There are no children here but something something something pulls me.
The silence roars in my ears and my feet move on their own accord, toward one of the bassinets. It’s still, it’s quiet, it’s eerie, and when I get to the edge, I pull on it with my fingers and it rocks toward me.
A hoodie is lying inside.
It’s a simple jacket, but it’s the one the boy was wearing and it fills me with dread, and I sink sink sink with it to the floor, and the floor seems to swallow me, seems to grab at me with barbed fingers.
“This was your mother’s nursery,” Sabine says from the door. “And Richard’s.”
Two bassinettes, which indicates that they were babies at the same time.
My heart pounds.
“Are they…I didn’t know… are they twins?” My words are limp, and Sabine doesn’t truly answer.
“Twins run in your family, girl.”
She trails her twisted fingers along the walls as she paces paces paces toward me, and with each step, her face seems to get more grotesque under the twisted scarf of her turban.
She drops something into my hand and it’s a locket and it’s inscribed with a calla lily. “Go ahead,” she urges me, and it comes open in my hands.
There are pictures inside.
One of Eleanor, when she was very young, and one of another woman.
They both look young, and dark-haired and dark eyed and
Oh
My
God.
“You,” I breathe. “It’s you. Are you and Eleanor… sisters?”
“Twins run in your family,” she says simply.
She sinks to her heels next to me, and she pulls me to her and hums, rocking rocking rocking me, and I think she’s singing a gypsy song and I’m confounded and stunned and still.
“Did you know that sons must pay for the sins of their fathers?” she asks, and then she hums again, and again and again. “Roma believe that, and it is true. Roma beliefs are different from yours, but we know. We know.”
“What do you know?” I ask her the question as I slightly pull away, trying to look at her face.
“We know what you don’t want to see,” she replies. “We know the things that aren’t explainable, the things that don’t seem possible. We know things happen that are bigger than us, more powerful than us. And sometimes, a sacrifice must be made for that.”
“What do you mean?” I ask and I’m afraid, so so afraid, so afraid that I want to break free and run.
“A sacrifice is something you give,” she looks at me, her dark eyes so cold and flat. “You give it willingly, to save something important.”
“I know what a sacrifice is,” I tell her. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“Everything, my girl. Everything.”
I break free from her grasp and I run, and she doesn’t follow.
Chapter Twelve
I summon all of my courage and I open the doors to Eleanor’s office.
She sits at her desk, sharp and stern in her tightly buttoned sweater and she stares over her reading glasses at me as I approach.
“Grandmother,” I say hesitantly, and she waits like a serpent on a rock.
“Yes?” her eyebrow arches.
“Will you tell me the story of our family?”
She is silent as she puts her book down and stares at me, examining me.
“You’ve been speaking to Sabine?”
I nod. “Is she your sister?”
Eleanor looks out the window and for a moment just a moment, I see the young girl in her face, the one that was in the locket. She looks softer for a second, then she hardens as she looks at me once more.
“Yes.”
“So we’re all related?”
“All?” She raises her eyebrow again.
“Me, Dare, Olivia, Finn….”
There’s something in her eyes something something something, but then it’s gone and she shakes her head and she denies everything.
“You’re still troubled, child. Olivia died when she was young. I don’t know who ‘Dare’ is.”
“He’s her son,” I cry out, and my fingers shake. “I know him. I knew him. I was raised with him.”