“Black,” he said before she had to ask.
For a moment, they sipped quietly and Eureka knew that soon she had to do it: shatter this peace. Say goodbye to her best friend. Convince Dad of absurd, fantastic truths. Evacuate. She would take this small sip of false normalcy before things fell further apart.
Dad hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked up to say hello to Cat. His face was ashen. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Can I talk to you, Eureka?”
She followed him to the back of the kitchen. They stood in the doorway that elbowed off into the dining room, out of earshot of Ander and Cat. From the side of the stove hung the backyard landscapes the twins had painted in watercolor at their preschool. William’s was realistic: four green oak trees, a weathered swing set, the bayou twisting in the background. Claire’s was abstract, wholly purple, a glorious rendering of what their yard looked like when it stormed. Eureka could hardly look at the paintings, knowing that, in the best-case scenario, she had to rip the twins and their parents from the life they knew because she had put everyone in danger.
She didn’t want to tell Dad. She really didn’t want to tell him. But if she didn’t tell him, something worse might happen. “The thing is, Dad—” she started to say.
“Your mother said that someday something might happen,” Dad interrupted.
Eureka blinked. “She warned you.” She took his hand, which was cold and clammy, not strong and reassuring the way she was used to it feeling. She tried to stay as calm as possible. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought. Maybe Dad already had some sense of what to expect. “Tell me exactly what she said.”
He closed his eyes. His lids were creased and damp and he looked so frail it scared her. “Your mother was prone to delirium. She’d be out with you at the park or some store buying clothes. This was back when you were little, always when the two of you were alone. It never seemed to happen when I was there to see it. She’d come home and insist that impossible things had occurred.”
Eureka inched closer to him, attempting to inch closer to Diana. “Like what?”
“It was like she would fall into a fever. She’d repeat the same thing over and over. I thought she was ill, maybe schizophrenic. I’ve never forgotten what she said.” He looked at Eureka and shook his head. She knew he didn’t want to tell her.
“What did she say?”
That she came from a long line of Atlanteans? That she possessed a book prophesying a lost island’s second coming? That a cult of fanatics might someday seek to kill their daughter for her tears?
Dad wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “She said: ‘Today I saw the boy who’s going to break Eureka’s heart.’ ”
A chill ran down Eureka’s spine. “What?”
“You were four years old. It was absurd. But she wouldn’t let it go. Finally, the third time it happened, I made her draw me a picture.”
“Mom was a good artist,” Eureka murmured.
“I kept that picture in my closet,” Dad said. “I don’t know why. She’d drawn this sweet-looking kid, six or seven years old, nothing disturbing in the face, but in all the years we lived in town, I never saw the boy. Until …” His lip trembled and he took Eureka’s hands again. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the breakfast table. “The likeness is unmistakable.”
Tension twisted through Eureka’s chest, crippling her breath like a bad cold. “Ander,” she whispered.
Dad nodded. “He’s the same as he was in the drawing, just grown up.”