Lainey smiled, then yanked me into a quick hug, whispering in my ear, “Now you need a distraction.” With a quick flip of her wrist, she unzipped the big bag on my bed with a flourish and said, “Let’s get incognito, baby!”
When it came to distraction from one’s worries, spending time with Lainey was like getting a shot of not-a-care-in-the-world medicine. It wasn’t that Lainey was the perkiest person in the world, it was more that she made you care about what she cared about. It was like her enthusiasm somehow rubbed off on you.
We tried on every single Mardi Gras style mask: some with swooping feathers, others with dangling pearls and silver beads, ones that you had to hold with a stick and the kind that strapped to your face with an elastic band. The masks’ colors were various mixtures of white/ice blue, white/silver, and all white.
Then we moved on to hairstyles, figuring out which ones worked best with the masks we liked. Lainey stayed through dinner—Mom ordered pizza and made a salad—and by the time Lainey left, my heart still ached over Freddie, but it wasn’t the same stabbing kind of pain. It was more of a dull, steady burn.
As I helped Mom put away the clean dishes from the dishwasher, she paused from wiping the water from the bottom of a coffee cup with the hand towel. “I know you said you aren’t going to the dance, Inara, but maybe you should consider going just for fun. It would keep you from dwelling, and right now I think keeping your mind occupied with positive thoughts is a good thing.”
I slid the stack of plates into the cabinet. “I had fun primping with Lainey, but I’m not going.”
Mom frowned. “After what you’ve been through recently, I don’t think Ethan would object to you going. You need to get out and have some fun.”
If Ethan knew what had happened, he’d be on my doorstep in a matter of hours. A part of me wanted to call him, to tell him I needed him holding me close, to hear him promise me everything would be all right. I’d tell him everything that had happened, even down to the hidden picture that disintegrated as soon as I tried to draw it in his journal. I concentrated and tried to recall the details of the picture, but it had already faded. All I remembered was that it featured ravens.
“Inara?” Mom’s hand touching my shoulder, drew me out of my reverie. “I was saying that I’m supposed to go out of town at the end of the week through the weekend, but I’m going to cancel my trip.”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that. I have Houdini.” He lifted his head from his bed by the door when I said his name.
Mom pressed her lips together. “I think I should stay.”
“Aunt Sage should be back by then, too,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up. “She will be? Why hasn’t she texted me?”
I shrugged. “I know she was going to some gem show while she was on vacation, so she probably got caught up in it. You know how she can be about her jewelry business.”
Mom nodded and smiled. “She really can immerse herself. When did she say she’s getting back?”
“At the end of the week.”
“I’ll give her a call.” Mom put away the coffee mug, then turned and squeezed my shoulder. “I won’t make plans until I’ve spoken with Sage.”
Once the dishes were done, I took Houdini out, then claimed loads of homework, bolting upstairs as fast as I could. I snuggled under my covers and checked my phone, hoping for a surprise text or voice mail from Ethan, but there wasn’t one.
With a sigh of disappointment, I turned on my bedside lamp, then retrieved my grandmother’s journal from my nightstand. Two hours later, I’d read up through my first birthday, and while I loved the insight into my grandmother’s thoughts and observations about people, my stomach had knotted since I hadn’t run across any journal entry related to the necklace she gave my mother…and there were only three pages to go.
I sighed and turned the page, then sat upright, my grip on the book tightening when I read the preface to her next journal entry…
Today was a very strange, yet memorable day. My emotions ran the full spectrum from shock to sorrow to confusion to bewilderment, then finally to hopefulness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
My focus snapped to the date in the upper-right-hand corner of my grandmother’s journal. It had been written when I was a little over a year old. I quickly turned to the next page to read her entry.
Richard had a morning meeting in Washington, D.C., and since it was going to be a lovely April day, I decided to go with him. While he presented his pitch to the corporate bigwigs, I thought Inara would enjoy going for a stroll along the Potomac. Elizabeth and Jonathan had finally taken a vacation, and I was determined my granddaughter would have a wonderful time without them.
It was around two in the afternoon by the time I parked and put Inara in her stroller. The place was packed with people laying out on blankets in the grass, kids flying kites, kicking soccer balls, and throwing Frisbees. Airplanes taking off from Dulles zoomed over every so often. Inara spent her time pointing at the planes and craning her neck to watch people zip past on skateboards, rollerblades, and bikes. She giggled when they did extra tricks just for her. I pushed her stroller slowly along the wide sidewalk, enjoying the busy energy of the place. The flowers were in full bloom, and every so often I stopped and pointed out my favorites among the clusters we ran across, rambling about the best time of year to plant and how I couldn’t wait to start a flower garden with her when she was old enough to help
.
“What were your favorite flowers?” I whispered wistfully. Planting a flower garden with my grandmother sounded wonderful. My heart constricted that we never got to do that.
When Inara suddenly went quiet, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep. I pulled the sun canopy back on her stroller to check and saw that she was staring with vivid fascination at the sky. I thought she was looking at the airplane that had just taken off, climbing high in the sky, but her gaze was locked on the one huge area of blue where no clouds covered the sky. “What are you looking at, sweetheart?” I asked
.
She pointed up, speaking in baby words that made no sense to me, but made total sense to her. By her expression, I could tell she was asking me something, so I squatted next to her. “What do you see?”
As she pointed toward the sky once more, I had just looked upward when I saw the airplane suddenly lift and then tilt in the air. At the same time it rolled to the right, its left wing was completely torn away, ripping off as easily as tissue paper.
I was glad I was squatting because my legs gave out. I fell to my butt, watching in shocked horror as the plane plunged down and into the Potomac.
Screams echoed all around us as people reacted to the crash. Most began running toward the water’s edge to see better, while others dialed 911 on their phones. There was even a couple who screamed they had family on that plane. Inara began to cry, reacting to the screams and fear on people’s faces.
I stood on shaking legs and picked her up. Pressing her baby face close to mine, I cooed in a calming voice in her ear, “It’s going to be okay, sweet baby.”
All I could think was…all those people, gone in an instant. A sickening feeling dropped in my stomach, spreading to my limbs, but I had to keep it together and be strong for Inara
.
She arched her back and screamed, clearly terrified by the chaos. I started to pull her close once more, when a man’s hand gently palmed the top of her head.
“Be calm, little one. All will be well,” he said in a soothing, deep voice.
Inara instantly quieted, and as she stared at the man standing beside me with avid curiosity, the tears in her bright green eyes dried. I turned, my gaze traveling up his custom-made suit to his unusual golden gaze. He was Viking-tall with an arresting, sculpted face, framed in short blond hair that curled slightly on the ends. He looked to be in his late thirties, but his eyes held a Zen-like calm and wisdom. He was so beautiful, I was surprised no one else had spared him a glance, despite the pandemonium going on around us.
“Thank you for calming her,” I said. Somehow, even as sirens blared and people continued to run around screaming for someone with a boat to help the survivors from the water, the reassuring tone in his voice had settled my nerves too. I still felt worry for the people in the plane, but the panic that had gripped my stomach disappeared.
Once he lifted his hand from her baby fine hair, Inara smiled and babbled something completely incoherent to the man. He returned her smile, then looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there, when I said, “I think she likes you.”
He withdrew his other hand from his pants pocket, then pushed his clasped fingers toward me, saying, “Take this and keep it safe. Once the age of maturity is reached, you’ll know what to do.”
The urgency of his words held a mesmerizing cadence. It was almost as if I didn’t have a choice in accepting his strange request. No, that’s not it. I wanted to honor his request. I’m finding this hard to accurately reflect my feelings about this surreal experience. Inara watched with rapt attention as I held out my hand, ready to accept whatever he planned to give me.
He lowered an unusual three-sided pendant and necklace onto my open palm in a cascade of silver, then folded my fingers around the keepsake with a curt nod before he strolled away with confident grace into the chaotic crowd.
I looked at Inara waving to the stranger’s back, a happy smile on her face, and I knew exactly what I would do. When this sweet baby was old enough, this necklace would be hers.
Side Note: Later that day, I was shocked, but relieved when the news reported that no one died in that horrific plane crash. It was an absolute miracle
!
That was the last entry my grandmother made. She’d died in a car accident just a couple of months later. I closed her journal with trembling hands.
Who was the tall, blond man who’d given my grandmother the necklace?
Freddie had also mentioned a tall, blond stranger had given him the book on ravens, but that had been in London. Could it possibly be the same man? Freddie hadn’t been as descriptive about the stranger’s appearance as my grandmother had been. Even though they were both tasked to hold onto something separately, the similarity of the requests and the fact that my necklace unlocked the hidden compartment on Freddie’s raven book, convinced me that the tall stranger was one and the same.
I laid back and closed my eyes, trying to remember when Freddie said he’d gotten that book. He’s said he held on to it for twenty-eight years. Since the stranger had given Freddie the book well before I was born, I couldn’t assume that the book had definitely been meant for me. Yet based on my grandmother’s odd experience that day she received the necklace, there was no denying that the key had been meant for me. Regardless, I had unlocked the book’s secret.
What did that drawing I’d found in the book mean?
As I began to drift off to sleep, I wished Ethan were around so I could discuss all of this with him. Wednesday night couldn’t get here fast enough. I could handle three more days. I hoped Ethan was finally at a good place with his family, because once I told him everything that had happened, he’d be on his way back to Virginia.
* * *
School kept me distracted from agonizing about my planned Wednesday phone call with Ethan in a few days, as well as the sad part of last night’s dream I didn’t want to acknowledge. I’d stopped by study hall to let Lainey know I’d be in the library researching for a project for my history class. I’d gotten the idea for the subject,
Mysterious and Inexplicable Disasters in History,
after that car accident I’d seen on Highway 29 the other morning on the way to school. I still didn’t believe it had been a hallucination, yet I couldn’t explain it either.
My chest felt as if a heavy weight had been dropped on it when I walked up to our table. Harper took notes from her math book, while Lainey flipped through a hairstyle magazine. I smirked to see them completely ignoring each other. “I thought you’d picked out the hairstyle you wanted already?” I commented to Lainey.
“Oh, I have.” Lainey glanced up from the magazine with a grin. “Was just making sure I didn’t find anything I liked better.”
“Are you taking your man to the dance, Harper?” I asked.
Her head jerked up from the book, surprise flitting across her face. “How’d you know I had a boyfriend?”
“I have my ways,” I said in my best sneaky voice, then smiled. “Actually, I saw him pick you up at CVAS.”
“Oh.” She flipped the page in her book. “We’ll probably go. Are you going?” she asked, cutting a narrowed sideways glance at Lainey.
Oblivious to Harper’s look, Lainey stopped thumbing through her magazine, her eyes locking on me. “Are you going, Nara? And
why
are you still standing?”
I sighed. “The answer’s still no.”
“Even your mom thinks you should go,” Lainey cajoled. “I
will
convince you, you know.”
I shook my head and thumbed back toward the classroom door. “I’m heading to the library to do some research.”
“Research?” Lainey wrinkled her nose as if it were a dirty word.
I nodded. “I need to document four historical disasters that occurred under strange or inexplicable circumstances.”
“You pick the oddest subjects for projects,” Lainey tutted.
“Hey, Nara,” Harper cut in, her face reflecting sympathy. “Did you see the paper this weekend about Mr. Holtzman’s sad death? I was so surprised when I saw his name in that article, since you’d recently mentioned visiting him.”
I swallowed my emotions and tried to ignore the knots snarling tighter and tighter in my stomach. “Yeah, I saw it. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I saw an article in the paper that they’re having a memorial for him today,” Lainey said, her tone softer. “Are you going?”