birthmark, I was certain he had.
He said I should know in case anything happened to him.
When he died, or I thought he had, I was as grief-stricken as everyone else and forgot about his wild stories. They didn’t seem important then.”
Harper nodded and looked down as if ashamed. “I went to the library and got a book of spells. I tried a few, but nothing happened.”
“We’re not fairies, Harp.”
“But Mother was. That has to be where Bri got it from.”
Their dead mother. It was possible Bri got it from her, but now they would never know. These past months they had tried to put the pieces together. They were still trying to unravel their past. At least they had each other. But who did Bristol have to help her? Cat’s throat swelled.
“She’ll manage,” Harper said, as if she could read Cat’s thoughts. “Those were the last words she said to me so I wouldn’t worry: You know me. I always manage.”
But Bristol’s last spoken words to Cat were the ones she would always hear. How could you not tell me? I trusted you. Get away from me. Get the hell away.