“Fine. Mom has me cleaning the diner now.”
“Oh.” I paused. “I miss you.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
After a pause, I asked, “Did the money help?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I sent Dad a bunch of money.”
“Oh. He’s still losing his shit about bills. So yeah, I doubt it.”
It wasn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I hadn’t expected myself to say what I said next: “I’m not coming home.”
“Go figure.” Her voice sounded hard—steel, just like Mom’s.
“But I’ll tell you where I am, so you can call or write if you need anything.”
“Sure.” The phone rustled and I imagined she was sweeping the floor.
“Okay. Well, I love you.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “Same.” Then she hung up.
Placing the receiver back on the base, disappointment settled on me. Felt like a fog. I had naively assumed that I could run off to San Fran and make cash and solve all their problems. But it hadn’t helped.
I hoped that Cindy would understand one day, that she’d forgive me. And maybe, someday, Mom would unwind herself from Dad’s rage and take control of her life.
I picked up my suitcase and walked out the door. Sometimes you have to pull a rotten tooth out of your mouth and move on.
28
Julia
Still weak from the hospital stay, I lifted my suitcase and limped down forty-five steps of my ridiculously huge—and former—house. Then I shoved the bag in the trunk of the black car.
Mother’s sobs meandered from the master bedroom down the staircase. Her bedroom had always been off-limits to me, although once Victoria and I snuck in to peek behind the curtain of its mystery. Her room—separate from Father's down the hall—had a grand walnut four-poster bed set in the middle of the room, a white marble floor, and an antique dressing table and mirror. Family heirlooms like perfume bottles and a silver brush and mirror dotted the dressing table. But the oddest thing about her room: the massive oil painting of my stern-looking—younger, dark-haired—Grandfather adorning an entire wall and the antique silk chair set in front of it, presumably a place to sit and admire it.
I climbed the winding marble stairs to her third-floor bedroom and knocked hesitantly on the door. It took a couple moments for Mother to respond, and when she finally did, she only opened the door a crack. As if I were a stranger.
Her face looked pasty and puffy, and she wore no makeup. It was strange to see her so raw.
You would have thought she’d lost her entire family, instead of the fortune and cachet that came with our name. Mother always wanted to see our name appear in the prominent newspapers. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted.
The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times had written pieces about Grandfather’s railroad ties with Fairmont Industries, a KGB-sanctioned Russian spy front, and about the government investigation. Then the bank started proceedings to repossess the family compound for bad loans and debt, but the family pretends it’s not happening. Meanwhile, student protests at Stanford forced the school to sever ties with SRI because the majority of its funding came from the Department of Defense.
“Mother, I came to say goodbye.”
She tried to shut the door on me, but I put my foot in the jamb to keep it from closing—a move I never would have made in the past.
“Julia. Leave me alone.”
I was suddenly furious. “Why are you crying?”
“You have no idea what this is like, Julia,” she snapped.
I scoffed. “I almost died. Do you even understand that? Your child. I was taken prisoner. Your sister died. Yet you sob over your stupid estate?” I pushed the door open farther to see her entire face. She stood in a long pink nightgown and floaty white robe. Her pristine bedroom looked ransacked. Clothes and dirty tissues strewn over the floor. The bedcovers wound in a jumbled mess.
Her lips shrank into her hollowed-out face. “You think you know everything, don’t you, Julia. I believed in my father. But he…” She waved her hand at me. “He did this to you. To my sister. And I just let it happen.”
“You turned a blind eye.”
“You have no idea what I have done for you. How I’ve kept us in good graces. All for you.”
“Thank you. But money doesn’t matter. Trust does. You never gave me that.”
“Hogwash!”
“You told me you’d be at my piano recital but sent the cleaning lady instead.”
She recoiled. “That was forever ago.”
“You left me alone on vacation with our nanny in Europe.”
“I left you in good hands.”
“All I wanted was you. Don’t you see? You’d say one thing and do another. Until I stopped caring.” The truth hurt, and it left me trembling.
I turned and walked away, half-hoping she would follow.
She called to me down the hallway. “Your grandfather. He’s a hard man to please, and he had a hard life.”
I ignored her, kept walking.
“Did you know he grew up dirt poor? Locked in a room with five brothers and sisters while his mother went off to the saloon? His older brother abused him.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t care what happened to him—not entirely, anyway. I’d often speculated what had made Grandfather the way he was. And if that had really happened to him, it was awful. But the truth was, there were plenty of people who had experienced bad things and didn’t turn out like he had. He was a selfish old man.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I said over my shoulder.
“If we’d gone against him, he’d have cut me out,” she continued, sounding desperate. “Cut you out.”
A lump grew in my throat and warm, briny streams fell down my cheeks.
“You’re not going anywhere until I say so, young lady,” she said. Her voice wavered. It was a line taken directly from Grandfather and showcased a desperate attempt at power.
But if I knew anything, it was that my mother no longer had any power over me, or anyone else for that matter. Maybe she never had. So I just kept walking.
Outside, the sunshine dried my tears. We might have lost our fortune, but at least I’d gained a new sense of self. Someone who could stand up for myself and for what was right, and who could trust the right people.
“You got everything?” Charley asked.
I nodded. “You?”
Charley pulled a passport from the back pocket of her jeans. “I’m ready to roll. Paris won’t know what hit it after we get there.”
I squealed and hopped up and down. We’d asked Katerina, Minnie, Cord—even Samuel to come. But they had their own plans. Minnie won a scholarship to the University of South Carolina and sought to be a physicist. Sammy was off to Stanford to become an actual student. And Cord joined the Army’s new secret psychic soldier unit. Katerina’s future was still in limbo as she stayed with Dr. Carrillo.
With even more “don’t sue” cash from SRI, this was something just for me and Charley now.
Victoria’s voice boomed across the grassy compound. “Hey, you! You weren’t leaving without saying goodbye, were you?” She strolled up the driveway in a pleated white skirt and crisp white blouse, her arms outstretched. When she approached, she wrapped me in a hug. “Take pictures and learn some freaking French, will you?”
“Maybe,” I said. It was strange to think that I’d be the one to run off, not her. We had been wound together for so many years, and that bond had loosened some. But we’d always be tied together.
“How’d you convince your father to do the study abroad thing?” she asked.
I didn’t tell her how I’d threatened to sue my parents for emancipation, and judging by the circumstances, I would’ve probably won. My father had had his own stash of cash put away for tuition.
“Charley here will take good care of me,” I said, and Charley beamed and slung an arm around my shoulder.
My cousin gri
nned. “No doubt.”
We waved goodbye to my cousin and climbed into the back of the black car before Robbie drove us out of the compound, past sculptured bushes and blooming rose gardens. Charley scooted closer and showed me a book she’d stolen from a library. The Essential Paris. She’d underlined everything she wanted to see in it. The Eiffel Tower, the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre.
I’d been to them all.
But this time, it’d be different. Because I was different.
I had put my trust in a few good people, and it had actually worked out. Still, ever since the atrial fibrillation during my last remote viewing session with Aunt Sabrina, my heart had still hurt. It was more than physical. Some days it felt like an anchor threatened to pull it through my ribcage. Sabrina was dead, really gone this time, and she had taken a part of me with her.
I forgave her. In the end, she really was a victim: her abilities became her greatest assets and her worst curse. I hoped I could live in her honor.
Acknowledgments
As always, I’m so very grateful to my editor, Kate Angelella, who shares my vision and offers thoughtful insight and what I call “Kate Brain” when I get stuck. So much of this story was collaborative.
Gratitude also goes to the watchful eye of copy editor Diane Telgen, who was the ultimate ’70s fact-checker and grammar police officer. You took so much care and time with this story, and make me look better than I am. And the cover design? That brilliance I owe to Sarah Whittaker, who lends creativity from the other side of the world.
I owe the spark for this novel to my husband, Kevin, who showed me a Flipboard article about Nina Kulagina, a Russian who claimed to have psychic powers. When American officials discovered the USSR’s research into her supposed powers, they began funding investigations into supernatural phenomena here at Stanford Research Institute. I went on to read a fabulous nonfiction book, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigation into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Author Annie Jacobsen provided the true-life facts for the unique setting for my book and intriguing details from government documents and interviews. This led to an understanding of real experiments, the physics they tested, and the government’s efforts to build a team of psychic soldiers. I also found great inspiration from the real-life story of former Russian spy Jack Barsky, whose book, Deep Undercover, offered a rare look into the mindset of Communist spies and leaders during the 1960s and 1970s.
Many thanks also go to my friend Tsvetelina Fuentes for her stories about her homeland of Bulgaria and to my friends Adina Petersmeyer, Ame Onofrey, Stella Padilla, and Carolyn Blevins for insights about life and places that helped me build the unique personalities of my characters. Thank you for the time, attention and support of early readers Matt Moore, Andrew Rapp, Rowena Alegria, Eliza and Saphira Klearman, John Shors, Ingrid McGinley, Kim Puntel, Kelly Dwyer, Bella and Nina O’Donnell and Jaimee Rindy. Your time and insight has been so helpful. Matt— thanks for seeing the bigger vision of this and my other stories on screen.
I also owe Julia and Charley’s survival to Jacob, who assisted me in sorting out the ending, and I owe their overall journey to Brendan, whose patience is always necessary for me to complete a novel.
To my family, friends, and loyal readers: your support and continued interest injects a sort of fuel to my writing. It’s a pleasure telling you stories … even those tales that are full of extraordinary lies.
Also by Jennifer Alsever
The Trinity Forest Series: Ember Burning, Oshun Rising & Venus Shining
When Ember Trouvé first ventures into Trinity Forest, she goes looking for escape. What she finds there is something much more dangerous than even the urban legends could have predicted. The forest’s candy-coated wickedness draws her in like spider’s web, promising a new, exciting life…with just a few fatal strings attached. What Ember chooses next will challenge her very notion of reality. In a series of events that will turn her and her friends’ lives upside down, Ember travels through the looking glass into a world of fame, wealth, and deadly vengeance. She will have to fight like hell to reclaim a life she once wished away in order to save the boy she loves and the family she only now realizes she’s always had.
Enter into a world a breath away from our own, filled with witchcraft, deception, and romance.
"An absorbing, stellar series introduction with elements of fantasy and horror."
--Kirkus Reviews
*2018 Gold Medallist: Best YA Fiction eBook
Independent Publisher Book Awards
*2018 Gold Medalist: Best YA Horror/Mystery
Moonbeam Book Awards
*Semi-quarterfinalist
2017 Publisher's Weekly BookLife Prize
*Finalist
2019 Dante Rossetti Book Awards
*Honorable Mention
2019 Writer’s Digest Best Indie eBook
Ember Burning: Trinity Forest Book 1
Oshun Rising: Trinity Forest Book 2
Venus Shining: Trinity Forest Book 3
About the Author
Jennifer Alsever is a Colorado-based author, journalist and mother of two boys. She enjoys writing, reading, good wine, the back country, rock climbing, skiing and yoga.
Alsever has for years contributed to Fortune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and other publications and in 2017 published her first work of fiction, the Trinity Forest Series, (Ember Burning, Oshun Rising and Venus Shining).
The first book in the series, Ember Burning, earned a Gold Medal for Best Young Adult Fiction E-Book in the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards and a Gold Medal for Best Young Adult Horror/Mystery from the 2018 Moonbeam Book Awards. The novel was also a finalist for the 2018 Dante Rossetti Book Awards for YA Fiction, the Writer’s Digest Honorable Mention Award for Best Independent Novel in 2019, and was a quarter-finalist for the Publishers Weekly 2017 BookLife Prize which said the novel was "excellently plotted, flows well and beautifully written."
Sign up for Jennifer’s VIP Reader Group, see digital extras of the Trinity Forest and discover new books and recommendations. www.trinityforestseries.com
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