“How so?”
“The truth about Kingsley is whatever story he’s telling at the moment, because that’s the story his soul wants to tell. I’m not attached to any particular idea of his past, and I’m not attached to any one definition of his present, either. I take him as he shows himself to me.”
“I just—I’m trying to get a picture of him. That’s all. In my head. Something more than what’s online.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Just like, why didn’t he tell you I was coming? But he told Meer? And why did he leave without telling me, when he wants to meet me?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.”
“What’s he like, then? Like, what music does he listen to? Or what are his favorite foods? Or could I—could I see his sketchbook?”The words pour out. “Meer said he always keeps his hands moving. I’m like that, too. I don’t really draw, but I make video game maps and sketch out weapon ideas and stuff. I’d like to see what Kingsley does. Like, maybe there’s something that’s the same, between us? Something about how our minds work that I inherited from him?”
“I can’t show you his private notebooks, Matilda.”
I feel myself flush. “Would it be okay to see his studio, then?”
“There are projects in my own studio that are pressing today, so I’m going to go to work now. But I’ll think about it.” She steps into the pantry and comes back with a syringe. She pulls up the edge of my T-shirt sleeve. “This is an antibiotic. Your hands are very inflamed and it will help you heal.”
The needle is in my arm before I even fully understand what she’s doing to me.
28
In my dream,I am asleep in the Iron Room. I know I am asleep, because one tenth of me is conscious. The world outside my window is black. That’s confusing, because I know I left the Oyster Office at two in the afternoon.
I can’t wake up any further. I am under a blanket of ice in a frozen sea.
I am still wearing my UC Irvine sweatshirt. The high neck feels tight around my throat.
Kingsley stands over me. He is home from his trip. My long-lost father.
His hair is threaded with gray. So is his beard. He looks much older than in the few photographs I have seen of him. He is tall—well over six feet, genes I didn’t inherit. He wears an old black T-shirt, stretched out at the neck, covered with spatters of paint.
“I knew a girl like you,” he whispers. “Isadora. Persephone.”
I want to say that I am her daughter, but in my dream, I can’t wake up enough to speak.
“She had my baby,” he says. “But I left her before it even happened. I took a different path. It was so long ago.”
I want to say that I am that baby. I try to reach my hand to him.
I cannot.
“Melinoe,” he says.Meh-lih-no-eh.
I don’t know what that means.
“Melinoe,” he repeats.
I reach for him but my arms will not move.
29
Kingsley was supposedto be home by now.
But he is not.
I’ve been here four days, and he still isn’t home.
