Chapter 6 - A Stranger Wearing Her Mother's Face
Goldie was sitting at the kitchen table when I arrived.
Her birthday card lay unopened beside a glass of milk.
Nathaniel stood near the window.
He looked as though he hadn't slept in days.
"Tell Rebecca what happened," he said gently.
Goldie looked at me.
"A lady came to the playground."
"What did she look like?"
"Pretty."
"Anything else?"
"She had hair like mine."
Nathaniel closed his eyes.
"How long?"
Goldie spread her hands.
"Really long."
"What did she say?"
Goldie looked down.
"She said she knew my mommy."
I pulled out a chair.
"Did she tell you her name?"
Goldie nodded.
"She said I could call her Aunt Miriam."
Nathaniel's face drained of color.
I remembered the missing geneticist.
Dr. Miriam Vale.
The woman who had vanished seventeen years earlier.
"What else?" I asked.
Goldie touched the birthday card.
"She said my daddy was trying to protect me from the wrong person."
Nathaniel turned.
"What?"
Goldie flinched.
He immediately softened his voice.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart."
She continued.
"She said Mommy didn't disappear."
My throat tightened.
"What did she say happened?"
Goldie looked at her father.
"She said Mommy was hiding."
Nathaniel sat down heavily.
"Where?"
Goldie shook her head.
"She wouldn't tell me."
"Did she ask you to do anything?"
Goldie hesitated.
Then she reached beneath her dress.
She removed a small silver key hanging from a ribbon.
Nathaniel stared at it.
"Where did you get that?"
"The lady gave it to me."
He held out his hand.
"May I see?"
Goldie placed it in his palm.
Nathaniel examined the key.
A number was engraved along its edge.
17.
I watched his expression change.
He recognized it.
"What does it open?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
Instead, he stood and walked toward the locked room upstairs.
I followed.
He opened the door and crossed to the dresser.
The bottom drawer was locked.
He inserted the silver key.
It turned.
Inside was a small black journal.
The cover was cracked.
A name had been embossed in faded gold letters.
EVELYN MERCER.
Nathaniel opened it.
The first pages contained ordinary entries.
School assignments.
Birthday wishes.
Drawings of flowers.
Then the handwriting changed.
The letters became cramped and uneven.
They say I am special.
They say my hair remembers things.
I don't believe them.
I think they are hurting people.
I turned the page.
A photograph had been taped inside.
It showed Evelyn standing beside another girl.
Both had extraordinarily long hair.
The second girl was dark-haired, with frightened eyes.
Beneath the picture was written:
Clara Voss. Age 11.
I stared at the surname.
Voss.
The dead doctor's daughter?
Nathaniel read the next entry aloud.
"Clara says her father keeps the girls downstairs. She says they are not allowed to leave until the treatments are finished."
Another page.
"Miriam tried to help us. They caught her."
Another.
"Clara disappeared yesterday."
The final entry was dated October 17, 2009.
One day before Evelyn vanished.
"If I disappear, Nathaniel must never believe I ran away. I am going to find Clara."
Nathaniel lowered the journal.
His eyes were wet.
"She wasn't kidnapped at the concert."
I looked at him.
"What?"
"She went willingly."
"To rescue Clara."
He nodded.
"She knew something was happening to that girl."
I thought about the woman in the gray coat.
The white hair.
The three raised fingers.
"Could Clara still be alive?"
Nathaniel didn't answer.
Then Goldie called from the hallway.
"Daddy?"
We turned.
She stood holding a photograph.
"Why does this lady look like Mommy?"
I crossed toward her.
She had found a loose picture inside the journal.
It showed a young woman with golden hair and familiar blue eyes.
She looked exactly like an older version of Goldie.
Evelyn.
But Goldie wasn't pointing at Evelyn.
She was pointing at the second woman beside her.
A dark-haired woman holding a baby.
I took the photograph.
The baby wore a hospital bracelet.
E-18.
Goldie.
My stomach tightened.
Because the dark-haired woman holding her was not Evelyn.
It was Clara Voss.
May you like
And on the back of the photograph, someone had written:
THE CHILD BELONGS TO BOTH OF THEM.
