Just that one reference and I’m back at the beginning of first grade, afraid to leave her side until she reached into her purse and retrieved a long red strip of yarn, tying it around my wrist. We’d spent the night before in Dad’s hospital room, talking on a toy phone made of empty soup cans and yarn. I’d poured out all of my fears to both of them, and they’d comforted me. When we left the hospital, Mom pulled the yarn from the cans and promised that all of her and Dad’s love and protection were woven inside the thread, and as long as I had it with me, they’d be there.
I still have that strip of yarn, marking a passage in my favorite fairy tale picture book that Dad used to read to me: Les Enfants Perdus, which translates to “The Lost Children.” It’s an old-world French version of Hansel and Gretel, a bit more grim, with the devil and his witch-wife holding two lost siblings—Jean and Jeanette—hostage in a forest. Together, the children escape, using their minds and wills to murder and outsmart their dark tormentors before they can be eaten. Although the book’s pages are water damaged and crumpled, I’ve never thrown it away.
I’d been so upset on the plane when I realized I forgot to bring either of those keepsakes to Paris. But Mom found a substitute for the red string.
“Wow, Mom—”
“Oh, and there’s this, too . . .” She hands me one other tissue-stuffed bag.
“Hmmm. Maybe I should go off to school more often after all,” I tease, dragging out the tissue. My breath catches at the glossy, brand-new Les Enfants Perdus staring up at me—as though she’s been reading my mind all along.
She shrugs when I turn a questioning glance her way. “It was in a display window at one of the shops this morning. It’s a modern edition . . . and the illustrations are different. But it’s the same story. Now you have your thread and your book to tie us all together.”
My eyes sting. “Thank you.”
She pats my hand and we share another smile. My lips wobble as I thumb through the pages, remembering Dad’s deep, strong voice reading the text to me in flawless French. I miss that so much. Just like I miss him speaking to me with his violin. When he got bad enough that we had to check him into hospice, I took up sleeping with the instrument under my bed every night. It almost seemed like a part of him—maybe because each time he played, he’d cradle it as one would a precious child.
I’d still have it with me to this day, had it not gone missing when Grandma Liliana first arrived in America. Mom suspected she took it, and confronted her. Grandma admitted mailing it back to Paris. Mom was furious, assuming she wanted to sell it due to its value. It was a one-of-a-kind Stradivarius, handcrafted of wood so black and glossy I used to think it had been carved from an oil slick. The scroll curled at the neck’s tip like a snail’s shell, adding to its uniqueness. But Grandma selling it didn’t make sense. The instrument had been a family heirloom since the early 1800s. One of our ancestors, Octavius Germain, had even engraved his initials on the lower bout, just inches from the waist of the instrument. I used to trace my fingers along that O and G, imagining a man in Victorian finery playing the very instrument my dad loved.
Now, sitting here with this book in my hands, I think maybe we misjudged Grandma’s motives. Maybe—just like I needed that piece of red thread to brave being without my parents that day in first grade, and this book to give me courage at a new school—she needed a piece of her son to be waiting at home for her, so when she returned she could survive in a world he no longer occupied.
I glance into the distance and swallow the words I want to say: Mom, I still miss him. Every day. I don’t want to be away from you, too. I don’t want to be alone.
Our limo slows to a crawl as we take a stone bridge over a giant river. I lean into the window, unnerved by how close the water is. Were it to rise just a few more feet, it would overlap the bridge. The river encompasses the academy on all sides, similar to a moat. The only land is the hill where the academy sits, and the eighty-some acres of woods surrounding it. Without any way to cross, it would be like an island unto itself.
I return the stationery box and my book to their bags. Unease roils through my veins in time with the blue-black depths swirling beneath the limo. According to the pamphlet, the water even surges underground beneath the estate’s foundation, flooding the third basement.
Water. My least favorite element, second only to fire. And now I’ll be surrounded by it. The fact that the rain has finally subsided relaxes me a fraction. Fog settles across the landscape, clinging low to the road as we roll off the bridge. RoseBlood Academy rises up, grim and ominous. The baroque architecture, looming and majestic, looks more like a brooding castle than an opera house in this isolated location.