Take the Key and Lock Her Up

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing, staring but seeing nothing.

“Grace, you need to look at this. Do you recognize it?”

The small book is a soft brown leather, and I can’t help but remember standing in a store with Jamie, running my hands along its cover, thinking I couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to give it to my mother.

“It’s a calendar,” I say without having to look.

“Do you want to … ?” Megan tries, but I’m already shaking my head.

“No.” I can’t read my mother’s careful notes, her perfect penmanship. I can’t look too closely because that’s one way to never see a thing. “You do it.”

Megan nods as if she understands.

The train keeps going, flying through the night. But inside the car, all is quiet as Megan scans the pages, speed-reading, taking it all in.

“When was it?” she asks, and I know exactly what she means.

“November,” I tell her. “Mom died the first week of November.”

She nods and flips through the pages until she sees something and makes a face, flips back, then forward again, as if something doesn’t quite make sense.

“Grace, what do you remember about … before? In the days leading up to the fire?” Megan says, and I’m grateful for it. I don’t think I could stand to hear her death or when she was shot. My nerves are like live wires. My insulation is all gone, and it doesn’t take much to make sparks.

“Was your mom acting differently? Did she say anything?”

I’ve spent so much time trying to remember that night. And I’ve spent the rest of my time trying to forget. I can’t believe I’ve never really considered Megan’s question before. What was Mom like in the days or weeks leading up to what happened? I have to think now, recall. It hurts, but I push forward.

I remember dressing up for Halloween and making caramel apples, playing in big piles of leaves and talking about a Thanksgiving that never came.

I remember …

“She was gone,” I say, honestly surprised by the words, by the memory. “She left. The week before, she left on a buying trip for the shop. Or for the Society, I guess. I don’t know. She was gone for a few days. She said it might be longer than usual because if she was going all the way to Adria, she should spend some time with Grandpa.”

But Megan is taking the book, turning the pages again. She points to something. “This says she went to Binevale. Do you know where that is?”

“No.” I shake my head, look at Noah.

“I’ve never heard of it,” he says. “And Adria’s not that big.”

“Megan, can you get online and see if you can find out where this town might be and what—”

“It’s not a town.” Alexei’s voice is flat and even, almost like he is remembering a ghost. When he turns to look at the distant lights of the countryside, I can see his face reflected in the darkened glass. He presses his palm against it, like he’s trying to push his way back in time.

“And it’s not in Adria.”

Valancia isn’t a large city, and Embassy Row is even smaller. But there’s an advantage to having best friends who each, technically, reside in different countries.

It only takes a few phone calls and a couple of well-placed lies for Rosie and Noah and Megan to all have “sleepovers” that are going to go on a little longer than their parents initially expected.

Then we get to work.

We put away our credit cards and hide our real IDs. Those things are lost to us now. Alexei and I have the fakes that Dominic gave us, and they are the only ones we dare to use. Luckily, borders are porous in Europe, and largely unpatrolled. A person can drive through three countries in a day and have no idea where one ends and another begins. So time is the only thing that stands between us and where we’re going.

And, eventually, time runs out.

“Alexei, are you sure about this?” Rosie asks when we reach the tiny nation of Dubrovnia. “I mean, I know the Soviet Union was big and stuff, but that was a long time ago. Maybe …”

“It was not so long ago if you are Russian,” Alexei says.

The car we rented at the train station is small and loud, and the transportation system here isn’t exactly state-of-the-art, so we rattle and roll along a two-lane highway that’s more trail than road.

The mountains are growing steeper around us, and change is in the air. In a lot of ways.

“Turn up the heat, will you?” Megan asks. She and I are shivering with Noah in the backseat. Alexei’s driving; Rosie’s riding shotgun. At first, she was disappointed to learn that an actual shotgun didn’t come with the position, but she’s made her peace with it, and now she and Alexei share a glance, as if to say that we’re all wimps. And I suppose we are. But we’re wimps who have been raised in much warmer climates.

It’s only early autumn, but already the terrain is cold and hard. The sky is a steely gray, and I can’t even imagine what it must feel like in the middle of winter. Dubrovnia hasn’t been a part of the Soviet Union since well before any of us were born, but Alexei seems at home here. We aren’t that far north—I think this country even shares a border with Adria at some point. But the little bit of sunshine that is seeping through the overcast sky feels precious, a fading, fleeting thing. For a moment I wonder if it really is as cold outside as it feels. Or maybe the cold is just radiating off Alexei.