I looked at her, surprised. She’d dodged every question I’d asked about her father so far. Every single one. And now here she was, offering him up freely.
“Some people are born with the ability to find water underground.” Wink leaned forward, and the tips of her hair dipped into the stream. “I once watched Pa find a buried spring in the pasture near the Gold Apple Mine, where we keep the horses. He held a forked stick and it started twitching really quick and fast. And that’s how he knew. Someday I plan to gather all the Orphans and dig in that spot until the water bubbles up. And then we’ll have a swimming pond.”
“Why don’t we do it today, Wink? I’d like to dig up a spring. I’d like to free it from deep underground.”
Wink shrugged. “It’s too hot. Not today, Midnight. Soon, though.”
We went inside to get out of the sun. I showed Wink around my house, the airy kitchen with the white, tiled walls, the sleeping porch with all the screens, the basement full of Mom and Alabama boxes, the cellar with the dirt walls and empty jars.
I showed her my bedroom, and she looked at all the books in my bookcases, all of them. Then she went over and sat on my bed. I flinched, worried that the pillows smelled like jasmine. She curled her legs underneath her, picked up the copy of Will and the Black Caravans I’d left open, and just set it in her lap. Wink had loaned the book to me—she said she hadn’t read it to the Orphans yet because she didn’t want them to get any ideas. She didn’t want it to stir their blood. And I understood. I was only half-done but Will and the red-haired boy-king Gabriel Stagg had already entered my dreams . . . the twisting, endless road, the knives in the dark, the feeling of restlessness.
“I’ve given it some thought and I think I know what happened to Roman Luck,” Wink said, out of the blue.
I sat down beside her and didn’t say anything, waiting for her to go on.
“I think Roman Luck decided that he’d done it all wrong, his whole life. He didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, and he didn’t want to live in a grand house. So he just walked out the door and left, and started over someplace else with nothing but the clothes on his back, determined to change his fate.”
I thought about this for a while. “I like the idea of it, but people don’t just leave their house and money and identity behind. They just don’t. Well, except for the old woman from Paris that you told me about.”
Wink folded her hands under her pointed little chin. “There was an heiress once named Guinevere Woolfe who disappeared without a trace one day, off into the foggy streets of London. She was finally found twenty years later, baking bread in a tiny French alpine town. She’d married a French pastry chef, and had grown fat and happy, and they’d had six lively children, all boys. No one in the town had the faintest idea that she was English, let alone that she was worth fifty million pounds.”
“So what did Roman Luck do, after he disappeared? Did he become a world-famous illusionist and spend his life traveling to exotic locations, only to die a sudden death on the Orient Express after drinking a poisoned cup of coffee in the dinner car with a jealous former lover?”
This was a fantasy I’d had about myself, once upon a time. The details varied from year to year, generally involving more and more beautiful women as I got older.
Wink smiled, quick and soft and eyes half-closed. “I think Roman Luck hopped a train to some faraway place, and started off a stranger and ended up a hero. I think he killed monsters and saved innocents, and rescued a sad, lonely girl and made her happy. That’s what I think happened to him.”
She stood up, and put her hands in her deep overall pockets, and let her curly hair fall across her freckled cheeks. “You could be a hero, Midnight. You could be a hero like Thief, and Roman Luck.”
“Alabama’s the hero, not me,” I said, open and honest because Wink made me feel like it was okay to be that way.
“I’ll help you. You can do it, you’ll see.” Wink nodded. It was a very serious and grave kind of nod. Her eyes were looking up to me, full of stars.
I heard tires on gravel. Car doors slammed. And then screams, kid screams, half laughter, half squeal. I got up and went to my window. The Orphans were back from the dentist and full of energy from being cooped up all morning. Peach was standing on top of the rusty Bell station wagon, messy hair down her back, trying to sing opera in her little voice. Felix had Bee Lee on his shoulders and was tickling her feet while she laughed hysterically. The twins were just running in circles around everyone else, like they couldn’t make up their mind on what mischief to start first.
WE WERE LIKE the three Fates, weaving the story together, threads of gold, red, and midnight blue.