Chapter 32
LIKE A TATTOO
Samuel and Marlene Abner live in a white clapboard house with green shutters on the outskirts of town. Jude and I step onto their front porch, where wind chimes catch the breeze and two rocking chairs creak like a pair of ghosts having a visit.
The hour is nine. AP Lit started thirty minutes ago, which means soon, or already, Mrs. Calloway will see my unexcused absence and begin to worry.
Maybe she’ll call my father and he’ll worry, too.
But I can’t help it. There are answers to find.
Not in that locked tome, perhaps. But maybe here, in this modest home that housed my mother for several months once upon a time.
The door opens.
An elderly woman appears on the other side. She wears a paisley house dress, her white hair pinned back in soft curls. With cautious warmth, she opens the screen door, which groans in protest, and studies me longer than she studies Jude.
“Hello,” I say, working hard not to fidget. “You’re Mrs. Abner, right?”
She nods curiously.
“My mother was Clara Green.”
When I say it, I don’t know if it’ll mean anything.
If, as Tulane said, the Abners were a revolving door for the parentless, then perhaps they don’t remember Clara Green.
She was one of many foster children they took in through the years.
But Marlene presses her hand against her sternum with an audible gasp, and it becomes clear that she absolutely remembers my mother.
She opens the door wide to shake my hand.
Hers is soft, her skin a bit papery. She ushers us inside a home that is trapped in time.
Not from centuries past, like the Vandenberg manor.
This is more 1970s, with floral wallpaper and gingham curtains, worn carpet, and faded linoleum.
In the living room, there’s a couch with crocheted doilies.
Hanging above it, a framed needlepoint of the Serenity Prayer.
Her husband, Samuel, rises slowly from an armchair—tall but stooped, wearing a pair of carpenter jeans and suspenders over a button-down shirt.
Marlene introduces me with a softly-spoken, “This is Clara Green’s daughter,” and when Samuel shakes my hand, his is calloused.
They invite us to sit. Marlene offers us tea or water.
Jude and I politely decline.
“We’ve had many foster children through the years,” Marlene says, sitting in the chair opposite her husband. “But we remember Clara well. I must say, you look very much like her.”
I’m unsure how to respond to this. I’m unsure what to say at all.
I’m a bit stuck on the fact that my mom lived here, in this house.
The television is off. It’s small, set inside a wooden cabinet.
Beside it, stands a bookshelf filled with well-worn Bibles, devotionals, and what appears to be a collection of Christian romance novels.
“How is your mother?” Marlene asks.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
The woman frowns. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
I stuff my hands beneath my knees. “Did she visit you, by chance—around five years ago?”
Marlene and Samuel exchange a look of puzzlement.
“No,” Marlene says. “We haven’t seen her since the social worker took her away.”
Took her away.
It’s a different story from the one Tulane told.
I lean forward. “Do you mind if I ask … could you tell us about her friendship with Simon Vandenberg?”
The couple share another glance, this one less puzzled, more uncomfortable. Like they’d rather not discuss her friendship with Simon Vandenberg.
Samuel clears his throat. “We didn’t know much about it, if we’re being honest.”
“Clara was only with us for six months,” Marlene adds. “She was a very quiet girl. Beautiful, but private. She kept to herself mostly. We thought she was spending her time at the library. It was only later, after the disappearance, when we learned she’d been spending so much of it with Simon.”
“Because she told you?” I ask.
“Oh, she told us alright,” Samuel replies.
I look at him quizzically.
“She went a little crazy, if you want to know the truth.”
“Samuel.” Marlene says, her tone gentle but reproachful.
“What do you mean, she went a little crazy?” I ask.
“Well,” Samuel continues, “she kept insisting she knew where Simon was. The rest of his family, too. She kept—” He stops, his brow furrowing, like he isn’t sure he should say any more.
“She kept what?”
“We don’t want to upset you,” Marlene says.
“It’s okay. I already know she was troubled.”
They exchange a third look, resigned this time.
Marlene takes up the story. “Well, she kept insisting they found some sort of … doorway? She was very adamant, and it was all very upsetting. We tried to help her, but she refused to let it go. Every day got a little worse, until she was in near hysterics. In the end, social services thought it would be best for Clara to start fresh somewhere new and they took her away.”
“Do you know if it helped?” I ask.
“I’m afraid it didn’t. She was eventually admitted into a facility.
” Marlene says the word delicately, but I can read between the lines.
My mother was put into a psych ward. I can’t help but wonder for how long.
“We were very sad to hear it. She was such a good student, your mother. Very smart. Pretty as can be. She loved reading.”
“Did she go to the high school?” I ask, realizing it quite suddenly. Unless Marlene home-schooled her foster children, or sent them to Blackwillow Christian Academy, which could certainly be a possibility if they were given financial aid, she would have gone to Foggy Hollow High.
“Well, of course.” Marlene smiles. “All of our foster children did.”
Jude and I return to school at the beginning of third period.
Mrs. Calloway buzzes us inside the front office looking every inch the mother hen. “Selah, I’ve been worried sick. I called your father, and he said you were dealing with something.” She turns from me to Jude. “I marked you absent as well, dear. And left a message with your mother.”
“Stepmother,” Jude says.
“Yes, I’m sorry. Your stepmother.” Mrs. Calloway turns back to me. “Selah, what is the matter? It’s not like you to play hooky.”
I tell her. The non-supernatural parts, anyway. About my mother living here, being a student here. Friends with Simon Vandenberg. When I finish, Mrs. Calloway looks properly shocked.
I slide my hands into the pockets of my puffer vest. “We just went to speak with her foster parents—Marlene and Samuel Abner.”
“I remember the Abners,” Mrs. Calloway says. “Up until a few years back, they were always enrolling new students. They fostered your mother?” She asks the question as she types into her computer, and I can tell by the light in her eyes that she’s found something.
The transcripts of Clara Green, perhaps.
“For six months,” I say. “Then she was sent away after Simon and his family disappeared.”
Mrs. Calloway swivels her chair to look from the computer screen to me. “Selah, sweetheart, that’s a lot to take in.”
“I haven’t told Twig yet,” I say, squirming a little as I do. It’s not like me to keep things from Twig. “I thought I’d fill him in tonight, after dinner. It’s too much to explain over the phone.”
Twig comes home later this evening. The team took fifth place in the Catalyst Cup, an impressive finish, really, considering the competition. Mrs. Calloway invited me to join them for dinner to celebrate. Naomi, too. Which means I’ll have to catch him up after she leaves.
Mrs. Calloway nods kindly, then starts writing us both a pass.
I fiddle with the skeleton key inside my pocket. “Can I see her transcripts?”
She stops writing. I think she would give me anything if she could.
But even I know this is too big of an ask.
“I would love to give you more information about your mother, but I can’t give you her transcripts.
That would get me fired.” Even as she says it, she looks conflicted, like she might bend the rules just once.
She taps her finger against the laminate desktop, her lips pursed.
Then she scoots her chair back. “But there is something we could try.”
Jude and I follow her down the hall, into Foggy Hollow’s uninspired library.
She walks decisively to a shelf near the front, which contains all the yearbooks from years past. Mrs. Calloway removes one with a spine that says Class of 1995.
The year my mother attended.
She sets it on top of the waist-high shelf and opens to the index, searching for Green, Clara.
Her finger stops on the name, and I’m excited to see there are three page numbers.
Mrs. Calloway gives my shoulder a squeeze, and, understanding that Jude and I might want some privacy, excuses herself to the main office.
I blink down at my mother’s name, proof that she’s been here this whole time.
A part of this school. She walked these halls.
Sat in these classrooms. Gazed out the windows, daydreaming of Simon and the Vandenberg estate and probably, the rift.
With a shaky exhale, I turn to the page listed first. Her yearbook picture.
In it, her nose is sun-kissed, her ears pierced, her eyes not so haunted.
I capture it on my phone, then turn to the next page listed in the index.
This one, a short write-up about the high school’s first poetry club, with Clara Green listed as one of its members.
“She wrote poetry,” I say, more a question than a statement.
I didn’t know she wrote anything.
I capture this, too, then turn to the final page, this one a collection of pictures taken at a pep rally.
In one of them, my mother smiles tentatively with a group of girls.
I stare at her face, as mesmerized as I’ve ever been, when Jude points to her clavicle.
She’s wearing a v-neck shirt. Her collarbones are pronounced like my own.
And what he has noticed takes my breath away.
The symbol.
A tad grainy, but unmistakable.
It’s not etched on a locket. Or sketched in some corner. It’s right there, beneath her left collarbone, like a tattoo on her skin.
After school, I show my dad the picture, zooming in on the mark in question.
“That was her birthmark,” Dad says.
We’re standing in the rose garden in the back lawn, to the right of the hedge maze.
“A birthmark?”
He lifts his ball cap to wipe his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel. The temperature is mild, but the sun has come out, and my dad’s a hard worker. “I thought it looked more like a tattoo, but she always said it was a birthmark.”
So then, this explains it. Why the symbol has always struck a familiar cord.
I must have seen it on my own mother, a “birthmark” on her skin.
This mysterious mark has become a web of gossamer, connecting one mystery to the other—the portrait and the cold case, confirming what I’ve already begun to suspect.
The two aren’t separate mysteries at all, but one.
“You doing okay, kiddo?” Dad asks.
When I look up at him, his eyes are concerned.
“I know this is a lot to take in. A really bizarre coincidence, if you ask me. Moving here, of all places.” He rubs his chin.
“You know I’m not much of a believer when it comes to all that supernatural stuff.
But with the way you took to this place, it always felt like, I don’t know.
Fate. I would hate for this discovery to … ” His words fall away with a frown.
To what, I wonder.
Undo me?
Send me back to therapy?
Dad looks so stressed. And for just a moment, I’m tempted to show him everything. Ezra’s Obsession. The drawing of the locket with my mother’s “birthmark” drawn in the corner. Her visit to Tulane five years ago. Simon’s journal entries.
I try to imagine what he might say. How he would respond. And I know, deep in my bones, it would be too much. Especially when he’s already wrestling with worry. And perhaps—a flare-up of grief?
“I’m okay, Dad,” I say with a smile. “It’s kinda cool, if you think about it. I’m going to school where she went to school. I’m friends with a Vandenberg, just like she was.”
I’m laying it on a little too thick. Saying the wrong words, probably.
Mom didn’t have a happy ending in Foggy Hollow.
Her best friend disappeared, and she was sent away, and eventually admitted into a facility.
I wonder if Dad knows about the psych ward.
I’m afraid to ask. So I just kiss his cheek and tell him not to worry.
A couple hours later, I’m sitting in the Calloway’s dining room, listening as Twig and Naomi tell us everything about their time at CMU.
When dinner is over and Naomi goes home, we slip into his bedroom, and I tell him everything that happened while he was gone.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
He’s not upset that I didn’t tell him sooner.
He understands why I didn’t want to get into it on the phone.
That night, exhaustion steamrolls me.
I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.
I have dreams.
In one, I’m standing in the dining hall.
A man is yelling, pounding his fist against the table.
A young man yells back, his face red with anger.
A woman cries for them to stop, please stop, while a teenage girl fumes in silence.
The very air in the room seems to feast on their emotion.
It shimmers and darkens, then turns into the same terrifying black hole that sucked up my mother.
I watch in horror as it does the same to John and Maureen, Simon and Lily.
It sucks them right off their seats and swallows them whole.