“Yes,” Raven said.
“She said something very strange to me. About who your father is.”
Raven’s heart thudded. She could easily see Mama talking about her father the raven when she was immersed in the spirit world. She sometimes lost control of her thoughts when she was halfway between the human and spirit worlds.
“Did she tell you that? About the raven?” her aunt asked.
Raven tried to hide her panic. If her aunt found out what Raven believed about her father, she would put Raven in a place for people with mind sickness. Mama had said Aunt Sondra and their father had tried to put her in one of those places—because she practiced earth arts they didn’t understand. From the time Raven could remember, Mama had forbidden her to speak of her father being a spirit. She had warned of the dire consequences over and over. Raven was terrified she would be taken from her home if she told anyone the truth. Her aunt would say she was sick and couldn’t take care of herself.
She had to say something her aunt would believe. She remembered a man Mama had mentioned recently. “My mother told me my father was someone she didn’t want me to know. A bad man. A senator.”
“A senator!” Aunt Sondra said. “I very much doubt that, Raven!”
What was that name her mother had said the day she was halfway in the spirit world? If Raven said it, her aunt might believe she’d been told about her human father. The senator was somehow associated with Mama’s father—her aunt would believe her sister had known him. And the man would pose no threat to Raven because Mama had said he was dead.
“Bonhammer, I think was the name,” Raven said.
“Bauhammer? Senator Bauhammer?” her aunt said.
“Yes. That’s him.”
Aunt Sondra looked too stunned to speak.
“He’s dead. I have no father,” Raven said.
“I know he’s dead. My father—your grandfather—went to his funeral.”
Raven was relieved to hear her verify that.
“He was a married man, Raven,” Aunt Sondra said. “And much older than your mother.”
“What does that matter?”
“My sister would never have—”
Aunt Sondra abruptly went silent. She looked strange. Inexplicably horrified.
“What’s wrong?” Raven said.
“Oh my god,” Aunt Sondra whispered. She took out her phone and typed something into it. As she scrolled her finger on the screen, Raven and Jackie looked at each other. He was as confused by her aunt’s actions as Raven was.
Her aunt stopped scrolling and stared at her phone. She pressed her hand to her mouth.
“What?” Raven said. “What are you reading?”
“Oh god . . . Audrey. What have you done?” Tears spilled from her eyes. The most brazen person Raven had ever known was crying.
“Why are you crying?”
She held the phone out so Raven could see. There was a news article.
Granddaughter of Senator Bauhammer Abducted. Search Widens Beyond New York.
“This happened sixteen years ago. She took you, Raven.”
“You’re wrong! That has nothing to do with me!”
Her aunt typed into her phone again and scrolled some more. She whispered, “Dear god.” She gave the phone to Raven. “Does that woman look familiar?”
The caption on the photograph said the woman was Ellis Bauhammer.
Raven stared at the woman’s face. It was almost like looking in a mirror.
PART FIVE
DAUGHTER OF THE MIRACULOUS UNIVERSE
1
RAVEN
The limousine stopped at a gray stone building with shiny gold letters that said, YORK, BAUHAMMER & SCHIFF LLP. The driver opened the door. “I don’t know how long we’ll be inside,” Raven’s aunt told him.
“I’ll stay close,” he said.
Raven followed her aunt into the building. They entered a tiny room that made Raven nervous, her first time inside an elevator.
“Sondra Lind Young to see Mr. Bauhammer,” Aunt Sondra said to the receptionist behind a desk. The woman showed them to a wooden door down the hall. The nameplate said, JONAH M. BAUHAMMER III, ESQ. The receptionist knocked lightly before she opened it. “Mrs. Lind Young is here.”
“Send her in,” a man inside said.
Aunt Sondra went ahead of Raven. The man was standing next to a big desk. He had wisps of white in his thick, dark hair, and he looked a tiny bit like Jackie might look when he grew up, except with blue eyes. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and purple patterned tie. Behind him, tall windows looked out at the sky and city buildings.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Aunt Sondra said, extending her hand. “My father met your father on several occasions. He spoke well of him.”
The man shook her hand, glanced at Raven, then looked back at her more closely.
Aunt Sondra stepped away to observe his response.
The man kept staring, and Raven’s heart beat like a trapped bird was trying to fly out of her chest.
Aunt Sondra sighed. “I thought so.”
“You thought what? Who is this?” the man asked.
“Does she look familiar?”
“She looks like . . .” He gazed at Raven, didn’t finish the sentence.
“Your ex-wife?”
Ex? Raven didn’t know they were divorced. She’d been told almost nothing. And she hadn’t asked. She didn’t want to know anything about these people. She only wanted to go back to her house and Jackie and school.
“Who is she?” the man demanded.
“I think she may be your daughter.”
Again, the man stared at her.
“Obviously we’ll have to do a paternity test.”
“Viola . . . ,” the man said. He stepped toward her.
She backed away. If he thought he would hug her, he was very much mistaken.
“My name is Raven,” she said.
“Raven?” the man said.
“She’s been called that since she was a baby,” Aunt Sondra said.
“Where did you find her? Have you gone to the police?”
“I wanted to talk to you before police got involved. I’d like to do the genetic testing first. If she’s your daughter, I’m hoping we can keep this as quiet as possible. She’s already badly traumatized. She had no idea she’d been abducted. She’s been living out in Washington.”
“Washington! Do you know who took her?”
“The woman she believes to be her mother is dead.”
“She is my mother!” Raven said.
“You see?” Aunt Sondra said to the man. “We need to keep this from becoming a media spectacle so she can come to terms with it in a quiet atmosphere.”
Raven didn’t like the way she talked about her as if she were a child who didn’t understand anything.
“But who took her?” the man asked. “Was it the woman who raised her?”
Aunt Sondra looked down for a few seconds. When she lifted her head, she said, “I’m very sorry to say, my sister, who had mental problems all her life, probably took her.”
“She doesn’t have mental problems!” Raven shouted.
“Please lower your voice,” her aunt said.
“I want to go home!”
The man raised his palm to his forehead and whispered, “My god.”
“Yes, it’s going to be a difficult situation,” Aunt Sondra said. “That’s why I’m speaking to you privately. I hope we can agree on a plan that will protect her. And, I admit, I’d like to keep my company as uninvolved as possible.”
The man turned a critical look on her.
“I’m sure you’d rather not dig up this mess again,” Aunt Sondra said. “It can only bring negative attention to your family and law firm.”
“How so?” the man said sharply. “I was the one who had a child abducted.”
“Do you want your boys and mother dragged through it all again?”
“That can’t be avoided.�
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“It can be minimized. You’re an attorney for celebrities. You must have your ways.”
The man looked angry again.
“My sister left everything she owns to Raven—significant assets and investments, including two large properties. I’m willing to let the inheritance stand without contest even if she isn’t my niece.”
“Are you bribing me to keep this quiet?”
“I’m being pragmatic. It’s in everyone’s interest to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
“Your sister has to be held accountable for what she did.”
“My sister is dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s another problem.”
“What is?”
“I’m certain she’s dead—I have her last will and testament—but I have no body. I believe she ended her life somewhere on her acreage in Washington, and we haven’t yet located her body. I’d have to get police and cadaver dogs in there.”
“You will not!” Raven shouted. “You read her last wishes. She wants to be left alone! And you’re wrong about it being suicide!”
A white-haired man opened the door and looked in. “Is everything all right, Jonah?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said.
When the door closed, Aunt Sondra said, “I’m trying to minimize the stress of this situation, mainly for Raven. I hope you and I can work this out together. If you’d like to involve her mother, that’s up to you.”
“She’s not my mother,” Raven said.
“Ellis and I have no contact anymore,” he said.
“Why don’t we do a paternity test and go from there?” Aunt Sondra said.
The man walked to his desk and nearly fell backward into the chair.
“Finally sinking in?” Aunt Sondra said.
He didn’t answer. He just kept his gaze fixed on Raven.
“Tell me where you prefer to have her sample taken. Do you know a lab that has a fast turnaround?”
“Yes.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
She gave him a card with her cell phone number and wrote the name of their hotel on the back. “Call me anytime.”
He nodded. He kept looking at Raven like she was a strange kind of animal.
She knew he wasn’t her father. She felt no connection whatsoever to him and his ugly city. So what if Raven looked like his ex-wife? Lots of people looked like other people; kids at school called that having a doppelgänger. But Raven was still scared Sondra and Jonah would never let her go home. Everything Mama had warned her about was happening.
They returned to the limousine. Raven was afraid about the test, but all the woman did was rub a Q-tip inside her cheek.
“What should we do for the next few days while we wait?” her aunt asked. “We’re close to New York City. Would you like to go there?”
Raven remembered Reece saying he wanted to go there, but she hated everything she’d seen so far.
“We can do anything you want,” Aunt Sondra said.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I can’t miss this much school.”
“I’ve talked to your school. Everything will be fine.”
Raven went to bed at the hotel, though it was the middle of the day. She wouldn’t get up when her aunt tried to make her. Most of the day, her aunt talked on her phone, telling people at her company what to do. Sometimes she spoke in a quieter voice to someone, probably her husband or son.
The following day went the same, Raven in bed, her aunt on the phone. Raven couldn’t eat. Her aunt had all kinds of food delivered, but Raven never wanted to eat again. She wanted Mama not to be dead. She wanted to be in Jackie’s arms.
The next day, Aunt Sondra sat on her bed. “Raven, please look at me. I have news.”
Raven’s empty stomach squirmed. All those fears and doubts that had spun relentlessly in her mind for a week. Would they turn out to be real?
“Raven . . .”
Raven didn’t move. “I don’t want your news.”
“I know you don’t. Of course you don’t.” She put her palm on Raven’s back. “The test results are in. Jonah Bauhammer is your father.”
Muted city noise filled the room. Raven’s tears soaked the pillow fast.
“Please, let’s talk about this,” her aunt said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. He’s not my father.”
“Half your DNA comes from Jonah Bauhammer,” her aunt said. “And I know you understand about DNA. You told me about it when you were just seven years old.”
Raven hadn’t really understood about DNA until she was in middle school. That was when she’d once asked Mama if she had half raven DNA in her cells. The question had angered Mama. Raven was a miracle, Mama said, and who knew what differences lay inside her? That was why she had been kept away from doctors other than Dr. Pat. To probe the mystery of her being could be dangerous for her. For both of them.
Raven had asked no more about her DNA. She had only been curious about what might be unusual about her body—because she certainly knew she was different from other people—even Mama. She had felt the two sides of her spirit from the time she was a tiny child.
But now the test said Jonah was her father. She felt like the news was the cascading effect of a gale uprooting trees in the woods. One tree falls and knocks over a second tree, and that one pulls down another. If Jonah was her father, Mama must have stolen her from him and his wife. And that led to the worst blow of all: Mama had lied to her about everything. Everything.
It hurt too much to believe. She curled up tight and cried.
Aunt Sondra sighed, pressed her hand more firmly against Raven’s back. “I’m sorry, Raven. But we can’t deny the science of a DNA test.”
Raven wished she could just run away. From Aunt Sondra, from the hotel and city, from everything that had happened since the day Mama sat on her bed and said she’d been the best sixteen years of her life.
She didn’t want Mama to be a bad person. She wanted to be Mama’s miracle. She wanted to be the child of a powerful earth spirit.
She felt eviscerated of all spirit, both raven and human. She couldn’t even cry anymore. She lay still beneath the blankets, wishing her body to depart with her spirit.
A few hours later, her aunt returned to her room. “You have to get up,” she said. “A detective needs to talk to you. We’re meeting your father there. Afterward, he wants you to have dinner at his house with the rest of the family.”
“Don’t call him my father,” Raven said into her pillow.
“Okay, we’ll call him Jonah. Please get up, Raven.”
“No.”
“You can get through this. You’re strong. You’ve excelled at school, made friends, and grown into a fine young woman—despite everything . . .”
Raven sat up. “Despite what?”
Her aunt looked sad and tired. “I know what it’s like to live with her. The episodes. Speaking to spirits. Her disappearances into the woods. It had to be frightening for you.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Please at least meet your family. See if you like them.”
“If I don’t like them, can Ms. Danner be my guardian?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility.”
“It is?”
“Please shower and get dressed.”
Raven was dizzy from lying in bed and not eating for two days, but the thought of Jackie’s mother being her guardian gave her new strength. She did everything her aunt asked, even drank a glass of green slush that was supposed to give her energy.
A limousine took them to see the detective. Jonah was already there. Two detectives, a man and a woman, wanted to talk to Raven alone. They asked a lot of questions about Mama. Raven could tell they hated her. The green drink still felt thick and cold inside her stomach, and she was afraid she would vomit. When they asked what she knew about Audrey Lind’s death, Raven started crying and couldn’t stop.
They took her
back to her aunt and Jonah. But they immediately brought Sondra into the room, leaving Raven alone with Jonah.
“I hear you lived in a log house out in the country,” he said. “That must have been great.”
“I live in a log house,” she said. “I own it, and I’m going back as soon as I can.”
A few minutes later, he spoke again. “Your brothers are excited to see you. Their names are River and Jasper. They’re twins, a little more than four years older than you.”
Raven looked away to let him know she had no interest in his sons. Jonah didn’t say more.
Aunt Sondra returned looking almost as upset as Raven felt when she came out of the room. She asked Raven, “Do you want me to come with you to Jonah’s house, or do you prefer to go alone?”
“I want you to come.”
“I think that’s better, too.”
Aunt Sondra asked the limousine driver to follow Jonah’s car. The drive was long. To the “suburbs,” Jonah had said.
Jonah’s house was big with lots of mowed lawn around it. There were a few trees and bushes that were trimmed to look like shapes from a geometry book. As they walked to the front door, Jonah looked tense, just like Raven felt.
Two young men and an elderly woman were waiting inside the door. The men looked like their father, one more so than the other. That one had blue eyes. His name was Jasper. The other, River, had more blue-gray eyes, and his skin was a little tanner like Raven’s.
The elderly woman was very thin, her blue gaze as sharp as a hunting hawk’s. Her hair was brown streaked with gold, obviously dyed. Her face unsettled Raven because it looked too smooth for her age. She’d probably had surgery to make it look like that. Jonah introduced her to Raven as her grandmother, Gram Bauhammer. Aunt Sondra called her Mary Carol and shook her hand as if she’d met her before.
“This is Raven, as she prefers to be called,” Jonah said.
River smirked. Raven immediately disliked him and his mocking expression.
“Nonsense,” Gram Bauhammer said, coming toward Raven with open arms. “She’s our dear Viola come back to us. She’ll soon get used to her name.”
Raven backed away from her. “If you call me Viola, I won’t answer.”
The Light Through the Leaves Page 28
