I don’t know if you will ever read this. If you do, I will probably have left this mortal flesh behind.
If I died by violence, then I must give you a warning.
Be careful, my darling boy, my only son.
I do not know if you were blessed when your sister fell ill. I know you both survived, if you did. I hope you were blessed. I hope you have the strength to become strong, like your father. Stronger than your father.
When Rachael, your younger sister, first fell sick, I would sit with her in her room, rocking in the rocking chair over that one loose board that always creaks. And I would tell her how if she could only survive, if she could only pray to God and purify her soul, she would become greater, she would undergo the Divine Transformation and become strong. Strong enough to show her father that she was worthy of more than he believed.
But she wasn’t strong enough.
I told your sister about you. Told her that if anything ever were to happen to me, that she should try to find you.
I am sorry she never had the chance.
I failed her as I failed you and Nora.
Perhaps you can succeed where I did not, my only son, if you have been blessed.
I looked at the note, almost as confused by it as I had been by the will she had left. Why did she feel like she had to tell me all this? Especially knowing that she’d written it after Rachael’s death.
And, more strangely, why would she have told Rachael to findme? And why tell me that now?
I wanted to talk to Noah—to ask him what he thought, both about why our mother had told our little sister about us—or aboutme, at any rate—and why she’d then chosen to tell me. Noah had known her better than I had—not because I felt any closer to our father, but because Noah had been encouraged to spend time with Momma, to learn how to be a wife and mother. Maybe he would have some insight that might provide some sort of explanation.
But I couldn’t talk to Noah.
Can you talk?
Give me a few.
I’ll call you.
I was rereading the note for the third time when my phone began to buzz.
“What’s going on?” Elliot asked before I even had a chance to sayhello. “Are you okay?”
I explained the note—what it said, where I’d found it. “I don’t know why she would tell me any of this,” I finished.
Elliot was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t know her,” he said slowly, clearly thinking. “But maybe she’s trying to tell you something. A coded message.”
“Why would she need acodedmessage?” I asked. “She’s writing to me—in a tool box she left to me.”
“What if your father had found it?” he asked.
I blinked. What if he had? “I—I don’t know,” I admitted.
It made me think.
If my mother had wanted to leave me a message that my father wouldn’t be able to understand, how would she have done it?
“Why not leave it with Humbolt, then?” I asked.
Elliot let out a thoughtful hum. “Maybe she didn’t trust him? He wasn’t part of the Community, so maybe that made her nervous.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But wouldn’t that make her more likely to trust him?”
“Maybe not,” he replied. “I don’t understand the Community, and I don’t like the comparison,at all, but there are a lot ofNation members who won’t trust white outsiders, even if those outsiders want to help.”
