Semele looked out the plane’s window, unable to fathom that the madman who had killed her father and Cabe now had her mother. She didn’t know if she could survive losing all of them.
She thought back to the day before her father died. She really had called him on a whim, just to say hi. Right before they hung up he had said, “There’s something important your mother and I want to tell you when you take the train up next week.”
She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but looking back she knew he had meant to tell her the truth about her adoption. He and her mother had gone to their favorite neighborhood restaurant the night before, a little Italian joint, and discussed it at length; her mother had cried as they walked home hand in hand. Semele had no idea how she knew all this, but she did. She could see the moments strung together like a movie of someone else’s life.
“What are you thinking?” Theo asked her, taking her hand.
“Just thinking about my father.” She looked over to him, not sure how she could explain.
“Was he the one who encouraged you to work in antiquities?” he asked.
Semele gave him a sad smile, knowing he was trying to distract her. “I was fascinated by handwriting as a teenager. I used to study it as a hobby. For a while I thought about becoming a professional graphologist after college.” She shook her head at the idea. “I used to give all my friends handwriting analyses.”
“I’ll have to show you mine,” he offered and kissed her hand.
“That’s not even negotiable.” She couldn’t wait to analyze his handwriting, to see which way his words slanted, how sharp the angles were, how hard he pressed to impose his will on the page. Every little idiosyncrasy had meaning.
“So that led you to manuscripts?” His finger absently stroked her palm in a soothing motion.
She nodded, staring at their joined hands. “I’d request volumes of antique letters from Beinecke to study the penmanship, but over time, I became more interested in the letters themselves.” This had prompted her interest in paleography, the study of ancient writing and manuscripts. Slowly, she began to find her niche. “My father was the one who suggested I learn Greek my freshman year in college.”
“Funny, that…” Theo murmured, shaking his head.
Now she wondered if Nettie had asked Joseph to make sure she learned Greek, or if his encouragement had happened naturally. With both of them gone, she would never know for sure. He had kept her mother in the dark; had that been to protect her? How much had Nettie told her father?
Semele was surprised by how much she wanted to talk about her parents. Since her father’s death and learning about her adoption, she had tried to shut them out. Now the memories were flowing freely again.
“While other kids were at the beach, we would visit libraries and tour collections on our vacations.”
“Where you saw countless treasures,” Theo surmised with a smile.
“The earliest known copy of the I Ching, Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Magna Carta, the Dead Sea Scrolls. We went everywhere. The Bodleian Library, the Vatican Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale…”
“So you traveled the world and stayed home for college?”
“I moved to Michigan for graduate school, Ann Arbor,” she pointed out. Ann Arbor had the largest collection of ancient papyrus and parchment in North America and a top conservation program. That program had launched a career in which she handled every kind of rare book and manuscript—early printings, maps, atlases, heirloom books, and first editions. She’d worked with libraries, museums, and private collectors around the world. Looking back, she could see that everything had led, one stepping-stone at a time, to finding Ionna’s manuscript, and Theo.
Strange how she and Theo barely knew each other and yet she felt as if she’d known him forever. Now they were forty-one thousand feet in the air, on their way to find the place where her ancestors once lived. She had the seashell from Paris in her purse and the necklace in her hand. Ever since she had found her mother’s pearls, she had yet to let them go.
Message from VS—
You’re angry.
One day you’ll understand.
Reply to VS—
Flying home tomorrow. We can talk when I arrive.
Message from VS—
No longer there.
I love you.
Reply to VS—
What have you done?
Ace of Wands
In Admont, Theo followed two steps behind Semele with the faith of a shadow. He never said a word except when he thought her frustration got the better of her. Then he would put a soothing hand on her back and murmur words of encouragement. She walked the streets of Admont for hours with no idea what she was looking for. The beauty of the historic town, the glistening Enns River and Ennstal Alps were all but lost on her.
They finally stopped at a café. Theo bought them coffee and a sandwich and they sat outside. She tried to eat, but the bread tasted like cardboard, the coffee like bitter water.
Theo’s cell phone rang. “What did you find?”
Semele watched him as he listened intently.
“Good. We’re in Admont. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.” He hung up and explained. “I had my IT specialist see if he could dig up anything else on Evanoff—my guy’s thorough. Evanoff did have a son, Viktor Salko, born during the war. He changed his name.” He noticed the color drain from her face. “What is it?”
Semele knew that name.
“He’s on the board of directors at Kairos.” She had never met him, though. He lived in Moscow. Now he was out there somewhere with her mother.
She scanned her surroundings, beginning to panic. Was her mother in Russia? Had they been looking in the wrong places?
She took in the family crossing the street, the little girl holding her father’s hand, and the two men on bikes whizzing past her, bringing a fresh breeze in their wake. Then her eyes landed on the man reading a book at the table next to them. He was wearing a Geiger watch.
“The watch,” she whispered. “That’s it.”
If synchronicity was life’s way of sending messages, it had just delivered several. She looked down the street and found the shop right away. There was a reason this street, and this corner, looked so familiar. When she was nine, her father had bought his Geiger while they were here on vacation. Semele remembered waiting outside the shop, eating ice cream with her mother. Afterward they had toured the library at Admont Abbey.
This city was the place she had dreamed about that night back in New Haven. She and her parents had been in the car heading here when they saw the accident. Her heart began to race with urgency. “I need to go to the library.”
Theo’s eyebrows rose, but he stood up with her and they quickly left the café.
The library was only meters away. All day, she had been walking in circles around the one place she needed to be.
*