by Kathy Parks
I’m not near a laptop, or a cell phone, or any device at all, but to hear the nurses talking, it’s quite the worldwide story: how I went into the forest with my father, his crew, and a guide, and showed up nearly two months later, bear-clawed and half-alive, on someone’s front porch in Qualiq.
Men who wear official-looking uniforms have been in and out of the room, asking me questions. And they have so many. But I haven’t said a thing. Because I don’t know what to do. Tell the truth and prove Dan was right? Or lie and let his legacy suffer for no reason?
A nurse comes in. “Sydney Declay called for you again,” she says. Sydney Declay is amazing. All calls are screened at the front desk. But somehow hers keep making it up to the nurses’ desk over and over. The nurse adjusts my IV. “Do you want to talk to her?” she asks.
I shake my head. She leaves and I look over at the knapsack. It’s not her story. It’s not mine, either.
My mother and Jason fly to Moscow to see me. They’ve been briefed on my rescue and on Dan’s death. Although I know they are coming, it’s still a surprise when they enter the room, moving slowly through the doorway, still blinking, shell-shocked and jet-lagged and in the first stages of grief.
I’m still sedated, and my head swims a little when I lift it to see them. It’s almost a dream as they approach me. They both look so tired and worried.
My mother gets to me first. Embraces me tightly. My time in the woods has sharpened my senses and I sniff not only her cologne but her hand cream as well and the new sweater she’s worn without washing.
“Adrienne,” she begins, and starts to cry, won’t let go.
I cry, too.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Sorry for what?” she manages.
“Sorry for everything. Just sorry that it happened.” She lets me go, fishes in her purse for a Kleenex. “Dan was brave,” I add, and she starts crying again. Jason cries, too. Now both of them are hugging me, and we are all crying. My mother looks a few years older. So does Jason. They lean over my cot, giving me that awkward hug people give when one person’s standing and one is lying down. The nurse hovers nearby, watching the IV drip like a hawk.
I have a family and they have me.
They have me.
They have me.
Twenty-Eight
The leaves are turning color in Boulder. A blanket of snow covers the mountains. I haven’t gotten out my skis yet. I haven’t been doing much of anything. I’m waiting for next spring to go back to my senior year of high school. I just wasn’t ready for it yet.
We’re all trying to adjust to life without Dan. We did give him a memorial service, in an overflowing church. I think he would have appreciated so many of his colleagues and friends being there.
I got up and spoke for Dan. I told everyone at the service the story of how he died. I told them what I told the reporter for the New York Times—that Dan was right, that there was a family. But I tell the story in my own way.
Some would call it a lie.
But, you see, I had no other choice. I had to clear my stepfather’s name. I had to protect the Osinovs. There was only one way I could do both.
So maybe I’m not a reporter, after all. Maybe it’s enough, right now, to be a sister and a daughter and a friend and figure out what I’ll be later on in life. There’s still so much to learn.
What I wanted to tell them was that Dan is still here. I didn’t see him that night; he did not come back to me. I’m not sure why. But I know Dan exists in a place that’s just beyond our modern senses. In a belt of colored light, under a full moon. He’s with us.
We are all together, the living and the dead. It doesn’t matter who believes me. I believe me.
Dan taught me that’s all that really matters.
I spend a lot of time drawing, and writing. I walk in the woods, snow crunching under my feet, and think about the Osinovs. I wonder if they’re cold. If the summer harvest is sustaining them. I get the Russian news and I always look for the weather in Siberia, marveling at how they can survive year after year. I wonder if Gospozha still nods when she speaks, if Clara is still singing modern songs in her own strange way. I wonder if Marat has joined the loved ones who visit them all when the sky turns colors, if Marat will let Clara run her fingers up his arm like a spider.
If he smiles at that.
If he knows I love him, too.
I hope so.
I hope the time is right for magic, for the bowl of tea to be passed around, and time to collapse, and loneliness to dissolve and joy to be found, the pure joy of reunion.
And of course, I think of Vanya. Beautiful Vanya. It is fair to say that I am brokenhearted over him. Just before I go to sleep and I’m fading out into a world that includes all worlds and all possibilities, I feel his arms around me. I hear his voice. I write to him, long letters on notebook paper that I put away in a drawer. There is no address to send them to. There is no map to his footsteps. And unlike the frost, half-melted, that makes the trees in the drunken forest lurch, his memory is solid and whole and eternal and will always hold me up straight.
People have finally stopped asking me questions. Requests for interviews have been denied so many times that the news outlets have given up, and the fan club on Instagram that sprang up overnight for me and earned one hundred thousand followers just went off-line.
There were no photos, no updates to post. No explanations. No exclusives. Just that one interview that was as much of the truth as I could possibly tell.
My story does not belong to the world. It does not belong to me or even to the Osinovs. What I have learned is that we are all the same story, and in this story we love and we hate and we pray and we sing and we search for food and shelter. We want our fathers to come back, real and solid and breathing again, and embrace us, as our fathers wanted for their fathers, and their fathers, and their fathers. We love certain colors. We wonder what is up in the sky. We wish for things and we believe in magic, and when that magic fails, we don’t understand. We enter people’s lives and bring them joy; we also bring them sorrow. We forgive and we do not forgive, and we in turn are forgiven and are not forgiven. We do things we cannot take back. We perform heroic deeds that no one ever sees. We fold laundry and we play in snow. We try to comfort one another. We wish the summer days were longer. We wonder what it means to be alive.
The girl who killed my father is almost thirty years old now. She’s started a foundation to educate college girls about drinking and driving. She speaks at high schools around the country.
She says my father’s name.
William Cahill.
I know this because I came to hear her speak, sat in the back row and listened. She cried when she told the story, after all these years. I still wanted to stop her before she hit my father. Still wanted that magic to work, even in a story.
I emailed her later. Told her who I was. Invited her over to my house, the same house she’d brought so much sadness into. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. But I know that I will be kind to her and understanding. I know that I will finally say her name.
A knock on the door.
I open it.
She’s standing there, looking nervous.
“Hello, Lisa,” I say. “Come in.”
* * *
I myself am part of a family. I have a wife, a son, and a daughter. We are not a perfect family. But studying the Osinovs made me understand what families really mean.
Dr. Daniel Westin
New York Times article
* * *
* * *
Do you think I don’t want to believe? Who doesn’t want to believe?
Sydney Declay
Washington Post article
* * *
* * *
It is true the Osinovs existed, that we found proof before the crew died and my stepfather drowned in the river. The proof was irrefutable: the remains of their cabin, their graves, some scattered bones, and tucked into an old cabinet near w
hat used to be the hearth, the diary of the second son. We will never know what killed them: the elements, the cold, wild animals, illness. What we know is that, like all families, they sought sanctuary. I hope they found it.
Adrienne Cahill
New York Times article
* * *
* * *
Love is very simple. And I love her.
Vanya Osinov
from the book A Voice in the Forest:
The Letters of Vanya Osinov
published posthumously, translated from the Russian
* * *
Acknowledgments
Thanks go first to Mollie Glick, überagent, whose early faith launched my YA path. Thanks to Claudia Gabel and her ferocious talent for finding and shaping a story.
Thanks to Katherine Tegen, Rebecca Aronson, Stephanie Guerdan, and all the gang at Katherine Tegen Books.
Thanks to Heather Daugherty and Helen Crawford-White for the home-run cover.
And Bess Braswell, Ebony LaDelle, and Rosanne Romanello for getting this novel into the hands of the readers.
Also thanks to Jon Howard, Robin Roy, and Dasha Tolstikova, as well as Mariana Olenko and especially Yelena Makarczyk, whose knowledge of Siberia greatly informed this book.
Thanks always to Polly Hepinstall and Becky Hepinstall, tireless readers, supporters, and friends.
And a shout-out to the Cool Kids: Rachel Johnson, Kelley Coleman, Anthony Grieco, and Joe Whyte.
About the Author
Photo by Rohitash Rao and Cory Noonan
As a baby, KATHY PARKS was thrown out with the bathwater. This experience shaped her life and art. She is the author of eight novels, including The Lifeboat Clique, and also works as an advertising copywriter. She lives with her husband, Michael, in Boulder, Colorado.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Kathy Parks
The Lifeboat Clique
Notes from My Captivity
Back Ad
DISCOVER
your next favorite read
MEET
new authors to love
WIN
free books
SHARE
infographics, playlists, quizzes, and more
WATCH
the latest videos
www.epicreads.com
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
NOTES FROM MY CAPTIVITY. Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Parks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
COVER DESIGN BY HEATHER DAUGHERTY
COVER ART BY HELEN CRAWFORD-WHITE
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962569
Digital Edition JULY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-239402-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-239400-2 (trade bdg.)
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
