I scooted into the corner of the snug, hugged my knees, and tried to calm myself. What was that man doing in Ireland? Did he follow me here? And if he wanted to kill me so badly, what was stopping him? And, would I always be so lucky?
My phone screamed at me from my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number or the name on the screen: M.G.R.I.
I answered in a shaky voice. “Hello?”
For a moment, I heard only breathing on the other end. Then, finally, “Cora. It’s G.”
“Oh my God. Giovanni, are you okay? I thought you were behind me. I lost you. How did you know my full number? I never gave you the last digit.”
“Well, there were only ten options,” he panted. “I’m okay. The man was too close behind us. I deliberately split in another direction from you so he’d follow me, instead. Then I lost him. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“It was him. The killer I saw back home.”
Silence. Then, “I wondered why you seemed to recognize each other.”
“I’d know his face anywhere.”
“Do you know what this means?”
My heart beat out the seconds before he answered his own question. My gut already knew the answer.
“It means he’s after you. He’s following you, too, Cora.”
“Yes. He’s after both of us. He and his…army.”
“Do you think he wants to kill us?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I do. He could easily kill us. I’ve witnessed how easily. And I think he wants to very badly. But he said it’s not what he wants that matters. There’s something stopping him.”
Giovanni and I sat with that, silently sharing the fear. His sigh was full of weight. Then he said, “I don’t like the way he feels.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m paying for the last digit, Cora.”
The door of the snug burst open. Finn dropped to his knees in front of me. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back,” I said and hung up.
Finn held my face in his hands. He placed tiny kisses all over my cheeks, chin, lips, forehead. “You’re okay,” he whispered, though I didn’t know if he was reassuring me or himself. “I should never have let you go with that guy. I’ll find him. I’ll kill him.” His aura flashed with large orbs of deep, bloody red and a darkness bordering on black.
“No, no,” I said. “It wasn’t Giovanni.”
He pulled back and looked at me. “Who then?”
I wanted to tell him everything, to curl myself under the protective umbrella of his love. But this knowledge put people in danger. What if he disappeared like my mother? What if that man killed him? I’d never forgive myself. “It was a strange man, following me. I—I thought I had seen him before.”
Finn searched my face. He held my hands and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I won’t let any harm come to you, Cora. I promise.” I nestled my face into the crook of his neck. He had no idea how little power he had to protect me from this kind of harm, the kind that comes at you out of nowhere, reaches inside, and pulls your soul from its bindings.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said into my hair.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go for cupcakes right now.”
He chuckled and fished a paper from his wallet. “I reckoned if I could help, maybe you wouldn’t need that tall Italian tosser.” He grinned at me. “I wanted to show you that I understand how important finding information on your mum is to you, so I went to the General Register Office. This,” he said, handing me the paper, “is your parents’ marriage license.”
I peered at the paper. There hadn’t been a copy of this in the treasure box. There was my father’s full name, Benito Raul Sandoval. And my mother’s name in Irish, which I couldn’t pronounce, but it did say “Grace” in parentheses. “Oh, Finn, thank you! I can’t believe you did this.”
“Look right here.” He tapped the paper with his tapered finger. “It shows their address at the time of filing.”
I gasped. “Can we—?”
“Way ahead of you. It’s not far from here.”
I pressed the paper to my chest. “Our house. I get to see our house.” I bit my lip but couldn’t hold back my tears. “Thank you, Finn. This means the world to me.”
“Aye, críona. I know it does.”
“What does that word mean?”
He smiled before answering. I thought I saw a blush warm his aura. “My heart.”
Thirty-Eight
The drive took on more significance because of where we were headed. Every thatched-roof farmhouse, every rock wall dripping with history, every corner pub and crumbling stone remnant of a building was something my parents and I would have traveled past years ago. These were the roads my parents would have taken to go to work or to the store for bread. These were roads my mother took to come home to us.
Before she didn’t.
Despite the sun, I blew warm air into my cold hands and rubbed them together. The fear hadn’t left me since my encounter on the street, but thinking of what might have happened to my mother only made it worse. Had she also been stalked, taunted, and threatened by a killer? Had someone like him found her but not held back?
The car slowed. Finn turned off the main road onto a narrow lane lined with trees and hedges. He parked in front of a tiny house ringed by a thicket. I grazed my hand over a leaf as we walked. “There are the best blackberry bushes in front of the house down there.” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Finn peered at me curiously. I knew these bushes would soon be dripping with dark, plump berries. But there was no fruit now, only delicate white flowers with a secret inside.
“How did you know?”
“I have no idea. A memory, I guess.” I saw a picture in my mind of a pudgy little hand stained with summer.
We reached a small stone cottage with an eave over a bright red door. “There’s your house,” Finn said, though I knew it already. Whenever I dreamed about a house, even the one I lived in now, it always had a red door. I’d never understood why, until now.
Do houses have memories, too? Can they recall the squeal of a little girl chasing after a grasshopper in the grass? Or the way young lovers gaze at each other over their sleeping newborn? Would this house be able to bring forth the smell of sugar caramelizing on fresh cinnamon rolls? Or the wail of a child sobbing, “I want mommy”?
We approached the stone half-wall surrounding the yard. I stood in front of the red wooden gate, ran my fingers over the weathered iron handle in the shape of a…daisy.
“You want to go to the door and ask if we can look around?”
“Do you think they’d let us?” I asked, taking Finn’s warm hand in mine.
He gave the door a couple of hearty knocks, and then we waited. We heard only the quiet hum of a late spring day—the rustling of leaves, a dog barking in the distance, an occasional car passing, the zip of an insect on the fly.
“S’pose nobody’s home.”
“Maybe I’ll have a quick peek in the windows.” I walked around the side of the house, trailing my hand along the stone. It wasn’t enough to see the house, I needed to touch it. Around the corner, I found a gleaming window trimmed in white. I cupped my hands around my eyes and, with my forehead pressed to the glass, peeked inside. A bedroom, perhaps a guest room because there were a few boxes, a vacuum, and odds and ends next to the bed that one would throw into a rarely used room. A layer of dust blanketed the items. Did no one live here now? I began to turn away when another image came into view like a holograph overlaid on the scene before me. A crib. A toddler with bright green eyes and black ringlets cascading around her face. Refracted light shimmered in my eye. An orange crystal hanging above the bed, casting rainbows on the walls.