Revealed (4 page)

“What do people have against just communicating things
directly
lately?” Nia asked from between gritted teeth, and without her saying it, we all knew she wasn't just talking about Louise.

I'd never realized how many places girls have pockets. Amanda's skirts had side pockets and front pockets, decorative pockets that didn't open, decorative pockets that did. Some of the pockets had pockets, and at one point I put my hand in the pocket of a blazer and pulled out a small purse that was attached to the lining of the blazer by a long string.

Inside the purse was a pocket.

I don't know what we expected to find in the pockets, exactly, but the more mundane pocket-y things we pulled out of them, the more depressed we got. Here and there—between the pennies and the forgotten vocabulary sheets, the gum wrappers, and the used-up ChapSticks—we found the occasional thing that could only have come out of a pocket that Amanda had owned. A delicate handkerchief with a border of flowers embroidered into the shape of a graceful A; a quill with a thick blue feather atop it; a small book with pieces of paper that Callie and Nia explained were covered in something called dusting powder.

“It's so you can powder your nose,” Callie said. Laughing, she ripped a piece out and touched it gently to the tip of Nia's nose. “There. Much better.”

“Oh thank god—I was feeling soooo shiny.”

Callie ripped off a second sheet and reached toward me. The paper felt smooth against my skin, and I closed my eyes slightly at the gentle pressure of Callie's fingers.

“Hey!” Nia's voice was excited, and Callie and I looked to see what earned a “hey” from unflappable Nia. She was pulling something out of the pocket of a hot pink raincoat.

“Movie tickets,” I said, recognizing the familiar shape. I read the name and address of the theater off them. “They're from Los Angeles.” I looked from Nia to Callie. “Did you guys know she'd lived in Los Angeles?”

They both shook their heads as Callie read the title off the ticket in Nia's hand. “The Rudolph Valentino Film Festival.” She looked up, startled and pleased. “Rudolph Valentino. Amanda Valentino. I wonder if that's a relative of hers. Maybe we can track him down.”

Nia snorted. “Tell me you're joking.”

Callie shook her head, bewildered at Nia's mocking her.

Still wearing her familiar expression of total disdain, Nia continued. “Did you, like, take a course in cultural illiteracy?”

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this conversation. “Um, guys, I think—”

Callie waved her hand in a way that indicated she wasn't interested in my playing sheriff at this showdown. “Don't start with me, okay, Nia? Whatever ‘crime' you feel I've committed, just give me a break.”

But either because she was still angry at Louise or Amanda, or because she was just such a big Rudolph Valentino fan that she couldn't bear the idea that someone somewhere in the world didn't know who he was, Nia wasn't about to let Callie's comment go. “You'll be happy to know, Callie, that we actually
could
track him down. In the
cemetery
where he's been
buried
for the past eighty years.”

There was a pause and I thought for sure Callie was going to lay into Nia. Instead, she cocked her head to the side, like she was considering something. “So you're saying he's probably not, like, her dad, aren't you?”

I don't know if it was the averted fight or the tension of the whole day, but suddenly the three of us just cracked up. We laughed so hard I literally fell down, which made Callie and Nia pretty much completely hysterical. Every time I tried to get up, one of them would say the words “Rudolph Valentino” and we'd all start howling all over again. Finally I just gave up trying to get off the floor.

Eventually Nia took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and said, “Okay, guys, we have to focus here.”

“Yes.” Callie gave a final giggle and looked at the tickets one last time. Then she shrugged. “Rudolph Valentino. Amando Valentino. Well, Valentino's a good name anyway.”

“Yeah, too bad he wasn't born with it. His real name was . . .” She squinted with the effort of recalling it, then snapped her fingers. “Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi.”

“That's a name?” Callie shook her head. “Sounds more like a class list from a school in Milan.”

Nia nodded her agreement and went to put the tickets in our “Amanda” pile (as opposed to our “gum-wrapper-loose-change-and-random-homework” pile). “You can see why he made up Valentino.”

And suddenly it hit me so hard I almost toppled over from my kneeling position. Callie must have noticed me catch myself. “Hal? What's up?”

At the sound of Callie's voice, Nia looked over at me, too.

I looked at both of them without seeing either. “So did Amanda.”

“What?” they asked together.

I waited a minute, but the feeling didn't go away. “So did Amanda,” I repeated. And in answer to their increasingly bewildered stares, I explained myself. “She made it up, too. Her last name? It isn't Valentino.”

“What are you talking about?” Nia demanded.

“Look,” I said, and I was about to explain how it's no big deal but sometimes I just, you know, “see things,” ha ha, nothing strange about that, is there? When I realized I hadn't told them about the list I'd seen in Thornhill's office.

Kind of a big omission.

I took a deep breath. “Look, you're just going to have to believe me about her name and put it aside for a second because I have to tell you about something else right now and I need you to pay attention and not be distracted by whether or not I'm crazy.”

“Oh, Hal.” Nia put her hand on my shoulder in a mock comforting way. Her voice was pseudo-assuring. “We'd never say you're crazy.” She paused, as if considering something. “Not to your face, anyway.”

“And even if you are crazy,” Callie assured me, “that doesn't mean we can't still be friends. We can
totally
visit you in the asylum.” She was smiling, which made me smile, too.

“Always good to know I'll have company on visitor's day.” I slapped my hands on my jeans to prepare myself. “Because what I'm about to tell you is pretty much the weirdest thing I've ever seen.”

I explained about the list I'd found on Thornhill's computer, naming all the people I thought I'd seen on it. Nia looked pale when I told her about her parents, and Callie's mouth opened into a wide O at the news that her mother's name had been on it. “There must have been, I don't know, a hundred names,” I finished. “Maybe two hundred.” Thinking of the difference between how many names I'd seen and how few I actually remembered made me sick.

“And you're sure Amanda's name wasn't there?” Nia asked.

I shook my head and corrected her. “I'm sure I didn't
see
her name on it.” I put my thumb and index finger a centimeter apart and held my hand in front of my face. “The font was this big. Plus, I'm pretty sure there were other pages I didn't get a chance to look at. Maybe I even saw it, only I didn't recognize it because I still thought Amanda
Valentino
was her real name.”

Callie and Nia looked at each other, and Nia must have asked Callie a silent question because Callie just shrugged and shook her head.

Was this how people acted right before they call the men in little white coats to come and take you away?

I opened my mouth to defend my sanity, but before I could say anything, someone else spoke.

“You kids find the box?” I turned around. Behind me, Louise was standing on a ladder fishing what looked like a thousand pieces of yarn out of a white plastic bag jammed onto a shelf. She shook the yarn out in front of her and it revealed itself to be a vest.

“Cool,” Nia observed.

“1965,” Louise said, her appreciation for Nia's appreciation evident in her voice.

“Um, did you say something about a box?” Nia asked, and I wondered if she'd really liked the yarn-vest or if she'd been buttering up Louise.

“I might have,” Louise acknowledged. “And if I were you, I'd likely look for it over there.” She gestured just beyond the coatrack, which might have been helpful if the small area that she'd pointed to hadn't been crammed with about a thousand items piled together.

Nia headed toward it, pausing at an old-fashioned vanity table to lift a beautiful silver mirror from it. As she did, her face took on such a strange expression that I asked if she was okay.

“What?” She shook her head, almost as if she were emerging from a dream.

“I said, are you okay?”

“I just . . .” Her voice was soft and thoughtful. Extremely un-Nia. “There's so much sadness in this gift.” She was still staring off into the distance, the mirror pressed to her chest.

Callie came up to Nia from around the other side of the coatrack. “What's that?” She reached for the mirror and took it from Nia, examining it closely. As soon as the mirror was out of her hand, Nia's face lost its dreamy look and went back to its more familiar semi-scowl.

“‘To my dearest Fran on our wedding day—I will love you forever. George. October 4, 1917.'” Callie looked up, confused. “That's not sad, it's happy.”

Nia rolled her eyes, then turned away from us and pushed her way deeper in the direction Louise had indicated we were to go. “Whatever,” she mumbled.

“Why did you say it was sad?” I asked, following her.

I expected some acknowledgment of what I'd asked (maybe just an anti-romantic Nia crack), but even though we were only separated by a few feet, Nia seemed not to have heard me. Just as I was about to repeat my question, she gave a shout of discovery and pointed. On its side, wedged between an old phonograph and a marble-topped dresser table, was a box.

From the way Nia struggled to lift it, I could see it was heavy—I was about to offer to help when she said, without turning around, “Don't even offer, Hal Bennett. Yes, it's heavy. Yes, I can handle it.”

“Oh. Well, great then.” I stepped back as she gently shifted it forward and back several times, finally freeing it from where it had been trapped, getting it up on a corner and lifting it onto the vanity table.

“Wow,” Callie said, reaching out a finger to stroke the ink-black wood.

“Very wow,” Nia agreed.

“Seriously wow,” I offered, ever helpful.

At first glance, the box seemed to be fine-grained black wood decorated here and there with turquoise, sometimes set directly into the wood, sometimes set into elaborate sunbursts of silver or mother-of-pearl. To my eye it looked slightly Native American, but that might have just been the turquoise. I stepped toward the box and went to open it, and it was only as I felt around for a lid or drawer that I realized there wasn't one.

“Um, Louise,” Callie called.

As if she'd been hovering, waiting for us to call on her for help, Louise's reflection appeared in the mirror above the vanity. She looked at us looking at the box.

“Did you say . . . I mean, is this a
box
box?” Callie asked.

“You mean as opposed to what? A shoe box?” Her question wasn't exactly friendly, but the tone was gentle, teasing. I got the sense she was relieved that we were standing together around the box.

“She means does it open?” asked Nia. Her voice was pleasant, for Nia, but just as she finished asking, her phone buzzed angrily, like it was going to express the irritation Nia was holding in check. Nia looked to see who was calling, then blanched slightly. “Hi, Mama,” she said, flipping it open. She stepped away from us quickly, but I could still hear her mom's angry flood of Spanish if not her exact words.

“Sorry,” Nia said, her voice truly contrite. “I lost track of time.”

Uh oh. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and saw I'd missed three calls. It was late enough that I didn't have to wonder who'd called me.

My ass was grass.

Maybe because her dad's not exactly in the running for concerned parent of the year, Callie was the only one of the three of us who didn't seem panicked by the fact that we weren't home yet. Instead of clutching anxiously at her phone like it was about to ground her of its own volition, Callie had her face inches away from the box, which she was studying intently.

“Hal, look at this.”

I moved over to where she was standing and got close to the box, like she was. And suddenly I saw why she'd been so amazed.

The wood wasn't fine-grained, as I'd thought at first. There was no grain at all. Instead, what I'd assumed was the pattern of a grain was actually a pattern cut into wood. The pattern was wild and more intricate than anything I'd ever seen. It looked like leaves and vines with creatures on them, but in the dim light of the store I couldn't make out exactly what I was seeing.

“It's beautiful,” Callie whispered. She stood up and put her hands on the box, looking off into the near distance as she felt around the wood. “I can't find a way to open it, though.”

Nia came back to where we were standing, snapping her phone shut in irritation. “Okay, I'm toast. My mom just gave me three minutes to get home, meaning I have about ninety seconds to develop the ability to fly.”

“I think I'd better go, too,” I said. My eyes were still on the box. Were we really supposed to just . . . leave it?

Like she'd read my mind, Louise observed, “Seems like you all could use a little more time with that box.”

Callie was pretty much always nice, but now she turned on some serious charm. She flashed Louise her girl-next-door smile and (I am not kidding you here) actually folded her hands in front of her chest as if she were begging. “Um, Louise, I have a huge favor to ask you.”

Like she knew exactly what Callie was doing, Louise released a burst of laughter. “Honey, save that sweet-girl show for your boyfriends.” Callie blushed, but she didn't get pissed the way Nia might have.

“You're going to let us have the box, aren't you?” Nia's question wasn't an attack, it was a realization, and I understood that something had somehow been settled between them.

Louise didn't answer her directly. “That box needs to stay in the right hands,” was what she said instead. “I hope you understand my meaning when I say it would be very, very dangerous for the wrong people to get ahold of it.”

“We'll protect it,” Callie assured her.

“We'll guard it with our lives,” I added, because what might have sounded melodramatic a couple of weeks ago seemed called-for now.

Looking from one of us to the other, Louise slowly rubbed her hands together, almost like she was washing them. Then she nodded. “I believe you will.” With that, she turned and walked even deeper into the back of the store. A minute later, we heard a door open and close.

The three of us looked at one another.

“We still don't know if it opens or not,” Nia pointed out.

Callie took a step toward the table and picked up the box. The way it had been wedged between the furniture must have made it seem heavy because Callie didn't have to strain to lift it at all. Holding it extended in front of her, she looked down at the surface of the wood that seemed to ripple in the soft light.

And then, with Nia and me watching, she gently shook the box.

From inside, we heard the sound of something sliding back and forth.

“Well,” said Nia into the silence of our amazement. “I guess we have our answer.”