by A J Rivers
The situation with Sarah didn't help. Actual Thanksgiving got swallowed up by the case and its aftermath, so Sam and I didn't even celebrate. But we're making up for that today, and in a few hours, Bellamy and Eric will be at my house looking for turkey. I'm determined not to let my holiday funk get everyone else down. I'll fake the Normal Rockwell cheer with the best of them. Maybe it will even convince me. Maybe all it's going to take is jiggling a memory somewhere, like everything that's happened in the last few months has clogged up my mind, and I just need to shake something free so the Thanksgiving feelings can come back.
"Happy Thanksgiving!" Sam bellows from the living room.
I walk out of my bedroom still in a bathrobe and slippers and discover the man I'm dating, a man I very well might love, resplendent in brown and gold. The sweater is straight off the cover of a Sears catalog in the late eighties, and the football he has clutched in one hand has bad idea written all over it.
This is helping.
"You certainly are cheerful this morning," I grin.
He comes up for a kiss, and I notice he already smells like warm bread. Which means somewhere he's packing a tray or two of rolls. Those don't come out very often. They were his grandmother's specialty when we were young, and they got passed along to him because he had no sisters to carry the tradition. I don't know what's in them. It's a closely guarded secret shared only with those who enter the inner sanctum of the Johnson family. My extensive experience and expert knowledge can only deduce it has something to do with yeast, butter, and maybe cocaine. They’re that addicting.
Sam transforming into a Hallmark movie hero, sparks some of the holiday feelings in me. I get myself dressed so we can start dinner. The impeccable timing of my two best friends means they show up at the door just as I set the bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. They come in with bright smiles and bearing side dishes and desserts. It's good to see them, and I let myself drift away into the warmth, good food, and candlelight. It starts to fade the corners of my thoughts and buff them away like watercolors until I'm not thinking about anything else. We become that portrait, that perfect holiday that winds up as the frozen image of an entire year, an entire time in your life.
But it isn't long before Bellamy brings me back down to Earth. We've finished eating and are carrying massive wedges of pumpkin pie into the living room. As I go to curl up in the corner of the couch where I always sit, I notice Bellamy's leather satchel. I go to move it, and her eyebrows shoot up like she's just remembered it's there.
"Oh," she gasps. "I can't believe I didn't show these to you yet."
"What is it?" I ask as she sets her plate down on the coffee table and reaches for the satchel.
Sitting down beside me, she dips her hand into the bag and pulls out a handful of papers. It isn't documents like I'm used to her showing me from work, but folded papers and bits of stiffer cardstock. It takes me a second to realize I know exactly what it is.
"I have what Christina Ebbots gave me when I went to see her, and she also sent me a few other things she found from her dad. She said when she gets back; she'll look for more and send whatever she can find. She knows there's more," Bellamy says.
"What is that?" Eric looks over with a frown.
He takes a long sip of coffee, and I stare at him before glancing back at Bellamy.
"You didn't tell him?" I ask. She shakes her head, so I continue. "It's letters and postcards from my mother."
"To whom?"
"Charles Ebbots. The man who owned the house where they lived," Bellamy says.
"And where my mother died," I add, looking down at the postcard she sent me a scan of through email. "In theory."
"In theory?" Eric asks, sounding confused. "What do you mean?"
I look between them again. "You know, I'm really disappointed in the two of you. What good is having my two best friends pretend not to be wrapped up in each other if you don't even keep each other informed?" They both blink at each other, then at me, but I'm not buying it.
"Don't try the innocent looks with me. We're not going into the next year with all this will they-won't they. You've got about three weeks to figure this out." Three pairs of eyes continue to stare at me, and I sigh. "I'm sorry. That was a lot."
"It's alright," Sam says comfortingly. "Every Thanksgiving’s got to have a drunk uncle who gets belligerent. This year, it’s you. And since it's actually December, you can be the drunk Thanksgiving uncle and put a down payment on drunk Christmas uncle as well."
Bellamy lets out a quiet cheer and waves her hand like she's holding a pennant. I manage a hint of a laugh, but it can't be much more than that. The words and images I'm holding in my hands are gradually stitching my throat closed. I hold the postcard out to Eric.
"This postcard was written by my mother. April 17, 2003. The Thursday before Easter. It talks about us spending Easter in Vermont that year," I explain.
"You never told me you spent time in Vermont," he says.
"That's part of the problem," I nod.
"Part of?"
"I'll be right back." I go into my bedroom and pull out my fireproof chest from under the bed. I take the papers out of it and bring one back into the living room to show Eric. "This is my mother's death certificate."
"April 17, 2003," he reads. I nod and point to the top of the page, indicating the state that issued the certificate. "Florida."
"Now you're beginning to see the problem. How could she have mailed a postcard at the top of the East Coast and died at the bottom? The postcard is postmarked on that Thursday, which means the earliest it could have been left at the post office is still after five on Wednesday."
"Right, because any earlier and it would have been postmarked on Wednesday," Eric notes, stroking his chin.
"Exactly. My mother died just before one in the morning."
"So, she would have had to drop off the postcard and travel all the way from Vermont to Florida in about seven hours," Eric muses.
"Unless she dropped the postcard off in a sidewalk mailbox earlier," Bellamy points out. "Sometimes, those aren't emptied out until evening, but she could have put it in hours before."
"Sure," I say. "That would give her more time to travel from Vermont to Florida, but it doesn't explain one thing."
"What?" Eric asks.
"She wasn't in Vermont. She was home in the days leading up to her murder. The whole time. She was supposed to leave that night. I thought she had left. Right up until they wheeled her body out, I thought she wasn't home," I say.
"She was supposed to leave that night?" Eric asks. "You never told me that."
"It's not something I think about much. I don't know why she didn't leave or what happened. All I know is that night she was supposed to be traveling to New York to meet up with some friend who had come in from Russia. Her flight was at midnight. She was going to be back for Easter," I explain.
"Then how did a postcard from her get sent from Vermont?" Eric asks.
"And how did she end up dead at home almost an hour after she was supposed to be on an airplane?" Bellamy asks.
"I don't know."
Chapter Four
"You didn't know about any of this when you were younger?" Eric asks.
I shake my head. "No. I didn't even know who owned the house we lived in until Bellamy found all this out. It was never mentioned."
"Did you look into the death certificate?"
"Remember when I went to Florida a couple of weeks ago?" Bellamy asks.
Eric's eyes snap to me, then back to her. "I thought you said you were going on vacation."
"I was. I did. There was plenty of vacationing. There just also happened to be some investigating. And I happened to have a look into the death certificate. The department of vital statistics wouldn't give me any information, but I poked around and found Emma's mother's obituary. That sent me to a funeral home where there was supposedly a viewing."
"Supposedly?" he raises an eyebrow.
"My mother was
cremated," I explain. "She didn't want any of that pomp and circumstance surrounding her death. It was one thing I really remember about her. She always said she didn't want there to be a bunch of people standing around, staring into a box at her and crying. When her life was over, she just wanted to be cremated and have everyone keep living. I hated it. I hated the thought of her being cremated and not even having the finality of a funeral or anything. It felt like we were just forgetting her. But my father wasn't going to do anything she didn't want."
"Is it possible he did and just didn't tell you? Maybe he did have a viewing, but kept you away from it to protect you since you were so young?" Eric asks.
"No. I was with my father every second for weeks after she died. I could barely stand to be in a different room than him for more than a couple of minutes. I dragged my sleeping bag into his room and slept there. He didn't go to work. The only time I wasn't right there with him was the day after she died when he had to go to the police station. That was only for a few hours, and I watched him get into the police car and then come back in it. She didn't have a viewing," I insist.
"The funeral home wasn't exactly forthcoming with me, but I did find something while I was there," Bellamy adds.
She tells him about the employee telling her about the man who came to ask about my mother and finding my ex-boyfriend Greg's name in the guestbook. Eric's eyes flash.
"And you didn't tell me any of this?" he demands. "I'm investigating a bombing that may or may not have to do with a missing man, and you don't tell me when you find his name written in a funeral home guestbook?"
"I'm not a part of that investigation," I point out. "You might remember a bit of a snit I had with Creagan over it. He, in no uncertain terms, told me I was to have nothing to do with investigating Greg or the bombing. I wasn't even supposed to think about him."
"That doesn't mean you ignore when you find potential evidence of where he's been and what he's been up to! You know that, Emma. You might be here playing house, but you're still a federal agent."
"Hey," Sam warns, holding out a hand to stop Eric. "That's enough."
"Don't talk to me like that," I say to Eric. "This has nothing to do with you."
"It has everything to do with me. You might have been locked out of the bombing investigation and told to stop trying to track down Greg because you keep interfering, but that doesn't mean you can just cut the rest of us out when it suits you. It's still your responsibility to bring anything potentially pertinent to an investigation to the attention of the team."
"Interfering?" I sputter incredulously. "That's such bull. You're the one who came to me to show me the video of him in the bus station before the bomb went off. And if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't know anything about the recording from Mary's laptop."
Realization hits me like a punch in the middle of my chest. "Oh, my god."
"What?" Sam asks. "What is it, Emma?"
My eyes lock on Bellamy. "The name."
"The name?" she asks. "What do you mean?"
I run to the desk at the side of the room and pull out a pad of paper and a pen. Bringing it back to the coffee table, I write down the name 'Mary Preston' and put the piece of paper on the table.
"Mary Preston. That's the name of the vlogger who was killed in the bombing. It was her video that had Greg on it, giving something to the man at the information desk and mentioning me. A video that no one should have had access to," I explain. "And as far as I know, there's still no one who knows how it was sent."
I look to Eric for confirmation. He's still angry, but he shakes his head.
"No. They're still trying to figure it out."
"Alright. Look at her name. Mary Preston. Now, look at my mother's death certificate. It lists her maiden name as well as her married name."
I slip the certificate across the table to line up with the piece of paper so Bellamy can look at both names at the same time.
"Mariya Presnyakov," Bellamy murmurs.
She pronounces it like 'Mariah', and I shake my head.
"No. It's Russian. It's pronounced like 'Maria'," I tell her.
"Like 'Mary'," Sam says.
"Yes. You look at those two names, and it looks like someone tried to take my mother's name and change the Russian to English."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Eric asks.
I narrow my eyes at him. "Seriously? You just threw a temper tantrum because I didn't immediately fill you in on everything that happened that may or may not involve Greg, and you can't even see it? The name written in the guestbook was Greg's, but it wasn't. Mary's name is like my mother's, but it's not. They are too close to be a coincidence."
"If it's not a coincidence, what does it mean?" he asks.
"I don't know, but someone knew that recording of Greg's voice was on Mary's video. They knew how to access it on the cloud and how to send it to me. That's not an accident," I point out. "I didn't tell you about Bellamy finding Greg's name in the guestbook because I don't want my family dragged into the Bureau's investigation of the bombing. We don't know who wrote his name or why. But the connection is there somewhere. You were willing to help me once, Eric. You need to decide now if you're going to keep helping me."
"You have to promise me you're not going to do anything that might compromise the bombing investigation," he counters.
"I can't promise that because I don't know how any of this intertwines. All I can do is promise when I find those threads, I'll tell you. You just have to promise me in return that you'll let me be the one to pull them. I'm at the center of all this, and I'm going to be the one to unravel it."
"You just make sure I know what's going on. A lot of people lost their lives that day."
"I don't need you to lecture me, Eric. I understand the gravity of this. Possibly more than anyone. And if I can figure out what it all means, I can get justice for those families. And for me."
A few hours later, Bellamy and Eric have headed back, but I'm still perched in the corner of the couch, a half-eaten pie beside me. It's not my first slice. It won't be my last. Sleep isn't going to catch me tonight.
"Did you figure anything else out?" Sam asks.
A mug of coffee appears in front of my face, and I take it gratefully.
"I'm just trying to understand it. Why would she fake an Easter postcard to make it look like we were in Vermont? And if that one isn't real, what else was she lying about when she wrote to this Ebbots guy? I keep looking at these letters and wondering which of them are fake, too," I sigh. “I just don’t get it.”
"Does anything else stand out to you? Anything you can pinpoint in those letters that don't match up to what you remember?" he asks.
Sam sits down beside me on the couch and rests his hand on my leg. I've long since shucked the Thanksgiving dinner-appropriate clothes I was wearing in favor of sweats, and the warmth and familiarity of his touch through the fabric is soothing.
"That's the thing. I don't know. There's so much of my childhood I don't really remember or that I'm not sure about. And I think that was on purpose," I say.
"What do you mean?"
"It's hard to explain, but it's like things were done to keep me back a step. Like my parents, and especially my father, never wanted me to really know what was happening or what was coming next. I’d wake up one day and we’re moving three states over. And then a month later we’re moving back. And then they’d leave for mysterious trips. Or I’d be sent to the Sherwood house with my grandparents. I never knew what to expect. So there are things in these letters I'm not entirely sure about, but I don't know if that's because they didn't happen or I just don't know."
"Why would he do that?" Sam asks.
"I always assumed it was to protect me, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn't about me at all. Maybe I was just along for the ride. And the thing is, there's more. Bellamy says Christina Ebbots told her she's sure there are a lot more somewhere in the house, but she won't be able to look for them until she's back after
the holidays."
"So, don't focus on that. You have no control over what else she might have. Think about what she sent you and if it means anything."
I show him the picture in my hand. "This was in one of the letters."
He takes it and looks down with a smile. "They're so young. You look just like your mother."
It makes my heart swell, and tears sting the backs of my eyes. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. Even to this day, I've never seen a woman more striking than her.
"She was a lot younger than me here," I tell him. I flip the picture over to check the inscription on the back. "1986. She was twenty."
I turn it back over and start to mention the shirt she's wearing, one I distinctly remember in the sea of vague memories of my childhood. Then something hits me, and I stop. Flipping the picture back over, I stare at the inscription again.
"What?" Sam asks. "What are you looking at?"
I hold the picture out to him. "Look at the inscription. I thought it said 'M and I. Mariya and Ian."
"Your parents' names," Sam says, nodding.
"Right. But look at the second letter. Is that an 'I'? Or is it a 'J'?"
Chapter Five
Him
Eighteen years ago…
"Are you absolutely confident?" he asked, staring into the dark eyes looking back at him.
There was no light in those eyes. There hadn't been for a long time. It was offered up in sacrifice for power and indulgence, satisfaction, and control. Xavier nodded silently.
He didn't know how Xavier found the information, but he didn't care. All that mattered was he found it. The chase was over now. For so long, he had been running, searching, waiting. There were times when he got so close; it was almost in his hands. He felt the warmth of her against his skin and breathed in the smell of her until she seeped into every fiber of him. But then it was taken again. He carried on. He forced himself forward. Step in front of step. Feet against the ground, soul against the world.
