“Well, that’s sweet, honey, but it’s just so—I’m underwater. And there’s a woman with long black hair, and she’s holding my hand and swimming with me. When I look into her face, I feel like I should know her. We swim deeper and deeper, and I keep thinking she wants to tell me something. But she never does. And just when I think I’m going to run out of breath, she lets me go, and I wake up. I know it’s just a dream—but it feels so real. Crazy, huh?”
The connection between my brain and my tongue feels severed.
“I just keep thinking it’s a message or something,” Mom goes on. “I know that sounds absolutely out there, Anne. My God, don’t ever tell your father. He’s worried enough about me these days. To tell the truth, I don’t even know why I’m telling you.”
The last part hurts. Is this how it is now? Me not telling her my secrets, and her feeling that she can’t talk to me?
“You can tell me stuff, Mom. Believe me when I say you can tell me. I am seriously the perfect audience for weird.”
Mom’s brow wrinkles. “Oh? And what is it exactly that gives you all this weirdness experience?”
Gosh, Mom, where do I begin? Oh, that’s right. I don’t. But I have to say something about the dream, something that might— “Who do you think she is?” I blurt out. “The woman in the dream?” The one who’s clearly your mermaid birth mother.
I can see my mother hesitate, like what she wants to say will sound so odd that she doesn’t feel comfortable saying it.
“Someone you know?” I prompt her.
Mom looks startled. “Now why would you—? Yes. Well, sort of. That’s the strange thing. When I dream it, I’m absolutely convinced that she’s someone close to me—like a relative. Someone who knows all about me. And she’s in such pain. It’s hard to explain. I just know that she cares about me somehow. I know it’s ridiculous to let a dream upset me, but it just brings up all sorts of emotions. David’s death…and other things.”
“Things like Lily, right?” I go ahead and blurt that out too. We haven’t talked about Lily since that night I’d come back from Professor Olensky’s—the night I’d learned our line of descent and how it connected through my mom.
Mom looks at me with a combination of relief and nervousness. She nods. “Okay, maybe you do understand more than I was giving you credit for. But I’m a grown woman. I’ve known I was adopted all my life. Why would I suddenly now be dreaming about some woman who makes me think about my birth mother?”
“Maybe she’s thinking about you too. Did you ever think of that?” Suddenly, my mouth seems to have developed a mind of its own. I’ll tell her everything, I think, just get it over with and tell her. “Maybe she wonders how you are. Maybe she wants to know. Stuff like that happens, Mom. I mean, have you ever tried to find her? Do you want to find her? People do that all the time now. Maybe the dream means that you should—”
Tears well up in my mother’s eyes. “How in the world did you know that I’ve started looking? I haven’t even told your father. How did you know that? I need a tissue.” She sniffles loudly in case I need some encouragement in getting one for her.
I grab my purse from the counter and unearth a crumpled tissue, but when I pull it out, Lily’s hair clip comes with it. One of the sharp edges has stuck to the tissue, and I have to pry it off.
“What’s that?” Mom blows her nose noisily, then runs her fingers over the hair clip that’s now resting in the palm of my hand. “It’s beautiful, Anne. Where did you get it?”
I ponder some kind of answer—It fell from the sky?—when Mrs. Benson saunters in through the back of the store. “Hey-ho,” she calls to us and then stops dead still a few inches from us, the color draining swiftly from her face. She smacks both hands against the cameo pin she almost always wears and clutches it. A tiny eep sound escapes her throat.
Behind me, the front door opens, and the bell above gives its distinctive, happy jingle. I turn. It’s Ben. He smiles at me, but even from the middle of the store, I can see an anxious wariness in his eyes. The three red welts on his cheekbone—one for each of my fingers that touched him—are faded but still visible. My breath catches in my chest. Maybe I have it all wrong, I think. Ben is steady and kind. How can I break up with a guy who smiles at me like that?
“Hey,” he says quietly. “Hey, Mrs. Michaelson, Mrs. Benson. Can I borrow Anne for just a few minutes? If it’s okay?”
Mom looks a little iffy about this. We’re in the middle of a moment here that Ben knows nothing about. But it’s Mrs. Benson who suddenly looks oddly pale—pale enough to distract me from all things Ben and Mom.
“Are you okay?” I plop the clip on the counter and angle around Mom to Mrs. Benson. “Do you need to sit down or something?”
“Where did you get that?” Her hand shakes as she points to Lily’s fan-shaped clip. Her voice trembles. Her face has gone so pale that it’s almost bloodless.
My pulse kicks up a notch or two. Make that three or four. Without warning, my hands begin their familiar under-the-skin buzz. The light from the plate glass window behind me dims. I whip around in time to see the sky darken. The wind picks up enough that even inside I can hear it whooshing.
“Was it supposed to rain?” my mother asks. “Look at that sky.” And then her voice trails off as she turns her gaze to Mrs. Benson.
“Amelia, what is it?”
“Where did you get that hair clip?” Mrs. Benson asks again. She’s looking at me very strangely.
“You really need to sit down.” Ben’s next to us now, his hand on my boss’s shoulder. He guides her to a stool over by the counter, his voice calm but insistent—it’s his lifeguard voice. “Your color doesn’t look good.”
“I—someone gave it to me,” I say. It’s true. Lily had handed the pin to me, hadn’t she? I pluck the thing from the counter, pull back a few strands of my gunky hair, and use it to clip them back. Maybe if I show ownership, she’ll calm down. Why is she freaking out about this anyway?
“This is impossible.” Mrs. Benson shakes off Ben’s hand and rushes back over to me. “Who gave this to you, Anne? Who was it?”
Outside, there’s a crack of thunder. Next to me, I feel my mother tense. Since that horrible day last fall, she doesn’t do well in thunderstorms. I’m not so good with them myself. The rain starts to pound from the sky—huge drops slamming against the plate glass window so heavily that at first I think it must be hail.
The four of us stand in the middle of the Jewel Box—a triangle of women and Ben in the middle.
The look on Mrs. Benson’s face is part intense focus, part shock, and part wonder. “I gave that to her,” she says, really more to herself than to the rest of us. “When she told me she was pregnant. Rubies and pearls. Passion and creation. Fire and water. I pinned it into her hair myself.”
Overhead, thunder booms so loudly that I clasp my hands over my ears. The store shakes. My pulse is racing; my stomach feels like I’m on a roller coaster. What’s forming in my brain makes no sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense.
“Gave it to who?” I squeak out the question in a voice pitched higher than I want it to be.
“What are talking about, Amelia?” My mother looks from Mrs. Benson to me to Ben. Outside, the sky is almost totally black. Above us, the recessed ceiling lights of the Jewel Box flicker wildly.
“How can you have it?” Mrs. Benson is in full-blown freak-out. She points at the fan-shaped pin with its rubies and pearls—right now, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have taken it, even though Lily insisted. Take it, she told me. You will know what to do with it when the time is right.
“She drowned herself,” Mrs. Benson whispers. “I ran after her, but I didn’t get there in time. Her coat was heavy. Her hair got caught. And then—oh, God. I told her it would be okay. I promised her. Give her up, I said. We both know it’s the only way to keep her safe. He won’t be able to find her. I told her not to listen to the witch. That it was only lies. She shifts her wild gaze to my mother. I try
to swallow, but my throat’s gone totally dry.
“What are you saying, Amelia?” My mother’s voice is shrill. “What kind of crazy story are you telling? Who are you talking about?”
The sky goes even blacker. The thunder keeps shaking the Jewel Box. A flash of lightning illuminates Mrs. Benson’s face—it’s pale as death.
“I searched for years for you, Laura,” she says to my mother, and for a second, I think my heart actually stops. That’s what it feels like—my breath’s jammed up and my heart stops beating, and I wonder how it is that I’m still standing. People without breath or heartbeats should fall down, shouldn’t they?
“I had to make it right. I had to find you. I’d promised Lily that you’d be okay—that it was the right thing to do. I didn’t understand until it was too late what was really going on. But then she was gone and you were gone and I had to make it right. I had to find you.”
Lily? She knows Lily? How is that possible?
“Find me?” my mother says slowly, her voice still sharp. “Find me? Lily? You mean my Lily? My birth mother? How do you know about that? I’ve never talked to you about that. You knew Lily? Amelia, what is this? Some kind of joke?”
Ben moves to stand next to me. “What’s going on?” he whispers. He takes my hand in his, and I let him, because right this second I need something—someone—to anchor me. It’s like last fall all over again. I’m tumbling into something that up until this moment, I hadn’t even known existed.
“Not sure,” I whisper back. It’s not even a lie this time. I don’t understand what’s happening or how it is that Mrs. Benson is saying all these things.
Ben links his fingers with mine. Would he do that if he knew that I’d been kissing Ethan? And what does it say about me that I’m still so willing to hold his hand? But I can’t focus on that right now.
“She was my friend,” Mrs. Benson says. “Lily was my friend. Always just a little different. That’s how your mother was, Laura.” Mom stiffens visibly. Her eyes are wide, and her mouth is open a little, like it wants to form words but doesn’t know which ones they should be.
“She knew things. I don’t know how she knew, but she always did. She said her mother was like that too. At first, I thought she was just one of those sensitive types—good at reading people, that kind of thing. But it was more than that. Little things happened that were easy to overlook. A dying houseplant that grew stronger after she’d touched it. A breeze that would pick up on a summer day when we were sweltering at the park. I’d see her smile, but I never questioned it. I should have, but I didn’t. I just listened and nodded when she’d talk about her mother and her grandmother. About family secrets. And once—after we’d both had too much wine one night—about how her mother had whispered to her about the Old Ones. About powers. About the old ways of Russia—deep secrets that went back so far that no one really knew their source. And about how her grandmother had told her that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed.”
“You knew my mother?” Mom’s eyes are huge. “You knew my mother? How can that be? Amelia, do you understand what you’re saying? And what does any of this have to do with Anne? Or the hair clip?”
“You need to listen!” Mrs. Benson is shouting now, competing with the thunder—this is not a woman who’s ever shouted as long as I’ve known her. She yanks the cameo and chain off her neck. I see for the first time that the cameo itself is not just flat. It’s a locket with a hinge that opens.
“Your mother was pregnant. She and Misha were supposed to marry before anyone found out. It happens, you know. We love who we love, and sometimes it happens. I told her it would be okay. But she kept saying that she had a bad feeling—that something was coming. She’d look behind her when we were out walking, like she expected something to pop up. And I’d turn, and nothing would be there. I thought it was just the pregnancy. Just hormones talking and setting her off. But I should have paid better attention. I should have believed her when she told me something was wrong.”
Mrs. Benson’s hands shake as she struggles to open the cameo. She’s talking so fast that I can barely keep up.
“She was four months along with you when Misha was shot. It was horrible. Lily kept raving about how he was shot because of her. The police said it was a robbery, but Lily kept saying no. Month after month—even the day you were born—she kept telling me that she knew differently. That men had come after Misha because of her, because of who she was. She didn’t know what they wanted. She didn’t know why. You were just a few hours old, and she was mad with it all by then. I didn’t know how to help her, and I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even after those things I’d seen her do, I still didn’t believe—not really. Who could believe it? My grandfather had been Russian too, but I’d never heard of things like this. But she was so sure. That’s why I gave her the hair clip. Your mother’s hair was so lovely—so long and lovely. Her crowning grace, I always told her. I was so foolish. I told her it would protect her. Rubies for her passion and pearls for her pure heart. Wear it, I told her. Wear it for me.”
Ben reaches up his free hand and touches the clip in my hair. “Is she talking about this? What’s this all about, Anne? Does this have to do with what happened last night? When you ran out of my house like that?” I can hear fear in his voice. This unnerves me as much as anything.
The lights above us flicker madly again, and for a moment, the room goes pitch black. When the lights blink on again, I can see Ben searching my face for answers.
Every piece of my crazy world is colliding at once. Well, almost every piece. Ethan’s not here—only right now, I wish he was.
“Your mother was certain she was in danger. That you were in danger. You were just hours old, and she was nursing you. You were such a beautiful little baby, Laura. So tiny and pretty! You looked just like her. She kept going on and on about how you weren’t safe. I’ve tried to go to the witch, she kept saying. But I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t find the forest. I couldn’t cross the river. There’s a way. I know there’s a way. The Old Ones told my mother’s mother, and her mother, and the ones who came before her. This is what my own mother told me. If I’m willing to give up what my heart desires most, then I can save her. The witch could help me. But I can’t get to her. It was craziness…but she was so certain. And so I told her the only thing I knew to tell her: give the baby up for adoption. No one will know where she is. It seemed the only solution anyway. I offered to take you myself, but she kept telling me no, that it wouldn’t be enough—that I was her friend, and they would find you with me. So there we were. Lily couldn’t have taken care of you. She could barely take care of herself. She agreed to the adoption, and the hospital took care of the rest of it. Two days later, they’d placed you in your family and closed the records.”
My mother’s gone totally silent. Ben is still holding my hand, so tightly now that he’s cutting off the circulation to my fingers. Mrs. Benson manages to open the locket’s clasp. Inside, there’s a tiny picture.
“I didn’t believe her,” she says to my mom. “Who would believe such things? I thought you were safer gone, and I still think you were. But it ripped her to pieces, and me along with her. My lovely Lily—her husband gone, her baby daughter gone, her mind filled with crazy talk of witches and Old Ones and secret forests that no one could find. I thought that time would heal her. A month passed. Two. Three. I gave her the hair clip. I thought it might remind her that she was still Lily—still beautiful and kind and special.”
“You were friends with my mother? Amelia—all this time I’ve been working for you, and you didn’t tell me this?” My mother’s forming her words slowly, like she’s working all of it out in her head as she talks. “This is what you want me to believe? That my mother talked about witches and was scared that I was in danger—and that’s why she gave me up for adoption? And you knew this and never told me? In danger from who? From whoever killed her lover during a robbery? What the hell is this all about? Why are you s
aying these things to me? How could you possibly think that Anne is involved in this somehow?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say softly, or as softly as I can and still be heard over the pounding rain, thunder, and lightning. Except it’s not okay. Maybe it’s never been okay. Stories within stories, Lily had said to me. Secrets within secrets. Is it really possible that Lily—the human Lily—knew about Baba Yaga? Is that the witch she was talking about to Mrs. Benson back then? If that’s so, then did she know? Did she have powers like I do? How did she get them? Was she told that she was supposed to save Anastasia? What about her mother? Did she know, too? Did I not know at first only because my mother was taken out of the loop? And how much of this is Ethan aware of? The knot of fear inside me tightens and grows larger. My skin feels cold and clammy.
My mother looks at me sharply, and I think she’s about to say something else, but Mrs. Benson doesn’t give her a chance.
“I know it all sounds crazy, Laura. Oh, how I know. That’s what I thought, too. That’s what I’m trying to explain. It was that last day, the day your mother—oh, Laura—the day your mother died.”
“Died?” Mom’s voice cracks over the word. “When? How? I’ve tried for years to find out what happened to her. You know that, Amelia. After David’s death, I wanted to—well, you know I talked about trying to find her. Are you honestly saying that you listened to me talk about this, and you said nothing? Why? Why would you do that?”
Mrs. Benson is almost shouting now, her gaze flicking wildly from Mom to me to Ben. “Because she was right! Because I saw him that night—the man she was afraid of. It was all those years ago, but I won’t ever forget it. I won’t ever forget him. I couldn’t forget him. Because Lily had given me his picture.”
She jabs her finger at the photo in the cameo. “I thought it was just another of her ravings. She made me swear that I would keep the photo with me—so I would know him when I saw him. Told me some story about a Brotherhood. About men who didn’t age. About how her own mother and her mother’s mother had whispered stories: a curse on the Romanov family that was somehow connected to her. A secret beyond what even that Brotherhood of men could understand. That they were destined for something that was yet to come. That one of their own blood would betray them and use them, but that even he wouldn’t really know the truth of who they were, of what they were. She said the witch had warned her mother, and her mother had warned her. That the gift of power came with a price—and she couldn’t allow her daughter to pay it.”