by Anya Allyn
He handed it to the child. "You know a hidey-hole? A cave that no one knows?"
Philomena nodded.
"I'll give you this,” He took a handful of coins from the coat and held them out to her. “if you can take the book and hide it where no one can ever find it. The book is worth nothing. It's just some old writing. But it's special to me."
Her eyes grew large. She dropped the money into her pinafore pocket and dashed off with the book under her arm.
Tobias’ eyes closed and he fell into sleep, still sitting—tired from the small effort of speaking.
“Cassie? Are you okay?” Molly’s voice filtered through.
“I’m okay,” I told her.
Dark clouds blotted the sky as the child skipped and jumped from rock platform to rock platform on her way up to the caves. Men in suits walked near the caves, stooping here and there to peer in.
Philomena stood on a high rock outcrop, hugging the book under her shirt. She turned and ran. The men barely seemed to notice her. The little girl ran tirelessly, all the way to the outskirts of Batopilas, to the massive arched entrance to a tunnel. A line of mules stood near the entrance as men and women loaded their packs with a dark metal. Silver. The arched tunnel led to a silver mine.
The little girl slipped inside. Dimly-lit tracks disappeared into a network of narrow tunnels. The girl ran through a tunnel barely large enough for a man to pass through—with rough, rocky walls and a rubble-strewn floor. She stopped before a shrine that had been cut into the wall. Religious statues—small wooden carvings of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a hut—were arranged inside, candles flickering around them. A man in ragged clothing walked through the tunnel, halting to kneel and cross his chests in front of the shrine. He spoke words in Indian to Philomena, and pointed to the way out emphatically. I could tell he wanted Philomena to leave quickly. The man continued on through the tunnel. Philomena checked behind her before sliding the book behind the shrine.
Her hand reached into her pinafore pocket, jingling Tobias’s coins as she retraced her steps out of the mine. A man with blond hair and sharp features strode bent his tall frame as he strode along the tunnel. A group of white men walked behind him. None of them were dressed like workers.
“You there,” shouted the blond man at Philomena. “You little beggar. What are you doing in here? Stealing silver? Come here and let me check your pockets!”
She backed away, her eyes large in the brunt of an angry language she didn’t understand. She fled further into the mine. Further and further, dodging wooden pylons and rattling mine carts.
My breaths squeezed short and painfully through my chest. I wanted her to run the other way. I wanted her to show the men she had none of their silver.
“Cassie, get out now,” warned Molly.
I couldn’t tear myself away from the sight of Philomena’s small limbs as she clambered over a set of still mining carts to reach a deep part of the mine, where the tunnel hadn’t even been dug out properly yet. She wriggled through a hole in the wall.
“Come back…” I breathed.
“Get out now!” Molly grasped my arm, shaking it.
A blast rocked the mine. Pylons toppled and fell. Mine workers scattered as the ceiling fell in and rubble exploded around them. The hole that Philomena had crawled through was now a large, gaping space. Dirt thickened in the air.
“No!” I screamed.
“Cassie, you get out—now—,” yelled Molly. “Now!”
I opened my eyes, staring at her, with the last image of the little Indian girl burned into my mind.
My father, true to his word, was waiting for us to begin the days hike. I’d been hoping he’d change his mind or have urgent work to attend to—anything to keep away today. But it seemed even a herd of wild elephants wasn’t going to keep him away.
The only positive was that, with his SUV, we could get back to Batopilas quickly. My father took us to The Lost Church of Satevo and the ruins of Hacienda first—the things any tourist to Batopilas would want to see. The silver mine was last on his list, and we just had to be patient.
Finally, we stood before the arched entrance I’d seen in my vision.
“Why do you kids want to see this so badly?” my father asked.
“I’m studying the Tarahumara Indians for school, Mr. Claiborne,” replied Zach. “I believe they worked in this mine.”
“Well, it’s going to be pretty dark and confined in there. Maybe not the best place for my daughter to go, considering.”
“Yes sir,” said Zach.
“It’s okay,” I told my father. “I want to see it.”
Zach secretly slid his hand over mine as we stepped inside. I glanced across at Molly. Her expression was tense. I reached for her hand and she turned to give me a thin-lipped smile. The air inside the mine smelled of dirt and age. It was already warmer inside here than it was outside. I hated to think what it was like in summer.
Emerson and Parker flashed their torchlights ahead in the tunnel and we followed after them. I looked over my shoulder, just to reassure myself the entrance was still open to the bright day outside, and caught Molly doing the same.
I gasped as Parker shone his torch on the shrine in the wall. It looked exactly as it had when I had seen it. I nodded at Zach to tell him that was it, and he looked uneasily towards the shrine.
“Well, I’ve seen enough,” I announced.
Part of me wanted to run through the cave and search for Philomena. My rational brain told me that the explosion had happened a hundred years ago.
Molly walked beside me as we made our way out into the sunshine.
A shout echoed from back inside. The torches were thrown up into the air, landing with a loud clatter. Zach and Emerson emerged, their arms around my father’s shoulders. He dragged his foot, his face screwed up in pain. Parker walked behind with the torches.
“What happened?” I cried.
“Someone else is in there.” Zach drew his eyebrows together. “They just ran at us as we looking at the shrine. We all got tripped up, and your dad fell to the ground and twisted his ankle.”
“We should get the police,” I said.
“No, probably just a local who’s angry there’s tourists poking around in there. Let’s just get out of here.” My father limped towards his car, still aided by Zach and Emerson.
“Did you three… find anything?” Molly said in a low voice to Parker.
He shook his head. “Nothing. If there was anything there, it’s long gone.”
33. LIES AND SECRETS
My father reclined on the bed in his hotel room, his swollen ankle resting on a set of pillows.
“You should have let them take you to the hospital,” I told him.
“I’ll be all right. Only thing is, now I can’t look out for you with this stupid foot.”
“I’m not used to you looking out for… I mean….”
“You’re not used to me being a dad,” he said flatly.
“I didn’t say that.”
He sighed under his breath. “It’s true. I haven’t been a father to you. I’ve been a stranger.” He adjusted his position on the pillows. “Where are you kids off to tomorrow, anyway?”
“Just a few more tourist kind of spots.”
“Don’t go anywhere isolated.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t like the look of that group that came into the town yesterday.”
I shrugged. “Probably a group of burned-out lawyers—like you.”
He gave a soft chuckle. “I’ve spent a lot of years as a prosecutor. I know when people are keeping something close to their chests.” He raised his eyes to me, looking serious. “You know, I could say those people are a bit like you. You and everyone you came here with. What’s really going on?”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I mean that a group of teenagers doesn’t decide to take time off school and come to one of the most remote parts of Mexico. Y
ou’re looking for something.”
“Wow, you’re almost worse than mom. Mom tries to psycho-analyze me and here you are with the courtroom cross-examination.”
“I’m sorry. I just feel stupidly helpless with my leg like this. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you… ever again.”
“Okay. Understood.” But I didn’t understand. He’d never spoken to me in this way before.
Hi jaw tightened. “When I found out… where you’d been all that time, I was crushed. Never in a million years did I imagine…”
“No one did,” I said quickly.
“When your mother called me and told me you’d been kept underground, in the dark… I was over the moon you were alive, but at the same time I couldn’t deal with it, knowing how terrified you’d been of the dark as a kid.”
I twisted my mouth wryly. “I was still afraid of the dark until recently. I think I’ve been cured of that. But how did you know I was scared of the dark back then?”
“I was there,” he said softly.
“You couldn’t have been. You left when I was a baby. And when you came back the second time, you were barely there long enough to find out what my favorite cereal was.”
I could hear the bitterness in my voice and I hated it. I’d spent my life pretending that I didn’t care about my father not caring about me. I’d carried that pretense around almost as a badge of honor. To me, being tough had meant not showing the pain.
“You weren’t exactly a baby when I left. You were three.”
“No, that’s not true. Mom told me I hadn’t even had my first birthday when you left. There’s no photos of you with me after I turned one.”
“Look, your mother might have her reasons. I’m sure they’re good ones. And I’m quite sure I shouldn’t be dragging this stuff up now. But the truth is I left when you were three, soon after your mom lost the baby.”
“What are you talking about? What baby?”
His face softened. “The baby she was pregnant with when you were three.”
My legs felt weak.
“Mom never told me about a baby.”
He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “It’s probably not the time to get into this.”
I sat on the chair beside him, my back rigid. “I want to know.”
“Sure?”
“Very.”
“Well… this is what happened. I’m not proud of it. Back then, I was trying to get ahead in my career. I wanted to put in the hours. Your mom felt differently. She wanted me at home at night, to be a family. She was right, of course. I just didn’t see it that way. When she became pregnant that second time, I… accused her of doing it deliberately. I screamed and ranted and raved. Like a lunatic.”
He cursed at himself under his breath. “The last thing I wanted was another kid. Another kid meant your mother wasn’t going back to work for years, and we were already drowning in debt. I wanted the hotshot car and the hotshot house. I’m ashamed to admit to that now, but it’s the truth. One night, after the worst argument we’d ever had—she put you in the car and drove off. It was the middle of the night, and raining. I should have let her go, let her cool off. But no, I had to jump in my car and follow her.” He breathed a low sigh of regret. “She hit a tree. When I got to her, she was screaming in pain. I got you out of your car seat and checked that you were okay. You didn’t understand what was happening and thought that I was some big baddie who had hurt your mommy. You got away from me and ran and hid in the woods at the side of the road. Your mom was losing a lot of blood, and you were lost. In that moment, I felt like I was losing my mind.”
“I don’t remember… any of that,” I said slowly.
“No, I know you don’t. When we found you—the police and I, you were shaking and terrified. I had to take you to the hospital with me, but you didn’t speak a word the whole time. Not even when we had to tell you that your mom lost the baby.”
I tried to process what he’d just told me, but I couldn’t. In my head, I was running through old photographs like a slideshow. Photos of a mom who was plumper around the middle when I was three. “Why wouldn’t mom tell me she lost a baby? All this time, I lost a brother or sister and didn’t know it?”
“Sister. The baby was a girl.”
I leaned back in the chair.
“You totally withdrew after that night. Every day, when night fell, you began screaming. You couldn’t bear darkness. I felt like it was my fault. You woke screaming every night, telling us you wanted to go with the baby. You held on as though the baby could come back—be alive again. You held on and on and wouldn’t let go. And you blamed me—for the loss of the baby, for making your mommy upset that night.”
“That’s why you left?” A lump like cement formed in my throat.
“Yeah. That’s a big part of it.”
“How come… how come I don’t remember the baby?”
“Cassandra… you were almost getting to a place where you couldn’t be reached. We tried child psychiatrists and all of that, but nothing worked. Nothing brought you out of it. In the end… your mother made a difficult decision. She decided to make you believe the baby had just been a dream, make you believe the accident never really happened. I thought… when you were older she’d tell you the truth. But I guess she thought it was better to let it go.”
I chewed my lip. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because… when you disappeared in that Australian forest, it brought me straight back to that time you disappeared when you were three. And I thought this time you were gone forever. I thought I’d never get a chance to tell you that I didn’t mean to be the hopeless father that I turned out to be. I guess I just wanted you to know that the reason I left was for your sake, to help you forget what happened.”
Emotions rushed through me. Nothing made sense.
“But you abandoned me… all those years.” It felt so strange to be saying those words to my father, words I’d pushed down deep inside for so long.
“I didn’t mean to. I guess I tried to pretend to myself you and your mom didn’t exist, to try to numb the pain. I tried again, when you were eight. I came back, as you know, and your mom and I tried to get it together. But there was so much unresolved stuff between us, we just couldn’t make it work. It was mostly my fault—I’ll admit that. I’d cut myself off for so long that I couldn’t… find a way back to my own family.”
“You still could have been a dad to me.”
“I know. I know… And I should have been. No excuses. But I’m taking this chance now to tell you that I did care. That I do care. And maybe one day, I’ll make it up to you enough that you’ll stop calling me Andy … and call me dad….” His voice cracked on his last words.
I stood and stepped awkwardly over to him. I didn’t know what to do next—I hadn’t so much as shaken his hand in the last seven years. I reached to hold his hand. He gripped it firmly, fear in his eyes—fear I was going to turn around and walk out. I dropped myself down to hug him. His arms came around me and he stroked my hair.
“I’m going to be there for you, Cassie. I’m not going to let any more years go by….”
The morning was still dark when I woke. I’d been dreaming, but not of Copper Canyon, not of the little Tarahumara girl.
I’d been in my neighborhood, walking down my street. Everything was so vivid, so real. I noticed small details everywhere—the variation in color of the roses in Mrs. Palmer’s garden, the smudged chalk on the sidewalk where some kid had abandoned their game of hopscotch. I rounded the corner and saw the speed sign I’d run into and dented when I was eight. It had never been fixed or replaced. But now the sign was standing straight and without a single dent. Our garden, which mom never had time for, was blooming.
The furniture inside the house was newer—the old sofa mom used to throw a cover over to hide the rip was gone and traded with a leather recliner. A man with his back to me hummed as he stirred a pot of something in the kitchen. I stepped through and into my bedroom
—at least, what used to be my bedroom. Two girls lay together on their stomachs on one of the beds, listening to music. I couldn’t see their faces, but you could tell by the lanky shapes of their bodies and by the waves of their long dark hair that they were sisters. They were perhaps six and nine.
A puppy bounded into the room and the girls turned their heads in unison. I strained to see their faces, but their features smudged and were lost to me as I woke.
I sat, tossing the blanket from me.
The sunshine-filled dream was replaced by a gray morning. I stepped from my room and along the corridor to my father’s room. Mountains rose like ancient monsters from the valley, sheets of rain blurring their many heads and thick bodies.
I still had so many questions. I wanted to know so many things about when I was three. All the things he’d told me last night whirled inside my mind.
I knocked lightly on his door. He didn’t answer. The door creaked on its hinges as I pushed it open.
The room was empty. The bed was made and not a single item of his remained in the room. Maybe he’d decided he needed better medical care after all. Maybe he had an urgent court case to attend.
Or maybe he’d decided he’d had enough of being my father.
I walked back along the corridor in a void.
How could he leave like that? Without so much as a note?
Molly stepped out in a singlet and pajama shorts, staring out in wonder at the torrents of water falling from the sky.
“My father left town.” I ripped a leaf from a potted lime tree and crushed it in my hand.
“I thought he was staying until we left.”
“Me too.”
Molly gave me a consoling smile. “Well, he needed that leg seen to. And we’ll be out of here ourselves in a few hours.”
A deep breath of air escaped me. “Without the book.”
“It wasn’t here to be found.” Molly turned to face me, her green eyes intent. The color of her eyes was always startling without her contact lenses in. “But we can’t give up. We’ll find a way—we have to.”
