Compass Jones:

Compass Jones: Table of Contents

2008-12-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

Chapter One: Her Own Private Hiroshima

Chapter Two: Compass Gets a Lesson in Alphabet Soup

Chapter Three: Having Class

Chapter Four: Mom

Chapter Five: And Then There Was One

Chapter Six: Wilhelmina Something-Like-Carbuncle

Chapter Seven: In Which Compass Remembers Why Her Mother is Such a Pain in the Ass

Chapter Eight: In Which the Mystery not only Refuses to Unravel, It Refuses to be a Mystery

Chapter Nine: Haunting Houses

Chapter Ten: Gathering Forces

Chapter Eleven: Of Wings and Venom

Chapter Twelve: Additions

Chapter Thirteen: Spider Bite

Chapter Fourteen: Revelations

Chapter Fifteen: Eggs, Etc.

Chapter Sixteen: Little Boxes, Little Boxes

Chapter Seventeen: One Woman's Trash . . .

Chapter Eighteen: Monsters at the Door

Chapter Nineteen: Never Ever Call the Girl

Chapter Twenty: Up from the Ashes

Chapter Twenty-One: Falling Apart at the Seems

Chapter Twenty-Two: Showdown

Chapter Twenty-Three: Close Encounters

Chapter Twenty-Four: Freezer Burn

Chapter Twenty-Five: Deep in Hot Chocolate

Chapter Twenty-Six: Relative Strangers

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Die Smiling

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Out the Open Window

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Under Savage Skies

Chapter Thirty: Signals

Chapter Thirty-One: The Vigil

Chapter Thirty-Two: Starlight

Thirty-Three: Lucky Charm

Chapter Thirty-Four: Treasures in the Attic

Chapter Thirty-Five: Row Four, Column Eight

Interim

Chapter Thirty-Six: Landed

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Poison Stones

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Special Delivery

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Tom Hanks Knows Nothing About Sleepless

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Tom Hanks knows nothing about sleepless

2008-12-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

Six nights of crappy, nightmare-riddled sleep had Compass more on edge than she’d been since the day Todd told her her pedigree was in question. The day-to-day worries were now starting to pile up a bit (sick mom, no income), enough to make a sort of annoying hum in the back of her head. The nightmares of her father, now broken, lurching and insanely angry, slumping into her bedroom, pointing at her with one crooked but powerful arm, darting around her room like a misshapen but speedy giant bug—those were making life unbearable.

There were no safe moments now, not since she’d read in the free neighborhood newspaper that blood but no body had been found in the local library. In books and movies, people always seemed to know what to do next: they called in favors with powerful, knowledgeable people; they reconnected with high school buddies who were intrepid newspaper reporters or high-placed politicians or unconventional but effective members of the police force.

Compass had none of these. Her friends, mostly English teachers, were terrific in a grammar emergency. They could conjugate verbs with the speed of Superman, pull the subjunctive tense out of a hat, distinguish a clause from a phrase at fifty yards and rattle off the difference between further and farther, affect and effect without breaking a sweat, but in cases like this, their many skills just weren’t terribly helpful.

Mark was as exhausted as Compass. Clinging to someone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week was tiring, apparently. Much as Compass feared or hoped she might be falling in love with the guy, she was starting to feel like she’d have to scrape him off with a spatula just to go to the bathroom. His concern was sweet, his protective instincts appreciated, but if he didn’t stop leeching on to her, she was going to have to pour salt on him just to get some privacy.

There had been no further attempts at contact from Oliver. Compass imagined him holed up somewhere, possibly an abandoned nuclear power plant, feeding off the spent but still radioactive rods or whatever, growing ever more powerful. She couldn’t stop hearing that sickly crunching sound, kept dreaming over and over that moment at the top of the stairs when Oliver had flown backwards into the darkness. Only now she dreamed of him returning up the staircase, flying, silent, up from the depths of the stairwell, a vengeful, broken thing that had until recently been human. She now deeply regretted spending so much of her childhood reading comic books.

Friday morning, she pried Mark off and set about convincing him to go to work. She would get out of the house, spend the day in brightly lit public places, she promised. She just needed some time alone in her own head. Mark, who writing up a proposal for a research grant, had been working from her home, which suited him just fine. He spent his days in his pajamas, one cat on his lap, the other next to him on the desk, drinking mug after mug of coffee and pausing in his work only to shout, “Where are you going?” every time she left the room.

“You need to go to your actual workplace, put in an appearance,” she told him. “They’re starting to forget what you look like.”

“I work in the basement. Alone. They don’t know what I look like.”

“Well, then, don’t you need to collect some more resources? Books and things?”

“Everything I need has been logged on to the network. And Jessie’s there to scan and log anything I need but don’t have.”

“What a crap job for an intern; you should do that yourself,” said Compass, increasingly desperate to have a moment of peace.

“Compass, the point is that I don’t need to go in.”

Compass stared him straight in the eye. “Yes,” she told him, “you do.”

He finally got the hint. Compass could see a day of relative freedom in front of her: she’d shave her legs in a non-furtive sort of way, pee with the bathroom door open, drink milk straight from the carton, maybe parade around in her underwear, which she’d never done before, but what the heck? Today was about possibilities. Just as Mark was gathering his notes and preparing to go the heck away, the phone rang. It was Ginny.

“Compass, sweetie, it’s your grandparents. Honey, I think you’d better come down here as quickly as you can.”

Ginny didn’t want to say much else, just that Mina’s health had deteriorated in the last few days, they were at a hospital in Olympia, and Compass should come. Now. Mark, who had been grumbling and muttering his way through packing himself a lunch, looked up to see Compass’s pale and frightened face. He leaped for the phone, nearly stabbing Compass with a peanut-butter-coated bread knife.

“Now listen up, you sick fuck, if you ever call here again- Oh. Oh, Ginny, oh crap, I’m so sorry, I thought you were….uh… never mind. Is everything OK?”

Compass stood in a sort of frozen numbness, listening to Mark get the news she’d just gotten. Right now, standing just here like this, nothing hurt. She was fine, just like this. If she moved, she’d crumble, but if she stayed still, she was all right. Everything was all right.

“Compass?” Mark grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her out of her pain-free zone and into a whole new world of hurt. “Compass, sweetie, we gotta go.”

“I know,” she whispered. “Tell Todd to take care of the cats?”

Mark nodded, darted out of the apartment. She heard him banging on Todd’s door a moment later, heard the muffled mumble of their conversation. They both returned a moment later.

“I thought I’d take them to my place,” Todd said, gathering up cats and cat accoutrements. “Seems safer.”

Compass nodded. Or at least she meant to. She wasn’t sure if it had happened or not.

“Linda,” she said suddenly.

Both men looked at her quizzically.

“Mom’s nurse. From here. Someone should tell her.” The need to pass the news along unfroze her, at least for now. She had that nurse’s card somewhere…she’d meant to tear the bitchy little mother-stealer’s card up and flush it, but she’d kept it. She finally located it in the deep dark recesses of her backpack, the place bananas went to die. Linda wasn’t answering her phone, so Compass left her a message. When she was finished, she hung up and looked up to see both men gazing at her.

“What?”

“That was an incredibly generous thing to do,” said Mark.

“It really was, honey,” said Todd.

“Whatever. Mom loves her. Maybe Linda can give her a little comfort. Let’s go. Wait! What about the emerald?”

They couldn’t leave it in Compass’s apartment, that’d be tantamount to wrapping it up with a bow and FedExing it directly to Oliver. Compass refused to saddle Todd with it, and chances were good that Oliver knew where Mark lived as well. In the end, there was no other choice—they took the poison stone with them.

Seattle to Olympia normally took a couple of hours, longer when I-5 was backed up, as it usually was. They made it in just under an hour-fifteen. They raced in the door, banged on the information desk until someone arrived to give them some, got to Mina’s room in time to see her hanging up the phone.

“That was Linda,” she said, as her haggard, red-eyed daughter appeared in her doorway. “She said you called to let her know I was in the hospital.”

Uh oh. “I’m sorry, I thought-”

“Thank you.”

“Oh. Uh…sure.”

“Could you all go find something wobbly and green and with things floating in it to eat? I’d like to speak with my daughter.”

Compass finally registered the fact that in addition to her mother, Ginny and Arthur were also in the room. She hugged them as they headed out. Compass sat in the chair that Ginny had vacated. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other. Mina was so pale and thin, but she still looked beautiful. Compass’s eyes filled up and she tried to blink the tears away before Mina saw them and made fun of her.

“Jeremy would have loved you,” her mother said.

Compass, shocked, sat for a moment with nothing to say. “I wish I’d met him.”

“He enjoyed me. I made his life exciting and interesting and fun for awhile. But in the end, he would have gotten very tired of that. He was made for a quiet life with a wife and kids, golden retriever, mowing the lawn on Sundays. His idea of being crazy was a second beer.”

Compass nodded. She tried to remember the face of the man in the photograph.

“He didn’t mind that I wasn’t his?”

Mina smiled. “I think he would have preferred it if you had been, but no, it wasn’t a big deal. He couldn’t wait for you to be born. He had the nursery ready, bought so many toys, I could hardly see over them. He read all the books, talked to his friends who had kids for hours about what to expect. No, he was all ready to be your Dad, DNA notwithstanding.”

“You think we would have gotten along?”

“I do. You’re calm, like him. You drift with the current instead of spending your energy trying to swim upstream. He was like that too.”

“Dull, huh?” Compass smiled.

“No. Just…adept at navigating someone else’s chaos. I named you well.”

It was the first time Compass could remember her mother complimenting her for anything. She held her breath, prayed her mother wouldn’t snatch it away the next instant.

“I’m sorry you lost him,” Compass said.

“I’m sorry we both did.”

Compass reached out to take her mother’s hand, realized what she was doing and patted the sheets instead, as if smoothing out wrinkles. Mina hated it when people did stereotypical things like holding the hand of the dying, accused people of having soap opera moments rather than authentic ones. To Compass’s surprise, Mina grabbed her hand and held on.

“Don’t let him get the stone.”

“Why not? It can’t ... do anything for us, why not let him have it?”

“He killed Jeremy to get it.” Mina’s voice was lead. “A few days after you were born, Oliver sent me a picture, of Jeremy in the alleyway, smoking a cigarette, breathing his last breaths, oblivious. Oliver drove that garbage truck. If he gets the stone, he wins. He denied me the one thing that could have made my life good. Happy. I need you to make sure he gets a taste of that.”

I could have made your life good, maybe, if you’d given us a chance to be happy, Compass thought but didn’t say. For a moment, she’d felt like a daughter. Now she felt like an instrument of revenge.

“Why does he want it? What can he do with it? He can’t keep it.”

“That, child, is the genius of the curse. It doesn’t just poison your body, it poisons your mind. Amelia Hind was no dummy—she knew once word of the curse got around, no one would want it. It’d end up at the bottom of a river or deep in desert sand, and that’d be the end of her entertainment. So she made sure people would hold on to it even as their clutching fingers rotted away around it. Oliver wants the stone because he wants it. I’d be keeping a close eye on your bald boyfriend, too. It doesn’t take long for the emerald to put its roots in a man.”

“It can’t just go back to the museum, then, can it? I mean, it’d just put a spell on the next guy, and this would all start up again, with a different cast.”

“That’s not your problem. Return it to the museum, and Oliver will never be able to get his hands on it again.”

Mina’s grip on Compass’s hand tightened.

“There’s got to be a better way. A way to remove the curse, maybe.”

Mina laughed, and suddenly she was the old Mina again, the woman to be feared and placated at all costs. She didn’t so much drop Compass’s hand as toss it back to her.

“Don’t be stupid. That thing’s been cursed for centuries. You think you can just say a few words in Latin, maybe light a couple of candles, wave some holy water around? Send it back to England. I don’t care if the whole goddamn island sinks, just make sure that stone sits in the British Museum, on display for Oliver to see and lament for the rest of his shitty, murderous little life.”

Just then, Mark appeared in the doorway, bearing doughnuts and coffee. He looked awful: wild-eyed from lack of sleep and abundance of worry, hair and head with a fine growth of stubble, clothes that looked like they’d been slept in by a circus. He looked, in short, crazy. Mina met Compass’s eyes, gave her a knowing look.

“And so it begins,” she told her daughter.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Special Delivery

2008-08-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Compass was in a breathless, frozen bubble as she and the man across from her shared appraising looks. The librarian, the books, the deepening gloom outside the windows, none of it registered as she studied his face and found pieces of her own. Now that she had a chance to see him up close and know him for who he was, the familial connection was undeniable: the ridge of his eyebrows, the line of his jaw, the spacing of his eyes were simply older, blunter versions of the ones she saw in the mirror each morning.

“I’m your pa,” he said, with a hint of, was that, wonder?

“So I hear.” Compass said back, in a voice pitched a perfect octave above his.

“You look a bit like me.” He reached across the table and took her chin in one of his big hands, gently turned her face from side to side.

It was the unexpected contact that jolted Compass into realizing several things simultaneously: first, she had every reason to believe that this man could and would hurt or kill her in pursuit of what he wanted. Two, what he wanted was humming slightly in the backpack slung over her chair, and three, they were now alone in one of the deeper, darker corners of the library. She let him study her face, even hold her chin while she concentrated on breathing evenly and remembering where the nearest exit was.

“I do look a bit like you,” she said, and realized she was talking in some weird father-whisperer voice, trying to keep him calm.

He lightly tapped her forehead with one big finger. “That’s all me, there, that intellectual brow.” He smiled. His smile was a bit lopsided like someone at the tail end of a bout of Bell’s palsy.

“Mina’s not exactly into intellectual pursuits, that’s true.”

Oliver laughed out loud. No one hushed him, which sent a small jolt of electric fear through Compass. They were down here alone. As if she needed further verification, the lights at the far end of the floor flickered and went dark. Then the next set, one row closer. Compass began gathering up her papers, trying to keep the covers and spines of the books where Oliver couldn’t see them. The next set of lights flickered, extinguished. Only a few rows to go, and Oliver hadn’t moved at all.

“You’ve got the emerald then, have you?”

“Do I look sick?” Compass stood, slowly, in a manner of one who is preparing to leave, in the normal fashion, at closing time. Her head and heart wanted her to scramble, grabbing and stuffing before running hell-bent and screaming to the nearest exit. She forced herself to act as one who is unalarmed. Another row of lights went dark. Only four rows left and they’d be down here in the pitch black.

“You don’t believe in that old curse, do you?” He pronounced it “awd.”

“Mina’s dying.”

“I know, lass, I know. Does that explain your field of study, then?” He picked up one of the books, studied the name on the spine. “Lift the curse, save her life?”

Compass shrugged. “Mina’s too mean to die; she doesn’t need my help.”

“Heh. Stash her away with Ginny and Arthur, it’s a wonder she’s not dead already.”

“What, from all that healthy food?” Another light went out. With all the nonchalance she could muster, Compass took her backpack from the back of her chair, started for the elevators. They were, of course, out of order. Compass could just see the priggish satisfaction of the librarian as she wrote the “Out of Order” sign that would likely get Compass killed. She could only hope she left a big, bloody mess on the stairs that that cow would have to clean up. Compass clutched a couple of very heavy books to her chest. She didn’t know what books they were, but she hoped they could stop a knife or deliver a blow, if necessary.

Oliver followed her, even held the door to the stairwell open for her. All seemed so stupidly normal, but Compass knew it was a dumbshow. They were like puppets, unable to stop themselves from playing out the scenes they’d been written. She hesitated the briefest of moments before plunging into the cold, ugly, cement staircase she hoped would bring her up to light and safety. Behind them, the last of the lights went out and the library basement went dark as a tomb.

The stairs were lit with those buzzing fluorescents Compass remembered from her grade school gym. She climbed upwards, her father close and panting slightly behind her, the emerald vibrating lightly against the small of her back.

“I think your phone’s ringing, there,” said her father.

That would explain the vibrating. She’d turned it back on a bit ago to order a pizza for take away—a pizza she now had no faith she’d get to eat. Dilemma, then: stop on the stairs, increasing the time she’d spend alone and vulnerable with Oliver, but get a measure of safety from the presence of another person, even if they were just on the phone? Or ignore it and continue up, hoping to reach actual, physically present people, that much sooner?

A hand grabbed her backpack from behind, pulled her to a stop. “I’ll be needing the emerald back, Compass.”

“I don’t have it.”

“I know you do. I was just behind you when you got it. Another half hour, and I’d’ve had it instead of you.” His voice still seemed quite…normal. But his eyes narrowed, and there was an unpleasantness in the deep lines of his face.

“I need it to save Mina.”

“It’s what’s killing her. How do you reckon that’s going to work?”

“I can reverse the curse.”

“The disease is already in her. Getting rid of the curse won’t change that. It’s too late.”

“Then I’ll sell it and use the money to-” The words sounded foolish in her own ears. She sounded like a child, hoping that Santa would save her Christmas. Oliver joined her on the same stair, his big body forcing her against the wall.

“I’ll be needing that emerald, Compass.” There was no mistaking the malice in his voice now.

There was no reason to keep it and every reason to hand it over. Oliver kept pushing himself into her space, and now the heavy books she was carrying were crushed up against her chest and threatening to slide to the floor. She gripped them tighter, wanting something between herself and her perversion of a father.

“I’ll have to Fed Ex it to you. It’s at home.” Pressed up against the wall like this, she could feel the emerald digging into her back. Her phone started to vibrate again, and Compass wondered where the hell the impatient cow of a librarian had gone. Surely it was now closing time for real. The thought of being trapped in the library overnight with Oliver sent her over the edge of her control. She began shoving back, desperate to get away from him.

With both hands, he gripped her shoulders and shoved her quite hard against the wall. “I’ll be needing that emerald.”

“What for? You want to commit suicide, sleeping pills would hurt less.” The pressure on her shoulders intensified, making it harder to hold the heavy books.

“I don’t believe in the curse.” Suddenly his face was much too close to hers, his eyes a flint gray, the heavy brow ridge they shared thuggish and thick with anger.

“Bullshit,” she said, and her voice shook only a little. “You left it with Mina all these years because you knew it would kill her, not you.”

“Mina’s suffering and dying was a grand bonus, I’ll give you that. But I had the rock under my control all the time.”

“The nanny.”

“The ninny, more like. Feel in love with you, she did, though she was supposed to be in love with me. Runs off with my emerald and hides it. I’m ready to have it back now.”

“Why now?”

“Quit stalling, little girl. Let’s see some green.” With his hands around the tops of her upper arms, Oliver began to lift his daughter off the ground. It was an impressive display of strength, but Compass barely had time to register it before she realized he was preparing to throw her down the stairs. Old, long, cement stairs, with enough force, she’d be dead before she got to the bottom. The books she still clutched started again to slide. This time she let them, even gave them a good push in the right directions.

When the first of the heavy books hit Oliver’s foot, the spine turned just so for maximum pointiness, Compass registered two things: one, there was a satisfying cracking noise she hoped was a bone, and two, the hands holding her were gone. She started to push and shove past him, frantic not to lose her window of advantage. Oliver grabbed at her with one hand, still bent at the waist to rub at his bruised foot with the other. The backpack began sliding off her shoulder, so Compass let it fall into her hand. In a moment of divine inspiration, she decided if Oliver wanted the emerald, he could have it. Upside the head. With as much strength as she had left, she grabbed wad of backpack in her fist and swung.

The emerald caught him in the left temple and launched him into the air. The world shifted to slow motion as Compass watched, almost dispassionately, her father pivot, grab for purchase, miss, and fly backward into the void. She was up and out so fast, she nearly missed the wet crunch of impact that came up the darkening stairs. The librarian was standing at the light controls, tersely flicking them off. The stairwell door banged into the wall, rebounding from Compass’s desperate push, and the librarian jumped and let out a little scream.

“Good lord!” She put one hand to her chest, the other still on the last switch that remained in the on position. “I had no idea there was anyone still here. Are you the last one out?”

The door to the stairwell remained open, and Compass stood with her back to the void. No sound came up behind her.

“I am, yes,” she said, and walked past the librarian to light and safety. Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it, wanting only as much distance as possible between herself and the unthinkable mess she’d left in that stairwell. Later that night, she’d find a voicemail from Oliver, a thin, harsh whisper delivering threats from hell.

When the library opened again on Monday, two days later, the librarian found a great deal of blood, but no body. Oliver had gotten away.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Poison Stones

2008-06-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Compass stared at the window for a long time, but the man Mark insisted was her father resolutely refused to reappear. Her pancakes grew cold, the syrup congealed on the plate, forming hieroglyphics of her disappointment. She stared until her eyes watered, but the street outside was as empty of fathers as her life to now had been.

“Compass,” Mark said gently. It wasn’t the first time he’d said her name in the last half hour, but it was just as gentle as the first. “He’s not coming back, Sweetie.”

He covered her hand with his own. Her fist was wrapped tight around the heavy metal fork which had long ago dripped the last of its butter and syrup on to the tabletop. Her knuckles were white with the effort of holding onto it—of holding onto something. She hadn’t breathed in a long time, it seemed. Hadn’t needed to or wanted to. Something inside her had just curled up and died, and finally she recognized it as hope. She knew it from its feathers.

She leaned her forehead against the cold of the window, let the fog of her breath cover the glass in front of her, closed her eyes. She let go of the fork.

“He wants the emerald,” she said, and turned to Mark. “He’ll have to find me to get it.”

“That’s right,” said Mark, startled. “I mean, unless you get rid of it before he does. Finds you, I mean. Before that.”

“No,” said Compass, picking up her napkin and wiping her dry lips, “I want him to find me.” She signaled imperially for the check which Mark had paid almost half an hour ago, and when it didn’t come right away, she forgot about it. She stood up, brushed at something sticky on her shirt, grabbed her backpack and walked out. “I’m going to the library,” she announced to no one in particular, and marched off in the wrong direction.

Mark was a minute or two behind her, having remembered to grab both his coat and hers from the backs of their chairs. He found Compass on the corner. The light indicated that she could walk across the street in the direction she was facing, should she decide to do so, but despite staring straight at the lit WALK sign, Compass seemed to be waiting patiently for something else to happen. Mark ran up behind her and wrapped her coat around her shoulders.

“What the heck is wrong with you? You were catatonic all over your breakfast, now you’re just not making any sense. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” Compass turned to look at Mark. “Well, I almost did. Mark, my father’s been dead my whole life. Then you tell me he’s just on the other side of that window. I turn to look and poof! He’s already gone. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the behavior of ghosts?”

“He’s not a ghost, you know that.”

“He has been. He’s been trying to be a ghost, stay in the shadows, scare me like some low-rent bogeyman. I turn a corner, and he jumps out from behind and yells BOO! and disappears again. He’s all big, thumping boots and …” suddenly Compass was furious. She was so mad she was grabbing Mark by the front of his jacket and shouting in his face. “I fucking hate this! This is stupid! What the fuck!? What are we, children? Nine fucking years old playing hide-and-go-seek in the shadows on the playground? He’s a goddamn bully, Mark; he’s a stupid, fucking, ass-ignorant bully who missed out on a chance to know his daughter and now plans to make up for lost time by giving her eighteen separate heart attacks and then killing her. Well, FUCK. THAT. If he wants the goddamn emerald, he can COME FUCKING GET IT!” Compass held her backpack up to the sky and shouted for everyone in the street to hear: “COME FUCKING GET IT, OSWALD OR OSCAR OR OLIVER OR WHATEVER THE SCREAMING FUCK YOUR NAME IS. COME FIND ME! AND I WILL KICK YOUR SORRY BRITISH ARSE RIGHT BEFORE I SHOVE THIS STONE DOWN YOUR THROAT! OH, AND BY THE WAY, YOU IGNORANT SHITHEAD, I WAS UNDER THE DESK! HA!”

A few people in the street applauded Compass’s screaming rant, but this being Capitol Hill, most people ignored it. She wanted to shout more. She really really wanted to hit someone, but there was no one around who needed hitting. Instead, she shoved her arms into her backpack and took off at a sprint in the direction of the library. Unfortunately, the library was only a few blocks away, and she got there long before her rage was spent. Mark was just a few paces behind her.

“What the hell was that all about?” he shouted, as soon as he had breath enough.

“Don’t start,” said Compass. “I am so angry right now, I could probably rip out someone’s liver with my teeth. Don’t volunteer by pissing me off more.”

“What are you mad at me for?”

“I’m not. I’m mad at the world, and you’re standing the closest.”

“This is an angry morning for you.”

Compass took a deep breath, hissed it out between clenched teeth. “I will be sorry later. I will make the appropriate apologies later. I know I should make them now, but I don’t want to. Right now, I’m going to go in that library and read a lot of crap and probably tear out the pages of books I don’t like and doodle in the margins of shitty magazines. I will whisper too loudly and forget to put my phone on vibrate, and then I will call myself repeatedly from the pay phone. I will use the internet computers for 38 minutes instead of the allotted half-hour. I will steal the shitty little golf pencils and hold a séance where the card catalog used to be before laying waste to the entire Dewey decimal system. But first, I want you to go away before I make you hate me.”

“Compass, I don’t know if it’s safe.”

“Mark, go or I will probably rip your lips off. I’m in that kind of mood.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, please? Anger doesn’t make you invincible, no matter how you feel right now.”

Compass couldn’t look at him. She was afraid her eyes would shoot laser beams and lightening bolts that would hollow out his eye sockets and perforate his torso. She was afraid they wouldn’t. “Go. Please.”

He went. Without even a backward glance.

Compass watched him go for a minute, watched the still early-ish light of morning shine on his bald head, weakened with affection for just a second and thought about calling him back. But she couldn’t. Not right now. She turned and walked into the library.

“Curses, removal of,” was oddly not a recognized heading under the Library of Congress system. There was plenty under “curses,” but they seemed to be mostly about the art of cursing. Compass reckoned she had recently proved that she was as adept at that as the proverbial sailor, so she kept on searching. She scribbled down numbers on bits of paper so smooth the graphite seemed to slide across them—why, she wondered, did libraries insist on having wax paper to write on and finger-crampingly small, eraser-less pencils to write with? Why was this place of learning so insistent on making actual learning so difficult? Still, the books piled up around her, and the table she sat on started to look more like a nest than an area of scientific study.

The removal of curses varied as much as the curses themselves. There were some universal constants, though, nearly all of them unpleasant. Many seemed to involve some variety of nudity and animal sacrifice, which Compass, a shy, animal-rights activist and vegetarian was unlikely to indulge in. There was chanting—always in Latin. Why Latin? Compass hoped that pig Latin would suffice. It was all she had.

Hours passed. Compass finally gave up and went to the desk to request paper that didn’t fight with her and writing implements that left an actual imprint behind them. The librarian, sour as a stereotype, peevishly squeezed out six sheets of yellow notebook paper and a pen with an actual layer of crust around the tip. Compass didn’t thank her and took some satisfaction in that.

Lunchtime came and went, as did dinnertime. Her phone was turned off, not because she didn’t want to disturb the academic hush of the library—she secretly did, of course—but because she didn’t want to be interrupted. The emerald had been quiet all day, rocking as if in a cradle in the backpack slung by one strap over the back of Compass’s chair.

Stones were particularly good for cursing, Compass discovered. There was a notion that this had to do with their multiple facets, multiplicity making for highly flexible curses or something. History was full of cursed diamonds, rubies, opals. There was even a supposedly cursed turquoise belt buckle in Texas that appeared sometime in the 1820s, though that particular legend seemed even more apocryphal than most. Gold, being softer, held a curse longer than silver did, though the curse softened along with the metal as it was worked from one form into another. Opal curses nearly always involved fire, and rubies were good for curses that had to do with blood. Obsidian curses had to be invoked at night and generally lifted during daylight hours.

The history of curses was so engrossing, Compass nearly forgot her original mission. However, a chapter in the book Poison Stones: A History of Cursed Jewels brought her up short.

"Surely the deadliest cursed stone of all was the Hines emerald. Big as a baby’s fist but rather more dangerous, the trapiche emerald was cursed by the witch who’d worn it—and burned for it. No man would ever own the stone and live to enjoy it, Amelia Hines swore before succumbing to the flames. And as far as anyone knows, for the stone disappeared from the British Museum in 1966, no man ever has."

The book went on to tell the story that Compass had already heard from Ethan, plus a few gruesome deaths she hadn’t. The book estimated that the stone was responsible for nearly a hundred deaths before it disappeared, leaving a trail of twisted, burned, bloodied and very very dead men and women behind it.

Women weren’t immune to the stone, according to the book. Their deaths simply took longer. Men died violently but quickly, women slowly and of lingering, wasting diseases.

But mom didn’t have the stone, Compass thought. I’ve had the key to the emerald all along.

Her mother’s cancer wasn’t Amelia Hines’s fault, apparently. The hope that had arisen at the thought that it could be, and therefore perhaps would simply disappear when the matter of the emerald was resolved, faded, then dissolved completely. The book said nothing on how to reverse the curse, of course, and Compass was not at all pleased that the book took the curse as genuine instead of dismissing it as an amusing superstition.

Compass didn’t notice her stomach growling, didn’t notice the irritation of the librarian who wanted her library cleared well in advance of closing time. She certainly didn’t notice the man across the table from her.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she heard. Compass looked up. She was knee-deep in ancient Egypt and had to shake off the history that was sticking to her fingertips and the ends of her hair. Her eyes gradually cleared, the mists of old stories wisping away as she blinked her way back to the muted light of the research section.

“Closing time?” she asked, smiling at the oddly familiar face.

“Nearly,” he answered. The librarian came by to flap nervous hands at them and gesture mutely at the clock.

“Out in a tic, love,” the man at the table said to the librarian, who flapped away. Compass finally registered the British accent.

“You're Mina’s garbage man,” she said.

“Well, just that once,” her father said, and smiled.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Landed

2008-02-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

Safely back in Seattle, Compass marvelled at how fluid her definition of “safe” had become in the last few months. Once, “safe” had meant having a job that paid the bills, a roof over her head, a reasonable amount of money in the bank and no balance on her credit card. “Safe” used to mean no overt health concerns like lumps or bloody goo when she coughed or wounds that wouldn’t heal. Now “safe” was an altogether different animal. The word now included states of being that she once took for granted, states so obvious she previously wouldn’t even have thought to include them in her definition: “no one’s pointing a gun at me right now,” for example. Or “I’m not on a plane with a cursed emerald – I’m ‘safely’ on the ground with it.” Safe had become so tenuous that even “my mother’s dying at home with her parents rather than on her own” qualified. There was a measure of safety, even in that.

“Safe” did not, however, encompass having a cursed emerald in her backpack.

So now the question became, where to store the emerald? Mina’s house was out of the question – Oliver knew where it was, or at least someone in heavy boots did, and Compass wanted no more interactions with the Man in the Big Boots, be he familial, fatal or both. Mark couldn’t keep it unless he fancied living in (or as) a charcoal briquette, and Compass refused to foist it off on her grandparents. That left her apartment, which had been the obvious choice from the beginning.

“No.”

Mark’s face went all stony at the mere mention of it.

“Why not?”

Mark sighed, then shifted his weight onto the other foot, spent a few seconds determinedly not looking Compass in the eye, then sighed again.

“Because Oliver knows where you live.”

Bits of Compass’s brain came unglued and flopped around inside her head for awhile. She sat down, hard, on her couch, the backpack slipping off her shoulder, the emerald inside making a heavy clunk as it hit the floor. When she could organize her thoughts enough, she realized she was missing some fairly pertinent information.

“How do you know that?”

Mark sat next to her on the couch and took one of her hands in both of his. “I followed him here once. I staked out your Mom’s house a few times, figured he’d show up there, remember? Well, once when Mina was out, he broke in. Either he picked the lock or he had a key, I couldn’t tell, it was dark. Whatever, he got in fast. He wasn’t in there long – ten minutes, maybe? Then he came out, got in his truck and drove straight to your place. I figured he’d found your address in her house, maybe in an address book or something.”

“That’s why you’ve been so tired. You’ve been watching my house.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. I didn’t want to scare you.”

Compass took a deep breath. His eyes were so concerned, his hands so warm, love just about oozed out of every pore. He was so gallant, so protective; it made her feel a bit safer, just to be sitting next to him on her couch. It also deeply pissed her off.

“Idiot.”

He dropped her hand. “What?”

“Look, Mark, I appreciate chivalry as much as the next woman, and anytime you want to stand up and offer me your seat on a crowded bus or drape your cloak over a mud puddle, you’re welcome to do so, and thanks. But don’t even think of leaving me out of my own adventure.”

“Look, Com-”

“I’m serious, Mark. I’m not playing Wendy to your Peter Pan, do you get that? I’m not going to sit around not getting my dress dirty, waiting to be rescued. I fucking hate women who do that. So don’t shove me into that role.”

“This isn’t a fairy tale.”

“So what makes you more qualified to play the hero than I am? Honey, it’s a very nice penis, but it is just a penis.”

“I know that.”

“I know you do. But don’t think you’re protecting me by keeping me in the dark. I don’t want you to fight my battles for me; I want you to fight them with me, do you see the difference? I’m not some limp little maiden that needs rescue, and if you don’t understand that, you can back on out of my fairy tale, Peter Pan.”

“Fine, whatever, but do you understand how it terrifies me to hear you talk about what’s going on as if it were happening in a children’s story? You have to take this seriously, Compass!”

“I do. I am! As much as I can. I know there’s a potentially dangerous man out there who wants what I’ve got. I understand that. I understand the possible consequences of that. But I also know that I’ve got a huge honkin’ cursed emerald in my garage-sale-four-dollar backpack and ghosts who want to help me, and that the only corpse so far went down with an erection big enough to merit newspaper headlines. I'll take it as seriously as I can, OK? I’m in this every step of the way, and don’t you dare give yourself the right to hold anything from me.”

They glared at each other for a long moment, until Compass’s lips twitched upwards into a shallow little smile. Against his will, Mark’s lips did the same.

“It is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it,” Mark said, by way of apology.

“It really is,” Compass agreed, by way of the same.

Brave heroes both, they reached across the space between them and held each other. A minute or two later, one of Compass’s cats came and rubbed its face on her backpack, then leapt away, hissing, and they were suddenly reminded of the question at hand.

“So, promise not to make unilateral decisions like not telling me stuff?”

“Fine. So what do we do about the rock?”

“I think it stays here. There’s nowhere else to take it, Mark, and don’t go all Easter Island Face again, please; think it through.”

“I still think your grandparents-”

“I said no. My grandfather lives in that house, and he’s a man. I won’t risk either the curse of the stone or the curse of the unwanted, possibly felonious ex-husband.”

“Why not send it anonymously back to England? Back to the Museum?”

It seemed the most reasonable solution; really too easy, in fact. It made Compass nervous and uncomfortable to have such a blithe answer to such a complicated situation. She nudged the backpack with her foot, imagined she could feel a slight electric humming coming from inside.

“Let’s think on that one a little. It’s too late to do anything tonight, anyway. Do you think it’s OK for you to spend the night?”

“OK? We have to ask permission from a pissed-off, long-dead witch now?”

“She’s burned down banks, Mark.”

“True. But your dad likely knows you have the stone. I think we should maybe get a hotel.”

That solution was so perfect, relief rushed over her like a waterfall. She took the cats to Todd’s, just in case, and they checked in to a quiet Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town, near the airport they’d just come in from.

The emerald – or its expired ex-owner – was quiet that night, and nothing happened to interrupt the first sound night’s sleep either had gotten in quite a while.

The next morning, they had breakfast in an IHOP and made their choice.

“Blueberry pancakes.”

“Apple cinnamon.”

Beyond that, they were out of ideas. Mark still advocated sending a package with a fake return address to the British Museum. A brief note, typed on a computer at the library, to explain that the jewel had been found in someone’s attic; it’d be easy, he insisted. Story over.

Compass still wasn’t at all comfortable with that idea. There was simply too much risk. The safest course, she’d decided, was to figure out what Amelia Hines wanted done with the stone.

“And how do you propose to do that? Séance? Ouiji board? Automatic writing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, maybe Henry and Sophie can talk to her, like a dead person’s intervention or something?”

“Very funny. I’m a little surprised at you. Call yourself a scientist, yet the idea of actual research never enters your mind.”

“Well, good luck with that, my dear. Directly after breakfast, I’m off to work. That place that people go to earn money, perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

“Briefly. That was enough. I’m off to the library. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, a place with books and scholars?”

“And drunks and addicts and homeless people.”

“Homeless scholars,” she corrected him.

Just then, their food came, and they dug in. Halfway through his stack, Mark looked up to see someone grinning at them through the restaurant window. Less than 24 hours into a promise to share all new information with his Partner in Adventure, Mark nudged Compass with his foot.

“Compass.”

“What?” Her mouth was full of pancakes, a thin trail of syrup or butter leaking out one side of her mouth.

“Your dad’s here.”

He gestured with one elbow to the window, but Oliver was already gone.

Interim

2008-01-24T20:56:00.001-08:00

The trip home to Seattle was a complete nightmare. Twice the plane they were on hit lunch-launching turbulence, once just as the meals were being served, littering the plane and passengers with chicken cacciatore and vegetarian curry and limp plastic cutlery. Clearly neither the pilots nor the crew had any idea that they were in for a bumpy ride -- the seatbelt sign wasn't lit, hot meals were being handed around, full cups of coffee and tea were being poured. Then the plane dropped out of the sky, or at least out of the top of it to somewhere in the middle of it, and the air was full of food and flight attendants. There was a lot of shouting and scrabbling and then the plane righted itself again, and there was a long bit of silence while everyone decided what to say next.

"Ladies and gentlemen," came an amazingly clear voice over the intercom. "We're not entirely sure what happened just there; we maybe hit an air pocket. All's well now, though, so we'll get everyone cleaned up and get back up to altitude. Skies look clear from here forward. We apologize for the incident, and please feel free to send the airlines your dry cleaning bill. And do be careful when you take your overhead luggage down. Things have moved a bit, I'd bet."

There was some light, forgiving laughter as people dabbed at the stains on their clothes, exaggeratedly wiped fake (and genuine) sweat from their foreheads and silently congratulated themselves on having kept calm. Compass unwrapped Mark's fingers from around her arm, dug her own fingernails out of his leg.

"You OK?" he asked her.

"OK," she answered. "You?"

"Hoping that woman in the fur coat in first class ordered the curry."

"And a glass of red wine."

"Hell, the whole bottle!"

They laughed, relaxed, accepted the proffered free glass of champagne from a flight attendant who looked like she’d been colored in by a feral two-year-old with Tourettes.

The second time the plane dropped was just as unexpected as the first. Awakened from a doze, Compass stared at a pillow that was lodged against the ceiling of the plane, idly wondering how it’d gotten there and why her stomach had crawled up into her mouth. By the time she woke up enough to understand what was happening, it was over. The voice on the intercom made no attempt to be jovial this time.

“Folks, we really don’t know what’s happening here. There’s nothing on our instruments to explain the drops, no equipment failure, no meteorological conditions that make sense of it, so to be on the safe side, we’re going to put down at the nearest airport and see if we can’t find you a smoother ride home.”

In record time, they were on the ground in Spokane. The line of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles panicked a few people, but the plane set down safely, though a tire blew after they’d been sitting on the runway a few minutes waiting for a set of stairs to arrive. As they departed the plane, one of the passengers turned to a flight attendant: “Is this plane cursed or something?”

“Well, if it wasn’t, it sure is now,” the attendant muttered. "I took care of that."

The people around her laughed, a little, but the passenger’s question hit Compass right in the gut.“Did we do that?” she asked Mark, once they were far enough away to not be overheard.

“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Ordinarily I’d say let’s not be superstitious, but why don’t we take a bus the rest of the way?”

After the third tire blew, this time high on a mountain pass, they shifted the emerald from his pack to hers, and all was quiet the rest of the way.

Chapter Thirty-Five: Row Four, Column Eight

2007-12-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

St. Louis Day was approaching, and for all her protestations about being independent and I-can-do-this-alone and blah blah blah, Compass really wished Mark was going with her. In fact, she’d rather assumed he’d insist on it. Instead, he’d waved off her offer to pay for his plane ticket with vague excuses about work, and that was pretty much the end of that conversation.

Mark was looking really awful these days: tired, bloodshot eyes, pale face. Even his bald head seemed more matte than glossy. They spent most evenings together at her place, Mark nodding off during the evening news, if he even made it that far. He was gone in the mornings before Compass woke up. As they sat on the couch one evening watching CSI: Miami, Mark’s chin dropped to his chest and he began to snore softly. He had a beer clutched in one hand, and Compass leaned across him to remove it before it spilled.

We’re an old married couple, she thought, and we’ve been dating for like, two weeks. Next we’ll be peeing with the door open and bickering about the mortgage. How did we get here so fast?

Just then, Mark awoke with a snort. He jerked and flailed a little bit, apparently concerned that the beer he was no longer holding was spilling. It was so funny watching him trying to grab something that was no longer there that Compass started to laugh. Mark turned a pair of red, bleary eyes on her.

“You think that’s funny?”

“I do. I think that’s funny. You trying to save your non-existent beer from spilling is on my list of funny things.”

“Is that right.” Mark reached over and took Compass’s diet root beer from her hand and set it on the coffee table. Then he attacked.

“What about this? Is this funny?” He knew how ticklish she was, and he was showing no mercy.

“Stop! Stop! Quit it!”

“Who’s all flailing around now, huh?”

“Mark! No! I’m gonna pee!” Compass giggled and thrashed around and then their childish play turned to something much more adult that even shocked the cats, and Compass forgot all about being half of an old, married couple.

The next morning was Fly to St. Louis Day. She had arranged to stay only two nights, figuring that was plenty of time to get the emerald if it was there to be got. The hotel was well away from the museum, which seemed safer, though Compass wasn’t entirely sure how or from what. She had not alerted the museum staff that she was coming, hoping that might minimize or eliminate the possibility of press attention. Mark offered to take her to the airport, but Compass thought he could perhaps use that time to catch up on some sleep, preferably not while operating heavy machinery that had her in it. She took the bus.

The flight to St. Louis was pretty uneventful. She dozed, ate some peanuts, drank a $4 plastic cup of bad red wine, read a little Stephen King and arrived with the usual airplane-induced headache. She was nervous about retrieving the emerald; it just seemed like there were too many ways for everything to go terribly wrong. One thought had hunkered down at the back of her brain, humming an annoying tune: what if the emerald was there?

She didn’t really believe that it would be. Undoubtedly the emerald had been discovered long ago and was halfway around the world, cutting a swathe of destruction through other people’s lives. If that was true, then the adventure was pretty much over. She would let her father know on his website, and assuming he believed her, he’d go away again, and the best chance she’d have of meeting him would be lost. Her mother would undoubtedly blame her for coming home empty-handed, never mind that she was probably not even 10 years old when the cursed stone burned blisters into some thieving stranger’s clenched fist.

But what if it was there? Then what happened? The stone belonged to the museum in England, Compass firmly believed that. But if Oliver was as dangerous as it seemed he was, what Compass firmly believed wouldn’t matter at all.

Compass leaned her head back against the seat of the taxi and stared out the window. St. Louis was draped in fog, and there was a fine mist on the windshield that the wipers didn’t seem to touch at all. Cold, wet, gray: it felt like home. The hotel was small and a bit past its prime, but it was pleasant and warm inside. Her room was clean and had an unexpected balcony from which – if she stood on a chair – she had a rather nice view of the Arch.

She debated calling Mark. It was only 8:30 pm in Seattle, but he had promised her he’d get some sleep, so she decided against calling. She turned on the TV in time to catch the local news and was struck, as always, by how weird it was to see the local weather map instead of the Seattle one she was used to. It was going to be cold and rainy the next couple of days, then sunny the day after she left. Of course. Compass got out her bathroom supplies and her pajamas, and “only 8:30” be damned, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed.

The next morning wasn’t as horrible as she’d feared. It was gray but there was no actual rain, and the morning weather guy was more optimistic about the chance of sun than the late-night weather guy had been. She called the museum and got the opening hours from the automated system. The museum opened at 10 and it was nearly that now. She ate a quick croissant from the “complimentary” breakfast bar, got bus instructions from the front desk and headed out, the key on the keychain in her pocket.

Compass was the first one in. On this dreary Tuesday morning, she had the museum pretty much to herself. The museum was small and unassuming, the displays a bit crowded in the Frank Lloyd Wright home that the museum occupied.

She spotted the lockers right away; they were hanging in the entry hallway. Some of the lockers were open, and inside the open ones were little plaques describing the contents that had been found inside. Compass had feared facing hundreds of doors and having to try them all, but there were only 50 in this particular bank of lockers, and at least 10 of them had already been opened and emptied. She looked around for someone official to give her permission to start opening. She came around a corner and nearly bumped noses with Mark.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” Clearly what he wasn’t doing was sleeping. He looked, if anything, worse than ever. Compass felt a jolt of fear. What if this wasn’t insomnia or too much late-night gaming? What if he was sick? She could feel her smile empty out, but she kept wearing it anyway.

“I decided I couldn’t let you do this without me. I took an early flight in this morning. So have you tried the key yet?”

“This morning? It’s only 10.30; what time did you leave Seattle?”

“I don’t know – like, 2:30 or something? Does it matter? Let’s get the emerald and get out of here.”

Compass took Mark’s hand and dragged him to a nearby bench, hoping it wasn’t part of the display. She sat down and pulled him down next to her. “Yes. It matters. It matters that you clearly haven’t slept for at least a month, and it matters that when I ask you about it you sidestep the question, and it matters that you’re hiding something from me, and I’m already about to lose one person in my life, and I’d rather not get a double-or-nothing on the fatal-disease sweepstakes, OK? It. Matters. And I’m not opening that locker until I know what’s going on.”

“You need to open the locker, Compass. Sort of nowish. I’ll explain every-”

“No. You won’t. You say you will, but when I ask you later, you’ll dance away from the question like you do every time. If I wanted to waltz, I’d date Arthur Murray. What’s going on?”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“We have time.”

“Your father’s in St. Louis. He was on the same plane as you.”

Compass froze. This was not the news she’d been expecting. “What.”

“I figured out who your dad is – long story, tell you later – and I’ve been following him for awhile. I don’t know if he knows who you are, but either he’s figured out about the locker somehow, or he has a way of knowing what you’re up to.”

“Is he here? At the museum?”

“I don’t know. I kind of lost track of him. He got on the same plane you did, but there weren’t any free seats. I had to wait for the next flight which was at 2:38 this morning. I spent hours pacing around SeaTac wondering what was happening with you. You never turned your phone back on after you got off the plane.”

Compass fished her cellphone out of her backpack. Sure enough, it was still turned off. “Is this why you’re so tired? Because you work all day and babysit Oliver all night?”

“Your father is clearly nocturnal. I followed him over to your Mom’s place a few nights ago. What a nutcase. From what I could see from outside, all he did was crank up the music and flash the lights on and off, then come tearing out like his ass was on fire.”

Compass hadn’t told Mark about her trip to Mina’s for the money. She decided to save the story for a better time.

“So he could be on his way here? Now?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He could be here now?”

“Hence my urgency on getting the stone and getting gone.”

“Right.”

They stood up and made their way back to the bank of lockers. An older man was standing there, looking intently at each locker, studying particularly those with the open doors. Compass felt her body turn to ice, to stone, to something rigid and unbending.

“That’s not Oliver,” Mark whispered in her ear, and everything came unbent at once. Fortunately she was able to catch herself on the railing that stood in front of the display. Just then, a museum official walked into the room, identifiable by her neat blue suit and the “OFFICIAL” badge around her neck.

“Excuse me?” Compass approached quickly, hoping she could make herself heard above the pounding of her heart.

“Yes?” The official had a smooth, blue voice to go with her smooth, blue suit.

“I’m Compass Jones. I called recently about clearing out the contents of one of your lockers? I have a key.” She showed the woman her key.

“Ah, yes, Miss Jones. You actually spoke to our curator. He’s given me permission to give you access to the locker when you arrive. Could I see some identification?”

Compass wasn’t sure why that was necessary, since she’d produced the key, but she handed over her driver’s license anyway.

“Would it be possible for me to open the locker in private?” The older man who’d been there a moment ago had wandered away, but Compass didn’t want any nasty surprises.

“I can post a security guard outside the room, if you like.”

“If you would, please.”

The official left, pulling a thin curtain over the door as she went. Compass stepped over the railing, half expecting someone to shout at her to get back, and started with the first unopened locker on the top left. She had to stand on tiptoe to do it, but she managed. The key didn’t fit. While Mark sat on the floor and fidgeted, Compass went down the rows and columns, hoping each time that her key would fit, relieved when it didn’t. The 38th locker, row four, column eight, was the one. The key slid in smoothly, turned easily, and the door was open before Compass even quite realized what was happening.

“Mark.” The door was open only a crack, not wide enough to see inside, and Compass didn’t want to do this bit alone.

“Mmmm?” Mark had been dozing lightly, his back against the wall.

“I found it. It’s open.”

Mark jumped up from his seat on the floor and stumbled over to where she was. He knelt down so his face was even with the locker.

“Open it. Go ahead.”

“I don’t know what to hope for.”

“Then don’t. We don’t have time to make up our minds. Just open it, clear out the contents, and let’s get out of here.”

“I’m scared,” she told him.

“So am I.”

He laid his hand on top of hers in a gesture reminiscent of a bride and groom making the first cut in their wedding cake. Together, they pulled the door open and peered inside.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Treasures in the Attic

2007-11-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

When Compass finally got up the energy to go get her mail, Todd came bolting out of his apartment to meet her in the hall. He tried to make it look coincidental, but there was the faintest imprint of a peephole around one eye.

“I see Mark stayed rather late,” he crowed. “I saw him in the hallway at a suspicious hour.”

“Yes, apparently he’s dating Mrs. Schuster in 3B. I asked him if a 40-year age gap was awkward, but he said she’s coping with it really well.”

“Very funny. So? Is it love?”

“I’m not sure. He says Mrs. Schuster is ‘emotionally unavailable’ which is odd, since I’ve seen her crying over advertising inserts in the Sunday paper.”

“You’re not going to tell me.” Todd pouted, as best a man well over six feet and built like a linebacker can pout.

“Things are a bit new, that’s all. There’s not much to tell.” Compass resumed her walk to the bank of mailboxes, Todd hot on her heels.

“I don’t want relationship details, Compass. I’ve got soap operas to take care of my drama needs. I want prurience, I want smut. I need me some of that good, vicarious lovin’!”

“Forget it.” They had reached the mailboxes. Compass inserted her key and fought with the tinny, cheap, impenetrable little mailbox door, as always.

“Fine. It can’t have been that great, since he didn’t even stay the night.” Todd leaned his back against the wall of mailboxes.

“Huh? Yes, he did.” The mailbox still refused to open, despite continued wiggling and tugging.

“Oh, so I didn’t see him sneaking out, shoes untied and unzipped fly flapping at 3.30 this morning? OK, I made up the bit about the open fly, but the rest is true.”

“You were dreaming. He got up to go to work.” The mailbox door yielded suddenly, and Compass slammed the back of her hand into the next mailbox in the row. “Ow, dammit!”

“Maybe it was some sort of bug emergency.” Todd shrugged. “I was up at 3.30 to release a late-night Pepsi demon, and I heard something thumping around in the hallway. I went to the door to look, and lo and behold, there’s your underdeveloped Mr. Clean, shoes clutched in one hand and desperately tugging a sock on with the other. I figured you’d done some head-swiveling marry-me-now girl thing and he was making good his escape.”

“Did you hear him come back?” Compass looked through her mail without actually registering a single address.

“Not over the sounds of my own gleeful cackling, no.”

“So glad you’re on my side, Todd.”

“I have no life at all. I take my victories where I find them. So he left and you didn’t know it?”

“Not until I woke up this morning, no. I figured he’d just gotten up and gone to work. He brought me groceries.”

“He did? What groceries, for example?”

“Forget it.” Compass wiggled her key loose from her mailbox door and started back up the stairs to her apartment. “If I can’t kill the messenger, I’ll let him starve to death.”

“Well, you just keep your horny girl self to yourself, child,” Todd called up the stairs behind her. “That boy looked like he needed some sleep.”

Compass opened the door to her apartment, Todd’s words echoing in her ears. Mark did look like he needed sleep. He’d looked that way for awhile. What was going on that he wasn’t sleeping?

She tossed the mail on the couch and went to the kitchen to make tea. She stood in front of the open cabinet, one hand still on the cabinet doorknob, and stared into the dry-good depths, unseeing. The bells in her head weren’t exactly alarm bells, more the kind that jingled an alert when someone opened the door to a shop. The word TRUST rose up in front of her eyes and she tried to blink it away until she realized that she was looking at a packet of TRUEST TEA, a Chinese blend devised by a company who didn’t put much stock in correct Sino/American translations for the American market. “Best tea you buy for bladder!”

Did she trust Mark? It was a simple question. She’d trusted him enough to share a bed with him, sleep beside him, completely vulnerable. But the fact that’d he’d sneaked out in the middle of the night, left a note that – if not a lie – was intentionally misleading: these things stuck in her head like burrs.

The tea kettle was screaming and might have been for awhile when Compass was finally able to shake her head and dislodge her unwelcome thoughts. Clearly, she realized, she didn’t entirely trust Mark or she would have been able to withhold suspicion until she could ask him for an explanation.

Fine, she thought. Then I’ll go to Henry and Sophie’s and get Mom’s money by myself. And then I’ll find out what Mark’s up to. No. No, then I’ll ask Mark why he left in the middle of the night, why he’s been so sleep-deprived, and I’ll accept whatever explanation he gives … if it’s plausible.

With this decided, Compass was finally able to complete the making of the tea.

Later that night, having fobbed off Mark’s offers of dinner with excuses about stomach upset, Compass dressed all in black and prepared, for a second time, to sneak around her mother’s house. Happily, this time, Mina wouldn’t be there.

Compass had decided to regard this as a stealth mission. It was possible that her father was watching the house, and though Compass hadn’t heard from him for awhile on Dragonfly Dad, there was no reason to think he’d given up and gone back to England.

More than ever, Compass wished she could just talk to her father without hiding behind anonymous blogs and pen names and all this subterfuge and mistrust. So what if her father and Jenny had had a love affair? So what if Jenny had been sent into their home to spy on Mina and her daughter? Did it mean Jenny loved her any less? Or perhaps not at all? Compass couldn’t believe that. For years Jenny had been her constant companion, her comfort, her most trusted ally in the war that had been waged on her childhood. Jenny had loved her, ulterior motives aside. Compass refused to believe anything else.

On the way to Mina’s house, Compass replayed scenes from her childhood inside her head, looking them over carefully for cracks. Granted, her memories of Jenny had the glowing soft-focus of childhood affection around them, but Compass had been a pretty astute kid. Years of living with the volcanic Mina had required highly honed survival skills. Compass had trusted Jenny then; she trusted her now.

Mina’s house was completely dark. Compass parked a couple of blocks away and walked up the back alley rather than take the street-lit sidewalk. She let herself in the back door. The house was freezing and eerily quiet. She was halfway up the stairs, shivering and feeling her way in the dark, when she heard the heater in the basement start its quiet humming.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the air. She had been just a little creeped out at the thought of being alone in the attic of a house she knew for certain was haunted, but it almost made her feel bad not to trust them, the way she’d felt about not trusting her grandparents. Henry and Sophie clearly wanted to take care of her, and so Compass decided to be brave on just this one thing in her life, and she headed on up to the attic.

The attic itself was quite brightly lit, thanks to a clear sky and fat, shining moon. But the fake wall, if it was really there, would likely be in a crevice or recessed wall that was shrouded in shadows. Compass took a handkerchief from her pocket and covered the business end of her flashlight with it before she switched it on. Something snapped under her foot – a small piece of wood, maybe one of Henry’s pencils – and Compass froze for a second. It was then she realized that the house was singing again. She stood very still for a moment, the lit end of her flashlight pressed against her chest, and listened.

I’m safe here, Compass thought, and tears came unexpectedly to her eyes. They’re telling me I’m safe. She stood a minute more and then got to work.

The attic was mostly unfinished, so in places the walls were exposed four by fours, and in other places there was a thin covering of drywall, inexpertly nailed to the beams. Where there was no covering, Compass assumed there was no money either. Where there was a covering, she thumped the drywall, flicking it with a finger like she was judging the ripeness of a melon. Thumping revealed nothing, of course, so she went back downstairs, dragged Mina’s thoroughly inadequate toolbox out from under the kitchen sink and carried a hammer and a screwdriver back upstairs with her.

Back in the attic, she set to the drywall with abandon, using the screwdriver to gouge out holes here and there, setting the claw of the hammer inside a small hole to rip out a larger one. At one point she paused to pull a sweaty lock of hair away from her eyes, and she looked around at her handiwork. Even in the limited beam cast by the cloaked flashlight, the room looked like it had been set upon by a crazed woodpecker. Still, she’d reached her hand into a couple dozen holes and found nothing at all. She was starting to wonder if Mina had set her up when suddenly she realized the music had stopped.

It had been playing, quietly, just a moment ago, she was sure of it. She knew it was because she’d recognized the piece: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, one of the few pieces of classical music she knew and consequently one of her favorites. But now the house was absolutely silent. Silent, except for the distinct creak of one of the wooden floors below.

Someone was in the house.

Henry and Sophie had turned off the music to warn her. Almost in the same instant that she realized this, she heard a creak from the staircase that led to the attic. She froze in complete panic. There was another creak, then another, as whoever it was made their way up to the attic door which, thankfully, Compass (or Henry or Sophie) had closed. Another creak, closer this time, unfroze her. Compass grabbed up her flashlight and skidded as quietly as she could under Henry’s desk, the only cover in the room. She pulled in Henry’s chair behind her and fumbled with the flashlight in the manner of Hollywood heroines in distress, finally snapping it off an instant before the attic door creaked open.

If whoever it was had been able to get the light to turn on, they would have seen the haze of drywall dust in the air. But the light – which had worked just fine as recently as a couple of nights ago – wouldn’t switch on. There were some frustrated flicking noises from near the doorway, but the light refused to work, and Compass sent up another silent thank you to Henry and Sophie.

A pair of heavy boots, glowing faintly in the moonlight, stomped past Henry’s desk as whoever it was took a long look around. The boots were simply too big to be Mark’s. Compass knew that was a pretty feeble fantasy anyway; the house would have kept singing if Mark had showed up.

Compass tried to keep her breathing soundless, but her body needed to gasp and retch and heave in fear. Her heart was thumping so hard, she could see the flashlight tremble with the beats as she clutched it to her chest. Spots were swimming in front of her vision, she was so sure that in another moment a head would lean down and spot her, crouched under the desk, trapped and defenseless. Maybe it was Oliver, maybe it wasn’t, but whoever it was, they’d had to break in to be here because Compass had locked the door behind her.

When the chair was yanked out, Compass made a little squeal which she prayed was covered by the general squeakiness of the chair. Not that it mattered. Her time was up. The face was coming, and the malevolent, murderous body behind it. Compass closed her eyes and wondered how much damage she could do if she hit that face with her flashlight.

But the face didn’t come.

Just then, just as whoever it was prepared to do whatever it was it was going to do with the chair, with her, with the whole end of her tiny, precious world as she knew it, the music turned back on with a thunderous crash. It was loud enough to turn her ears inside out, and Compass nearly cried out at the suddenness and pain of it. The lights in the attic blazed on, a thousand times brighter than the one unshaded bulb that hung from the center beam, and as Compass turned her face away, the light just as quickly went off again.

“What the-” she heard, impossible to detect an accent with the scream of the music, then the lights blared on again, then off, then the music shut off, then on, then the attic door slammed shut, then flew open, and then the man in the heavy boots had had enough and he fled, thundering down the steps so fast he was half stumbling, half flying, and then he was out the door, heavy footfalls moving fast down the sidewalk, past the house and away.

Compass was still so scared. Henry and Sophie had saved her, again, but she was terrified, now of them as much as him, whoever he was, and she was all right, she was all right, the house was sane again, the attic light as dim as ever, the music soft, and still Compass was sobbing, sobbing there under Henry’s desk, her heart broken, her soul turned inside out and emptied like a pocket, and she bawled and raged and there was no one to hold her, no one with arms, anyway, and she knew Henry and Sophie’s hearts were breaking for her, she could feel them trying to carry away some of her sorrow like bags of sand, but they couldn’t, for all their wanting to, and she just had to sob and tell them she’d be OK when she could talk around her tears.

When finally, an eternity later, cramps in her legs forced her out from under Henry’s desk, Compass felt hollow. If someone turned her upside down, she’d make that noise like a rain stick makes, the sound of the storms coming from inside her. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up with her girls and maybe do a little more weeping, since she’d gotten so good at it lately, and drink hot chocolate and try to forget that the most solid, loving people in her world were ghosts.

“Thank you. Henry, Sophie, thank you.” She looked at the floor, didn’t look up in case they were there, visible somehow, and she wouldn’t be able to hide her terror from these shadow-people who, inexplicably, loved her and protected her. “You saved my life. Thank you. Again.”

Now that the light was on, she could clearly see where the drywall had been cut and removed and new piece put in its place. It would look like just a shoddy repair job to anyone who didn’t know that this house belonged to a woman with plenty to hide. She located her hammer, slightly east of a giant footstep that didn’t belong to her or to Mark, and pried the drywall loose.

The money was stacked inside: fat packets of $10s and $20s, rubber-banded, more packets underneath, $100s and $50s. The dust on them was thick – Mina hadn’t had to touch her reserves since they’d been placed here. There was money enough to bring her back to life, money enough to shield her until she died, whichever path Mina’s life would take from here on. Compass found a bag to stuff it in, this Museum money she didn’t even want to touch. She turned off the attic light as she left.

As she followed her father’s dusty footprints down the staircase from the attic, Compass realized that the house was warm. Her father – if that’s who it was – must have known she was there. She shivered again, stopped to clutch a suddenly uncertain stomach as she realized how close she’d come. She barely had leg strength enough to get down the stairs, but she made it. As she stood at the back door, ready to leave, she heard the heater shut itself off, the music fade to silence. She turned and blew a kiss to the house that only seemed empty.

She drove straight from Mina’s to her grandparents’ house, not stopping even to answer her cell phone which rang and rang and rang. She drove all the way around and over the bridge to the island, and didn’t stop moving until she’d carried the money into the house and dumped it in Mina’s lap.

Before Mina could say a word, Compass turned and walked out again, pausing only to bear hug her grandmother and grandfather, giving them hugs not only for themselves but Henry’s and Sophie’s portions as well. Then she drove the two hours back to Seattle, her car coasting in on fumes and good fortune, back to her cats and her hot chocolate and her sweet sweet bed that, thanks to a quick phone call somewhere around Tacoma, had Mark – fast asleep – in it.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Lucky Charm

2007-11-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

They spent the remainder of the night at Compass’s place. Mark wasn’t accustomed to sleeping with cats, and more than once he woke up in a blind, choking panic when one or the other of the fat girls draped herself across his face. But instead of cursing the cats, he took each instance as an opportunity to curl up behind Compass and snuggle and drift back to sleep with his nose in her hair.

When Compass woke in the morning, Mark had already left for work. Watery, early April sunshine struggled to penetrate the clouds. Compass had now been unemployed for long enough that it made her feel a little panicky every morning. She had savings to last a little while, but then there was the question of what to do next?

Her officemate at school had been horrified at Compass’s decision to take a hiatus from teaching. He loved to teach – went to conferences, did research, wrote papers on different pedagogical theory and strategies, even had a wooden-apple pencil-holder on his desk. He left school every day surrounded by adoring students, the St. Francis of college kids. Compass found it impossible to explain to him that while teaching was fine, it wasn’t her passion.

“Teaching is what you do.” she told him. “For me, it’s just what I’m doing.”

He failed to understand the difference.

And so she’d turned down all the hours offered her for spring quarter. She had so far been reveling in not having to prepare lessons or spend entire weekends wading through student papers for no pay. But soon she’d have to start thinking of how to make a living.

For now, she shrugged off the thought as best she could, put on the oversized fleece shirt that served as a robe, and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee. When she saw the full pot, warm and ready, a choir of angels started singing the hallelujah chorus in her head. She opened her refrigerator, hoping she could ring one more drop out of the empty milk container she had put back in there yesterday. When she went to pick up the milk, she nearly dropped it. It was heavy. Full.

And there were other things in there. Food-shaped things. Fresh fruit, a line of little yogurts like soldiers to the rescue, a carton of butter, a fat little pot of jam, even eggs! Like one in a dream, Compass set the milk on the counter and reached a tentative hand toward the first yogurt in line. Dark cherry. She touched it, it stayed. She picked it up, it didn’t melt away or bite. It was even cold.

On the table was a note.

Welcome to the world of real food. Popcorn is not real food. That’s why people eat it at the movies. Movies aren’t real either. Making popcorn isn’t cooking just because it involves a pan and heat. Do NOT pop your breakfast, OK? I had to go to work; I’ll call you later in the day.

Hugs
M

Compass stared at the note. More exactly, she stared at the semi-colon. While not entirely a grammar snob, she did have a certain fondness for the semi-colon, mostly because so few people knew how to wield it correctly. Mark did. Compass came as near to swooning as a recently reformed cynic could.

Coffee in one hand and yogurt in the other, Compass went to her computer to write up her notes. This had become an almost daily activity, keeping track of events, and she found she looked forward to it. By the time she’d finished, the coffee pot had turned itself off and gone cold, but she microwaved herself a second cup and wandered back to the bedroom to dress.

At the back of her closet, there was a box. It was a box of keepsakes, mostly photographs, some scribbled short stories, school awards, the debris of sentiment that drifts over an average life. Compass fought her way to the back of the closet, tripping over shoes and shoving aside clothes that should have gone to the Salvation Army a decade ago. The box teetered atop a pile of old video cassettes, but she managed to get it down without disrupting the delicate balance of all the other crap. Using the box as a sort of battering ram, she got clear of the closet.

She set the box on the bed, opened it as carefully as a junior member of the bomb squad. It wasn’t a huge box, her life being a little short on memorable occasions, and right on top lay Jenny’s manuscript. Compass picked it up and set it aside. The next thing she was looking for was a little harder to find, as it had slipped and slinky-ed its way to the bottom of the box. She drew it out carefully, not wanting to snag it on anything.

It was Jenny’s charm bracelet. Compass laid it on the bed, formed the bracelet into a circle and fanned out all the charms so she could see them. They were beautiful, really: the dragonflies were different sizes, some of gold, some silver, some pewter. Some had stones inset for eyes. The bracelet was crowded with them, and Compass counted 16 dragonflies. Sixteen dragonflies, and one tiny key.

She was right. She’d remembered it right.

When she went to England to visit Jenny’s grave, Jenny’s sister Margaret had given her the manuscript and the bracelet.

“Jenny adored you, my girl,” said Margaret. “She would have liked to give your mother a good thumping, but you she loved. She wanted you to have these.”

At first, Compass demurred, saying that Margaret should keep the bracelet for her own daughter, but Margaret persisted. Now that Compass thought about it, she had been very insistent.

“Jenny had very few precious things, but you were one of them. This charm bracelet’s another. I’d have mailed it to you when she passed, but I wanted to give it to you in person. I’m glad you’ve come and can get it safely now.” And she put the bracelet Compass’s hand, rolled the young woman’s fingers around it and squeezed. Then she nodded, rather vigorously. “Precious. You understand?”

Now she did. How much Margaret knew was unclear, but obviously she knew that the bracelet was valuable beyond the worth of the charms, beyond even the sentiment attached to it. It took a pair of wire cutters to do it, but Compass managed to cut loose the key from the bracelet. She couldn’t wear the bracelet – she’d be terrified of losing it or losing one of the charms – so she thumb tacked each end to her bulletin board so it could smile at her as she sat at her desk.

She prayed to Google, God of Hopeless-Seeming Research, and typed in “keys” in the search box. It took a few tries, but finally she found keysofallkinds.com. The site, dedicated to saving keys from the bottoms of junk drawers worldwide, had pictures of all different kinds of keys and the locks they belonged to. There were millions. Compass nearly wept at the impossibility of the task, but then she did something she nearly never did: she read the instructions.

“Does your key have an identifying number?” She turned the tiny key over in her fingers. Yes! She typed in the number. That narrowed it down in a hurry to a bank of lockers that had been in a St. Louis train station, installed back in the early 50s. A little more hunting produced a phone number for the train station. The emerald – if that’s what was in there – had been stashed in that locker for at least 30 years. Compass had remembered seeing the key dangling from the bracelet even when she was a child. What were the chances the locker was still locked, still even there?

With trembling fingers, she dialed the number.

The old train station had burned down, she was told, by a man who must have had a striped cap and a walrus moustache. Why did all men of a certain age in St. Louis sound like Mark Twain? It wasn’t the big, main station, the man told her; it was a much smaller one just outside the city – older. Made of wood. Burned down 33, nope, 34 years now.

“The lockers? What happened to the lockers?”

“Funny you should ask. An old eccentric … name of Byrne or Brine, something like that, he bought up those ugly old lockers and hung ‘em on his wall as art.”

“Does he still have them?”

There was a pause. “Now I do find old train lockers pretty fascinating, but I have to admit losing track of that particular collection.” It took Compass a full minute to realize he was being ironic. She thanked him and hung up.

Compass went back to Google, finding Gabriel Brynn’s locker collection in a surprisingly short time. No sooner had the lockers been installed on one wall of his 28,000 square foot house then the house had burned down. Yet the lockers survived. Twice in raging fires and only slightly singed, the lockers were officially a “curiosity,” and they’d been moved, unopened, to a small, private museum of St. Louis history. The museum was made of brick.

Compass called and would have sworn she was talking to the same guy. Yes, they had the lockers. Yes, they were still unopened. Yes, if she had a key, she was the rightful owner of the contents. Yes, she’d have to come there and open the locker herself. Could she let them know when she was coming? It would be nice to have the media there to document the occasion of Opening the Locker. Compass, picturing Geraldo shoving his moustache and microphone in her face as she tried to stuff the emerald down her shirt, sidelined that request to deal with later. She hung up the phone and started searching for airplane tickets.

When the phone rang, Compass assumed it would be Mark on the other end of the line. She gave her “hello” as much warmth as she could stuff into a single word, and just a hint of sexy. It was Ginny.

“Oh! Hi, Gran,” said Compass, guilt at not having checked up on her mother instantly dimming her day.

“Dear Lord, what have I raised?” said Ginny, her usual round and sunny voice a little sharp today. “She’s been griping and moaning all morning. I told Arthur, if she’d been plugged into anything, I’d’ve unplugged her by now.”

“Oh, Ginny, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t you worry, dear, it’s not all that bad. The doors in this house are solid enough to muffle even that screeching tea kettle of a voice. I’ll tell you why I called: I’ve got some good news to pass along. Seems your mom has an emergency stash of ‘valuables,’ and she considers being stuck with her boring old parents enough of an emergency to tap into the reserves.”

“Am I going to have to figure out how to fence stolen gems?” Compass’s heart made a couple of protest thumps in her chest.

“ ‘Fence?’ Now who watches too much CSI? No, dear, the gems have already been converted into cash, according to my dear, thieving daughter of whom I am so proud. The money’s stashed in the attic, in the wall. Perhaps you can take that lovely young man with you. I know Henry and Sophie look out for you, but there’s only so much the incorporeal can do.”

“I’m sure Mark will go with me. Hey, Gran, did Mom and I ever live in St. Louis?”

“St. Louis … not that I know of, but there were gaps of months and years when we didn’t hear from your mother, so it’s possible. Why?”

“I think the emerald’s there. It’s a long story which I’ll tell you later, but as far as you know, we never lived there.”

“As far as I know, but then, that’s not very far.”

A crash in the background at Ginny’s ended the phone call in a hurry. Compass had barely hung up the phone when it rang again. This time it was Mark, and Compass readjusted her voice lower in her throat, hoping for husky and sexy.

“Are you coming down with something?”

Argh. “No, I’m fine. Hey, do you want to go to St. Louis?”

Chapter Thirty-Two: Starlight

2007-10-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

When Compass finally awoke, it was already dark. It was very disconcerting, waking up in the dark and unsure if this was morning dark or evening dark. She looked at her clock: 6.17. Time for dinner or breakfast? Her head was sluggish and slow. She turned on the TV to find Katie Couric, which confused her still further. Was she still on daytime TV? Hadn’t she shifted to nights? Compass stared at the screen and tried to remember.

The cats were curled at opposite ends of her, one wrapped around her head like a hat, the other bundled under the blanket at her feet. Compass extended an experimental hand out from under the thick gray afghan. It was cold in her little home. She pulled the hand back in and reconsidered this whole getting-up idea. She was hungry, having not eaten since the scone, and she wasn’t even sure how long ago that had happened. The cats weren’t moving, and taking her cue from them, Compass closed her eyes and fell back to sleep.

The phone rang some time later, jolting Compass from a nice dream that had penguins in it. The cats were now on either side of her, pinning her under her blanket, so it took a bit of thrashing around before she could get loose to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Compass? Hey, it’s Mark. Did I wake you?”

Early days of relationship, Compass noted. We’re still announcing ourselves by name on the phone.

“That’s OK. I needed to get up anyway. What time is it?”

“It’s a little after 7.”

“Ah.” Compass thought for a moment. “What day is it?”

Mark laughed. “I had the same problem. I wasn’t sure if it was Sunday night or Monday morning, and when I turned the TV on, it was Katie Couric, and that didn’t help at all.”

Compass felt warmer, just hearing him laugh. “And the answer is . . . ?”

“It’s still Sunday night. I thought we could maybe get some dinner.”

“That sounds fantastic. Give me a bit to clean up? And wake up?”

“You got it. I’ll come by in, say, 45 minutes?”

“I can do that.”

“Bring a sweater. And a jacket. It’s chilly out there.”

Compass was showered and had clean teeth and relatively calm hair by the time Mark arrived 48 minutes later. Still in the throes of dress to impress mode, she had put on a skirt and blouse, but he sent her back into her closet for jeans, boots and a heavy sweatshirt.

“Where are you planning to have dinner, exactly? You know, they call it the Outback Steak House, but it’s not actually in the Outback.”

Mark just grinned from beneath his stocking cap. “You’ll see.”

They drove for about an hour, leaving the city lights far behind them.

“Lemme guess. My mom took a life insurance policy out on me today, and she’s hired you-”

Mark leaned down and cranked up Peter Gabriel on the radio, drowning Compass out. She gave up and the three of them sang “Salisbury Hill” as Mark turned off Highway 2 to follow a little dirt road that Compass could barely identify as a road.

They followed that for a little while, bumping and jostling through potholes and over rocks until finally they came out of the trees to a big, open prairie. In the darkness, Compass couldn’t make out the boundaries of the prairie; it could have stretched on forever, for all she knew. Or cared.

They drove across this open space for a while, finally ending up in front of a high cliff that reached up from the prairie to the sky. Mark turned off the engine, and they sat for a moment listening to the ticks and pings of the cooling car. Compass braced herself for the cold and got out of the car.

“Where are we?”

“Christmas Crag. It’s a popular spot for rock climbers. I’ve been here a few times, but I’ve always wanted to see the place after dark.”

“Why’s it called that?”

Mark took her arm and turned her toward the cliffs. He pointed up, and Compass could just make out a single, perfectly shaped fir tree silhouetted against the starry sky.

“It’s at the top of Unclimbable, so named because it really is. You can’t tell in the dark, but this part of the cliff is actually broken off, separate from the rest. And it’s slick as ivory and wet nearly all year ‘round, there aren't any bolts, and nowhere to place protection. No one I know has ever even attempted it. But every year at Christmastime, someone decorates it. Someone climbs up there with tinsel and ornaments and a big silver star and decks it out for Christmas. No one knows who does it. Cool, huh?”

“It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful here.” It really was. It had rained recently, and the air smelled of clean, fresh dirt and pine trees. It was so still that Compass could hear the ringing in her ears.

“I thought you’d like it.” And even in the dark, Compass could hear him grinning.

Using the light from his headlights, Mark pulled a tarp out of the back of his car and laid it on the ground. On top of this, he put a blanket, then another blanket, then a basket.

“The battery’s good. Should last us awhile,” he said.

“No, please turn the lights off, will you? There’s enough light to see by.” Much too bright, the lights felt artificial, intrusive. Mark shut the headlights off, and they sat together on the blanket, readjusting to the darkness.

There really was quite a lot of light, more and more as the clouds rolled away and the sky slowly filled with stars like someone pouring diamonds into a bowl. It was, if not a full moon, then near enough as to make no difference, and it rose fat and shiny as a new dime.

Mark had been to the Japanese shop down in the International District. He pulled out fried garlic tofu, deep in sweet plum sauce, and a container of rice and veggies still steaming when he unwrapped several layers of towels from around it. He even had chopsticks and hot coffee laced with Bailey’s Irish Cream in his thermos. For dessert he produced thin slivers of apple, sweet and crisp, to dip into honey.

They didn’t talk much, just enjoyed a silence thick enough to wrap around their ears. The food was delicious – eating in the dark made Compass more aware than usual of the smells and tastes and textures of her food. When they finished, Mark packed the empty containers back in the basket and handed Compass a little foil packet. She was about to laugh at his presumption when she realized she was holding a handi-wipe. Then she had to laugh at her own. She wiped her sticky fingers, gave the trash to Mark to put in his basket, and lay flat on the blankets to watch the sky.

Mark came back from the car with one final blanket. He pulled off his shoes and lay down next to her, pulling the blanket over them. They lay for a long, silent moment, watching blips of airplanes, counting stars, making wishes. Mark put his arm under Compass’s head as a pillow, and despite the chill air and lying on the stony ground, Compass thought she’d never been so comfortable.

“You really came prepared,” she said, a feeble attempt at a thank you she didn’t know how to say.

“I used to do this with my family when I was a kid. My parents and my brothers and I would drive out into the mountains, find a place, eat a bunch of good food my mom had packed, and fall asleep on the blanket as my parents talked.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It really was. My brothers and I never fought on those trips, which is pretty amazing, really. But they were special, you know? We didn’t want to break the spell.”

“I get that.”

“What fun stuff did you do when you were a kid?”

Compass thought hard to remember. “There wasn’t much. My mom was never . . . a fun person. But I went to camp every summer. Camp Tecumseh. We ate s’mores and wove lumpy wallets out of prairie grass and swam in the lake, stuff like that.”

“Did you like it?”

“I did,” Compass said, surprising herself a little. “I never thought I would. I protested every summer, but I always liked it. I think I just hated having to do the ‘getting to know you’ stuff every summer. There was always that risk that this summer I’d be that kid everyone picked on. I never was, but I always worried about it. Little girls are vicious, you know.”

“You go through the world worrying that people aren’t going to like you? Has it ever happened to you that someone didn’t? Ever?”

“Just my mom.” Compass meant it as a joke, but it came out all wrong. She told him the story of what had happened after he left the hospital. He was quiet for such a long time, she worried she’d put him to sleep.

“It strikes me,” he said at last, startling Compass a little, “that there’s more there than you know. Probably more than you’ll ever know. You’re an awesome person, Compass; I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like you unless they had some warped reason for it that had nothing to do with you.”

Compass snuggled up a bit against Mark’s side. He was so warm, she couldn’t imagine him ever feeling cold.

“I don’t remember her ever liking me,” said Compass. “I grew up with a nanny. Doesn’t that sound weird in this day and age? To have a nanny? We weren’t rich, but we had enough money for that. I don’t know, maybe we were rich. Anyway, the nanny – Jenny – was young and fun and sweet and she loved me. Mom was like a ghost for most of my childhood. She wafted through rooms, scaring people, and we reported mom-sightings to each other because they were so rare.”

“What happened to Jenny?”

“She went back to England. Don’t say it, I know; a British nanny, even. I was 12 when she left. I used to write to her a lot, and she’d send me baskets of Twiglets and Scottish shortbread cookies and Cadbury’s fudge bars. Then mom made her quit because she thought I was getting fat. After that she sent me soaps from Bronnley, fun things from Harrods, stuff like that.”

“Do you still hear from her?”

“She died eight years ago. I didn’t know about it until I got a check from Mitchell & Norris, Solicitors, for 148 pounds. I was in her will. That was my share of her estate.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been bad.”

“It was. I cried a lot. I told Mom, but she just shrugged it off, of course. I used the money to pay part of a ticket to England to visit her grave. I stayed with her brother’s family. They told me a lot about her that I never knew.” Compass sighed. “She went back to England because she had some great, mysterious love affair, and she was apparently pining for the guy. But the relationship was never healthy and ended badly. She never told me about it, and her family never met the guy. I was the closest thing she had to a family of her own, I guess.”

“That’s not so bad.”

“She was a writer. I mean, she was going to be. She wrote a book about life with me and my mom, but she couldn’t find a publisher.” Compass started snickering, remembering. “They said it wasn’t believeable enough – the mom was too much of a cartoon villainess. Can you believe that?” Compass went from a snicker to full-on hoots of laughter, tears rolling from her eyes to soak Mark’s sleeve. “The original Nanny Diaries.”

Mark started laughing too, and then there was a lot of rolling and thrashing about and holding of stomachs and then holding of each other’s stomachs and then some very different rolling and thrashing and another foil packet and they glowed so brightly together that another star lit up, way up in the night above them.

When it was over and all was still again, Mark wrapped his long, lean legs around Compass, anchoring her so she didn’t fall into the sky. Compass wanted to drift off into sleep, but it was too cold here, and uncertain rustlings in the grass nearby were eventually going to penetrate her post-coital calm.

“I have to go back to the house,” she said, her voice calm and steady against the blackness.

“I’ll go with you. We’ll dress in black and paint our faces with charcoal and sneak around with flashlights.” Mark’s voice was sleepy and amused.

“So, no different from usual trips to visit Mom, then. You know, I pretty much tore that place up looking for clues to her disappearance. I didn’t see any more boxed bugs. I don’t think there are any. She would have sold the jewels off by now.”

“The emerald has to be somewhere,” Mark reminded her. “Best guess is it’s in the house. Or maybe we’ll find a key to a safety deposit box.”

“Or a locker at the train station, like in the movies.”

“Why not?” Mark cupped his hands together and blew, making a hoot like an owl. From somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted back.

They lay for another moment until, very nearby, a group of coyotes starting singing. Compass shot out from under the blankets at the unexpected sound, and that set Mark off laughing again. In the time it took him to get under control, Compass had the blankets folded and the car packed. It took forever to get back to the main road, and once one of the coyotes trotted in front of the car, unafraid, his eyes glowing red in the headlights. Compass stared back, thrilled to the core.

“Can we come here again, when it’s warmer?”

“Anytime you want,” said Mark, and he rubbed his free hand along her thigh.

Compass hadn’t thought of Jenny in years, but now her head was crowded with her: Jenny laughing, Jenny trying to be serious and failing, Jenny making faces behind Mina’s back when she didn’t know Compass could see her.

All of a sudden, Compass couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see through the spots in her eyes.

“Oh my god,” she finally croaked out. “Oh my god.”

“What?” Mark took one look at her face and pulled the car over.

Compass had to force her body to speak. “Jenny had a bracelet. I remember playing with it when I was little. Jenny said never to tell Mom about it because it was our secret. It was a charm bracelet with little silver charms, lots of them. She got a new one every year on her birthday, in the mail, from England.”

“OK . . .”

“The charms, Mark. The charms were dragonflies.”

Chapter Thirty-One: The Vigil

2007-10-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Compass and Mark semi-dozed in the hallway for a few hours, taking turns to awaken with a jolt every time there was a loud noise or a gurney went banging past, which was often. It was all so unreal that Compass often wasn’t sure if she was awake or still asleep. At one hazy point during the night, she might have watched a family being told that someone was dead, she wasn’t sure. There was a lot of very real-seeming grief and tears, but she vaguely remembered a penguin which made her think maybe it was a dream. At one point, banged in the shin by an old man’s portable IV coat-rack thing, she woke to find Mark eating Cheetos, mechanically, one after the other in a kind of robotic rhythm that both freaked her out and put her back to sleep.

They had gotten to the hospital around 12.30 or 1 in the afternoon, Compass estimated, then stayed all that day and through the night. It was now Sunday morning. Compass had managed to convince Mark to go home, take a shower, get some shut eye. He was clearly desperate for sleep, but he didn’t want to leave her. Compass was touched but assured him she’d be OK on her own. He finally agreed and left, returning 45 minutes later with a giant vanilla latte and a cranberry-orange scone from Tully’s. On seeing the steaming coffee and little paper bag, Compass, finally and for the first time since the drama began, burst into tears.

She didn’t like Starbucks coffee. It tasted burnt. She’d never liked it. There were two Starbucks in the hospital, probably two or three more within a 10-block radius, but Tully’s was far less ubiquitous, and the nearest was a several-block walk away. She clutched the coffee in one hand and the scone in the other and wrapped her arms around Mark’s neck.

He didn’t try to tell her it’d be all right. He didn’t make soppy little ticking noises, meant to be soothing, he didn’t pat her head or her hand, he just held her tight and let her cry. When she let go, so did he, cupping her face and wiping her tears away with his thumb, a gesture that’s every bit as sweet and romantic in real life as it is on TV. Then, ever the Boy Scout, he took her coffee and handed her a wad of Tully’s napkins to blow her nose. When she was down to those last hiccupy little sobs, he led her back to her chair and sat her down.

“You OK?”

Compass nodded. She was, for now. He set her coffee on the table next to her, gave her a sweet kiss on the top of her head, and left. Compass wasn’t hungry, but she drank the coffee and ate the scone, feeling cared for. She hadn’t been allowed in to see her mother since Mina was admitted. Compass felt like she ought to kick up a fuss about that, but, though she felt like a huge coward, it was a relief. She didn’t want to see Mina unconscious in a hospital bed, looking wan and vulnerable and horribly sick. She also didn’t want to see Mina awake in a hospital bed, angry, vengeful and horribly sick.

She got up and threw away her empty coffee cup and brushed the crumbs from her clothing. Her neck was stiff, her back hurt and she would have knocked over a Walgreens for a toothbrush and some toothpaste. She was considering asking a nurse if they had such things when a doctor approached her.

“Miss Jones?”

“Yes.” Compass tried to read the doctor’s face, but the woman’s practiced, dead-pan expression gave nothing away.

“Your mother’s awake. You can see her now, if you like.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Reasonably well. The pain is under control, and she had a little bit to eat this morning.”

There were so many questions that Compass wanted to ask, but she was ashamed to admit that her mother had told her nothing, hadn’t already entrusted her with the information.

“Is she in a lot of pain? Normally, I mean?”

“She has medication to help control it, but I understand she’s been cutting the pills in half to stretch them out a little longer.”

Compass wanted to be sick. The scone rolled in her stomach like fresh lava.

“I had no idea,” she whispered. She sat back down in her chair.

“There’s a lot you should know, Miss Jones, about your mother’s condition and possible treatments. Why don’t we make an appointment to talk.” She reached into a pocket of her white coat and brought out a business card. Compass took it and stuffed it into her backpack.

“Where’s my mother now?”

“Room 1117. Why don’t you follow me.”

As Compass stood up, she noticed, lying in the shadows under a chair on the opposite side of the hallway, a stuffed penguin.

They wandered through a maze of corridors, and Compass would have sworn they passed the same nurses’ station at least four times, but finally they came to room 1117. The doctor held out a hand, and Compass shook it.

“Call me when you’re ready,” the doctor said, over her shoulder, and briskly walked away.

There was no window in the door. Compass had hoped for a window so she wouldn’t have to walk in blind. She took a deep breath, felt the scone settle a little, pushed open the door and walked in.

The room was full of streaming sunlight. People were laughing. Before her eyes adjusted, Compass wondered if she’d somehow walked out of the hospital and into a picnic. Gradually she was able to focus and saw nurse Linda sitting companionably on the edge of Mina’s bed. Linda was holding Mina’s hand, something Compass hadn’t dared to do since Mina declared her daughter was old enough to cross the street without help. “Without clutching at me,” as Mina had put it.

They hadn’t noticed her come in, so Compass stood for a moment in the shadowy alcove of the doorway, watching. Mina, propped up with giant pillows, looked thin and pale, but she was laughing and chatting, and even from across the long room, Compass could see her eyes sparkle. Linda said something, and the two women laughed, leaning in towards each other so their heads almost touched. Then Mina’s laugh turned to a strangled cough, and as she fought to get her breath, Linda expertly poured her a glass of water and held the straw to Mina’s lips.

It took a moment, a long moment when Compass didn’t even realize she was holding her own breath, but Mina got it under control and was able to take a few sips of water. Linda rubbed her back; big, circular motions designed to soothe and calm. She didn’t panic, she wasn’t afraid, she knew what to do. Compass had frozen in the doorway, unable to move, as her mother struggled to breathe.

I should go, Compass thought. Now, before they see me. Linda can take better care of her. Mina loves her. She stood a moment more, trying to decide if leaving were the kind thing to do or the cowardly.

Then Mina spotted her, and all the light went from her face.

“My daughter is here,” she said to Linda. “Hooray.”

Linda stood up, all business now. Compass felt like she did at a classmate’s sixth birthday party when she’d announced to all the kids that there was no Santa Claus. Mina, she suddenly remembered, had told her to tell.

“I’ll leave you, then,” said Linda, and she gave Mina a kiss on the cheek, pulled up the blankets and smoothed out the pillowcase. She made sure the water was within easy reach, even pointing the straw towards Mina. Then she smoothed out her white skirt, brushed past Compass without a glance, said, “Don’t tire her,” like a threat and left.

Compass walked to her mother’s bedside, perched in the spot where Linda’s butt rumple would still be if she hadn’t smoothed out the blankets.

“Don’t sit there; the sun’s in my eyes,” said Mina, sharply, and pointed to a chair on the other side, some distance away.

Compass wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what. The picture of Mina, chatting happily with the nurse, was fresh in her head and she was afraid that anything she said would be petulant and accusing. They sat for a moment, Compass looking at her mother, her mother glaring fiercely at the television that wasn’t turned on.

Compass got up to get a glass of water from the sink. She didn’t dare touch the pitcher of ice water that Linda had undoubtedly fetched specially for Mina, but she figured tap water would be fine. She reached for one of the cups next to the sink, but Mina wasn’t having it.

“Those are for the patients,” she snapped.

Compass counted to ten, then put the cup back down. She wondered which wire attached to her mother she could pull. Was there an assortment of possibilities here? The black wire for a quick death, the green for a slow one; red for a hot death, blue for a cold? She smiled at her mother, lips closed so no teeth would show, the same way one smiled at a territorial dog.

“How are you?”

“That was Linda,” said Mina. “The nurse. She was here all night. With me.”

So was I, thought Compass, though she didn’t say it. “I met her when we came in. She . . . she was very worried about you.”

“You brought me in?”

“Mark and I, yes.”

Mina looked confused. “Linda didn’t tell me.”

“How did you think you got here?” Compass sat down in the chair, resisted the urge to scoot it further away and scooted it a hair closer instead.

“I didn’t think about it,” said Mina. There would be no thank-yous from Mina, no chance for Compass to explain that she had been worried about her mother, had stopped to check on her and found her unconscious on the hallway floor. “Linda says you’re checking me out today.”

“I guess so,” said Compass. “The hospital says they can’t-”

“Yes, well, whatever.” Mina gave an airy wave of one thin hand. “Never mind that I can’t even get up and down the stairs, just take me home and dump me like dirty laundry for someone else to take care of.”

“I can’t do that. You can’t take care of yourself, not until you get some strength back.”

“Well, I’m not going to stay with you in your cat-infested hovel. I’d rather die.”

“You don’t have to.” Compass took a deep breath, launched into it like she was diving into a shark tank. “Arthur and Ginny are on their way here. There was a ferry breakdown or something, but they’ll be here soon.” Mina’s face went even paler with shock, but Compass ploughed on. “They’re taking you back with them. They’ll take care of you until you’re strong enough to take care of yourself.”

It was a fait accompli. All details handled and settled on, and Mina was too weak to wiggle out of it. Compass leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms to indicate how much this was the plan and how unalterable it was. It was the only plan that made sense, and Mina might fight it, but it was how it had to be. Mina's face turned to stone.

“Get out.”

“What?”

Mina lay back against her pillows and rolled over to face the window, away from her daughter. Compass sat for several more minutes, but her mother had nothing else to say. Finally Compass got up and left. She found a seat in the hallway and stayed there until Arthur and Ginny arrived. She hugged them, waved away all their questions and concerns, and finally fled. She felt terribly guilty, dumping the burden on them, but staying in that hospital with her poisonous mother for one more second was simply unthinkable.

She walked home, fed her anxious cats, then curled up with them on the couch.

“Hey, Mom, I have a new boyfriend,” she said to the air. “He’s really sweet; I think you’ll like him a lot. He’s an entomologist; he studies bugs. He’s really smart. And he’s cute, in a geeky way. Tall, glasses, he has that air of a pocket protector, you know what I mean? You’d like to meet him? I’d like for you to meet him. Remember when you were so sick? He helped me a lot then. He helped me get you to the hospital, and he stayed with me all day and all night, and he brought me coffee and a scone. He eats Cheetos, but he manages to get all the orange off his fingers, so that’s OK.”

She went on, describing her boyfriend to the patient air and to the cats, who seemed happy for her, until she finally fell asleep.

Chapter Thirty: Signals

2007-09-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

When they got to Mina’s, the house was dark and quiet. Compass felt an unpleasant jolt of déjà vu.

“Do you suppose she’s run off to Europe again?” asked Mark.

“Would that be a bad thing?” asked Compass.

Apart from the times he had to shift gears, Mark had been holding her hand for the entire drive, his thumb rubbing the side of her index finger. When they first got into the car, Compass had that jittery expectant feeling of a new relationship unexpectedly blossoming in the dung pile of her life. Now the jitters had turned to something less pleasant. They pulled up along the curb opposite the house, and Mark killed the engine. They sat for a moment, girding loins, gathering courage, milking the last drops out of the joy of fifteen minutes ago, when they were leaning against the car in the driving rain. Just then the light in the attic came on.

“I wonder what-” Compass began, but she stopped when the light flipped off again. Then it flipped on again. Then off. Then on. Then on and off a few more times, quickly.

“It’s a signal,” said Mark, and he jumped out of the car. In the back seat, he had a pair of baseball bats, and he handed one to Compass.

“You’re a baseball player?” That bat was brand new and felt lethally solid in her hands.

“Boy scout. Always prepared, you know. I bought these a few weeks ago, just in case.”

They walked up to the house, cautious, the rain still coming down hard but covering the noise of their footsteps on the gravel path to the front door.

“It could be a trap,” Compass whispered, wiping rain from her glasses with one wet finger.

Mark grinned at her. “You’ve always wanted to say that, right?”

Compass thought about if for about a half-second. “No, not really.”

The light in the attic flashed on and off again a couple more times. Compass took a deep breath and, while Mark raised his bat, gently pushed open the front door.

Inside the house it was dark and silent. As they tiptoed in, the rain came down even harder, sheeting off the windows and making the house darker still, despite the windows. They moved as quietly as they could, bats at the ready, shoulders bumping with their reluctance to make the other person go first.

It was slow going, Mark being the boy scout and checking every room, every closet, under tables and behind curtains. When they had thoroughly investigated the entire downstairs, they stood for a moment in the living room. Whoever was in the house, they were upstairs.

A sudden flash of lightening illuminated the figure of a woman on the stairs. Another flash, and the woman was gone.

“Jesus!” Mark jumped back.

The figure of the woman was burned onto Compass’s retina. She was beckoning to them. Compass dropped her bat and raced up the stairs, shouting to Mark behind her.

“It’s OK! It’s Sophie! My mother’s hurt. Call 9-1-1.”

Compass found her in the hallway upstairs. She was unconscious but still alive. There was no smell of alcohol, so this wasn’t her usual Saturday unconsciousness but something far more sinister.

While Compass fetched a pillow and a blanket to keep her mother warm, Mark did a quick check of the rest of the house, turning on lights as he went. Despite clearly being shaken by the woman on the stairs, he gamely checked the attic and returned, white-faced.

“There’s no one up there.”

“Not no one,” she reminded him.

She’d straightened out her mother’s limbs as best she could and covered her with a blanket. If Mina hadn’t been lying on the floor in the hallway, she would have looked almost normal. But Compass had been shocked at how thin and frail her mother’s body felt under her hands. Her breathing was ragged but consistent, her color pale but not deathly.

“I’ll wait outside for the ambulance,” said Mark. Already they could hear the faint whine of approaching sirens.

Mark took all the warmth with him. Compass knelt in the hallway, her butt on her heels, her arms wrapped around her in the chill house. She tried not to look down at her mother, tried not to plant the picture of her mother, unconscious on the hallway floor, in her brain forever. But when she closed her eyes, the images were worse: her mind insisted on showing her what it would look like if one of the EMTs pulled the blanket up over her mother’s face; that final, immutable gesture of death, that exact second when hope ends and despair begins.

Compass rocked back and forth on her heels, willing the sirens closer. She’d never before felt so entirely helpless. Then suddenly she felt a warmth like a blanket dropped around her shoulders. And in that last quiet moment before the EMTs arrived and took over, the house started to sing.

When they first arrived at the hospital, a very young, very pretty nurse came darting out from behind her desk. “Is that Mina? Oh, no!” The nurse was so clearly distraught that Compass quickly checked to make sure she was accompanying the right gurney. But it was definitely Mina lying there.

“She’s such a lovely lady!” gushed the pretty nurse, tears in her eyes and tugging on Compass’s arm. According to her pin, either the nurse was named Linda or her left breast was. “The last time she was here, she told me that I was like the daughter she never had. Oh, I do hope she’s all right. How do you know her?”

“I’m the daughter she had,” Compass said, relieved when Linda let go of her arm. She smiled at the girl to let her know it was OK, but received only an icy stare in return.

People in white and blue carried her mother away. They had seen Mina before, knew her name, had records and information Compass could only guess at. An oncologist, not Mina’s regular doctor but someone who insisted on being called Gary, said things that Compass barely registered in all the furor. For ever after she would remember Gary as a vague, blurry face and a voice like an adult from a Charlie Brown special.

Mina was very ill, they told her. Needed a great deal of care, special treatments. Compass nodded at everyone, hoped that nodding was what was expected of her. Her jaw felt frozen and the warm blanket feeling she’d had disappeared as soon as she left Mina’s house.

The one thing that cut through all the confusion was the uptight man with the glasses and the fussy hair. “No money.” Apparently Mina had run through her insurance premiums, had exhausted her savings, had maxed out her credit cards. She could stay until she was stable, but then she had to go away. And she’d better be stable by tomorrow.

Mark wasn’t allowed in the ambulance, so he had come after her in his car. He’d gotten separated from the ambulance, gone to the wrong hospital, had problems parking his car when he got to the right one. His bicycle was on top of his car, meaning he couldn’t park in the parking garage, so he’d circled around forever, trying to find a place to park on Capital Hill. He was breathless and apologetic when he finally arrived. Compass didn’t care. She was so glad to see him, she was surprised the force of her relief didn’t knock him down.

She spilled the whole sorry story of her mother and the money. Mina had nowhere to go. She couldn’t go back home unless Compass was there all the time to take care of her, and that just wasn’t possible. Compass had a job, and with Oliver on the loose, it was better for her to stay in her own apartment, her secret bolthole.

“Call your grandparents.”

It made perfect sense. Mina could stay with them, at least until Compass found a way to get more money. There must be other bugs in the house – loaded ones – which would tide Mina over until they sorted out what to do with the emerald.

Compass called her grandparents who assured her they’d be on the next ferry. They would stay in Seattle tonight, then take Mina home with them in the morning. Mina would be furious, but it was the only solution anyone could come up with.

“Maybe Linda would like to take her?” Compass mumbled to herself at one point.

The first night of their burdgeoning relationship was spent in desperately uncomfortable chairs in the mint-green, antiseptic hallway of a local hospital. Smells of formaldehyde and bleach and desperation wafted down the hallways as they sat in silence, holding hands between the chairs.

“I’m sorry,” Compass said at one point.

“It’s OK,” Mark replied, some time later, and he squeezed her fingers gently.

Nothing much else happened, as Ray Bradbury once wrote, all the rest of that night.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Under Savage Skies

2007-09-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

The skies had opened up by the time Compass got out of her apartment and headed for Charlie’s. The agreed-on 30 minutes proved to be optimistic in the extreme, and Compass had to huff it up the hill to be within shooting distance of the deadline. Mark was already there, sitting at a table, gripping a cup of coffee with both hands. Compass slid into the booth across from him, sure the words “I called you my boyfriend” were carved onto her forehead. She forgot to worry about her own face when she saw his.

“You look terrible. Are you OK?”

His eyes were rimmed with red, and his shaved head had an all-over five o’clock shadow. Dark bags sagged under his eyes, and apparently he’d shaved his face with a machete and his eyes closed. Possibly using his feet.

“Rough night.”

“I’m guessing. What happened?”

“I slept in my car.”

“In it or under it? You look like you’ve been run over. And what’s that on the front of your shirt? Is that toothpaste or bird shit?”

“It’s toothpaste. OK, we’ve now established that I look like hell. Can we move on?”

“Not yet. You still haven’t told me what happened.”

“You’re right. I haven’t. A little lesson in social interaction, Compass: when people consistently dodge a question, it usually means they’d rather not answer it just now. Let it go, please.”

A little stung, Compas leaned back against her seat and picked up her menu. “Fine.”

The waitress came over just then, and Compass gratefully accepted her offer of coffee.

“Could we get some skim milk for the coffee, please?” asked Mark, opening several of those little containers of half-and-half and dumping them in his cup.

“I’d say it’s a little late for that,” said the waitress, nodding at the pile of cream discards.

“Oh, it’s for her,” said Mark, adding several seconds’ worth of sugar into his coffee.

“Huh,” said the waitress, grinning at Compass, “that’s either really considerate or really insulting.”

Compass shrugged and smiled back. The waitress gathered up as many of the cream packets as she could hold and walked off.

“What did she mean ‘insulting’?” asked Mark. “You drink skim in your coffee. Right?”

“I do,” said Compass, who’d opted for ‘really considerate.’

Mark picked up his menu and grumbled into it for a few seconds. The menus at Charlie’s were huge, unwieldy things which required serious study, so they each propped their separate menus on the tables and disappeared behind them. Cups of coffee emerged from behind the menus and then vanished again, emerged and vanished until finally the menus came down and both announced, in unison, that they were going to order the French toast.

The waitress duly reappeared, took their orders, refilled their coffees, provided them with a small silver jug of milk and went away again.

“So you decided to reply to your dad.”

“What, no warning shot across the bow, just directly into battle?” Compass unrolled her silverware from her napkin, fiddled with her fork.

“Come on, do you really think that was a good idea?”

“I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“Are you sure you’re safe?”

“Of course I’m not sure. I haven’t been sure for quite awhile now. ‘Safe’ is no longer the ultimate goal here.”

“So what is the ultimate goal?” asked Mark. “Getting a happy family? Because that’s at least a jail term for your dad and a lobotomy for your mother away. Be realistic, Compass.”

“Look, I said I knew that wasn’t going to happen. This isn’t Disney; I know that. And you were the one who said I should do something instead of being so passive. So I’m doing something, and now you’re all over my case about it.”

Mark sighed. He put one elbow on the table and rested his head against his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m just wondering if maybe it’s time to get some professionals involved. Like the FBI or Scotland Yard or something. I mean, that guy died, Compass. It worries me, OK?”

“If we get law enforcement involved, then my mom goes to jail. Or at least goes on trial or whatever, and if she’s as sick as she claims, she really shouldn’t go through that right now.”

“Let’s go see her.”

“Huh?” Compass’s elbow slipped off the tabletop, and she nearly dropped her hot coffee in her lap.

“Let’s see if she’s as sick as she says she is.”

“And how’s that going to help anything?”

Mark stared at Compass for a long minute, long enough to border on the uncomfortable, have-I-got-something-in-my-nose sort of feeling, when finally he sat back and sighed.

“I guess it won’t. I just feel like she’s engineered this whole mess, and now she’s getting off scot-free.”

“Cancer is hardly ‘scot-free.’”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. But I guess we don’t really know what she’s doing over there. I mean, she is in the phone book, address and all.”

The waitress came and delivered two plates of thickly cut, cinnamon-laced French toast. She came back a moment later to refill their coffee cups and the skim milk jug.

“Are you checking on her pretty regularly?” asked Mark, soaking his toast in syrup before tucking in.

Compass stuffed a forkful of brunch in her face to prolong having to answer the question. She chewed carefully and at length, but finally her mouth was clear and Mark was still waiting.

“Not really,” she admitted. “Our last meeting wasn’t very friendly. We went from mild dislike to active hate. She told me she never wanted to see me again. I’m calling her bluff.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Compass was shocked. Sorry? He’d said it like you’d say it to someone in mourning, to someone who’d just lost a loved one. But then again, for most people, estrangement from a parent was cause for grief, not just the natural, inevitable progression of the relationship.

The realization of what Compass was missing in life hit her full force. Not talking to her mother, her mother who could be in danger, her mother who could be dying, hadn’t felt all that strange to her. There had been tears, at the beginning, but none since. Her mother had barely crossed her mind, existed only as a vague, vaguely irritating humming noise at the back of her brain, kind of like the knowledge that the toilet paper was running low and she’d eventually have to make a trip to a grocery store and buy some.

“Oh my god.” Compass put down her fork and put her head in her hands. “I’m a bad person. A genuinely bad person. I never realized that before.”

Mark ladled more syrup onto his plate. “You’re not a bad person.”

“My mother is in danger, she’s got cancer, and I won’t call her because I’m sulking and I want her to call me first. What do you call a person like that?”

“Angry.”

Compass felt Mark’s fingers running gently through her hair.

“I’d call that person angry,” he continued. “Let’s go see her now. Right after brunch. OK? Look, Compass, she hasn’t given you many reasons to care about her, but you still do. She’s done everything she can to make you hate her, but you won’t. That actually makes you a decent person.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course. We can say hello to Henry and Sophie.”

“Oh, yes! Henry and Sophie.” That thought cheered Compass up enough that she was able to lift her head and smile. “If my mom and I get a divorce, I want custody of Henry and Sophie.”

“To Henry and Sophie!” Mark raised his coffee cup and they toasted the ghosts.

During the time they sat in the intimate dark depths of Charlie’s, the rain had turned to a real storm. Fortunately, Mark had brought his car and had rather miraculously found parking not too far away. They ran as fast as they could, but they were still pretty soaked when they threw themselves into the car, a block and a half away. The skies lit up every few seconds with lightening, and they even got a rumble or two of thunder.

“I miss thunderstorms,” said Compass. “Thunderstorms are great in the midwest. You can sit and listen to them roll across you – they start miles away and just keep coming until they’re right overhead, and they just keep going, miles on beyond you. Seattle may know rain, but it doesn’t know thunderstorms.”

They sat for a moment in the car, waiting to see if the heavy rains would abate a little.

“Why are you helping me with all this?” Compass asked. “I mean, I’m grateful, but surely you have a life that’s more compelling than sidekicking on mine.”

Mark snorted a little. “You’d be surprised.” There was a long pause. Mark’s mouth moved like there was more in it to be said, so Compass stayed quiet. “I really thought you’d have guessed by now.”

“Guessed what?” Compass’s heart beat a little faster – equal parts hope and hesitation.

“I’m doing this for you. Because I care about you. Compass, you’re like the most insane person I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it in a good way. OK, maybe ‘insane’ wasn’t the best word choice. I mean that you think about things in the oddest, most interesting ways. You come at things from this angle that’s like, 107° off the normal perspective. Argh. I’m really not saying this well.” He leaned back in his seat and stared out the driver’s side window.

“A hundred and seven?”

Mark snorted again. “It’s just the number that popped out.”

“It seems awfully specific.” Compass smiled at the window on her side, watched the rain pelting the few people desperate enough for a latte to brave it.

“I can believe anything of you because the weirdest stuff just swirls around you. If aliens took up residence in someone’s refrigerator, it’d be yours, you know? But you’d handle it. You’d, like, build them little homes out of shoeboxes and make sure to have the right kind of baking soda, you know what I mean?”

“Not even remotely,” she lied.

“Nobody, nobody puts diamonds into plastic bug boxes. Nobody does that. Nobody has an emerald that is cursed. That shit just doesn’t happen. But if it did, to all the people in all the world, it’d happen to you. You’d have a house that’s crawling with ghosts, a house that’s a giant music box only certain people can hear. You’d have a mom who’s like Cruella deVille’s college roommate and a dad straight out of a Pink Panther movie. You’d have that. And you’d handle it. I know who my grandparents are! I’ve always known! Do you know how jealous I am that you only just got to find yours? I know that’s incredibly selfish because this has been really hard on you, but I also know that you can handle it. And I want to be around that. I want to be in the chaos and the craziness, and I want to be holding the hand of the one person in the world who thinks this is how life is supposed to be and therefore doesn’t freak out about it. Do you know how rare you are?”

Compass opened the car door and got out into the pouring rain. She shut the door behind her and leaned back against the car, let the rain fall directly onto her face, cooling her. She heard another car door open, then shut, and then Mark was standing in front of her, worry he’d gone too far etched all over his tired face. She tilted her head back down until she could meet his sweet, scared, hazel eyes.

She felt strong. She’d never felt this strong before. She could take on anything, face anyone, meet any challenge grinning. She reached her arms out, pulled Mark close. She was startled to taste syrup before she fully realized that they were kissing. They leaned against the car and kissed until the taste of syrup was gone and something newer, even sweeter, had taken its place.

They kissed in the Seattle rain until a deafening clap of thunder drove them, laughing, back into the car.

Whatever’s going on at Mom’s house, thought Compass as they drove, it’ll be OK. We can handle it. ‘We’! We’re a ‘we’! And we’ll handle it. It’ll be OK.

Compass was, as usual, dead wrong.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Out the Open Window

2007-08-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

Compass wrote her response to her dad eleven times, each time trying to pull herself further back. It was a bit like standing at an open window, wanting to see out but not be seen. With each draft she took another step back, away from the window, until she felt sure he couldn't see the color of her hair, the shape of her jaw, the bump on her nose, and know her for his.

It took all night that night, a night she should have been lesson planning and paper grading and sleeping, but all at once it seemed she couldn't wait. Ethan's sudden death added urgency to everything. When it was done, Compass read over the response with satisfaction. It sounded nothing like her, not really, not that he would know what she sounded like, but it made her feel safer to sound different, another step back from the open window.

She added her response to his most recent post, the one beginning, "Happy Valentine's Day". Then, despite her itching, tired eyes, her sore neck, her stiff back, she opened up her journal and poured some more of the story into it.

The phone woke her a few hours later. She didn’t really remember going to bed, which was probably because she really hadn’t gone to bed as much as she’d thrown herself in the general direction of the bed and by very good luck, landed in it. She normally reserved her hatred of the phone for when it didn’t ring and she wanted it to. Today she could have killed it for ringing when she most desperately didn’t want it to.

She was lying on the bed, fully clothed. There was something furry in her mouth that she was a little frightened to investigate, but happily it turned out to be her tongue. Her hair had had some bad dreams and was all over her head in a frenzy, and either she’d drooled copiously on her pillow or one of her cats had wet on it, but with admirable restraint. She sniffed the damp spot cautiously and determined it to be of human origin. Then she rolled over it to shut up the bloody phone.

“Hello?”

“Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing?”

“Mark?”

“Yes, it’s Mark, and what the hell are you doing?”

“I was sleeping. Now I’m going to call in sick to work. But to do that I’m going to need my phone. I’ll call you back.”

“Compass, wait, we need to talk-”

Mark was a great guy, but sometimes he really couldn’t take a hint. Compass stabbed at some numbers on the phone pad, numbers that seemed vaguely familiar, and hoped that she was calling the sick line at school. She was. When the automated voice stopped wittering at her, she tried to put on a “sick voice,” choked on her own furry tongue and ended up sounding far sicker than she’d intended. Still, it would do the trick.

She got up, staggered into her kitchen, brewed herself a pot of coffee. Once the first cup had cut a line through the fog, she felt up to calling Mark back.

“Hello?”

“Mark? It’s Compass. I think we got cut off. You were abusing me for being crazy. Please, continue. I’m ready now.”

“I saw your response on Dragonfly. I thought you weren’t going to respond to him just now.”

“I wasn’t. But things changed. I thought it was the right time after all.”

“What changed?”

Compass was still a little pissed off that he’d woken her up just so he could shout at her, and she wasn’t giving anything away that easily.

“I just decided that, in light of recent events, it was time to make my move. You were the one telling me to be less passive, remember?”

“Yes, I did, but I don’t think my advice included ‘stick your head up above the firing line so your dad can get a clean shot at it.’ I could be wrong, though. What ‘recent events’?”

“Look, Mark, you can’t go giving advice with one hand and grabbing it back with the other.”

“Advice is situation-specific. I wouldn’t advise you not to drink the water in, like, France or something. Oh, for christ’s sake, this is the stupidest conversation ever. Are you going to tell me or not?”

Compass let him off the hook. “I called Ethan yesterday to get some more information out of him.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He’s dead, Mark. He died. Just a day or two ago.”

“Holy shit.”

“And then some. And to make matters worse, he died from a spider bite. Spider bite! He couldn’t just have a heart attack or accidentally fall on the third rail or something, it has to be a spider bite.”

“Holy crap.”

“Tell me. I talked to his wife, his widow, I should say, and she was all upset and freaking out, and then his mother-in-law gets on the phone, and she was incredibly rude and vetty vetty British and I felt like I should leave the room backwards and bowing. I mean, spider bite! What the hell is that? Who the hell dies from a spider bite?”

“Compass-”

“So I look in a bunch of British newspapers, and not only did Ethan die, he died with a woody, so everyone in Britain is laughing at him, and that makes me feel bad. He didn’t seem like such a bad guy, on the phone, just a scared guy, you know? And now he’s dead, and it’s a dirty, stupid little death that could have slid in on a banana peel or maybe my dad delivered it to him through the letterbox? Either way, it’s ludicrous, it’s the three stooges, it’s fucking slapstick. It’s-”

“COMPASS.”

Compass stopped. She hadn’t realized she’d stopped breathing until she felt a desperate need for a breath, like she was finally breaking the surface after coming up from a long way under.

“Yes?” Her voice was shaking. So were her hands. Her head hurt and she just wanted to crawl back into bed and not come out until everyone promised to behave themselves.

“I’m worried about you. Are you OK?” Mark’s voice was low, comforting. She realized he was intentionally putting on his soothing voice, but she decided not to call him on it. She closed her eyes and lay back on her bed.

“I’m OK-ish. Look, Mark, I realize that it wasn’t a great idea to respond just when we may have to add another murder to his life list. But it just seemed necessary. I mean, what if he’s a good guy? What if he’s here to . . . I don’t know, put things right, make amends? If my mom really has cancer, if it’s really serious, this could be my last shot at a happy family.”

“Oh, Compass. . . .”

“I know it’s unrealistic and stupid. I know it’ll never happen. But what if, just briefly, I could get a father and a mother, both alive, both on the same continent, even in the same city! And what if, just for, like, a few minutes, they both like me at the same time? And maybe I could ask a question or two, even tell them something about myself that they’ll be proud of – I’ll have to make something up, but I’ll come up with something – and we’ll all smile at each other for just a minute, just a second. It’d be enough. It’d be more than I’ve ever had. I can live without it, I already have, I know how. But it’d be nice. Just for a second.”

“You want this too badly.”

“What?” For the second time that morning, Compass felt jolted out of her dreams.

“It’s making you careless.”

“He can’t trace me, Mark. I posted anonymously; he has no more information than he had yesterday.”

“He knows you’re listening. He knows you’re curious. That’s more information.”

“I don’t think it puts me in danger.”

“I hope you’re right. Look, I’m not trying to play Big Brother here, I promise. I just want you to be cautious. I care about you.”

“I’m being cautious. But I can’t just hide out and wait for him to come get me. This way, maybe if he does figure out where I am, at least I’ll be able to see him coming.”

“Who knows. If anyone can charm the savage beast, it’d be you.”

“Why, Mark, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me while bitching me out for being an idiot.”

“You’re welcome.”

“While we’re at it, you need to be on your guard too.” Mark started to protest, but Compass wasn’t having it. “Now, don’t get all testosterone-y, I-can-take-care-of-myself macho manly on me. If he’s a bad dad, he’ll be after my friends too.” She sighed. “I had hoped for a dad who would bully my boyfriends, not try to off them.”

She could have bitten her tongue off and fed it to a goat. There was a pause during which Compass could have sworn the word “boyfriend” echoed at least half a dozen times.

“Testosterone-y?” asked Mark.

“The San Francisco treat,” Compass replied, and hoped Mark hadn’t noticed the other thing. The “boyfriend” thing.

“I’ll keep an eye out. Hey, maybe we should spend more time together. Safety in numbers and all that.” Mark gave a laugh that could only be described as “nervous.” Compass instantly felt better.

“We could do that. I called in sick. Why don’t you meet me somewhere for brunch?”

“You called in sick on a Saturday?”

“Saturday? It’s Saturday? Oh, crap. Oh well, if anyone asks, I’ll say I was delirious with fever. Charlie’s on Broadway in thirty minutes?”

“Deal. Take an unusual route.”

“Mark, it’s brunch. I don’t brunch. Any route to brunch is therefore ‘unusual.’”

“Fine. If you get there before I do, order some potato skins. And hey, did you call me ‘boyfriend’ back there?”

He hung up before Compass could choke out an excuse. She went to shave her furry tongue, humming all the way.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Die Smiling

2007-08-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Brazilian wandering spider in defensive posture. Picture from Parana State Gov't, Brazil.

The last entry on Dragonfly Dad actually made Compass laugh. If only this weren’t the out-loud diary of her potentially murderous father, she’d actually sort of enjoy the blog. She often spent too many hours surfing blogs, looking for diamonds, panning for gold, resenting writers for their talent when she found them. She’d thought frequently about starting her own but was quickly overwhelmed by her own lack of anything useful or amusing to say. Dragonfly wasn’t bad, and she found herself wanting to drop a comment that said so. Then she’d realize that she couldn’t. But really, why couldn’t she?

She could be anonymous. Even if he figured out it was his daughter commenting, he still wouldn’t be able to find her unless she let him. The temptation was nearly irresistible. She’d never been so sought after, after all, and it was vaguely exciting. But was it a red flag to a bull, fuel to a flame? She didn’t want to stir up some sort of manic fury in Oliver; they were in the same city, and Seattle wasn’t that big. And since Mina was in the phone book, address carved in public stone for all to see, perhaps the low-profile strategy was best.

The trust issue was becoming a real problem. Compass found herself leery of nearly everyone, wondering if every man that glanced her direction was actually her dad. As she was walking in a quiet park on Capitol Hill the other day, a trench-coated man of about the right age saw her, headed in her direction, reached into his pocket. Compass was about to shout or run away, or more likely freeze in helpless terror, when the man pulled out his penis. Compass was so relieved that she laughed. In fact, she was so relieved that she thanked the man and wished him a nice day.

Compass had never trusted strangers, but she now looked back longingly on the days when she was relatively indifferent to them. Granted, as a woman walking alone, she couldn’t afford to be completely oblivious to strangers, particularly men, but now she was downright twitchy and it pissed her off. It was time to put an end to this. It was time to act. Was he dangerous or wasn’t he, and who would know?

She called Ethan. She politely waited until it was a civilized hour in England, then with a pounding heart, she dialed the interminable string of numbers. After a long, quiet pause, there was that delightful double-chirp at the other end, then a woman’s voice.

“Hello?”

Compass was a little taken aback, having expected to get Ethan. “Uh, hello. Hi. May I speak to Ethan, please?”

“No, I’m sorry, you can’t.”

Her answer seemed a bit abrupt, and the silence after it rather odd. Compass would have expected more information, an offer to take a message, even a hang-up rather than this silence.

“Oh. May I leave a message?”

“No. No, that won’t work either.” The sound of someone waiting.

“I see. OK. Um, is there a better time for me to call?”

“I suspect not. You might try during the Rapture, just in case he gets his body back and can come to the phone then.”

And the woman burst into sobs. Great heaving sobs that made Compass breathless just to hear them from several thousands of miles away. A moment or two later, someone came and took the phone. There were noises of comfort and of shooing the sobber away.

“Hello? May I help you?” If the accent were any indication, Compass was now talking to the Queen.

“Hello? I’m sorry, I’m looking for Ethan.”

“Are you? Well, I do hope it’s not urgent. My son-in-law is dead, you see.”

“Oh! Oh, I . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Isn’t that nice. Were you a friend of Ethan’s? A colleague?”

“No, we never met. He was . . . he was, um, helping me with a problem.”

“I see. Are you also a collector of stories about mad people?” The voice was polite but still managed to convey deep and profound distaste for Ethan’s work.

“No. Well, maybe. I’m sorry about your loss.” She had to ask it. Knew she had to, and soon, didn’t want to with a fury.

“That’s very kind. I’ll convey your sympathies to my daughter whom I assume you also haven’t met?”

“No. No, I haven’t.”

“Well, she’ll be very gratified to hear how sorry you are, then.Very well. Good bye.”

“Wait! Wait, please.”

“Was there something more?” Clearly, the matriarch considered this extension of a finished conversation both unconventional and rude.

“May I ask, how did he die?” Please don’t say garbage truck. Or rubbish lorry or whatever. Please please please.

“You must either be calling from the States or from under a rock. Surely you people have access to real newspapers there. Why don't you look it up.”

Even the way she hung up the phone was more curt and cutting than normal people’s hang ups. Compass stood with her phone in her hand for a long moment, her stomach churning with its attempts to digest this new information.

Heart attack, she thought to herself, accidental drowning on a sea-side holiday in Skegness, tragically skewered self through lung while making shish kebabs. There are lots of ways he could have died without help from my dad.

It didn’t help. She was shaking so hard it took three tries to replace the phone. She turned on her laptop, opened Explorer, typed Ethan’s name into Google.

“ ‘Mad’ Doctor to be Put in Coffin Sideways: Is that a scythe under that cloak, or are you just happy to see me?!” read the lead in The Sun. There was a gruesome picture of a spider leaking venom from Photoshopped fangs. Compass quickly skimmed the article – apparently Ethan had been bitten by a deadly spider. A spider that also cured erectile dysfunction. Briefly. Or eternally, depending on whether you planned an open or closed casket funeral. Dear god.

Knowing The Sun’s reputation for being a crap newspaper, Compass did some quick cross checking. Less sensational papers hid the story quietly on back pages, but writers obviously couldn’t withstand the temptation to comment on Ethan’s unusual passing. A note about being able to ring the doorbell at Saint Peter’s gate with “both hands full” in The Guardian made Compass snort, but at least she had the decency to feel badly about it afterward.

The Brazilian wandering spider, also known as Phoneutria nigriventer, caused symptoms easily recognized by Brazilian doctors – pain, increased blood pressure, uncomfortable erection. Properly treated, bites attributed to this spider rarely caused death. Sadly, Ethan’s hospital was a bit shy on Brazilian doctors, and his symptoms were attributed to a bad reaction to Viagra. Ethan tried to tell doctors he didn’t take Viagra, but they’d heard that one before, usually from men too embarrassed to admit the truth. They treated for a drug allergy, a treatment that went disastrously wrong. Ethan’s erection survived, but he didn’t.

Bugs. Compass’s life seemed full of them. She read on. According to this second article, the spider likely rode in on a bunch of bananas. A simple explanation, just like she’d wanted. Relatively rare spider, outside the borders of South America, but certainly not unheard of in other places, that was reassuring. Sort of. Only there was some comment in the article from the mother-in-law that, as one of Ethan’s children was mildly allergic to bananas, they never had them in the house. Still. Nothing to connect the bug to Oliver. There was evidence that the spider had been in the house for some days or weeks – what evidence that could possibly be, they didn’t say, but it did mean the spider could have been there since before Oliver left for the States. No way of telling. The death was being recorded as “accidental,” but the author’s suspicion left ant-trails of doubt between the lines of the article. Clearly, the writer of the article had reservations, but whether they were genuine or intended to sell more papers was less clear.

Compass turned off the computer. The trail had ended here. Compass was so confused now, she wasn't sure whether to feel guilty about Ethan's death or not. Somehow, it bordered on her fault, and she had no idea how or why. But she felt badly for him -- such an ignoble death with all the screaming, gleeful headlines and leering insinuations. He didn't deserve that, she was almost sure.

And now, there was no one left who could tell her whether or not Oliver was dangerous. Mina either believed Oliver was out to kill her or was prepared to stick to that lie to the end. Arthur and Ginny had no reason to believe that Oliver was anything but crooked, wicked and probably lethal. Ethan, who had once been his friend, was now dead. If she wanted to know, she was going to have to find out from the man himself.

Of all the things she’d wanted to be when she grew up, “bait” wasn’t one of them. But how else to lure her father out into the open?

She turned on her laptop again, began to craft her reply.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Relative Strangers

2007-08-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

It was a long, awful night. Compass was exhausted and more than a tad drunk, and she desperately wanted to sleep. But sleep was out of the question now, impossible with the word “murder” banging around her brain.

Compass lay in bed, fully dressed down to her shoes and jacket, listening to the whispers and the creeping of elderly, arthritic feet. From time to time, the voices seemed elevated, angry, and twice her bedroom door creaked open. Compass lay with her face turned away, feeling watched and vulnerable and trying to control her breathing. Long seconds later, the door was pulled shut with a careful click. Only when the watery March sun limped in her window did Compass feel safe enough to shut her eyes.

Two thin hours later, Ginny knocked gently to wake Compass for breakfast. Her grandmother looked so fresh and cheerful, Compass briefly wondered if her whole horrible night had been just a bad dream. But the bags under her grandfather’s eyes – as big and brown and sagging as used tea bags – confirmed her worst fears.

Astonishingly, despite a Henry the 8th-sized meal last night and nearly no sleep, Compass was ravenous. She loaded up her plate with delicious-smelling scrambled eggs, biscuits with homemade blackberry jam, grapefruit halves with each pocket of fruit meticulously cut out so she didn’t even need a grapefruit spoon. She piled eggs onto half a butter-heavy biscuit and raised the fragrant, teetering foodpile to her mouth. Just as she was about to bite, she looked up to see her grandparents eagerly watching her. Her mind screamed an alarm, and Compass dropped the the biscuit and its suddenly inedible cargo. The plopping sound of her food hitting her plate was the sound of rudeness, of hospitality warmly offered and coldly refused. When Compass saw the confused, hurt looks on her grandparents’ faces, she almost would have preferred to eat poison.

“Is anything wrong?” Ginny asked, gently.

Compass couldn’t think of an excuse that wouldn’t be an insult to their kindness. They had done nothing to deserve her suspicion, and yet she couldn’t force herself to feel safe.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and put her head in her hands.

Arthur picked up his fork, reached over to Compass’s plate and speared a large chunk of the eggs. He doused it liberally with Tabasco before Ginny could object, then popped the forkful into his mouth.

“Have you ever noticed,” he said, morning voice growly and low, “how other people’s food tastes better than your own?”

He spun the small glass bowl that held Compass’s grapefruit, and when it stopped spinning, he speared a chunk of the fruit with his fork and ate that too. He even snagged the other half of her biscuit, though that was likely because Ginny wouldn’t let him have biscuits rather than to prove a point. He landed an enormous smear of butter on it, spooned jam and honey onto it, then stuffed the whole drippy mess into his mouth.

“O me of little faith,” Compass said quietly, party to herself, partly to her butter-whiskered grandfather. He winked at her, and Compass picked up her fork.

The food tasted as wonderful as it smelled, and Compass wanted to shovel it in with both hands and a trowel. Her grandparents were too polite to discuss Compass’s little relapse into suspicion, but Compass felt she owed them an explanation.

“You were up all night,” she said, unsure how to begin. “I heard you moving around. I suspected a tree loaded with Christmas presents this morning.”

“I doubt that’s what you suspected,” said her grandfather, grinning. “But it’s a nice way to open the topic.”

Ginny said nothing, and disappeared into the kitchen. Shortly there came noises of pans being thrashed about and food – hopefully – being violently chopped.

“Does she always do that when she’s upset?”

“Took me 45 pounds to figure that out,” Arthur replied. “I never pick fights any more. My cholesterol level can’t take it.”

“Granddad,” Compass said, “what is it you’re not telling me?”

“Granddaughter,” Arthur responded, taking one of Compass’s hands in both of his, “can you wait on that? It’s not time for the telling yet. I know trusting relative strangers – no pun intended – is hard, but please try to trust me on this. There is something you need to know, but first we need to get our facts perfectly straight.”

“Is it about the Hines emerald?”

The noises from the kitchen abruptly stopped and Ginny emerged, chopping knife still in one hand, carrot in the other.

“You know about that?” she said, her face pale.

“You could hear us?” Compass asked. “Man, I hope I inherited your ears. Yes, I know about the emerald. Ethan told me.”

“Ethan?!” The shout came from both grandparents, and for a moment everyone was startled into silence.

“Junior Idiot. Sidekick to the Idiot,” her grandfather grumbled. “I might have known he was in there somewhere. Tell us.”

“He called me recently. He’s worried that Mom’s going to flush my father out of the bushes and all hell will break loose.”

“Well, he may be right about that,” said Ginny. “Or maybe he wants the emerald, and he's trying to flush it out first.”

“I don’t think so,” said Compass. “He advised me to throw it into the lake. He believes in the curse; he doesn’t want it for himself.”

“Oh, the curse is real enough,” said Arthur, “but there are ways around it.”

“I think he’s concerned about his reputation more than anything. He’s some sort of academic: published a couple of books no one’s ever read, that sort of thing. He also seemed concerned that Oliver might come after him, which is what’s making me nervous for myself. And for Mom, I guess.”

“Whatever happens to your mom, she brought it on herself,” said Ginny, pouring more orange juice into Compass’s glass. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

Arthur looked sternly at his wife, but she only glared back at him. “She could have done better,” he admitted.

“We have a 39-year-old granddaughter we’ve only just met, and who’s afraid to eat at our table because her mother consorts with thieves and mur-.” She stopped, then started again. “I’ll say she ‘could have done better.’” And she stormed off into the kitchen again to bang some more pans around.

Before Compass could clarify her grandmother’s near-slip, Arthur stood up and began stacking dirty plates. “You mustn’t pay your grandmother too much attention. Your mother’s flair for the dramatic she came by honestly, if not much else.” And he too disappeared into the kitchen.

Murderers, thought Compass. My mother consorts with murderers. Well, that’s wholesome.

Compass gathered up her bags; Arthur was taking her back to the Bremerton ferry terminal. Her class wasn’t until the evening, but she wanted to do some research in the library. On the ferry, she called Mark and asked him to meet her. She was going to need help.

When Compass arrived at the downtown library, a bit breathless from walking up the steep hill from the waterfront, Mark was already there.

“Newspapers. Springfield, Illinois, 1968,” she told him, between pants. “My birthday or thereabouts.”

The Springfield State-Journal Register’s online archives only went back as far as 1985, but happily, the library had some older papers on microfiche. It took awhile to find a microfiche machine that worked, but finally they got the fiche in right-side-up and focused.

“Garbage Collectors’ Strike Enters Eighth Week,” was the headline on the day after Compass’s birth. Apparently, they read, in January of 1968, the city was knee-deep in garbage, and only the cold weather had been keeping the smell and the rats at tolerable levels. However, a predicted warming trend had the city in a panic. The Springfield municipal board was hiring scabs as quickly as they could scoop them up and dry them out, commercial driver’s licenses be damned. No one knew who was running which routes in all the chaos, and the drivers seemed to be collecting on an entirely random basis. Those willing to pay a “surcharge” had their rubbish removed. A couple who complained of extortion were found in their own garbage cans. And in their neighbors’. And in a couple of other cans a few houses down.

Compass flipped through the paper until she found a short article describing Jeremy Jones’ death. He was, Compass read, “another victim of the strike. Had the usual, legally licensed driver been behind the wheel of that truck, this tragic accident would never have happened, and Jeremy Jones would even now be celebrating the birth of his first child: Constance. No one knows who was driving the truck; the driver fled the scene, leaving Mr. Jones to bleed to death in the alley, just inches away from medical help. An eye-witness who heard the driver said the faux-garbageman ‘had an English accent. And he cursed like the devil.’ Anyone with information is urged to contact Springfield police.”

“So that’s the murder they didn’t want to tell me about.”

“Your dad killed your other dad?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Compass, I think you need to be really careful here. It’s a big leap from ‘has an English accent’ to ‘my father did it,’ you know.”

“My grandparents think he’s guilty. I heard them talking about it.”

Mark turned back to the microfiche machine, fiddled with a knob. “Your grandparents are ready to believe anything about Oliver, you said so yourself. Compass? Are you OK?”

Mark’s fiddling had brought up the lower half of the newspaper. And a picture of Jeremy Jones. It was the same man from the fishing picture, more serious, but still handsome and young. He was only 27 when he died – so much of a life unlived. It made her feel sick.

“He would have been my father, and I never would have known the difference,” Compass whispered. “We look enough alike.” She pointed at the grainy old photograph, twice reproduced and fuzzy. “Look: my eyebrows, or close enough. Similar lips, high cheekbones, even a widow’s peak like mine. No one could tell I wasn’t his. I would have called him dad, and he would have called me sugar or poo, or something else horrible and embarrassing.” Compass’s eyes teared up. “He would have intimidated my boyfriends and taught me to drive a stick shift. My mom was happy with him, Grandma Ginny said so. Can you imagine how different my life would have been with a mom who was happy?”

Mark folded Compass into his arms. “I’m sorry that was taken from you.”

“God, Mark, what if my father is the one who took it?”

When they left the library, it was raining again.

Chapter Twenty-Five: In Deep Hot Chocolate

2007-08-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ginny and Arthur were thrilled that Compass wanted to come visit. They had noticed a distinct cooling from their granddaughter since their brunch together, which had puzzled them a little. All was made clear when Compass admitted she needed to be sure her grandparents really were who they said they were. She apologized for not trusting them; they assured her they were relieved to have a granddaughter who was so clever and careful and they weren’t hurt at all. Compass opted not to tell them that she’d been ready to throw herself on the warm bosom of her maybe-family-maybe-foe without question, and only Mark’s unwelcome warning had stopped her.

They agreed on another meet in Bremerton that very afternoon, after Compass’s last class. Winter quarter was finally drawing to a close and the days were slowly starting to lengthen. In Seattle, March was generally pretty dreary – the sky still leaking most of the time, no sun to speak of, winds and wetness and grayness. March was the reason Seattle was only very overpopulated instead of tragically overpopulated. Today was no exception. Compass’s car was doing something noisy and disconcerting, and just turning up the radio didn’t seem to be helping, so she was stuck riding the bus down to the ferry terminal from school.

The bus smelled like a soggy Newfoundland and was, as usual, crammed hip deep in nutcases ranging from the standard fashionably-homeless kids, tattooed, pierced and outfitted in the latest Value Village ensemble, to the genuine deep-enders, mumbling or shouting, more froth on their lips than on top of a yuppie’s latte. Scattered among them were those quietly willing the bus to go faster, to get them home before the nuttiness leapt out of control. Compass hated the bus. She had once tried to enjoy it as an opportunity to observe a fascinating cross-section of America, but being trapped in a seat next to a urine-soaked, vomit-flecked sad-act once had put paid to that forever. Now she just kept her eyes on neutral surfaces – her book, her backpack, the back of the seat in front of her – and hoped to stay beneath the radar.

The ferry, in contrast, was a treat. It was early afternoon yet, so the boat wasn’t crowded, and she had a whole table to herself. Compass bought a a cup of hot chocolate and a bag of greasy popcorn, and she had her laptop computer in her bag. Seattle ferries now had WiFi, so she could surf the Net while relaxing cozily in some of the most picturesque scenery the Northwest had to offer. Almost before she could stop herself, she had surfed over to DragonflyDad.

Two new posts. It gave Compass chills to think there was someone out there, thinking of her, typing away at a blog created expressly for her. She was, she supposed, a tiny bit flattered, but this was counteracted by her being a whole lot freaked out. She tried to read the letters as a neutral observer, tried not to see every line as potentially sinister, but a lifetime with Mina had trained Compass to expect the smack beneath the caress. She read the letters carefully, chose again not to respond, spent the rest of the trip making notes in her journal. She was aware of her own deliberate refusal to feel anything, recognized it as the defense mechanism that it was, registered it in her journal. She was proud of her Spock-like detachment, though she suspected her emotions were merely delayed, not deflected.

Her grandparents met her at the terminal in Bremerton, and this time Compass could see faint echoes of Mina’s face in Ginny’s, her own nose squarely set in the middle of her grandfather’s face. As Compass was hugging Arthur, Ginny started to laugh.

“I’m sorry, dear, you were perfectly right to be cautious. I’m trying to see us as scary, but I can’t. We’re just too cozy and plump!”

It was funny, now that Compass was back with her muppet grandparents. They were cuddly and sweet and made her think of oatmeal cookies and Ovaltine, whatever that was. The scariest thing about them was Arthur’s drug-trip paisley socks, just visible beneath the mid-shin conclusion of his Wrangler jeans. Compass between them, they all looped arms and walked to the car. No restaurant today, Compass was going to get a home-cooked dinner.

The Corberson’s home was more modern than Compass might have expected, but still comfortable and welcoming. One entire room was devoted to their computers. A self-declared Internet junkie, Arthur even had his own blog: The Garden Gnome Gnows, the title of which took some explaining. Arthur had a very extensive garden out back; his blog gave tips for killing slugs and building raised beds. His pet project was creating the first beefsteak tomato hybrid that could actually thrive in the short growing season of the Pacific Northwest. Ginny was an Internet gamer. Her doctor had recommended some games as a way of keeping her fingers limber and her mind sharp, and Ginny had quickly gotten hooked. Her characters’ costumes were rather more demure than most, Ginny admitted, but she could frag a baddie with the best of them.

Dinner was veggie burgers hot off the grill, which Arthur grumbled about and wouldn’t confess to liking, even though he had two, homemade potato salad, a giant green salad, corn, baked beans and apple pie for dessert.

“We like to eat picnic food in March,” said Arthur. “As a reminder that summer will come again.”

It was a lovely afternoon and evening, and the bottle of very nice wine they managed to polish off added a warm comfort to a potentially awkward time. Compass insisted on helping with the clean up, so the three of them crowded into the kitchen to do the dishes. Compass told her grandparents about Henry and Sophie, and Ginny decided that she had to go visit her daughter if for no other reason than to see if she could hear the music.

“Obviously they only play for the people they approve of,” said Ginny.

“And for cats,” said Compass, smiling. “They love my cats.”

When the dishes were done and dried and put away, the three of them adjourned to the living room. Arthur built them a fire and Ginny brought out the hot chocolate, and Compass felt like she was being given a second chance at the childhood she’d missed. They offered her a bed for the night, and as it was already fairly late, she accepted. A quick phone call to Todd covered the cats, and with everything settled, Compass snuggled in for real.

“So, granddaughter,” said Arthur, bushy eyebrows doing calisthenics above his nose, “what really brings you here?”

Compass thoughtfully squished a mini-marshmallow against the roof of her mouth while she considered her own motives. “First, family,” she said. “I’m pretty sure this is the first family evening I’ve ever had. Mom and I didn’t talk, really; I read books, and she . . . huh. I’m not really sure what she did. I know we spent evenings at home together, but what did she do during that time? She kept a journal, and she used to write in that, I remember, because every time she had it out she had to find some new way to threaten me about ever touching it.”

“She’s done that since she was a little girl,” Arthur said. “Only pink, flowered, little-girl diary on the block to be wrapped in razor wire.”

“She was the only little girl wrapped in razor wire,” said Ginny. “A little mean from the get-go, was our girl.”

“Why is that? You two are so nice!”

“She spent a lot of her early childhood sick with asthma, bronchitis, all kinds of problems,” Ginny said. “And the rest of it fat. She had no friends until she slimmed down in high school, and by then she’d learned to be mistrustful of everyone. I think she felt she’d been cheated. She probably had, really, but she was never able to let go of the resentment.”

“She ran off to England when she was just 17,” Arthur added. “That way she could punish us without having to learn a second language.” He poked the fire, sending sparks up the chimney. “So that’s one reason; what’s another?”

“Answers,” Ginny said. “You want answers, isn’t that it? Do you even know for sure what your questions are?”

Grandma was right. Compass was all-over questions, but she was having trouble sorting them out. There was so much shouting going on in her head, she couldn’t think with all that noise.

“I think I want to know the colors of their hats,” said Compass.

Ginny looked puzzled, but Arthur understood right away. “Black or white, good guy or bad guy, right? Whose side to be on, which team to cheer for, or even what the teams are?”

Compass pulled out her laptop. She’d copied all of Oliver’s posts into a Word file which she now showed to her grandparents.

“It’s sort of awful, not knowing if your father loves you or is gunning for you,” she said. “I mean, I guess love is asking a bit much, since he’s never actually met me, but I’d be happy with ‘doesn’t want to kill me,’ at the moment. It’s not the best foundation for a relationship, but there are worse.”

Arthur sat next to her on the couch and put an arm around her shoulder. “I guess our Wilhelmina’s not the only one who was cheated out of a childhood.”

“I didn’t get the typical version,” Compass said, and couldn’t resist snuggling a bit closer to her vanilla-tobacco-scented grandfather, “but it was OK. I mean, she was drunk and nasty a lot of the time, but I don’t think I’m traumatized or anything.”

Arthur took the computer from Compass’s lap and brought it closer to his face. “Hard to gauge, isn’t he? One minute nice enough, the next a bit mean-sounding.”

“Oh, the Idiot could be charming, that’s true,” said Ginny. “When he was sober. I never met the man in person, but we had a conversation or two over the years, and six lines of dialogue in, I’d find myself giggling. Giggling! I don’t giggle; it’s undignified. He’d try to charm Willy’s phone number out of me, and I’d try not to let him.”

“But is he a good guy or a bad guy? I find myself wanting to respond. I mean, he’s been writing these letters to me for years, that’s got to mean something, right?”

“But you only have his word for that,” Ginny gently reminded her. “He could be writing those letters right now, for all we know.”

Compass leaned her head on her grandfather’s shoulder. “Shit. Sorry.”

“I think I’d wait a bit yet,” Ginny said. “Don’t respond. Stay safe for now and give us all time to find out more.” Ginny patted Compass’s knee and took her granddaughter’s cup into the kitchen to refill it. The second cup of chocolate had even more marshmallows than the first. “When Willy was pregnant with you, when she and Jeremy were together, I think she had some genuine happiness. It was the softest I’d ever seen her. Even her smiles had fewer teeth in them, if you know what I mean.”

Compass nodded. She did.

“Losing Jeremy put her over the edge, in some critical way,” Arthur said. “She cut herself off from everyone; told us you were born with the cord wrapped around your neck, and that was the end of you. We should never have believed her.”

“So it really was death by garbage truck at the hospital, just like she said?”

A look passed between her grandparents. A significant look.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Ginny, and she picked up her own cup and disappeared back into the kitchen. Arthur just nodded and began poking the fire again.

“There’s something more here,” said Compass. “What is it?”

“It’s late, that’s what it is,” said Ginny. “I’ll just put some clean sheets on the guest bed.”

“I’ll see if I can’t rustle up a nightshirt for you,” said Arthur, and they both rushed out of the room. As much as 80-year-olds can rush, anyway. When they returned, a longish time later, they were clearly done with tonight’s conversation. Compass was presented with a towel, a toothbrush and an oversized t-shirt to sleep in. She was bundled to bed as if she were ten years old, and she found herself too tired to resist. If her grandparents were hiding something from her, they were doing so with good intentions. She’d weasel it out of them tomorrow.

On her way from the guest bathroom to the guest bed, she could hear them talking rather intensely in the kitchen. She didn’t want to eavesdrop, but a few words reached her anyway: “murder” was the one that kept her awake that night.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Freezer Burn

2007-07-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

After a couple of nearly sleepless nights, Compass decided not to take Mark’s advice about having someone nearby when she read her father’s blog. In fact, she ignored Mark’s advice completely, willingly and with malice aforethought. Well, maybe not malice, exactly, but there was a certain amount of chafing. That “passive” remark still stung, and Compass decided the best way to take the sting out of the bee was to ignore the bee’s advice and take charge of the situation herself.

She sat down at her computer, turned it on with a determined poke of the finger, ignored all the siren websites that sought to lure her away from her real purpose. No lolcats today, she told herself firmly. She went directly to DragonflyDad and read the two entries posted there.

It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. Oliver seemed reasonably unthreatening and sane, so far, and Compass couldn’t deny that he had a point. Mina had always played fast and loose with the truth – the big truths and the little ones – and Compass knew from childhood that virtually anything Mina said should be verified through at least two other, neutral sources.

Mina lied to protect herself, to get what she wanted, to get herself out of trouble or others into it, for profit, for fun, for the sheer hell of seeing what she could get away with. Compass had grown up believing, for example, that milk came out of a cow’s nose rather than its teats: Mina hated milk and refused to have it in the house – grossing Compass out was a sure way to keep her from trying it somewhere else, liking it and insisting Mina buy her some. Once Mina showed up drunk to a parent-teacher conference (the being drunk wasn’t the shocking part; the fact that she’d showed up was); the next day, she tried to convince Compass to tell the teacher her mother was suffering from MS. It was one of the few times that Compass defied her mother’s edicts. Had Mina gone to the conference, she would have discovered that her daughter’s teacher actually had MS. Compass told the teacher that her mother was on medication which made her woozy. It was still a lie, but on the range of horribleness of lies, this one seemed less so.

She had taken to keeping a log. Every time something else went pear-shaped, she wrote it down. At first, it was an excercise in maintaining sanity despite the world’s continued efforts to bump her off balance, but now she found that she was almost looking forward to the next disaster so she’d have something to write about. Were this life happening to someone else, she realized, it would be interesting, perhaps even fun. So she made it happen to someone else. Putting her life’s odd knocks into the third person helped her find her equilibrium, gave her some measure of peace.

It puts the Librium in equilibrium, she decided, and named herself Margaret. All her life she’d wanted a name that didn’t require a second try: “Name please?” “Compass.” “Excuse me?” “Compass.” “Like the north, south, east, west thing?” “Yes. Like that.” It always took at least two goes plus a definition and often a full-on spelling before people accepted it. Jokes along the lines of “Well, I guess I know who to ask for directions!” had haunted her entire life, clinging to every introduction like leeches. Nowadays she responded to name inquiries with, “Let me spell it for you, C, O, M . . . ” etc. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t actually put the letters together in a meaningful way, and the rest of the “my, what an unusual name” conversation could be avoided.

After reading her father’s blog and updating her log with the new details, Compass sat at her computer, staring blankly at the screen. Mark was right. She had been passive, not just in recent weeks with all the “who’s your daddy” stuff, but for most of her life up to now. Mina had such excess of character and personality, that Compass had spent a lifetime leaning back, fifteenth row center, watching, judging, eating popcorn. She hadn’t needed to actually do anything; she floated along, letting Mina entertain her, make decisions for her; letting Mina act while she only reacted.

Several years ago, she’d had a bout with panic disorder. She’d spent months stumbling around in a haze of fear, heart pounding, wanting to fight or flee but having nothing to fight with or flee from. She grew paranoid that her life was only her imagination; that she was actually wrapped in a strait-jacket, keening, in a mental hospital somewhere. It was the most horrible time of her life, and while she never seriously considered jumping out a window, it suddenly became clear how other people could. She couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, got only brief periods of calm between episodes before her fear of the next attack actually brought it on.

In the end, it took a few days of therapy, then some highly targeted medicine, and the whole episode was virtually over. Occasional panic attacks still interrupted her life, but she had learned how to handle them now. She had, she now realized, taken the most interesting thing about her and co-opted it into the drab reality of herself. Her panic was the young, shocking, edgy Eddie Murphy, but she’d tamed it, flattened it out, rendered it dowdy and dull, turned it into the Doctor Doolittle-era Eddie Murphy. Some part of her had been crying out for her attention, shouting for her to do something, be something, and she’d ignored it at her peril, inviting chaos so overwhelming that even now scraps of it still remained.

Unbelievably, a single pill had broken the cycle of panic long enough to allow her to regain control and begin putting herself back together again. And because the cure had been so “easy,” compared to the disorder, she’d lost her respect for the fear, hadn’t learned the lesson her body was trying to teach her. She thought perhaps she understood it now.

It was no good blaming Mina. Yes, Compass was frozen, and perhaps Mina had stuck her in the deep-freeze, but how hard had Compass really tried to get out? It was oddly comfortable here, despite the blue lips. The question really was, where to begin?

Compass didn’t post a response to her father’s blog. There was still too much here she didn’t trust; she preferred to keep what few cards she had close to her chest. But she felt that at least this time she was choosing not to act, rather than simply not acting. It wasn’t much of a start, but the situation called for caution.

A compass is a tool that others use when they’ve lost their way, Compass thought. It doesn’t point the way for itself. Well, screw that.

The current quarter was almost at an end. Compass had classes tentatively scheduled for spring, but she decided she had other things to do and just enough in her savings account to do them. She called all her schools and turned down the hours, her voice trembling only a little. Then she called her grandparents and asked if she could visit.

Compass Jones: Cast of Characters

2007-07-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

Compass Jones: 39, English teacher, single-with-cats.

Wilhelmina (Mina) Jones: Compass's caustic, oft-inebriated mother.

Jeremy Jones (deceased): Compass's father, or so the story goes.

Todd: token gay neighbor. Early 40s; neither fey nor frilly, but still fabulous.

Mark: entomologist, 40-ish, bald, brainy.

Ethan Robson: one of the Mina-Oliver-Ethan triumvirate. An academic with a past.

Ginny: Mina's mother (presumably) and therefore Compass's gran.

Arthur: Mina's father (presumably) and therefore Compass's gramps.

Oliver: late 60s-ish, highly suspect Brit. A past more checkered than Yasir Arafat's headscarf.

Henry and Sophie: Mina's ghosts.

the Girls: Compass's spoiled, rotund cats.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Close Encounters

2007-07-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Compass stumbled out of her mother’s house and climbed on her bike to ride home. A morning which had seemed relatively promising, weather-wise, had descended into that wet, spitting misery Seattle is so good at. She might as well have left her glasses at home for all the good they did her, and she swiped at them furiously as she rode. This was the worst time to be on a bike: the mist made it impossible to see anything, and the beginning rains after any period of dry brought up the oil on the roads and made them slippery. The words “too much” kept circling through her head, keeping pace with her pedalling. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch on the flats and downhills, t o o m u c h t o o m u c h on the ups.

After several near wipe-outs, Compass finally pulled over and tried to get her emotional feet back under her. It was, of course, entirely possible that her mother was lying about the cancer, and she wasn’t sure what was worse: that her mother would lie, despite Compass’ ultimatum, or that her mother might really have cancer, might actually die. And Compass was horrified at herself. Was she really so selfish she’d almost rather her mother have a life-threatening disease than be willing to lose her? A sudden stomach cramp bent Compass over her handlebars. She hunched there, sobbing, as the skies opened up above her.

Two hours later, swathed in a thick robe, freshly washed and warmed and gripping a cup of comfort- and peppermint schnapps-laced hot chocolate, things looked marginally better. Or Compass cared marginally less, it was hard to tell. She had piled onto the couch with the girls and a large bowl of popcorn and was preparing to watch Princess Bride for the umpty-umpth time when someone knocked, rather urgently, on her door. Compass considered ignoring it, decided that would be unwise, then rather warily checked the peephole. It was Mark.

“What’s up?”

He waved a newspaper in front of her face. “Did you see today’s PI?”

“Can’t say as I have. Why?”

Mark glanced back over his shoulder in a way that bordered on cliché and would have been funny if it weren’t slightly creepy. “You’re in it.” He pushed past her, closed her door and latched it from the inside.

“Oh, hoorah,” said Compass, not even particularly interested in hearing the details. She went into her bedroom to put on some clothes, then wandered back into her living room, shooed the cats away from the buttery popcorn and resolutely took up her place on the couch. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” said Mark, and he moved cats and chocolate to make room for the paper on her coffee table. He spread out the paper, then turned to the Lifestyles section. One whole page of the paper was dedicated to a rather unusual, eye-catching ad. A picture of an old fashioned compass dial took up nearly the entire page. It was set at a slight angle, so that the N arrow pointed at the NE corner of the paper. In giant print at the top of the page was the legend, “Looking for you. Need directions.” At the bottom, just to the right of the S arrow, in a font meant to look like handwriting, it read, “Love, Dad.”

They sat and stared in silence for a long moment. Mark shifted slightly, turned to look at her, but Compass continued staring at the paper in front of her. Finally, the gears in her brain meshed up again and she could speak.

“Any chance this isn’t for me?

Mark pointed at the paper. Directly in the center of the compass, where all the arrows meet, there was perched a tiny dragonfly. “I doubt it.”

“Crap.”

“This doesn’t mean he’s here in town,” said Mark. “He could order this ad from anywhere. And he’s being open about the fact that he’s looking for you. That’s got to be a good thing.”

Compass dropped a couple of pieces of popcorn on the floor for the cats to lick. “There’s no contact information,” she said. “No phone number, no address.”

“Actually, there is,” said Mark. And he was right. Along one side of a compass arrow was a tiny URL: http://dragonflydad.blogspot.com/.

“No, this is ridiculous. This can’t be meant for me.”

“Because Compass is such a common name.”

“Why go to all this trouble? I’m in the bloody phone book!”

“No, you’re not. Remember? The student stalker?”

Mark was right. Just over a year ago, a student had been given a grade with which he vehemently disagreed. He’d shown his displeasure by showing up at Compass’ apartment, poorly written compositions clutched in his fists, face red with rage and sporting those gross dry mucousy things in the corners of his mouth. Fearing for her cats, Compass got a restraining order, then moved as soon as her lease was up. Even though that student was now on meds and reportedly “doing much better,” Compass requested that she not be listed in the phone book anymore.

“Shit.”

“This doesn’t have to be bad, Compass. He’s trying to contact you; that doesn’t mean he wants to hurt you.”

“He wants the emerald. Mom has it, he knows it, and I’m the thing between.”

“Let’s look at the website.”

“No.”

“Why not? It can’t hurt.”

She didn’t know why. “It’s too much.” She told Mark about the conversation with her mother. Somewhere in the telling, he sat beside her on the couch, took one of her hands in both of his. “And the worst of it is, I’m not sure if she’s lying or dying. No, that’s actually the second worst. The real worst: I’m not sure which I’m hoping for. That makes me possibly the shittiest person alive.”

“Wow. I mean, no, you aren’t the shittiest, possibly not even in the top ten.” He smiled at her. “And your mom’s indestructible. She’ll find a way to get around this too. She’s very slippery, is Mina. And actually, I think you should be proud of yourself for going over there this morning and demanding some answers.”

“Proud? I would have snapped her arm in two in another minute.”

“Compass, for the last several weeks, all kinds of weird, crazy stuff has been happening to you. This is possibly the first real step you’ve taken to meet it.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want this to sound bad, but you’ve been a little . . . passive. Wave after wave, crashing in on you; now it sounds like you’re ready to take up arms and fight back.”

“That sounds bad. Despite the disclaimer,” said Compass, stung. “And it’s a mixed metaphor.”

“I’m not saying I would have or could have done any better. But I’m glad to see you standing up.”

“Well, thanks, I guess. I appreciate your help, I really do. And I will fight back. But I’ll do it my way when I’m ready, OK? First I need to figure out if fighting is actually called for.”

“Fair enough. But . . .” Mark stopped, looked uncertain.

“Go ahead. Advise,” she sighed.

“Don’t tell him where you are, OK? No address, no phone number, don’t contact him at all. In fact, it might be better to stay away from your mom’s for awhile too. No doubt he knows where she is.”

“I’ve already thought about that,” said Compass, who hadn’t. “I think staying away from Mom’s might be a good idea on several fronts.”

Mark hesitated for a brief but noticeable space: “Do you know what kind of cancer she has?”

Compass could hear the unspoken, parenthetical “(might have)” in his voice.

“No, she didn’t say, and I didn’t have a chance to ask.”

“Well, knowing your mom, she probably had a mole frozen off and she’s being a raging drama queen about it.”

“It’s possible.” But Compass couldn’t get the picture of the ragged, shabby woman she’d talked to this morning out of her head. Mina wouldn’t wash her car without being immaculately groomed. She wouldn’t wash her car, period, but if she had to do it herself, Compass was sure Mina’s hair and makeup would be perfect.

“I think you should have someone with you when you check the website.”

“You’re just full of advice this morning,” said Compass, feeling unaccountably light and cheerful all of a sudden. Her mind and body had apparently taken as much darkness as they could handle. The rain was over, sunlight streamed through the window sheers, and Compass suddenly wanted to get on her bike and ride her woes away. She practically pushed Mark out the door in her hurry to strap on her helmet and hit the road. She had some food in her fridge that would make a lovely picnic lunch, and Seward Park was a healthy riding distance away. She’d take a blanket and a book, huddle up on a bench and watch for eagles.

“Compass, this could be serious. I just want you to be careful.”

“Mmmmm,” said Compass, in what she hoped was an I agree, I’ll be careful, please go away now sort of tone. Mark had been great, he was great, but right now Compass just wanted to point her front tire toward the sunshine. Mark was right – it was time for her to take this whole mystery head-on. But to do that, she’d need to get her head straight. Otherwise her head-on would be more of a head-angled-to-one-side oblique sort of thing, and that wouldn’t do. So she packed her bag with hard-boiled eggs and cheese and crackers and cut up apples and baby carrots – brain food.

Halfway to Seward Park, Compass hit a pothole, hard, and jarred loose a revelation. Her father was in Seattle. And she’d already met him.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Showdown

2007-07-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Compass showed up at her mother’s door. It was early. She hadn’t called first. This time, there would be no alerts beforehand, no warning shots across the bow, no chance for Mina to hitch up her skirts and head for the hills. Compass wanted answers. Hell, she was entitled to them. She was in danger, after all: people were lurking! There was actual lurking involved here. In the course of her normal life, nothing lurked except her cats, and they were too fat to do it right. Now it was an epidemic: people were lurking in every alley, around every corner. Lurking was high on the list of Compass’ least favorite activities to be on the wrong side of. She was pissed off enough to confront Mina now, even early-morning, pre-coffee, why-the-expletive-didn’t-you-call-first Mina. Probably.

Compass started out knocking, but as she heard her mother moving around inside without actually moving toward the door, she gave up knocking and started pounding. Pounding moved to full-on body-checking: a running-start, hip-first, full-body slam that made the heavy oak door shake on its hinges. Three or four of those, and even Mina could no longer ignore her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mina shrieked as she yanked open the door.

Horrified, Compass almost laughed out loud. Sleek, feline Mina with the perfect face and coiffure had been replaced by a wild-eyed harridan with panicked hair, breath that could drop a rhino, and a bathrobe that had recently spent time in the garbage disposal. She held an empty shot glass in one hand. For the first time ever, Compass felt a jolt of pity for her mother.

“Get out.”

It was short-lived.

“No. You owe me some answers.”

“I don’t owe you anything. For christ’s sake, Compass, you’re 42-”

“Thirty-nine.”

Mina giggled. She was still a little drunk. “What year did I say you were born in?”

“I saw the birth certificate, Mom. I’m 39.”

Compass shoved past her mother, pulled her away from the door and shut it behind them. She was astonished by how angry she was, and how powerful it made her feel. Mina was a pathetic drunk, and Compass was ashamed at how thoroughly cowed she’d been by this woman. She pulled Mina over to the couch and pushed her onto it.

“You owe me some answers. And not just answers. I want proof.”

“And why is that, dear; don’t you trust me?”

Compass shared with her mother an ability to raise one eyebrow in a manner that said, You are so thoroughly full of manure, I could raise roses in your mouth. She raised that eyebrow now. Mina tried to raise her own in response, but her face wouldn’t cooperate. She threw the shotglass, bouncing it off the wall.

“Proof, Mina.”

“What the hell else do you need to know? You ransacked my house while I was gone, destroyed that box I told you never to look into, prowled through the boxes in the attic, invaded my privacy-”

“Mom!” Compass shouted. “Shut the hell up!” She walked across the room and picked up the shotglass. “I don’t give six shits about your privacy.” She threw the glass, shattering it on the fireplace. “You are a wretched, drunken, bloated old cow who has lied to me about everything in my life. Everything! I met a couple of old people not too long ago – they might be my grandparents. Notice I said ‘might.’ Most people are clear on things like grandparents. Those same old people who have been staring down at you your entire life, those people who dispensed wisdom and made you cookies and gave you ten bucks when you came around and watched you graduate from high school; those people who wrote you letters about what’s growing in their garden this year and how Aunt Frannie had her spleen removed, and who at the senior center cheats at canasta, those people are your grandparents. Not a hell of a lot of mystery there. Me? I get taken to lunch by a pair of friendly seeming old people, and I have to worry whether they’re secretly planning to poison my eggs and bury me in their basement. Now suppose you shut the fuck up about your privacy,” here her voice dropped to a hissing whisper, “and fill in some of the gaps.”

Mina was clearly more than a little taken aback by this creature in her living room. For 39 years she’d had a daughter who was meek, timid, careful, at least around her mother. This person who pounded on doors and threw glassware and curse words was new. Mina’s eyes took on that snaky, crafty look of someone planning their next move. Compass leaned down and took hold of her mother’s shoulders, not gently.

“I don’t know how much this will matter to you, but if you lie to me again, even just one lie, even a really small one, you will never see me again. Do you understand?” Compass meant it. And finally, she knew she was strong enough to do it. She didn’t want to – she really wanted those answers – but she’d rather walk away never knowing than let Mina play headgames with her anymore.

The sly look disappeared, and suddenly Mina just looked old. The woman was in her 60s, after all, but she’d always hidden it so well, Compass had half expected to find a painting of an aged, decrepit, withered old crone in the attic. But now the old crone was here on the couch, looking every minute of her age and every inch of her lifestyle.

“I don’t care if I never see you again.” Mina’s voice was as dull as her eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment, Compass still gripping Mina’s shoulders. Then Mina laughed. “You’re still here, so obviously you don’t think I’m lying when I say I don’t care.”

Compass didn’t say anything. Mina was right: her instinct, on hearing that her mother didn’t care about her, was to believe it. Virtually any other thing that came out of her mother’s mouth had to be double-checked and cross-referenced for accuracy and truthfulness, but this, this she had believed without question. It made her feel sick.

“I’ve known that for a very long time,” Compass said, quietly. She let go of Mina’s shoulders, sat down in a chair across from her. “Now tell me some things I don’t know.”

It took most of the morning. Compass made them both coffee, and later, eggs and toast which neither of them ate.

Arthur and Ginny were Mina’s parents. She loathed them to a degree worthy of a angst-ridden teenager. They were provincial and plump and content, and Mina preferred to think of herself as descended from sleeker stock. She insisted there was nothing nefarious in her refusal to put grandparents and grandchild together; she simply didn’t like her parents and didn’t want to give them an additional reason to involve themselves in her life.

“You went to some pretty spectacular lengths to keep us apart. You expect me to believe that it’s because you don’t like them, and that’s all?”

“Believe what you want. Arthur and Ginny didn’t approve of my life, didn’t approve of me, would likely have had me declared an unfit mother and had you taken away.”

“I’m trying to see the downside here. Oh, right. You’d be without your insurance policy then.”

“You were my daughter. Smug, self-righteous little prig that you were, you were my daughter, and I’d be damned if I’d let someone else raise you.”

“Touching. No, really. I’m touched. Drunken, neglectful, acid-tongued, jewel-thieving harpy, who else should have responsibility for a child?”

“You think I was too critical.”

“I think Genghis Khan was more forthcoming with the praise.”

“I was raising you to be strong.”

“You were raising me to jump at every shadow,” said Compass.

“It’s my fault you took everything the wrong way?” asked her mother.

“Was there ever a Jeremy Jones?” Compass refused to be led off topic. It would be easy enough to do: she desperately wanted to let Mina know what a truly lousy parent she had been, how Compass had come to regard her entire childhood as an open wound. But Mina would never hear it. Compass could waste all the time and breath she wanted, but Mina would never hear, would never care. So Compass plowed on, the myths of her life piling up on the roadsides.

“There was a Jeremy Jones. We met on the airplane from London. I was about three weeks pregnant. He was very civilized and looked enough like Oliver that just in case you looked like your father, no one would wonder.”

“Wow. Is there anything in life that you aren’t cold and calculated about?”

“I believe in being prepared. Pour something in this coffee. If I have to spend this many hours on a couch with you, I’m going to need reinforcements.”

“No. Did Jeremy know that I wasn’t his?”

“Jeremy had very advanced denial skills.”

“He’d need them. So you introduced yourself over Greenland and were married before you hit the ground in Chicago, huh? Poor shmuck, he never knew what hit him.”

“Jeremy never regretted a thing.”

“I’ll bet.”

Mina abruptly smacked her daughter across the face. “You can trample on and judge my history all you want, but you know nothing about Jeremy. So back off, little girl. That part of my life has nothing to do with you.”

Compass was stunned – not from the slap, which was one of Mina’s favorite argumentative strategies – but from the fact that she’d apparently touched a nerve. Mina had a nerve, had a moment in her life worth protecting. That was shocking.

“Why is all of this coming up now? Why, after all this time? What started it all off? Was it Todd telling me about the blood stuff?”

“No, of course not. I’ve had my cover-up story ready for years. In fact, I can’t believe it took you this long to figure it out. And it wasn’t even you who figured it out! According to Todd, you had to have it laboriously explained to you. Good lord, child; do you ever pay attention to real life, the actual people around you? Or are they only real and interesting if they’re in a book?”

“You’re boring me pretty badly right now, for example,” said Compass. “How about answering that question.”

Mina yawned theatrically. “I’m tired. Let’s finish this some other time.”

Compass waved her nearly full glass of coffee over one of the couch cushions. “Keep talking or the couch gets it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This ‘couch’ cost $11,000 and was imported from Paris. It’s one of a kind.”

Compass tilted her glass a little further, and a little further still. Her mother, slit-eyed, still said nothing. Compass let a single drop fall, a drop which Mina miraculously intercepted, though it meant sprawling across her daughter’s lap. “Stop that! Goddamit!”

“I’ll destroy every beautiful thing in this home, Mina. I can do it, too. Hell, look what I’ve done to you, in just one morning.”

Mina raised her hand to hit her daughter again, but this time Compass saw it coming. She caught her mother’s bony wrist mid-smack.

“What started all this?” Compass would never have believed herself capable of violence, but now she had to stop herself from deliberately squeezing her mother’s wrist to the point of pain.

“Fine. I’m out of money,” Mina said. “Or nearly. I contacted your father to sell him the Hines emerald. I have cancer and I can’t afford the treatments. I can get a note from my oncologist if you don’t believe me.” She paused for a moment, but Compass was too shocked to speak. “Your father won’t buy it. He can’t own the emerald because of the curse. But he can take it back to the Museum and collect the very generous reward. He’s afraid I’ll sell it to someone else, so he’s come for it, but I won’t let him have it. And now it’s a race to see which kills me first.” Mina stood up, pulling her wrist easily from Compass’ slack grip. “I think I’ll just go have my shower now.”

As soon as she was gone, Compass burst into tears. And spilled her coffee on the couch.

Chapter Twenty-One: Falling Apart at the Seems

2007-06-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

After the phone call with Ethan, Compass rallied her troops. Both of them.

Todd and Mark were edgily OK with each other – Mark had the straight boy’s discomfort of hanging out with a gay man who he suspected of being attracted to him; Todd was simultaneously annoyed and amused by this, and he kept subtly flirting with Mark until Compass told him to stop it.

She provided tea and shortbread cookies. Todd brought margarita mix and a blender. The tea slowly grew cold, swaddled as it was in the hideous, knitted scarf a former student had made for her and which served as a cozy. It was fairly late when they met up, all had work to go to tomorrow, but they drank margaritas and small-talked until it was very late and they were drunk enough to big-talk.

Compass gave them a quick and rather less polished version of Amelia Hines and her cursed emerald (in her head, Compass couldn’t stop pronouncing it curse-ed), rounding the story off with the Big Truth: “My dad stayed with my mom because she was his insurance policy against the curse of the emerald. I was born because I was her insurance against him. My father’s mother died when he was just a kid, and I guess it devastated his family – he wouldn’t leave his own child motherless. Particularly as he wasn’t about to take over raising me himself. As long as there was a me, he wouldn’t go after her.”

“So what’s different now?” Mark slouched on the couch, his head lolling on the back. Todd dangled a shortbread cookie over Mark’s mouth which Mark gracelessly swatted away.

“Well, lots of things seem to be colliding, as far as I can figure,” said Compass. “I can’t quite figure out what was the tipping point here. First, Todd figures out that I’m not my father’s daughter after all. He has since confessed to accidentally tipping mom off to my new information and indignation,” and here she reached over to swat at Todd herself. “Mom hightails it to points European, where she finds Ethan and communicates to him that I am hot on the trail of the other half of my DNA. Which I’m not, actually; I just have some questions that Mina would rather not answer.”

“So we’re in mortal danger, and it’s all my fault. Gosh, I’m powerful.” Todd stretched out on the floor, rolled over onto his stomach. “I can’t believe she didn’t just lie to you. It’s not like she’s never lied before. Why not just tell you she went to a sperm bank or something?”

“Right. Because she was so desperate to be a mother? Please. Gerbils who eat their young show more maternal compassion. And what do you mean she’s lied to me before?”

“Well, there’s the whole ‘you know that guy under the garbage truck? Yeah, that was your dad.’ Pretty convenient, him getting squished.”

“Todd, come on. He may not have been her father, but he was an actual person,” Mark said.

“We have only Mina’s word for it. And Mina’s word is usually ‘shit,’ if you catch my clever double meaning there.” He gave Mark a long, slow wink, but by this point, Mark was tequila- and exposure-innoculated against Todd’s attempts to unsettle him.

“He has a point, Compass,” said Mark. “Was there ever actually a Jeremy Jones? Is there a gravestone? Pictures? Paperwork?”

Compass thought back, as far as her tequila-addled brain would allow. “Nooooooo . . . I mean, I was told there was, but I never actually saw any of that. In those boxes, there was one picture of a man identified as ‘Jeremy,’ and in that letter to my mom, my dad refers to a ‘baboon’ – or was it ‘buffoon’? – my mother married. But she could have lied to him too, I guess. There were sympathy cards, but no personal messages. Just signatures, on every one. I thought that was a little weird.”

“No grandparents, no aunts or uncles, nobody showing up claiming kinship?” Mark asked.

“Not on that side of the family, anyway.”

“Speaking of family, have you heard from Granny and Gramps?” Todd poured himself the dregs of the last pitcher of margaritas.

“I called and left a message that Mom was home and I’d moved out. They haven’t called back.” Compass shuffled into the kitchen and retrieved an almost-full bottle of cheap white wine and the last of the tequila.

“Wow. Seriously, that’s impressive. She invented an entire history and managed to get everyone to believe it,” said Mark.

“Until now,” Todd said. “Now it’s unraveling like an ugly knitted scarf doubling as a tea cozy.”

“Well, Ethan did say mom spent her time at the Museum making up stories to tell her tour groups.”

“Lettuce and Lovage.”

“Sorry?”

Todd chuckled a little. “Sorry, my gay is showing. It’s a play by Peter Shaffer about a woman tour guide who makes up stuff. Or she tells the ruder stuff they’re not supposed to tell, I can’t remember.”

“Do you suppose any of this is real?” Compass lay flat on the floor, an invitation to her two cats to come pile on top of her, which they promptly did. When she next spoke, she risked a hairball, but spoke, muffled, anyway. “Is my mom a character in a play, and all of this is an elaborate ruse to make me nuts?”

“Sweetie, tangled hangers make you nuts. If making you nuts is the goal, there are much cheaper, easier ways of going about it.”

Compass stopped petting a cat to flip Todd off, an act which annoyed the cat far more than it annoyed Todd.

“Could we please continue with the schedule of events here? Your mom takes off for Europe, why does she contact Ethan? Maybe she thought he would know where Oliver is?” Mark closed his eyes. “I just don’t get why she would tip her hand that way. You have no way of finding your father without her help, she has no intention of helping you, end of story. There was no reason to drag in the Euro-contingent, was there?”

“Well, there’s still the question of the emerald,” said Todd.

“Right, but as far as we know, he hasn’t been asking for it,” said Compass. “And is it odd that, after 39 years, suddenly my grandparents appear on the scene? I mean, us finding out about each other looked coincidental and good-timingy, but might it have been according to someone’s Grand Design?”

“Whose? Not Mina’s, surely,” said Mark.

“Maybe she’s tired of keeping secrets?” said Compass. Both men gave her looks before all three of them started barking with laughter. Tequila- and sleeplack-fueled, the laughter took some time to moderate to chuckles, then to sporadic snorts. “Sorry,” Compass said, when her lungs had re-inflated. “I knew how stupid that was, but I couldn’t stop it.”

“Do you suppose only straight men can’t own it?” Todd was musing. Chin on hand, elbow on floor, a position ripe for late-night musing. “Or does the curse apply to anything with a penis? Or formerly with a penis? How LBGT-friendly is this emerald?”

“Why would anyone want it? It’s not like you could sell it. I mean, wouldn’t it be identified pretty easily?” asked Compass.

“There are a lot of shady collectors out there,” said Mark. “People who covet rare objects just to own them, even if they can’t display them. The thrill of possessing something that’s one-of-a-kind, I suppose. Lots of people own paintings they know were stolen by the Nazis, but they just quietly keep them. Beautiful, valuable things can make people really stupid.”

“And therein lies the secret to Mina’s success,” said Compass.

“To Mina’s success!” said Mark, and they all raised their glasses.

“So these elderly folk seemed grandparenty?” asked Todd.

“They did,” Compass confirmed, nodding as best she could with a cat on her face.

“And the British chap seemed on-the-level?”

“He did, indeed,” said Compass.

“The story of the gem-laden dragonflies, seems, crazy as it is, to have a ring of truth?”

“So it seems,” said Compass.

“That there, little lady, is a lot of ‘seems’,” said Todd.

“I know,” Compass sighed. “My life is falling apart at the seems.”

Mark had been holding his liquor pretty well up to the last toast, but suddenly he seemed all-over sloppy drunk. “You know,” he mumbled at Todd, “you don’t seem gay. I mean gay in the ster- steroi- stereotypish sense.”

“Too butch?”

“No, just not . . . frilly.”

“It’s all the rage now,” said Todd, “this manliness shtick we’re on.” He sighed. “Whatever happened to fey ways?”

That set them all off giggling again, and Compass had to admit that they were too punch-drunk (and actual-drunk) to get any further tonight. She managed to cobble together enough extra pillows and blankets for her guests, and she bedded them down in the living room – Todd on the couch, Mark on the floor. Compass was still pretty wired, so she booted up her computer and wrote more notes until she unwound enough to fall asleep. When she checked in on the boys, each was asleep and snoring, each with a cat draped somewhere across them.

Count your blessings, she told herself, though she didn’t believe in blessings so much as in blind luck. Still, it didn’t hurt to remember to be grateful for the good stuff once in awhile. “One, two, three, four.” She pointed to all the living things in her living room, then shut off the light and went to bed.

Chapter Twenty: Up from the Ashes

2007-05-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

“Yes?” Compass had waited nearly the whole day before calling Ethan back. This gave her the unplanned-for advantage of waking him in the middle of the night and catching him off guard: she could hear the 4 a.m.-beard-growth in his voice. “Yes? Who’s there?”

The feeling of having heard that voice before was even stronger this time. It wasn’t that she recognized the sound of him exactly, more that his voice resonated somewhere in her history, like a bell being struck in the far-off distance.

“Hello?” Compass heard the rustling of bedclothes, a sleepy woman’s voice in the background asking what was the matter. Compass felt instantly guilty, as though she’d somehow managed to drag an innocent bystander into the middle of her maelstrom. Whoever this woman was, she was a passer-by, a looker-on, and Compass wanted to open her hands and let the woman go.

“It’s Compass Jones. Tell her everything’s fine,” she whispered at Ethan.

“It’s fine, dear,” said Ethan, though it suddenly wasn’t. “Go back to sleep. I’m going to change to a different phone,” he said to Compass. “Hold the line a moment.”

There was a thunk of a phone hitting a bedside table, then a muttered conversation with the woman, the clicks of one phone being picked up and another put down. Compass waited, her heart beating too fast. It was 8 p.m. in Seattle which made it, what, 4 a.m. in London? She debated hanging up, but it was too late: she’d already given her name.

“Miss Jones? Hello, are you there?”

Ethan Robson must live in a house, thought Compass, big enough that he doesn’t have to whisper now.

“I’m here.”

“Thank you for calling back. I might have hoped for a somewhat more civilized hour. . .”

There was a gap here, meant to be filled with Compass’ apology, but Compass didn’t feel like filling it. She let it hang there, gaping, until Ethan cleared his throat and began again.

“It’s 4 in the morning here. Perhaps you didn’t know you were calling overseas?”

“I knew. But we had a sunny, nice day here, and this didn’t feel like a sunny-day sort of phone call.”

“You have a point. Do you know who I am?”

“Do you have something to do with bugs? Dragonflies?”

There was an affirmative silence. An absence of denial. Compass rested her head on the back of her couch, felt one of her cats curl up around it. “So you’re a jewel thief too, then?”

“Well. You know rather more of the story than I’d expected you too.”

“You’ve told it to me already.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. Hazy memories sharpened in her mind’s eye. Or ear, in this case. “You called, a couple of times. I was a kid, but not that young. Eleven, maybe? Then again when I was fourteen or so. You begged me to bring back the dragonflies.”

“That was you? That wasn’t supposed to be you! That was your mother, surely.”

“We’ve always sounded alike. I stayed home from school many times on the power of that voice.”

“Dear god. I’ve been on borrowed time for how long? Twenty-five years? Did you never tell anyone?”

“It never made sense to me. In fact, I don’t think I ever connected the two calls until now. You were drunk. You rambled and mumbled and talked about bugs and crazy people. It didn’t mean anything to me until now.”

“God. God.” There were sounds of cabinet doors being opened, then something being poured into a glass. Whatever it was, Pepto Bismol or gin, Ethan drank it in one quick swallow.

“Is my father that dangerous?”

“Your father? Dangerous enough. Please. Don’t tell them about any of these calls. Either of them.” There was a pause. “I have a family.”

“I won’t.” Compass reached an arm back to scratch the head of the cat behind her. The cat began purring, the soft rumble a comforting vibration through the bones of Compass’ skull. “I have parents that prompt people to say things like, ‘I have a family’? Is Tom Selleck going to be involved at any point in this?”

“Sorry, who?”

“Never mind.” She sighed. The cat rested its chin on her forehead. “Tell me about my parents.”

“Your father and I worked together at the museum. Do you know about the museum?”

“I do. How did my father meet my mother?”

“She was a tour guide. She was very young. She used to make up most of what she told her tour groups.”

“She did?”

“All the time. I remember we had the Wellcome exhibit back then – a collection of medicinal objects from far-flung aboriginal tribes. It was a lot of what you might expect: crushed-beetle-wing powder, pastes made of bat spit and strawberries, that sort of thing, but your mother talked the nightwatchman into opening the display cases and letting her slip in a blood pressure monitor or a modern syringe. The next day she’d tell her groups that the abos in question had ‘remarkably developed tools’ or some such nonsense. She was so convincing, no matter how implausible the story, they couldn’t help but believe her. Your father adored that about her – how she’d tell outrageous stories and no one ever doubted her, even when they knew better. A born actress. That came in useful, later.”

“When you started stealing the jewels.”

“Well, yes. When a new piece came in, she go round saying things like, ‘That diadem that just came in is absolutely spectacular. Such a shame so many of the stones are missing.’ Of course, not a single jewel was missing, but by the time she’d made her rounds, everyone was convinced the thing was less a crown, more a sort of colander for the head.”

“So when the real stones went missing, no one thought anything of it.”

“Exactly.”

“Why are you contacting me now? This is all ancient history, nothing to do with me.” Compass heard the faux-British lilt creeping into her voice and snuffed it, embarrassed. “I’ve never even met my father.”

“You sure about that?”

“What?”

“Look, er, Compass, I’m not saying anything here, because I don’t know anything. But your mother’s on the hunt for him, and if she flushes him out, the damage could be extensive to all of us. She seems to think you started all this by finding out her secret, and now she’s got to do some sort of damage control. I have this picture in my mind of people setting the forest on fire in order to prevent an even bigger fire. But those small fires have a way of getting out of hand and setting innocent, near-by villages alight.”

“She has something he wants, doesn’t she?”

“She does. Or he suspects she does.”

But he never came after her. Compass let that thought trickle through for a moment, set it aside for later. “What is it? Is it one of the bugs in plastic?”

“Do you have them?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell you. But I guess you’ve answered my question. Good bye.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up. Look, there’s one bug in particular. If you’ve got it, get rid of it. Give it to Mina, or wrap it up in a cement package and lob it into the nearest ocean. Just don’t hold on to it if you’ve got it.”

“Tell me.” Compass closed her eyes, the rumbling tummy of the cat cushioning her head.

“It was almost too neat. It was irresistibly perfect.” Ethan slipped into his professional story-telling voice – a way of making it seem, to him, that the story had happened to three entirely other people. He’d been telling this story to himself for nearly four decades, just waiting for the chance to tell it to someone who didn’t already know it.

“The gem came from around the neck of a noblewoman named Amelia Hines. She wore a beautiful necklace of woven gold filament, quite intricate and set with many stones. But at the heart of the necklace was an emerald. It was a very rare and valuable emerald: a trapiche or star-shaped stone, likely from Columbia, though how it came to be in the hands of a seventeenth-century British woman remains a mystery. Amelia Hines was beautiful, she was rich, she was intelligent and highly educated, and in 1638, she was burned for a witch.

“At the age of 67, Amelia had outlived half a dozen husbands and at least as many lovers, yet she never got sick, nor even grew older, and it was her thick, dark hair, her perfect teeth, her straight back and unlined skin that condemned her. Unique among all the others that followed her to the flames, Amelia Hines really was a witch, and by all accounts a very powerful one. No one knew where her emerald had come from; every one of her husbands and lovers had been rich, but all their fortunes combined wouldn’t have purchased that stone.

“She wore the necklace every day of her trial, toying with the emerald, stroking it so often that her obsession with it made the public record and even led some to conclude that the stone was actually her pet toad – her familiar – charmed to look like an emerald. Legend has it that one of her guards offered to let her purchase her freedom with the stone, but she refused. She laughed in his face, telling him that because he was so simple and stupid, she’d spare him the torture and nasty death the emerald would surely bring him. No man, she told him, would ever claim ownership of that emerald and live to enjoy it. And so she went to the pyre, the stone still around her neck.”

Ethan stopped for a moment, and Compass, her mind back in the 17th century, didn’t say anything.

“Hello? Compass, are you still there?”

“I am. Please go on.”

“Very well. In those days, it was common practice in England to hang a witch first, then burn the corpse. But the judge in Amelia Hines' trial found the woman so distasteful, so unrepentantly evil, that he condemned her to die in the flames, without mercy. But even here, the witch foiled him. Instead of choking and screaming and taking hours to die, Amelia Hines went up as though she were made of paper, in a whoosh so quick the executioner nearly went with her.

“The next day, when the embers had cooled, the executioner dug through the ashes for the emerald that – by law – was now his. As his fingers closed around the stone, warm as though he’d pulled it away from her living skin, a still-burning coal popped up and flew into his grinning mouth, lodging in his throat. Afterwards, though he was still able to breathe, just, he could no longer eat, drink or speak, and he died, silently and excruciatingly, eight days later.

“From that day, the emerald passed from person to person, slowly through female hands, more quickly through the hands of men, who had a habit of dying unpleasantly shortly after taking possession.”

“He gave it to my mother to protect himself.”

“There may be little honor amongst thieves, but there is great superstition. Yes, he passed it on to your mother to avoid the curse.”

“You held it, didn’t you? And you’re still alive.”

“Like its original owner, the stone didn’t mind being touched by men, just so long as no man ever claimed to own her. It.”

“My mother must have loved that story.”

“She did. I think that’s why Oliver believes she still has the stone. No matter what its value, the legend of the stone would be more valuable still for Mina.”

“Where is the stone? Which bug is it . . . housed with?”

“This is where the cosmic forces seemed to Oliver to be insisting that he steal the emerald. Even though it meant we’d all have to leave the museum and the easy money we’d been enjoying by then for nearly a year. The gods meant for him to have it, he was sure.”

“Why? What happened?”

“On the same day that the emerald came to the museum, we also got a particularly rare dragonfly. A Hine’s emerald.”

Chapter Nineteen: Never Ever Call the Girl

2007-05-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

Ethan Robson, when he wasn't lecturing, had a wispy, scratchy, slightly panicked-sounding voice. He always sounded as if he were whispering a secret that, if overheard, would cost him dearly. Today, of course, he was right.

In all the nearly 42 years he'd known Oliver, their relationship had sat on the ragged edge of violence. Even when he and Oliver had been junior-underlings-second-class at the museum, equal in rank, duties, pay and the no-chanceness of upward mobility, there had always been the scent of potential blood in the air, bodies on the ground. He had since discovered that Mina was the truly dangerous one, but there was enough unpredictable aggression around Oliver that Ethan trod carefully.

And in the times since Ethan-and-Oliver, when it had briefly been Mina-and-Oliver-and-Ethan before dissolving into Ethan. And Oliver. And Mina-and-the-girl, one thing had been made very clear to Ethan: never ever contact the girl. It was the one thing that Oliver had no sense of humor about. Once Ethan had jokingly threatened to call the child on Father’s Day, and he’d awakened several hours later to find himself hanging upside-down from a beam in the museum by his shoelaces. Oliver later apologized for his behavior by kneeling on Ethan’s throat and shoving a rare Archmandrita tesselata in his mouth. Ethan could now assert, with some authority, that the “giant peppered cockroach” tasted nothing at all like pepper.

From that day on, Ethan had pushed all thoughts of Oliver and Mina’s daughter aside. Nearly. She had, after all, completely ruined a very good thing. In the days before her conception, before Oliver even met Mina, things had been good. In their very early 20s, living in London, lowest chickens in the museum’s rigid pecking order, Ethan the effete and Oliver the thug had formed an unlikely friendship. Ethan made Oliver laugh with his stories of the well-to-do and barmy; Oliver supplied Ethan with the prurient details of his many trysts, some of them nearly true.

At first glance, a stranger might have mistook them for brothers, but the resemblance was superficial. Ethan was slender to the point of gaunt with floppy, dirty-blond hair, a thin face, and a penchant for clothes that bordered dangerously on the Byronesque. While there wasn’t actual lace on his shirts, it was hinted at. Oliver, on the other hand, was lean and muscled, a rock-climber’s body. He lifted weights and ate raw eggs to bulk up, but his muscles just stretched and lengthened instead of thickening. He kept his thick, dark hair almost military-short, and this offset eyes which more than one woman had identified as “twinkly.” He wasn’t handsome; neither of them were. But they were young and energetic and had features which Jane Austin might have described as “regular” – not handsome, but no one would be gouging their eyes out rather than look at them. Oddly, it was Ethan who came across as a bit sneaky.

Both boys were cavalierly poor in the way of young men, and they nicked many a meal after hours from the museum’s cafeteria. Their lair was the basement where Ethan encased bugs in plastic while Oliver pressed the metal plates that gave the species name and the catalog number. Ethan had the delicate touch needed for the Lucite: he could suspend the insects in plastic without snapping antennae or bending wings. In fact, on a good day, his bugs still had the illusion of flight about them. His secret? A little glycerin, carefully applied to the hair on the legs, gave a swept-back look. Minute details, meticulously combined, created a feeling of movement of which Ethan was inordinately proud. The metal plates were affixed while the Lucite was still a bit wet and sticky, and then the bugs were sorted by destination: giant drawers for most, shipping containers for some, onto a cart headed for a display cabinet upstairs for a priveleged few, though most of those were just given a plastic sheen rather than a full block.

Hiding things in the plastic cubes was Oliver’s idea. A girl he no longer had feelings other than contempt for had given him “the key to her heart.” It was actually a cheap, tiny, luggage key, but she’d presented it with such earnest ceremony, she clearly expected Oliver to cherish it forever. Down in the basement that night, he’d been toying with it while he listed all the reasons he’d gone off her. Her hair was several shades too dark, Ethan learned, and at least an inch too long. She snorted when she laughed, which was entirely too often, and she smelled of fruit salad and stale bread. The gap between her front teeth was a reservoir for food particles, and what didn’t get stuck in her teeth was often found trailing down her shirt front or dangling from the ends of her too-long hair. With a shiver of disgust, Oliver stuck the key onto the still-sticky Lucite block that Ethan was working on.

“No, Oliver! Once these things are in plastic, I can’t do them over.” Ethan scrabbled at the key, trying to unstick it, but it was already too late. “Shit.”

“No worries; it’s stuck on the corner, I’ll just put the ID plate over the top of it.”

And he did and it was perfect and no one would ever have guessed at the key underneath. After that, they made a sort of game of it – what else could they hide? Ethan became quite the master, figuring out ways to hide small objects in the opaque plastic, even without the covering plaque.

In a near corner of the basement, another artisan practiced his craft: making paste copies of real precious stones. Not all of the stones on display upstairs were fake. Generally a few were replaced with carefully marked replacements that could be tracked. That way if a piece were stolen – say, the consort crown of Mary of Modena – the police could find the thief when he tried to unload the spoils at a pawn shop. The originals were catalogued and stored, the whole process undertaken with the breathtaking nonchalance of a pirate safe on the high seas. Thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels were scooped into a schoolboy’s desk drawer at night, locked with a key nearly as flimsy as the one that now resided with an Icaricia icarioides missionensis in drawer 3367-AIIM-08.52-Lyca.

One night, Oliver wandered over to the jeweler’s workbench, hands in pockets, not quite whistling a jaunty, innocent tune, though Ethan could hear the echo of it. Ethan held his breath as Oliver pulled out the drawer – it wasn’t even locked! – leaned over the precious stones and plucked one from the tray like a feather from a dead goose. He replaced the drawer, stuck his hands back in his pockets and sauntered back to their workstation. He handed the stone to Ethan who buried it in Lucite. Oliver pressed the metal plate, made a note of the ID number and drawer number on a scrap of paper, tucked the paper under the desk blotter, and walked outside to have a smoke.

Once Oliver was gone, Ethan was finally able to breathe normally again. He was more terrified than he could ever remember being – not of the crime he’d just committed, but of the depth of careless viciousness he’d always suspected and finally glimpsed in his best friend. This whole scene had been conducted in complete silence, but at one point their eyes had met and the enormity of what they had begun passed between them.

“Back out now, and I’ll kill you,” Oliver’s eyes had said.

Ethan had never told a soul. Even when unexpected windfalls arrived in the family coffers, he never whispered a word to his wife. Three times, just three times in his life the secret had gotten so big inside him, he had to let a little out or risk choking on it. Three times he had gotten enormously drunk and called Mina and mumbled at her the secret she already knew. Well, once, actually. He didn’t know this, of course, but Mina and her daughter sounded an awful lot alike.

Chapter Eighteen: Monsters at the Door

2007-05-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, when the first of Compass’ rescue cats was a kitten, the kitten had had worms. Compass had to give her medicine, then check the cat’s stools for dead worms, to ensure that the meds had worked. The expression on Mina’s face as Compass yanked open the door, must, Compass thought, have been very similiar to her own as she squooshed through cat crap in search of dead flatworms.

“Your hair’s a disaster,” Mina snapped, and she shoved her way in.

“Welcome home,” Compass mumbled, cursing the autonomic response that had her smoothing down her hair with one hand before she could stop herself. “Why did you knock?”

“I lost my key somewhere along the way. Give me yours. You won’t be needing it now, anyway. Why are you here?” Mina stopped dead, her gaze frozen to the floor. “What. Are. Those. Dents. In. My. Floor.”

Compass was about to issue a disclaimer when Mina’s gaze fell on the guilty bicycle shoes. Compass opened her mouth to say something – she wasn’t sure what yet – but her mother was already half-way down her throat.

“Just moved in, did you? Made yourself at home? Dents in the floor, dirty bike clothes littering the hallway? Been peeing in the corners to mark your territory, perhaps?” She started moving around the entranceway, pointedly sniffing in the corners.

“I wanted to be here in case you came home. Can’t remember why just now, though.”

“How very sweet of you,” said Mina, “to move into my house in order to protect my washing machine and my satellite television, my jacuzzi. . . . well, protect them from boredom, anyway.” Just then Mina noticed the cats, both of them balled up at the back of their crates. They hated snakes.

“Ahhhh,” said Mina. “I see that your cats, at least, are ready to go. A fine idea. Go home. Give me your key and go. Take my taxi, your four-legged furballs, your floor-destroying shoes and git.” She whirled around and started up the stairs. Half-way up, she stumbled and nearly fell.

OK, thought Compass. Of course.

Mina caught the knowing look on her daughter’s face.

“Little girl,” she hissed, “don’t imagine you understand anything at all.”

Compass took her cats and her bike shoes and left. Mina had apparently opted to fly into the Portland airport, or possibly into Anchorage, and left it to Compass to pay the fare. By the time Compass and her girls had traveled the few miles from Greenlake to Capitol Hill, the meter read $207.79. She was looking for her wallet and praying he’d take plastic when the cabbie spoke – audibly – for the first time.

“That your mom?”

“Yep.”

“Ride’s on me.”

Compass thanked him profusely, pulled her cats and her shoes out of the car and waved good-bye. He drove off, mumbling again and shaking his head.

Back at her tiny apartment, Compass called Mark to let him know Mina was back in town.

“I thought I felt my sphincter tighten,” said Mark, who’d tangled with Mina on a couple of occasions.

“Didn’t you once say she was ‘fun’?” asked Compass.

“Well, yeah, when she’s a few thousand fat, cushion-y miles away.”

Compass nodded. “I'm nodding,” she said. “Emphatically.”

“Poor girl. What will you do without Henry and Sophie to keep you company?”

“Wow. That’s so strange! I was just noticing how quiet it is in here.”

“No music?” asked Mark.

“No music. Does it play all the time?”

“Nearly every time I’ve been there.”

“You hear it?” Compass was astonished. “You never told me that.”

“I thought you’d think I was sucking up or something.”

Compass felt a momentary twinge of disappointment. She had thought that Henry and Sophie made their music for her alone. But then she realized how appropriate it was that Mark could hear it too.

“I don’t think you’re sucking up.”

“You tap your foot.”

“Huh?” Now re-acclimated, Compass’ cats were twining hungrily around her legs.

“That’s how I know the music’s playing even when I don’t hear it: you tap your foot.”

“Do I? How funny.”

“So, are they your grandparents?”

For a confused moment, Compass thought he was referring to Henry and Sophie. “Oh. Huh. Actually, I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, well, what about Oliver? Yay or nay on the paternity of the jewel thief?”

“Ah. Excellent question. Still unanswered.”

“Oooookkaaaaay. Any idea where Mina’s been the last couple-three weeks?”

“Dunno.” Compass was starting to feel sullen and cranky. She took her cordless phone into the kitchen and dumped some food in the cats’ bowls, then sat on the floor next to them so she could hear them crunching. That rarely failed to make her feel better.

“Good grief, Compass, did she tell you anything?”

“I have bad hair. We managed to resolve the whole hair-quality issue, and the consensus is that it’s bad. Oh, and bike shoes are the work of Satan himself. Hair and bike shoes – not bad for a night’s work, I thought.”

“Oy.”

“She’s a monster, Mark. I am the Daughter of the Beast. There’s probably a number tattooed on my head. $207.79.”

“Sorry? You’ve lost me.”

“Nothing. She had me out of there so fast, she’s probably still enjoying the breeze. She made me give her my key- Oh crap!”

“What?”

“She’s going to find the dragonflies. And the trunk, or what’s left of it. God, she’ll probably take out her wrath on the stuff I’ve left over there: my bike, my clothes, my books! It’ll be a bonfire, just her and her coven, all dancing and cackling from underneath their perfect hair. She’s just drunk enough to do it.”

“Drunk enough to pass out? Maybe we could sneak over there and get everything back. Except you don’t have a key. Any chance you left the door open?”

“The key I gave her was hers. She left without taking it. I still have mine.”

“Then let’s go. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

“My car. I left my car there and took her unpaid taxi because she told me to. Jesus. How does she do that?”

“Ten minutes. Dress dark.”

Compass spent ten minutes finding dark things to wear (fortunately she’d been through a slam-poetry phase a couple of years back) and locating her key to Mina’s house. She was incredibly nervous, as if they were planning a real break-in, as opposed to a sneak-in. Given the option between finally coming face-to-face with her allegedly nefarious, gem-lifting, presumably dangerous father and confronting her drunken, ego-destroying, vitriolic mother, Compass would hang on to her earrings and take her chances with dad, no contest.

Poison in a woman-shaped vial, thought Compass. Monster in a mom-suit. As soon as her mother was gone, Compass was planning to write her biography. Coming up with possible titles was one way she passed many an idle moment.

When the knock sounded this time, Compass peered through the peephole before opening. Mark was on the other side, looking thin and ridiculous and oddly French in his all-black sneak-garb. He even had what looked like a black stocking cap in one hand. She opened the door. “What’s with the hat, Boris McBadGuy?”

Mark tapped his shaven head. “Shiny.”

Compass fought the urge to smile, then decided she’d had a shitty day and she should just go ahead and smile. She did. He smiled back.

“You ready?”

Compass took a deep breath. “Guess so.”

Back at Mina’s house, all was quiet. Too quiet, in fact: the music had stopped. Compass light-footed around the house, gathering clothes, books, papers, bags of catfood. There was no sound from Mina, apart from the slight snoring Compass could hear when she pressed an ear to Mina’s bedroom door. They got Compass’ bike up on the rack on her car and were just heading in for a final look round when they caught a glimpse of someone else in black sliding out of Mina’s front door. Before they could react, the other sneak was across Mina’s yard and gone. Compass rushed back inside to make sure her mother was still alive. She was. Alive, but completely unconscious, and the snoring that had sounded soft and feminine through the heavy door was in fact ponderous and oddly . . . bulky up close. Compass pulled the garbage can near the side of the bed and quietly let herself out. She did a quick lap through the house to see what the burglar had stolen, but since he’d had nothing in his hands, she didn’t expect to find anything missing. And nothing was. Mark was standing outside, his cell phone in his hand.

“Did you call the police?” Compass asked him.

“Well, I was wondering. Is that such a great idea when we’re dressed like this?”

“Point taken. She’s fine, all the doors and windows are locked; maybe we should leave it and check she’s OK in the morning.” Compass just wanted to get away. The house was far creepier without the ghost music playing. The strange garbage man was gone, the sneak (the other sneak, Compass couldn’t help thinking) was also gone, the house was secure. Plus, Compass’ glove compartment was full of dragonflies. Even though they were jewelless, Compass couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them there.

“Let’s roll, then.”

In the morning, Compass called her mother at an unforgiveably early hour. She got a grunt, a hiss, two cursewords and a dial tone. Mina was fine.

Compass marvelled over her calm the night before. A burglar, a real one, had scuttled out of her mother’s door, and Compass had calmly gone back inside, checked out the house, locked the doors and left. No panic, no cops, not even a great deal of emotion that she could remember. She lined the dragonflies up on her fireplace mantel, then went out and bought a bunch of CDs. By humming, red-faced, at the clerk, she managed to get several of Sophie’s favorites, and she played them now, very faintly, in the background. As she typed up notes for her next class, she occasionally looked down and realized that she was, indeed, tapping her foot.

Once her lesson planning was finished, Compass pulled up a blank document on Microsoft Word (the modern-day equivalent of rolling a blank sheet of paper into ye olde Smith-Corona, thought Compass) and started typing some notes about recent days. She tried to be relieved that her mother was home and safe, but she couldn’t help feeling sad that she wasn’t in Henry and Sophie’s house any more. She wrote and wrote and wrote, ignoring the phone when it rang, as it did, periodically. Finally, several hours later, Compass turned off her computer and went to listen to her messages.

There were three messages from Mark, just “checking in,” one from Arthur and Ginny, wondering if she’d heard from Willy yet, and one that came from far away. There was that hissing sound of a long-distance call, then a tremulous British voice:

“Is this Compass Jones? Hello? Oh, sorry, must be an answer-phone, didn’t hear the beep. My name’s Ethan Robson. I’d like to speak with you, if you have a moment. I know your parents, you see. Please don’t let them know I’ve called, just call me back, if you would.” There followed a long stream of numbers which Compass just let flow past her.

Why did she know that voice?

Chapter Seventeen: One Woman's Trash . . .

2007-05-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

It was garbage day. Once again, Compass had failed to get the cans out to the end of Mina’s drive. She’d neglected to get the garbage out the previous two weeks – once because she was busy panicking over her mother’s sudden disappearance, and a second time because she was a careless, neglectful person who would soon be drowning in yogurt containers, furtive candy wrappers and potato-chip bags that Compass couldn’t even look in the eye – the garbage of the lonely, the confused, and the chubby.

The heavy grinding of truck gears and the hiss of truck brakes woke Compass, who was completely bewildered to find herself still in the attic, still seated at Henry’s desk. She raced downstairs and outside, waving her hands at the driver, not even noticing she still clutched the letter in her hand.

The driver looked a little surprised, possibly because Compass was in her pajamas, panicked hair all over her head, eyes red with the dust of someone else’s history. But he took pity on her and pulled over, taking a small crumble of curb with him as he misjudged the edge of Mina’s driveway.

“Thank you!” Compass panted at him. “Another week and they’d have to dig me out.” She hurried up the driveway to the garage to get the overflowing garbage cans, rolling them down to the waiting truck.

The driver was clearly new at his job. He got back into the truck and fiddled with switches for what seemed an inordinately long time. Mirrors moved and water splashed the front windshield, and there were some interesting grinding noises, but nothing significant happened for a long while. Finally the driver hit on the right combination of buttons and levers, and the back of the truck yawned open. He then climbed down and rolled the first can into position. He got back into the cab of the truck, there was some more mirror movement, some more effort by the windshield wipers, and at one point he moved his seat forward fast enough to nearly pin himself against the steering wheel. Finally he gave up, wriggled out and dumped the cans by hand.

Compass watched this Garbage Disposal by the Fourth Stooge, dumbfounded and desperately wanting to laugh. But she didn’t want to embarrass him, he was trying so hard, and her face started to hurt from the strain of keeping itself straight.

Once the garbage was all loaded onto the truck, the garbage man seemed pleased with himself. He brushed off his hands with satisfaction, then actually trotted up the driveway to where Compass stood watching.

“All loaded up!” he said, eyes shining. The guy had to be in his 60s. Post-retirement job, Compass thought, and once again resolved to open a savings account.

“Yes, I see that,” said Compass. The man stayed there, grinning, eyes twinkling at his truck. “Congratulations,” she said, since he seemed to expect it.

“I’m Dan,” he said, and stuck his hand out for her to shake.

Compass was a little taken aback by this. She still had the letter in her right hand, so she switched it to her left and reached her right hand out to complete the shake. Only Dan had apparently lost interest. They both stood there, hands outstretched and hanging in mid-air but not meeting. Compass, expecting another hand to counterbalance her own, found only empty space, and she stumbled foward slightly on the follow-through. Dan’s eyes were fixed on the letter in her hand.

“Uh . . . is everything OK?”

He regained himself quickly. “Oh. Yes. Yes, certainly.” He looked at her face for a long moment, then patted her shoulder and climbed back into his truck. He flapped his mirrors for a moment, almost like a salute, but probably because he was trying to move his seat back, and then he ground and hissed and rumbled away.

Compass was gob-smacked. “What the f-”

“Hey!” It was Mina’s next-door neighbor, also in pajamas and slippers, standing in front of his still-full garbage cans. “What happened?” he called to Compass.

“I don’t know,” she hollered back. “I think he’s new.”

She grabbed Mina’s cans – now minus their lids as Dan had neglected to remove them before emptying the cans into the truck – and hauled them back to the house.

Back in the house and back in the attic, Compass quickly forgot about the twinklingly incompetent garbage man. She returned the letter to the first box, then turned to the next box in the pile.

She found very little in the next two boxes. There were mostly receipts for things, tax documents, some medical records on Compass, the usual debris of life which most people throw away. Compass didn’t know why Mina had chosen to keep all this, but none of it yielded any results that she could make sense of. Besides that, it was Monday, and she had an afternoon class and a night class and no time to puzzle it out just now. The rest of the boxes, and the mystery she hoped they would answer, would have to wait.

The lovely weather from the weekend had decided to hang on for at least one more day. Seattle was awash in light, Seattlites everywhere frantically searching for that pair of sunglasses they’d bought the last time there was a reason to own sunglasses, but that was weeks ago, and why didn’t they come equipped with tiny little Clap-On devices? Seattle apparently had one of the highest rates of sunglasses consumption in the nation – the result of such sporadic need that they often got shuffled to the bottom of life’s junk drawers. It was too nice a day to waste, and she was teaching at her near-by campus rather than her far-away campus today, so Compass decided to ride her bicycle to work.

Seattle made Compass feel vaguely guilty about being out of shape. Every time she ventured into Nordstrom’s or the Bon-Marche-which-was-now-Macy’s-but-she-couldn’t-think-of-it-that-way, she felt so . . . . ungroomed. The people in there were so sleek and pretty, it was like being at an exotic cat show. It was odd, since the people on the streets were generally shrouded in bulky gray or black fleece and denim, but in these stores they emerged from their fleece chrysalides with perfect shining hair and clean nails and the firm buttocks of marathoners. Where did they come from, these elegant women, buying their size 2 Levis and slinky tailored skirts? And even more, where did they go?

Seattle was, comparatively, a thin city, and Compass often felt graceless and clunky next to the Persians and the greyhounds that surrounded her. Biking made her feel a bit better about herself, and when she arrived at work, glistening with sweat and self-righteousness, she felt more a part of the city.

Compass was a relative new-comer to the Pacific northwest. She’d moved here 10 years ago from her teaching stint in central Europe, unable to bear the thought of another midwestern summer. Or winter. Or election season. Seattle had everything Compass wanted: mountains to learn to ski in, oceans to learn to dive under, trails for hiking, rocks for climbing, and temperate weather to do it all in. Tragically, it also had everything Mina wanted, and no sooner had Compass unpacked the last box than her mother followed her here. Mina needed an audience for her antics, and Compass was it.

Her ESL class crept along, progress almost invisible at the glacial pace with which languages are mastered. It was a frustrating job sometimes, mostly because the English language was so bewildering. It seemed almost mean-spirited in its refusal to follow its own rules, and many questions had to be answered with, “That’s just the way it is.”

“Teacher! Why do you say, ‘pay attention’? Why ‘pay’? There is no money here.”

“Teacher! Why do you say, ‘get home’? There is no ‘getting,’ you don’t ‘get’ anything!”

“Teacher! Why do you spell it e-n-o-u-g-h, but pronounce it ‘enuf’?”

“What it means, ‘do’?”

“Experts” claimed that language learning was a process, as if there were anything orderly about it. In Compass’ experience, both as a teacher and a learner of languages, learning a foreign tongue was a helter-skelter, hodge-podge experience at best. Words attached themselves to your brainstem or they didn’t. Foreign grammar internalized itself in you or it wouldn’t. The stiff, formal language of the classroom helped her students not at all when they found themselves in a slang-gang of teenagers at a bus stop or confronted by the idiosyncracy of colloquial speech. It was no wonder that students (and their teachers) were often frustrated; it was a testament to the determination of these people that any of them mastered the language at all.

Today’s lesson was on pronunciation, and for the next few hours, Compass would try to teach people to bend their tongues in new and imaginative ways to make the ‘th’ sounds of this and think, to reliably distinguish r’s from l’s, to finally and forever make the distinction between Tuesday and Thursday, and to never again ask to borrow a ‘shit’ of paper. Just those few simple tasks would absorb them for hours and at best, yield mixed results.

Between classes, Compass had a few minutes to run to a nearby grocery store for a hummus sandwich. At the check-out stand, an international incident was unfolding. The customer was a tiny, aged lady of probably Cambodian or Vietnamese origin, the clerk a tattooed, tongue-studded American teen. The customer needed something which the clerk was unable to understand, both were aware of the other people in line, and frustrations were rising all around. They had fallen into the dreaded communication gap -- each trying to rectify the situation by waving her arms more wildly in a kind of pleading dance to the language gods to intervene. This apparently had been going on for some time before Compass got in line, and the clerk’s face was red with anger. The little lady’s voice was getting louder and more harsh, and finally she gave up, handed over a pile of bills, took her change, got her groceries and got out.

The clerk looked up at Compass. “You have no idea how hard it is to deal with foreigners day in and day out,” she said.

“I’m teaching as fast as I can,” said Compass.

Much later, back at Mina’s house, Compass peeled off clothes soggy from an unexpected burst of rain. She was struggling to free herself from an amorous sports bra when the phone rang. She was able to get to the phone just in time to hear the other party hang up. She considered dialing *69 but decided it was likely a telemarketer. Mina had refused to add herself to the do-not-call list. She regarded telemarketers as sport and had whiled away many a dull hour, pretending that she really would change her long-distance carrier, just as soon as they ran through all those options one more time, her mind was just a sieve these days!

Compass sat on the bench next to the phone and unpeeled her bike tights, trying not to notice where the dampness and the tightness had creased playful patterns in her fish-belly-white legs. She wrapped herself in her robe and was working on unknotting her hair when the phone rang again. This time she snatched it up immediately.

“Yes?”

“Compass?” A voice whispered into the phone.

“Mark?”

“Yes. It's me, Mark.”

“And yes, it's me, Compass. Why are we whispering and talking with such careful enunciation?”

“I’m across the street from the house.”

“Oh. OK. That doesn’t really explain the whispering, though.”

“I’ve been here for an hour. You’re late getting home.”

“I rode my bike. What’s up?”

“Are you dating a garbage man?”

“What?” Compass noted with some satisfaction that her bike shoes had left tiny little cleat marks in Mina’s perfect hard-wood floors.

“There’s a garbage truck out here, and the driver’s been sitting in it, smoking cigarettes and staring at your house for at least an hour.”

“Really?” Compass thought back to the events of that morning. “Have the mirrors moved at all?”

“Actually, I think they did once. Is that some sort of code?”

“No, he was probably trying to operate the cigarette lighter. That’s Dan. I met him this morning.”

“So why is he here now? It’s nearly 10 o'clock.”

“He wants to get an early start tomorrow? He forgot everyone’s cans but mine.” Compass paused. That seemed odd, now that she thought about it. “Everyone’s but mine? Mark, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I’m coming over.”

Compass gathered up her cats and put them in their crates, ready for a move. She didn’t know why she was doing it. Even just doing it freaked her out, as it seemed to indicate some kind of imminent danger. Dan the Twinkling Sprite of a Garbage Man suddenly seemed sinister, and Mark’s loud knock on the door nearly sent Compass through the roof. She yanked open the door, ready to read him the riot act. And she would have, had it been Mark on the other side.

Chapter Sixteen: Little Boxes, Little Boxes

2007-04-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to content.answers.com for the picture.

After returning Seattle-side on the ferry, Compass and Mark made a quick side trip to Home Depot for a hammer. They spent a good part of the afternoon cautiously chipping away at the dragonflies as Compass couldn’t bring herself to destroy the bugs. To her combined relief and disappointment, none of her bugs was a carrier.

“You make it sound like they have the Plague,” said Mark, smiling and wiping Plexiglass dust from his hands. “You don’t want to be rich?”

“This way? No thanks.”

“It bothers you that the jewels were stolen?”

Compass mused on that for a bit, then decided, “No . . . I mean, it’s the history of precious stones to be stolen, isn’t it? By thieves, by victors in war stealing from the conquered, by invaders stealing from the natives, masters stealing from the newly enslaved, museums plundering the graves of emporers and dead civilizations, Nazis looting the homes of the Jews. Every jewel my father took had probably been stolen a dozen times already.”

“So what’s the issue, then?”

“Trust. Immediate, irrevocable erosion of trust. It’s already started. My grandparents tell me to beware of my dad. You tell me to beware of my grandparents. I trust you, but I’m sure someone will pop up soon to tell me not to. And now I don’t trust myself.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mark, I was ready to go home with those people today. I was ready for them to take me in and feed me cookies and show me old pictures and probably wall me up in the cellar to die alone and rat-nibbled amongst the canned tomatoes and strawberry preserves.”

“Or not. Look, Compass, I didn’t mean to snatch your brand-new grandparents away from you. Chances are they’re the real thing, right down to the DNA, and I just deprived you of an afternoon of OD’ing on chocolate chip cookies.”

“Maybe. But maybe not. And the possibility of not makes me feel naive and stupid and vulnerable because it didn’t even occur to me to ask for ID or whatever. I guess I was just so desperate to have what everyone else has.”

“A normal family.”

“A normal family.” Compass smiled, a little. “I should know better. Any family with Mina in the mix is by definition warped.”

“But she puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, doesn’t she? Remember the time we tried to take her out for Mother’s Day and she got drunk and kept calling you ‘mom’?”

“She made the chef put the roses I bought her in the blender and bet the busboy $20 that he couldn’t drink them. I never saw that busboy again.”

“He just kept grinning at her, bits of rose petals stuck in his teeth, and he wouldn't take the money.”

“He probably got a perforated intestine from all the thorns.”

“Your mom can be a lot of fun, Compass. She’s different, at least.”

“Her idea of entertainment is to unclip a seeing-eye dog from its leash.”

“Yeah, well, who hasn’t fantasized about doing that?”

Compass fixed Mark with a glare.

“OK, I haven’t either, but come on, Compass. She’s given you this adventure, this once-in-a-lifetime chance at mystery and intrigue.”

“This isn’t Murder, She Wrote, Mark, this is real. What if Oliver comes after me? What then? Angela Lansbury is looking a bit frail these days, so no help there.”

“I’ll be your Angela Lansbury. Or your Watson, that might be better. Wait, was Watson gay?”

“Go home, Mark. Find your pipe and your deerstalker, and we’ll talk tomorrow, OK?”

“Yes. Call me if you need me. Are you sure you’re OK to be on your own?”

“I’ll keep the hammer close by. Go.”

After Mark left, Compass spent the rest of that day and much of the night tearing Mina’s house apart. Except for the attic, where she never ventured while in the house alone, Compass searched everywhere for anything at all that Oliver might want. There was nothing.

In fact, there really wasn’t much in the house at all. There were clothes and some books and a surprising number of kitchen towels, but there wasn’t much in the house to suggest a life fully lived. There were no knick knacks from foreign countries, no pictures with actual people in them, no cute little stuffed toy kept for its sentimental value, no dried flowers preserved in a vase, no memorabilia at all, really. There was nothing left from Compass’ childhood – even the hotpads and throw rugs and bathroom towels were all new-ish and matched; not a single thread-bare leftover to show that Mina had a past, a daughter, had once had a family.

Mina owned some beautiful things: she had a fountain pen collection that Compass coveted immediately and a bunch of jewelry she didn’t, she had some nice paintings of places Mina’d likely never been but which matched her decor, she had some glass bowls and empty boxes made of marble and a bunch of decorative eggs, all carved from different polished stones, but everything here was hard and cold to the touch. For the first time ever, Compass felt a twinge of sympathy for her mother.

There was nothing to find. Not in the lower reaches of the house, anyway. But if Mina wanted to hide something from her daughter, the best place to hide it would be the attic. Mina knew the story of the ghosts both fascinated and frightened her daughter, and she took full advantage, periodically embellishing the legend with details of her own. She would tell Compass of nights when she woke up just inside the attic, having been lured by siren singing in her sleep. She talked about walking through cold spots, places in the house where the temperature might be 40 or 50 degrees colder; cold enough, she claimed, to see her breath in summertime. Things flickered just at the edge of sight, she said; and often there were quiet footsteps from above or the almost-inaudible scratching of pencil on paper. And of course there was always the music: sometimes opera, often jazz, always the piano, unaccompanied except by a thin, haunting voice that Mina found herself straining to hear. And, for her coup de grâce, she claimed that once the voice had lured her to the attic and shut the door behind her. What happened then, she would not say, only covering her mouth with one masterfully quivering hand before bravely changing the subject.

Compass knew her mother was full of bullshit, but the attic terrified her anyway. It was stupid. She’d felt such peace there that first time, then let her mother scare her off with her ludicrous stories. If anything, Henry and Sophie were benevolent, even welcoming, and Compass refused to be afraid of them any longer. But she took her cellphone with her, just in case.

The door to the attic creaked so theatrically, Compass wondered if Mina had had sound effects installed. The dust was pretty thick up there, and a lack of recent footprints meant that if there was something to see, Mina hadn’t taken it with her when she fled.

Henry’s desk took up the length of the attic on one side. His children had left his chair, which surprised Compass, but the chair looked so natural there that it would leave a gap like a missing tooth if taken away. It took a minute or two of loin-girding, but she was finally able to come all the way into the attic, first checking that the light bulb still worked. She mumbled an apology as she stuck a heavy book in front of the door.

It only took another minute or so before Compass felt the peace and calm she’d felt before. If Henry and Sophie were here, they were smiling; that much was certain. Compass took a deep breath and allowed herself to look around. The attic was mostly empty, apart from the desk and the chairs. Rows upon rows of empty bookshelves lined the walls of the attic, and Compass could imagine them crammed full of books and papers and all the flotsam and jetsam of a real writer’s life. But under the far corner of Henry’s desk, as discreet as Mina wasn’t, was a small pile of boxes. Recent boxes.

Compass approached them as gingerly as she might a pile of sleeping grizzlies. The spectres of previous homeowners were tame compared to the horrors that might be contained in those boxes. She pulled them out carefully, in a manner to make a bomb squad proud.

She considered carrying the boxes down to the living room where the light was better, but decided to stay here where she could have the comfort of Henry and Sophie if she needed it.

The boxes were organized by dates written on top in Mina’s carelessly elegant handwriting. The most recent box was dated from a few months before Compass’ birth up to less than a year ago. Forty years crammed into one box just big enough for a toaster oven. Compass pulled at the yards of packing tape until it finally let go.

On top was a photo from Compass’ graduation from grad school. She was linked, arms over shoulders, with a group of equally joyful-looking friends, all of them glowing in their robes and their triumph. Compass had no idea who had taken the photo or how it came to be here. Her mother hadn’t attended the ceremony, saying the smell of smug made her nauseated. The box was full of Compass: drawings from school, horrible craft projects her mother had derided, saying the only way her daughter would hang in the Tate was by her neck. But there it all was – preserved, or at least kept. Every school photo was there, in order, and Compass flipped through them, the gaps in her smile filling in, the wonder in her eyes fading out. Here were the ballet slippers from when her mother insisted that Compass take a class to learn more grace, and Compass had quit after she got her foot caught in the bar and twisted her ankle. There were reports from camp lauding Compass’ victory in having achieved “guppy” status in swim class (she would remain a guppy for six consecutive summers) and grade cards from school and even all the letters Compass had written from school or her years abroad. Mina had kept it all.

At the bottom of the box were birth announcements and congratulatory cards that had the gifts given scribbled on them in unfamiliar handwriting. There had been a shower, then, even though Mina claimed a horror of baby showers, claiming she simply could not coo on command. There were also sympathy cards, lots of them. There was one photo of a man, handsome and young, a cigarette poking from one side of his mouth, a fish dangling from a line. On the back, that same unknown woman had written “Jeremy, July 4, 1966, Myers Lake.” Her not-quite father, less than two years of life left in him, though he looked strong enough for a hundred. Besides the few photos of her, this was the only other picture in the box. No pictures of pregnant Mina, no photos of Arthur and Ginny, no houses just bought, no gardens or Christmases, or barbeques. Mina’s past was filling up, but it was still far from full.

Tucked under one flap at the bottom of the box, Compass found a folded piece of paper. It was old, yellowed, the blue lines nearly washed out. It was a letter. With trembling hands, she carefully unfolded it. It was too dark in the corner to read the faded writing, so she took the letter over to the desk where a small lamp gave her a comforting pool of light. Without really noticing she was doing it, she sat down in Henry’s chair. The letter was dated December 21, 1967. Less than two weeks before Compass’ birth.

Dear Willem, (the letter began) It’s now nearly eight months since I last heard from you, and I’m wondering how my little seed-pod is faring. You must be fit to burst by now, but perhaps that’s not the most sensitive language to use for a woman in your situation. I hope you are able to sleep at night, even with the apnoic buffoon you married snorting away next to you. I’m sending you xxxxxx’s mixed with zzzzzz’s – these are hugs wrapped in sleep, you wrapped in my arms.

I know you think it’s only your pregnancy, plus your buffoon, that keeps you safe from me, but I promise you again that you are in no danger, provided you do as you’re told. I only want what’s rightfully mine. Well, rightfully the Museum’s, I suppose, but still more mine than yours in the great scheme of things. Return the hinds emerald and you can keep all the rest – there are plenty more still secreted in the collection, and now that you’ve so kindly returned my list, my future is no longer in doubt. Yours, however, is.

Fondly,
OE

At the bottom of the letter, Mina had scribbled the word “twat.”

Compass sat in Henry’s chair, the letter in her hand, for a long, silent time. The three people who knew Mina best – her lover, her parents (assuming they were) and her daughter – each had a different name for the same woman. Which seemed to indicate that none of them knew her at all. She was so wrapped in her thoughts that she completely failed to notice the slight tremble of the hardwood floor beneath her feet.

Chapter Fifteen: Eggs, Etc.

2007-04-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

“Ibegyourpardonwhat?” That feeling of the world spinning out of her control was almost comforting in its familiarity. She was starting to feel like an alcoholic who couldn’t walk upright if the world wasn’t spinning, just a little, all the time.

“He’s a jewel thief,” said Arthur, and he returned to attacking his eggs.

Compass and Mark sat and gaped at her grandparents. There was a long, stretchy silence while the elders ate and the youngers gaped and everyone avoided eye contact with everyone else and the waitress came and refilled their coffee cups and left them to their eating and gaping while she had a cigarette outside and narrowly missed being hit by a garbage truck. The truck driver who almost hit her wasn’t their regular pick-up guy, and presumably didn’t know about the secret hidey hole for the smokers. Nor did he know, apparently, to pick up their garbage.

Inside, Compass had given up gaping as a lost cause and stuck some eggs in her open mouth instead. She needed a moment to gather thoughts as scattered as a clumsy child’s marble collection, mentally picking up the pieces of what she had thought was her life: one here under the cerebellum, a couple hiding behind the corpus callosum, one dangling from her basal ganglia. Virtually nothing of her old life remained: grandparents not dead after all; father replaced by some other guy, apparently a committed criminal; mother . . . well, Mina was still a raging bitch and a liar.

“Is everyone’s life like this?”

“Oh no, dear,” said Ginny, patting Compass’ hand with one of her own. “Just you.” She smiled. “Not everyone is able to handle an interesting life; those are only assigned to the strong.”

Compass didn’t feel strong. She felt like she’d been on the receiving end of that garbage truck, not her not-quite father. “What do I do now?”

“Do you have anything of his, anything he might want back?” Arthur dribbled a bit more Tabasco on his eggs.

“I wouldn’t know what was his if I saw it. What would it look like?”

“All things bug-related,” said Arthur. “For starters. His job was to catalog bugs at the London Museum of Natural History.”

Compass started to tell her grandparents about the dragonflies when a sharp kick under the table distracted her. She turned an angry glare on Mark who was shaking his head in a tiny ‘no.’

“I don’t think Compass has any bugs she knows about,” said Mark. “I’m an entomologist – she’d have shown them to me by now. So how did he pull off his heists?”

“His job was to catalog bugs, as we said. The specimens would come in, and he would first encase them in Lucite, if the bug wasn’t particularly valuable, then catalog them and add them to the collection. Apparently he would include a stolen jewel with some of the bugs, then proceed as usual,” said Arthur.

“Lucite is transparent, isn’t it?” asked Mark. “Couldn’t someone see the jewel inside?”

“No. All of the Lucite containers are given a storage number. It's printed on a metallic plate that's placed around one corner of the block while the Lucite is still wet and a little sticky. He hid his treasures beneath the tags. He’d let the Museum store the insects in their extensive collections, then retrieve the jeweled ones when he needed them.”

“If the jewels were invisible, how could he keep track of which bugs were loaded?” Compass didn’t like that Mark had kicked her and then taken over her conversation.

“There was a list,” said Ginny. “Of all the catalog numbers.”

“So he thinks I have some of the jewels?”

“Possibly. Willy got ahold of that list once and managed to ‘liberate’ quite a few of the jeweled bugs. She sold the stones on the black market and has been living well off of them for years. Your father found out and threatened to turn her in, so she threatened to turn him in, and both decided to leave the other alone.”

“Uh . . . does my father have a name?”

Arthur got all stony and cold. “He does. But we don’t use it.”

“Oh. It’s just that, I might need to know it. Someday. If he calls. Should I guess and you can tell me if I get it right?”

Mark snorted at that. “He’s not Rumpelstiltskin, Compass.”

Compass was now thoroughly annoyed with Mark and turned a chilly shoulder in his direction.

“His name is Oliver,” said Ginny. “Oliver Edwards. But he calls himself the Dragonfly.”

Mark laughed out loud. “You’re kidding.”

Ginny laughed too, a light, tinkling laugh that relieved the tension at the table, if just for a moment. “Isn’t it ridiculous? Fancies himself a super-villain, that boy does. We call him the Idiot.”

“Why now? Why after all this time would he be coming after me?”

“We don’t know, dear,” said Ginny. “We haven’t had contact in ages, then just that one, drunken phone call. Your mother might be able to shed some light.”

“She ran away to Europe. When I found out my father wasn’t really my father, she bolted instead of telling me the truth.”

“Yes, that’s our daughter,” said Arthur. “Queen of the 100 Meter Dash of Conflict Avoidance.”

“Mom? She loves conflict; she thrives on it. She spews conflict everywhere she goes! I’ve seen her pick fights between best friends just so she can sit ringside and eat popcorn.”

“Conflict that isn’t her own is fascinating,” said Ginny. “When she was little, she’d stir up an anthill for hours. But when she’s on the receiving end of the stirring stick, well, she hightails it for higher ground.”

“Where did the jewels come from?” asked Mark.

“When pieces come in that have jewels in them -- crowns, for example -- the stones are generally removed and replaced with fakes, and the jewels are stored in vaults somewhere in the Museum,” said Arthur. “The Idiot would intercept the real stones somewhere in that process; we don't know the details. The whole procedure was intended to prevent crime. Amusing, huh?”

What remained of their breakfasts had long been cold. They had drunk as much coffee as they could reasonably drink; their brains and bladders were full to bursting. It was time to say good-bye and head home.

“Be safe, won’t you, dear,” said Ginny, giving Compass another long hug.

“Let us know if you find anything suspicious in Willy’s house,” said Arthur. “We don’t want anything to happen to our brand-new grandchild.”

“I’ll be careful. And I’ll keep in touch,” Compass assured him.

Arthur and Mark did the manly handshake thing, and after many promises of phone calls and visits and care-taking, the two couples moved off in opposite directions.

Back on the ferry, Compass finally had the chance to vent on Mark. “What the hell was that about? Why did you kick me?”

“Compass, what proof do you have that these people are really your grandparents?”

“What? I- But- What are you talking about?”

“Your mom’s not here to verify, they had no pictures, no documents or records of any kind, they don’t look a thing like you or your mom – couldn’t they be after the dragonflies just as much as your dad is? If any part of this crazy story is true?”

Compass sat back in her seat. “Oh. My. God.”

Mark moved from his seat opposite her to sit beside her and stroke her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I just want you to be safe. I’m not sure we can trust these people until we know for sure who they are.”

Sweetie? Compass stored that for later. “They could be anyone.”

“They could. Chances are they’re your dotty, long-lost grandparents. But on the off chance they aren’t . . . .”

“Don’t tell them about the dragonflies.”

“Maybe best not.”

“Do you think my dragonflies are loaded?”

“It’s possible, I guess,” said Mark. “It makes a sort of sense – at least it explains why your mom has never had to work.”

“And why she was so adamant that I never open that box. Should we look? I mean, should we look at the dragonflies, see if they’re carriers?”

“I guess we should. Maybe you should. And keep the results a secret.”

“Secret even from you?” Compass looked up at Mark, confused.

“The fewer people who know, the better. The safer for you. And I want you to feel you can trust me.”

“I do,” said Compass. She did. She trusted him more than anyone she knew, certainly more than those who claimed blood relations with her. “Do you have a hammer?”

Chapter Fourteen: Revelations

2007-04-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Despite the very cordial phone call, Compass was still nervous about meeting her grandparents. Would they like her? Would they find her charming and delightful and all-round perfect-granddaughter material? Or would they be of the caustic-and-horrible school of family relations, and make fun of her hair? Compass didn’t think she could handle another Mina, much less one who was older and therefore even more seasoned and possessing a wider repertoire of nasty things to say.

It was a beautiful day, one of those rare crystalline days when the rains stopped and the world was clear and bright and in sharp focus. Compass sat at her table on the ferry, sipping a cup of truly awful coffee and staring out the window. There were cormorants, posed like giant bats, drying their wings in the sun, and an occasional buoy sported a seal or two, slick and sleepy, tails and flippers draped over the side, looking nothing whatsoever like a mermaid. The mountains, tops still thick with snow, did their majestic-looking thing in the far off.

She kept her gaze firmly out the window when someone came and annoyingly occupied the seat just across her table. There are plenty of free seats on the ferry, after all, grumble grumble, Compass thought, then realized that a cup of vanilla-scented Starbucks was being shoved at her.

“Mark!”

“I was trying to get your attention at the loading dock, but you were all wrapped up and miles away. I brought you some less-burnt tasting coffee. Non-fat vanilla, right?”

In Seattle, knowing someone’s preferred latté arrangement indicated a level of familiarity, if not downright intimacy. Compass blushed.

“Right. Thank you. The ferry stuff’s pretty undrinkable.” She took a careful sip. It was still hot. “Are you following me?”

“Of course. Half the men on this boat are following you. See that guy over there? The one in the Gore-tex jacket? See how he’s furtively eating that scone? Following. And that guy talking on his cell phone? See how he completely refuses to look in this direction? Following. Oh, and the lovely dovey couple feeding each other popcorn? He’s following; she’s a decoy. And-”

“Ok, ok, it’s not all about me. I get it. So why are you going to Bremerton?”

“I don’t know. I was following you. I was planning to spend a sensible day fighting crowds at Pike Place Market in order to buy elephant garlic and chocolate pasta, but then I saw you getting on the ferry, so I decided to see what you were up to. Bug hunting?”

Compass was inordinately pleased by this. Pleased by the company, flattered that he had followed her. She tried to pass off her sudden jolt of happy as caffeine-induced, but she couldn’t quite make it stick. She smiled. “Not today. Well, sort of. I’m going to meet my dead grandparents.”

“Ah. More ghosts.”

“Resurrected. My mom told me that her parents were dead. Seems they’re very much alive and not two hours south of where we sit right now. I’m meeting them in Bremerton for lunch and a quick getting-to-know-you.”

“Wow! That’s amazing. You know, most people’s family size is reasonably constant – the occasional birth or death, usually expected – yours fluctuates by the hour.”

“You should see the family Bible. Cross outs, arrows pointing all over the place, big lumps of WhiteOut. I may have to start keeping notes.”

“How did you find out about them?”

“They called Mina’s house. I answered. Chaos ensued. Hey, are you really not busy today? I mean, could you come with me? Just in case either of them is the devil from which my mother was spawned, I could use someone to help me dodge the pitchforks.”

“Lucky for you, I brought my Wonder Woman bracelets. Are we expecting Satan and his minions?” Mark leaned back in his seat.

“Not really; I mean, they seemed really nice and very . . . grandparenty on the phone, but my mother can also be very charming to people that don’t matter to her. Just in case they start trying to drag me into the nether reaches of hell. . . .”

“I’ll be there. Avoid the pomegranates, though.”

Compass gave Mark a quizzical look. “And I’m the weird one.”

“Didn’t you ever read Greek and Roman mythology? Hades? Six seeds of a pomegranate? Call yourself an English major.”

“English majors tend to stick to texts in English. Call us crazy.” Compass looked out the window and saw the ferry dock of Bremerton in the very near distance. It loomed, inasmuch as a ferry dock can loom. Her heart thumped once, painfully.

“I wish they didn’t call them ‘terminals.’ Makes riding a ferry seem like the last stages of a fatal disease.”

“In keeping with the death-and-hell analogy we’ve got going. Compass, are you sure you’re ready to meet these people? You seem a little hesitant. Hesitant like going-to-the-guillotine hesitant.”

“I want them to like me. I want a blood relation to like me. It would make for a refreshing change.”

There was some gentle bumping and the feeling of very large and heavy water-borne objects being fussed around, and then it was time to disembark. Compass and Mark stood up and started making their way toward the footbridge. Without consciously realizing it, Compass reached down and grabbed Mark’s hand. Had she been looking, she would have seen him smile big enough for his teeth to do that trademarked Disney twinkle.

They walked along the footbridge and through the ferry terminal, coming out into bright sunlight on the other side. There, arm-in-arm and grinning, were a pair of the most adorable muppet grandparents Compass had ever seen. She hoped fervently that they were hers.

They were. Grandma Ginny was short and round and smelled like honey. Compass had feared an awkward to-hug-or-not-to-hug moment, but instead she was enveloped by her grandmother who held her fiercely and sobbed down her shirtfront. It was the longest hug Compass had ever been involved in, and she was loath to let it end. Finally, there was a male throat-clearing – either Mark or her grandfather, she didn’t know – and the two women came up for air.

Her grandfather was taller, a little taller than Compass, with an elegant beaky nose and bushy grandpa eyebrows over eyes that can only be described as “twinkly.” Compass would discover later that this was largely due to cataract surgery, but the twinkle went to the bone, so it didn’t matter. He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a long looking over. Then he smiled. “Hello, granddaughter.”

“Hello, grandfather.” He pulled her in close. He smelled of wool coats and arthritis rub and held her as tightly – if rather less damply – than Ginny had. Compass emerged from this second-longest hug to find Mark engulfed in a Ginny hug of his own.

Once they were all untangled, they headed to a cafe nearby for more coffee and conversation. Ginny and Arthur moved slowly but steadily. They had to be in their early 80s, according to Compass’ calculations, though they both looked years younger. It was a good half-mile walk to the cafe, and they chatted about the lovely weather and the beauty of the Northwest as they strolled.

Once seated at a table, there was a lengthy discussion over the menus about food choices. Arthur favored the Idaho farm-boy breakfasts of his youth: lots of grease and an assortment of dead animals, but Ginny wouldn’t hear of it. She’d gotten him as far as 84 by sheer will-power alone, she told Compass, and she wasn’t having him go off the rails now. He ended up with the vegetarian egg-white omelet and two pieces of whole wheat toast. Once the coffee was poured and the menus retrieved, the real conversation could begin.

“So could you fill in a blank or two for me?” Compass half-expected a cloud to roll over the sun at this point, but it didn’t and she chose to see this as a good omen.

“We can try,” said Arthur. “We had a hint about you, not long ago, only we didn’t see it for what it was.”

“A hint?” Mark took a mini-muffin from the basket in the center of the table and started peeling off the paper wrapper.

“Your father called. He does that, from time to time, usually when he’s drunk. Last time must have been five or six years ago, and we had pretty much decided he was dead.”

“When did he call?” They knew who her father was! It was more than she could have hoped for.

“This must have been . . . what was it, Ginny, maybe six weeks ago?”

Ginny nodded, her face pale. “He called us up, roaring drunk, shouting down the phone for us to give us ‘the girl’s’ number.”

“We thought he meant Willy’s number,” said Arthur. “We kept giving him Willy’s number over and over, but he just kept shouting, ‘No! No! The girl’s! The girl’s!’”

“We realized after we talked to you that it must have been your number he wanted,” said Ginny.

“So he knows about me?”

“I guess he does,” Arthur said. “I wish now I’d listened closer to all his rambling phone calls over the years. I used to just set the phone down and read a magazine. I might have known about you sooner if I’d listened.”

“He wants to get in contact with me, then.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Mark picked up another mini-muffin and began peeling it. The first one sat naked and uneaten in front of him. The question was addressed to her grandparents.

“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?” said Compass, already a little defensive of her father.

“That’s actually a very good question,” said Arthur. He leaned forward as if to communicate a confidence when the food arrived. There was an impatient silence as the food was arranged on the table and all the condiments asked for and arrived one-at-a-frustrating-time.

When the waitress was finally gone, Compass couldn’t wait any longer. “Why would it be a bad idea to meet my dad?”

“Sweetheart, we think he may want to contact you because he thinks you have something of his. Something he wants very very badly.” Ginny put her hand over her granddaughter’s. “We just don’t know how far he’ll go to get it.”

“You think I could be in danger? From my father?” Compass pulled her hand away and put it in her lap. “I don’t believe this. Is it because he’s a drunk? That’s OK, I’m very good with drunks.”

Arthur was attempting to cut his omelet, but it kept wiggling away from his fork. Finally he set his utensils down and stared Compass straight in the eye.

“He’s not a drunk, granddaughter, not really. He’s a jewel thief.”

Breakfast went downhill fast from there.

Chapter Thirteen: Spider Bite

2007-04-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

The restaurant and lounge of the Forbury Hotel was elegant – sleek, hardwood floor, comfortable chairs in a color that Ethan couldn’t name but reckoned Mina could, unobtrusive pools of light and beautiful people speaking in quiet voices about impressive things. Mina had already artfully draped herself over one of the chairs when Ethan arrived, nervous and sweaty. The barman, better dressed than Ethan was for his wedding, gave him a bemused look when he sat down beside the most gorgeous woman in the room.

“You’re late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Would you like something to eat? They have lovely egg and cress sandwiches here.”

“Thank you, no. I’d rather we just have our conversation.”

“Don’t look so dire, Ethan. Conversation with me is generally regarded as great fun. You look like you’re preparing for a funeral.”

My own? Ethan thought, then shook the thought away. The barman approached and stood waiting for Ethan’s order in a manner both deferential and arrogant. How do they manage it? Ethan wondered. “Half of dry Blackthorn's please.”

“Very good, sir.” He oiled away, with an air of I’ll do that right this very instant mixed with you peasant. They sat in silence until he returned with a cider for Ethan.

“Anything for you, Miss?” to Mina, who'd just finished her tea.

“Tequila with a lime twist, please, Edward.”

With considerably more genuine deference, the barman fetched Mina's drink, fussing unnecessarily with the napkin and lighting the candle before finally leaving them to it.

“Why are you here, Mina?”

“So direct. Very well. My daughter’s found out that Jeremy Jones is not her biological father.”

“I see. How did that happen?”

“A friend of hers was mucking about with the family genealogy and came across the mismatched blood types.”

“Well, it was bound to happen. I’m only surprised you managed to hold on to the secret for this long.”

“For a would-be creative writer, my daughter has an appalling lack of curiousity.”

“Why don’t you just tell her the truth? She’s an adult, she can handle it.”

“Absolutely not. I’d far rather tell her that you were her father.”

“You’re too kind.” Ethan gave a little bow intended to be sarcastic, but not too.

“What’s your blood type?”

“None of your business. You’re not sticking me with a 39-year-old bastard child. What would my wife say?”

“Your wife would be astonished that you’d managed to convince another woman to sleep with you. How is the Queen Bee? All the little larvae?”

“My wife and children are fine, thank you. And bees don’t have larvae.”

“Don’t they?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. For god’s sake, Mina, would you get on with it?”

“Fine.” Mina sat up, leaned forward, and Ethan would swear the room got a little darker. “I need to know where he is.”

“What makes you think I’d know?”

“Oh, come on, Ethan. You’re his best friend, his sidekick, his lackey and yes-man. You could no more be separated from him than a lamprey could from the shark it’s sucked on to. Tell me where he is.”

“With such sweet flattery, how could I say no?”

“Don’t act bitter, Ethan. You’re too plump and well-cared-for for bitterness.”

Ethan decided that while he had the upper hand and before she bit it off, he’d take advantage of his position to clarify some issues. He pulled the spider out of his pocket and set it on the table between them.

“What is this supposed to mean? Is this a threat?”

Mina sat back in her chair and Ethan could breathe a bit more easily again.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But she looked away.

“It’s deadly, this is, according to my entomologist office mate. You’d know that.”

“And I do. It came from his collection. I thought perhaps you’d like to return it to the museum.”

“Sneak it in under cover of night? Miracle spider, recently returned after a 40-year hiatus, hitchhiking the world in bunches of bananas? Don’t be foolish. I’m not taking this.”

“I’m sure the museum has been scouring the world to find this example of a completely ordinary, plentiful spider. No one noticed it was gone; no one will notice its return.” Mina waved a careless hand.

“This must not be one of his ‘special’ bugs if you’re giving it back.”

“You can only find that out if you take it.”

“And the Hine's emerald?”

“Is none of your business,” Mina said, and stared Ethan down.

Deftly, Mina had regained the upper hand. Ethan picked up the spider and examined it closely, but of course, there was no way to determine if this was one of the special bugs without chipping it open. He put it back in his pocket, feeling that he’d just participated in his own destruction but wasn’t sure how.

“Where is he, Ethan.”

“Honestly, Mina, I haven’t heard from him in months. Last time we met, he claimed he was going straight. He’d found god, or some such, I suppose. Developed a conscience or been told he had six months to live. Anyway, he was in London then, though he’s likely moved on by now.”

“He left you with no contact information, nothing?”

“He never does, you know that. When he needs you, he calls. It’s always been his way.”

“What does he mean, he’s ‘going straight’?”

“Generally it means staying on the kosher side of the dairy aisle, Mina. Specific to his case, I couldn’t say.”

“God, you’ve turned into such an idiot. You’ve been spending far too much time with your lunatics.”

“Leave my children out of this. It could mean that he’s wanting to make reparations, you know. Put the record straight, undo misdeeds, return certain misbegotten goods. Possibly even make contact with his only known progeny. I’d be more worried about him making contact with you and yours than with me and mine.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“What’s stopping him, Mina? You? You could no more lift a finger against him than against a freight train, and you know it.”

“Well, then I’ll have to switch tracks on him. What name is he using these days?”

“Dan something-odd. Hang on, I wrote it down last time.” He rummaged through his pockets, finally coming out with a beaten-down address book. “Fylgor. Dan Fylgor. Claims he’s Danish or Swedish or something with high cheekbones.”

Mina groaned.

“What is it?”

“It’s an anagram, nitwit. He never could resist grandstanding, could he.”

“Anagram? Of course. Silly me, I didn’t even see it.”

When Ethan left, a few minutes later, Mina had the most recent address and phone number for “Dan,” and Ethan still had his head, which both surprised and gratified him.

He walked home briskly, weight lifted, relief so acute it almost blurred his vision. Safely back in his own semi-detached with his semi- (and sometimes fully) detached wife, Ethan spent several long minutes hugging his children. They begged him for a bed-time story, and he indulged them with the tale of the late Marion Barbara Carstairs who owned her own island and had, for a best friend, a voodoo doll named Lord Tod Wadley. When he started in on her affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead, his wife cut him off, briskly turning off the light and shooing her husband downstairs.

After she had gone to bed, Ethan searched the house for his tools, finally locating the one, lone hammer on the floor in the sitting room where he’d left it after utterly failing to hang a family portrait.

He hammered the plastic-shrouded spider with that special fury that Mina often provoked in weak men, but a thorough investigation of the bug box yielded nothing. This wasn’t one of the special bugs after all. Ethan put his head in his hands and succumbed to a moment of intense self-pity. He never won where Mina or “Dan” were concerned, he should know that by now. He cleaned up the debris by shoving the whole mess into the trash, never noticing that the spider had gone missing.

Chapter Twelve: Additions

2007-04-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

Compass sat at the kitchen table, chin resting on folded arms, staring down a fat pile of student compositions. She had engaged in every procrastination ritual she had: the bed was made, dishes washed, floors vacuumed, news headlines skimmed, even the cat boxes had been emptied and refilled. That’s how much she didn’t want to correct and grade those papers. She’d rather scoop turds. Compass sighed and laid her head down on her arms. Without looking, she wearily reached up and pulled the top paper from the pile.

In addition to her ESL classes, Compass also taught Composition. It was this class whose papers she was currently confronting.

“Why Hair Extensions are Cheeting,” was the title of the paper in her hand. Compass groaned. When the phone rang, loud enough to almost make her cats react, Compass was so happy she could have hugged it.

“Willy, dear, were you planning to call us sometime? It’s just that we were planning a trip for, say, summer 2009, and we wouldn’t want to miss your call.” It was a woman’s voice – older, unfamiliar, but not entirely.

“I’m sorry, uh, ‘Willy’ isn’t here. You do mean Wilhelmina, right?”

“Very amusing, dear. Didn’t we play this game last time? I didn’t fall for it then, I’m not likely to fall for it now.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, of course. Look, Willy, I may be old, but I’m not deaf. I know your voice when I hear it, despite your feeble attempts to disguise it. At least you’ve dropped that awful French accent this time.”

“Listen, lady-”

“No, you listen to me! All that ‘foody oo je suis une foofoo lollerol’ nonsense is ridiculous. You must think I’m senile.” The old broad was a steamroller, and this was clearly a conversational track she knew well and relished. “I don’t mind if you’re only willing to talk to me seven minutes out of the year, but I don’t appreciate being treated like a fool. So can we just stop this now and have an actual conversation?”

There was a sudden gap, so unexpected that Compass didn’t realize at first that she was expected to fill it.

“Uh. Oh. OK, fine by me. But this really isn’t Mina.”

And the old lady was off again. “Not ‘Mina’ indeed. That’s right, dear, I’m just a crazy old bat with her glasses on sideways and oatmeal dribbling down her chin; I can be fooled by the simplist of tricks. In fact, I bet if you put the phone in the aquarium, I’d be perfectly happy burbling to your fish.” This went on at some length, but the old lady was funny, so Compass sat back and enjoyed it. She could always hang up if she got bored, and her mother would get the blame, and this was waaaaaaay better than grading papers.

“It’s one thing, you just playing these games with me, but you know your father isn’t well-”

Wait. What? “Wait. What?”

“I told you about the kidney stones, and now his doctor’s going on about hip-”

“Father? Mina has a father?”

There was a fairly sizeable gap in conversation as both parties re-evaluated.

“Who is this?”

“This is Mina’s daughter. Who’s this?”

“Virginia. Willy’s mother. She has a daughter?”

“She has a mother?!”

“Well, heavens, child, did you think she hatched from an egg?”

“She told me you were dead.”

“Wishful thinking. She never told us you were alive.”

“Where are you?” They both spoke at once, then laughed. Anyone hearing those almost-identical laughs would have pegged them immediately for family.

“I’m in Seattle.”

“We’re down on Harstine Island. Just a couple of hours’ drive away. Fancy that. How old are you, dear? Ten? Eleven? Older?”

“I’m 39.”

A brief pause, then Mina’s mother erupted into laughter. “My god, but that girl can keep a secret!”

“Yes, she can,” said Compass. “Yes, she can.”

“You must come visit Arthur and me. Or we can meet you halfway, you could take the ferry to Bremerton, and we could meet you there. Do you have kids? My goodness, do we have great-grandchildren? Arthur!” The last came out as a shriek.

Suddenly Compass was crying. Big, gaspy, empty-lunged, full-hearted sobs with fat tears that soaked the front of her shirt.

“Oh, my. Oh, dear, sweetheart, you needn’t come right away or at all if you don’t want to. Oh, I didn’t mean to overwhelm you; Arthur says I could make a deaf man jump off a bridge when I get going. It’s just, this is all so . . . well, I guess I don’t need to tell you what it is, you’re right here, after all. And, oh, honey, don’t cry. Arthur!”

There was a click as someone picked up an extension.

“You hollered?” He had a deep, hoarse, rather frail-sounding man’s voice. The voice of a grandfather. Compass wept even harder.

“Oh, my my my. Another telemarketer, reduced to putty. What do you say to them, Gin?”

“That’s not a telemarketer. Honey, tell him who you are.”

But Compass couldn’t. She could only gasp and wheeze and sniffle her way around all this, and now she had the hiccups from crying so hard.

“Is this a person or a warthog? All I hear is snurfling. You hauled me away from a Fawlty Towers marathon on PBS to listen to something rooting in the underbrush?”

Arthur and Ginny bickered on for a bit, until finally it got so ludicrous – them quibbling and her snorfling and bawling – that Compass started to laugh. A few seconds later, they were all laughing. It was the sloppiest conversation Compass had ever tried to have, and it took several minutes for them all to get themselves back under control.

Finally, Arthur asked again, not unkindly, “Now, who are you?”

Compass was almost afraid to answer, afraid to mortally shock this grandfather and lose him when she’d only just found him. She was framing an answer that was subtle yet informative when Ginny cut her off.

“It’s our granddaughter! Canyoubelieveit?!”Ginny was excited bordering on hysterical, and Compass held her breath.

“Well, now. Fancy that. Hello, granddaughter.” His voice was firm, solid. Warm.

“Hello, grandfather.” Her eyes filled up again. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“What’s your name, dear?” The excitement of a new baby in the family was finally wearing off and the business of filling in the 39 years since the birth was beginning.

“Compass. Jones. Compass Jones. You’re my mother’s parents, right?”

“That’s right,” said Ginny. “That’s an unusual name.”

“A good tool for someone who’s lost,” said Arthur, chuckling. “No pressure.”

Compass laughed out loud. “No, indeed. I think she gave up on looking to me for direction a long time ago.”

“I have so many questions for you! What do you like to eat? Are you married? Are you happy? When’s your birthday? Goodness, think of the backlog of birthday and Christmas presents we owe you!”

They chatted for a long time, the three of them, discovering a mutual affinity for cats and dogs, a unanimous dislike of squash, asparagus and religious zealots, and a shared allergy – between Compass and her grandfather – to penicillin. They fought with great passion and zeal over the edibility of mushrooms, spinach and Indian food, settled once and for all the Coke-vs.-Pepsi debate (though both Compass and her grandmother would opt for a diet Dr.Pepper over a cola any day), determined Compass’ favorite foods, colors, architectural styles, authors, time-wasting activities and position on children, the having of. Finally, they set a date to meet in person, at a restaurant near the Bremerton ferry dock.

At the end of the conversation, as all of them were feeling tapped out and exhausted, Compass asked if she could have two more answers.

“Of course, dear,” said Ginny.

“One, do you know of any connection between my mother and dragonflies, and two, do you have any idea who my real dad might be?”

There hadn’t been a gap in conversation for several hours now, but this one was so long and so enormous, Compass felt she might have lost her brand-new grandparents in it.

“There’s so much there to tell, granddaughter,” said Arthur. “Can you wait until we can tell it in person?”

“We don’t want to add any more mystery,” said Ginny, adding exponentially to the mystery. “We’ll tell you all we can when we see you. It’s just better that we see you.”

They said their good-byes shortly thereafter, and despite the awkwardness there at the end, Compass could hear the expectation of love in all their voices.

Chapter Eleven: Of Wings and Venom

2007-03-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

(photo by Jerzy Proszynski)

“Hugh Octavius Smythson-Carruthers was a famous English arachnologist. Perhaps ‘notorious’ is a better word, and, in fact, despite his being heralded as ‘famous’ by such irreproachable sources as Wikipedia, very little about his life is known.”

The Natural History Museum of Reading, England was hosting a Night of Famous English Entomologists. It was sparsely attended, and for most of the names on the list, the appelation “famous” was more than a bit of a stretch. Still, Dr. Robson, biographer of the beguilingly odd, was pleased. All eight of his students whom he’d recently threatened with a failing grade in his English Eccentrics (colloquially, “Notable Nuts”) class had turned up in hopes of brownie points for their brown noses; his office mate at Reading Poly was there to show support (which was only fair, since he’d attended her treatise on the Evolution of the Uniramous Antennae less than a fortnight ago); there were smatterings of bored homeless people, the dateless and dull, genuinely interested types (two), and an intriguingly cloaked woman – he guessed it was a woman – in the third row.

“Smythson-Carruthers,” said Robson, hitting his rhetorical stride, “was a genuine English eccentric. His spiders, many of them deadly poisonous, had free reign in his home. It was rumored that, while he was alive, he was bitten so often, he was well-nigh immune to nearly any toxin his eight-legged companions could deliver. He had a favorite spider, a salticidae, otherwise known as a ‘jumping spider,’ named Rafe that rode along with him on his shoulder or under his hat when he went out walking. Smythson was notoriously impatient with conversation, and when he felt someone had been bending his ear for too long, he’d somehow prompt his four-eyed friend to leap towards his interlocutor. It nearly always discouraged further dialogue.” He paused here for the titter that always came. Even the bored homeless crowd, at first only here for the warmth and the cheese and crackers that followed a lecture, were paying close attention now. Attack spiders rarely failed to arouse interest.

“He was also a great lover of dragonflies, though these he kept out in his prodigious gardens. He built climate-controlled shelters and ordered exotic water plants from around the world in order to attract and keep the widest possible range of dragon- and damselflies.”

Here the woman in the cloak leaned forward, almost involuntarily, as if startled.

“Tragically, or perhaps heroically, Smythson-Carruthers was never able to provide as much information to the world of entomology as his brothers and sisters in research, for he refused, full out, to kill any of his bugs. He would not be the cause of death for any of the world’s creatures, he proclaimed, and he did indeed eschew meat, leather – even going so far as to prohibit his publisher from producing his books in hard, leather bindings. His books and papers, therefore, were bound in humble cloth.”

“There is one very important fact that he added to the world of entomological knowledge, though his discovery is only now getting the respect and attention it deserves.”

Almost as one, his audience leaned forward. He let a long moment pass, let the tension build, let them try to guess before he hit them with the shocking truth.

“Insects, said Dr. Smythson-Carruthers, insects, those humble creatures who constitute 95% of all living creatures on this planet, those humble creatures who number as many, perhaps, as 10 quintillion – that’s ten followed by eighteen zeroes – insects, says Dr. Smythson-Carruthers, have a very special secret. They can read minds.”

The audience froze for a second, processing. Then they all leaned back again, some snorting, others thinking, still others just waiting for the punch line.

“Just so. How else, says the good doctor, can you explain the complex behavior of ants in colonies? Their ability to respond, in unison, to a stimulus that most can’t even see or hear or smell? There have been others who have posited this theory to explain the ability of flocks of birds to change direction, simultaneously, and too quickly for each to be responding to a clue from a lead bird. Rupert Sheldrake called this ‘morphic resonance’ and claims that clairvoyance explains a great deal of animal behavior. How many people here have a dog?”

Here several people raised their hands, rather reluctantly, afraid they might find out something disturbing about their canine companions.

“Have you ever returned home to find your dog at the door? Waiting? As if knowing your arrival was imminent? Now, you may say that he heard your car or she recognized your tread on the stairs. Perhaps. But how long has your dog been sitting there?” He paused to let them mumble for a moment. “But getting back to the bugs: Dr. Smythson-Carruthers didn’t just theorize about bug ESP, he got proof. And to do it, he used dragonflies.”

Dr. Robson rested his forearms on the podium. This was his favorite part of this lecture, and he had this audience in the sweaty palm of his soft, academic’s hand.

“Dragonflies have long had the reputation of being one of the most intelligent insects in the kingdom of insecta, the phylum arthropoda. They use simple tools, respond with intelligence to situations, problem-solve and even remember. A dragonfly, treated kindly by you one day, will remember you the next and the next and the next, up to a year later, if they – and you – should happen to live that long. They can attack prey singly or in phalanx, moving with skill and in coordination.

“In order to study their behavior, Dr. Smythson-Carruthers separated one dragonfly from its community. He placed several bowls on colored cards. The bowls were of transparent glass. In most of the bowls he had ordinary water; in a few, a food made specifically for dragonflies. A colorless, odorless, but nonetheless tasty food. He let his single test bug loose in the room, gave it time to sample the wares of each bowl. It took several hours for the dragonfly to test them all and discover which bowls held food, and which mere water. When a host of dragonflies was released into that room, they instantly flocked to the bowls that held food – not one dragonfly so much as sampled the bowls that contained water. How did they know? I’ll tell you how they knew: telepathy. The good doctor did his experiment again and again, and each time had the same result. The one dragonfly would test the waters, so to speak, then pass the message along so that all could share in the bounty. Would that human beings were as generous.

“Indeed, the more competitive arachnids seemed to send their compatriots to the wrong bowls, quite intentionally, to save the good stuff for themselves. Alas, Dr. Smythson-Carruthers was never able to gain much traction with his theory in the greater scientific community. After a paper on the topic was delivered to much derision at an entomological conference, he gave up. He holed up with his beloved bugs and wasn’t heard from again. He died, alone, rather ironically of a bee sting.”

Dr. Robson fielded questions for a good quarter of an hour – fourteen minutes more than was expected by his hosts. When the room finally broke up for biscuits and tea, Dr. Robson descended from his podium, exhausted but well pleased. The woman in the cloak approached him, her hands already pulling down her hood. Her face took Dr. Robson’s breath away.

“Mina,” he breathed, when he could finally talk again.

“Hello, Ethan.” She put something hard and cold in his hand, then turned away. “You can find me at the Forbury.” And she walked out.

Ethan Robson looked down at the object in his hand. It was a bug. In plastic. He was about to put the curious cube in his pocket when he was approached by his officemate.

“Brazilian wandering spider,” she said, taking the cube from him. “Possibly the most toxic spider known to humankind. The entomological equivalent of waking up with a horse’s head in your bed. You made someone pretty angry, hey?” She handed the deadly bug back to him and began heading for the door. “Mind your bananas.”

No amount of rapid blinking could make sense of that last comment.

Chapter Ten: Gathering Forces

2007-03-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

(picture by Lewis Scharpf)

The dragonfly with the big green lips was called an Eastern Pondhawk. It took Compass a trip to the library and four hours of flipping through pictures of dragonflies before she found the one she was looking for; typing “big-lipped dragonfly” into Google had yielded nothing useful and a couple of things that were frankly disturbing. According to a book called Dragonflies of New Jersey, the Pondhawk she had was male (the powder blue color gave it away, as blue often does), had a broad range and was generally unafraid. Its genus and species names were given as Erythemis simplicicollis. Compass found herself rather affronted by the name. There was nothing “simple” about her bug, thank you. She could neither pronounce nor understand the name, but that didn’t stop her from being affronted. The world had taken far too many liberties with her lately, and she would be affronted if she felt like it.

Beyond the annoying name, there was no information that got Compass any closer to the truth of her paternity. She liked the bug, wished the entomologists had given it a better name than “Pondhawk” which sounded like the supposedly cool name a total geek might BeDazzle in rhinestone studs on the back of his pleather jacket. It had such a ridiculous face, dark bulbous eyes like sunglasses and the round, bobbed green nose and ludicrous mouth. The pictures in closeup made her snort through her nose, a tiny, furtive snot bubble landing on the margin of one glossy page. She wiped it away, feeling terribly guilty, and decided she’d had enough for one day. She checked out several dragonfly books, stuffing them into her backpack, her mind already on Taco del Mar and the latest contribution from Netflix. She stepped out into the cool Seattle mist and almost bumped noses with a familiar face.

“I knew you couldn’t resist.”

“Mark! Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Research. They have a nice collection of myriapoda slides down in the basement. So you got a bunch of books on dragonflies, huh?”

“Nothing wrong with learning a little more about the world around me.”

“I still think you’re on the wrong path. Nothing links those bugs other than their presence in your mother’s trunk.”

“There’s got to be something. My mom wouldn’t just have a bunch of bugs for no reason.”

“Your mom’s a nutcase.”

“I’m aware of that. She’s in Prague. Or was, fairly recently. I just got a copy of her most recent debit card statement.”

“You’re opening her mail now?”

“I had to find out if she was still alive, didn’t I? She’s alive. And eating most of her meals at Joe’s Bar in Prague, apparently. She wouldn’t survive a day in a John Grisham novel – paper trail as obvious as a long stream of TP stuck to a bride’s heel.”

“Colorful.”

“Been working on it. But is it ironic?”

“Still just unfortunate, Alanis. So what happens now? Now that you know she’s alive?”

“Nothing. I stay in her house with my cats and her ghosts and I keep digging for clues.”

“Ghosts?”

“Henry and Sophie. You’d like them. They’re nice to my cats.”

“Apparently ‘nutcase’ is a genetic condition.”

“Watch it.” Compass paused, swiped some mist from her glasses. “There’s got to be something in there. And I guess it’s something fairly horrible or she wouldn’t have hid it all this time, wouldn’t have flown behind the Iron Curtain to get away from it now.”

“There is no Iron Curtain anymore.”

“Well, behind the continental window sheers, then. Whatever. You really are no help at all.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Compass stared at Mark for a moment. “Do you mean that?”

“I guess. I mean, I know you want to figure out who your father is, and I can understand that. I think you’d be better off waiting for your mom to run out of clean undies and come home, but obviously you’re not prepared to do that.”

“I can’t.”

It nearly took all the air in Compass’ lungs to admit that. She hadn’t entirely fessed up to that fact to herself, much less to someone else, and she had caught herself off guard. She couldn’t wait to start searching, couldn’t let her mom control the terms by which she established the Y side of her DNA. She turned away from Mark and frantically blinked back the unexpected tears. She was nearly under control when Mark gently took her arm.

“I’ll help.”

Such kindness proved to be her undoing. She was undone. She undid. Compass mumbled her thanks without looking up, then ducked and ran. Back home, she unpacked her jumbo veggie burrito (no guac, extra jalapenos), her Diet Coke, her bug books, and snuggled down on the couch. The dragonfly she thought was the most beautiful was the bar-winged skimmer. This one covered a lot of territory, from southern New York to Texas. She put her laptop music collection on “random shuffle,” and somewhere between Billy Joel and the Monkees, she fell asleep.

In her dream, she had just missed the last train to Clarksville, and Mickey Dolenz was looking dolefully out the window as the train took him away. Mickey was always her favorite, and Compass was sad to have missed the chance of coffee-flavored kisses. But the underground station was oddly full of bright sunlight, and what she first thought were dust motes turned out to be – what else – dragonflies. They were so beautiful in their irridescent arrogance, swooping and sliding through the air of the suddenly glass-domed station like tiny fighter planes, all colors of the rainbow and then some, bioluminescent and just plain luminescent. Then she realized that some of them had little tiny canisters around their legs, be-messaged like carrier pigeons. She tried to grab one out of the air, but she grabbed too hard and crushed it. She could feel its tiny heart beating between her fingers, too fast, much too fast, then too slow and then not at all. She opened her hand, eyes already blurred with tears and apologies – it was a smear against her palm, no message at all, and then Tracy Chapman hit her in the nose and she woke to “Give Me One Reason,” which at first had her desperately trying to explain the notes around the dragonflies’ legs until she realized that she was in her mother’s house, dozing on the couch.

It was late but not terribly late. Still it gave her quite a jolt when the phone rang. It was Todd. Todd was very very sorry, and in her still-sleep-adled brain Compass thought he was sorry about the dead dragonfly.

“It’s OK – it was just a dream,” she told him, then realized that it was her dream, not his, and that as far as he was concerned, she had yet to make sense in this conversation. “Hang on. You woke me up. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry, Compass. I should have told you.”

“Told me what, exactly?”

“I called your mom. The day she ran off. I called her and confronted her about the blood types.”

“Why would you do that? You hardly know her.”

“Well, actually, I know her pretty well. She and I go shopping sometimes. And we brunch. She said you don’t brunch, and she needed a brunch partner, so we brunch.”

When did ‘brunch’ become a verb, Compass wondered, then dismissed the question as tangential.

“Oh, God. You’re her latest accessory.”

“What?”

“Todd, my mother is exactly the kind of woman who would have a gay male friend because gay male friends are fashionable.”

“Oh, sweetie, I know that. But it’s nice to be with someone who thinks you’re a Yves St. Laurent in a Target world. But I scared her off. I didn’t mean to – I mean, who thinks a phone call is going to send someone jetting off to Eastern Europe?”

“But why did she run away? That’s what I don’t get. She’s told me unpleasant things before, she never flinched at that. Remember last Christmas when she asked that waiter to put us in the ‘bad hair’ section so I’d feel comfortable with my own kind? Or the time she came to my apartment and sneaked off with half of my clothes which, she told me later, she’d had euthanized as it was the only merciful thing to do?”

Todd snorted. Give him credit, he tried to stop the laugh, hence the snort, but Compass heard it and knew what it was.

“It’s not funny.”

“Sweetie, you are her punching bag, and I’m her handbag.”

“And she’s just an old bag.”

“I’m sorry. Really.”

“It’s OK. Will you help me, though? I’ve decided that the Fates are testing me with this whole ‘Who’s your daddy’ thing – it’s a paternity test, of sorts. I could use help.”

“I am yours to command.”

“No more consorting with the enemy, though.”

“Too bad,” Todd sighed. “I made a good consort.”

“Don’t let her know you’re not still her . . . handbag. I could use a spy in the enemy camp if she ever comes back.”

“Deal. And until then?”

“What do you know about dragonflies?”

Her armies were amassing. Well, not exactly amassing, as there wasn’t a whole lot of mass there, but they were gathering, the three of them. Triangulating, then. Herself plus Todd and Mark. She felt grateful for them, knew that they weren’t enough. She picked up the bar-winged skimmer, turned the plastic cube of dead bug over and over in her fingers, studying the little animal from every angle. Totally missing the clue that would have told her everything.

Chapter Nine: Haunting Houses

2007-03-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Compass’ mother’s house had a history. It had more than a history, it had a past. There’s a difference, after all, between a history and a past. Pasts were things that were italicized, and spoken of in greedy whispers over cocktails. Histories were things that could be written about in respectable textbooks and dozed over by high schoolers. It was a great story that Compass loved while her mother lived here. Now that she was living here, at least for the moment, the story kind of creeped her out.

In all the excitement of a run-away mother, Compass had forgotten about the house’s interesting history. She was rather forcibly reminded when she brought her cats to live with her, and she kept losing them, only to find them blissed out in the attic. Every once in awhile one or both of them would start loudly purring for no immediately apparent reason, and while cats are notorious for doing inexplicable things, Compass’ cats were by and large too lazy to indulge in odd behavior. Their focuses were food and sleep and body heat. Not a lot of mystery there.

One evening just after sunset, the less-chubby of the chubbettes started purring. She lay on her side, rolled on to her back, moved her head exactly as if someone were rubbing it. A moment later, she stopped, got up, and headed up the stairs to the attic where she banged her stupid head against the attic door until Compass came to open it. And then Compass remembered.

The day that her mother had first seen the house, Compass was with her. They were out driving around, looking for signs and checking out open houses. As they passed this house, they saw a young couple trying to erect a “for sale” sign in the front yard. It was still cold and the ground was fighting back. The couple was laughing and swearing and had no idea what they were in for.

“Excellent!” said Mina. “Do-it-yourselfers always undervalue their homes. Let’s go. And Compass . . .” and here Mina poked a finger at her daughter, “I talk. You don’t. Your sympathy is too expensive.”

They toured the house which was nice, but unspectacular from an aesthetic point of view. The young couple had bought the place from the grandson of the man who had built it, and they worked hard to keep it looking the way it had looked for the almost hundred years it had stood. They kept the old, scratched, hardwood floors, they resurrected the ancient crown molding with sanding and paint; even the wainscotting was original. The doorknobs were brass or iron and rattled loosely in their fittings, and the chandelier had apparently been swung from by a couple of generations of drunken uncles; the whole tour was a bit like walking backwards in time.

The last room they visited was the attic, which was where the original builder had kept his study. A moderately famous writer, this had been his library, his sanctuary, and just being in the room made Compass feel more at peace. She lingered behind for a moment after her mother had given the space her usual cursory glance and moved on. As Compass stood alone in the late-evening light that came through one window, she was vaguely aware of distant music.

Back downstairs, she found her mother in early negotiations with the young couple. Mina was convinced that she could get a bargain from these sellers, and she was pushing her advantage.

“There’s a lot of work to do here,” she said, and even if she didn’t actually say “tsk tsk tsk,” you could hear the echo of it in her voice.

“Yes, that’s true,” said Zack, the young husband. “But we wanted to keep it-”

“More here than a coat of paint can fix,” said Mina.

“The building’s been entirely rewired,” said Julie, the wife. “It’s all up to code, so no problem with insurance or fire hazard.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Where does the music in the attic come from?” asked Compass.

The young couple froze, jaws dropping almost in unison and to the same depth.

“You heard it?!” said Julie. “You see?” And here she turned and gave her husband a whack across the chest. “I told you! You wouldn’t believe me!”

Zack laughed. “OK, you’re not crazy. Congratulations.”

“You don’t hear it?” Compass asked Zack. “It’s opera. Is one of your neighbors a fan?”

“No, that music doesn’t come from any of the usual sources,” Julie said.

Mina’s lips parted and Compass could tell that her mother had already had enough of this conversation which, after all, did not include her.

“You have to buy this house,” said Julie, “We'll only sell it to someone who can hear it sing.” And Mina’s lips managed to simultaneously snap shut and twist into an evil little smile – a feat which gave Compass chills.

The story went like this: the house had been built in 1919 by a soldier home from the Great War. While on R & R in London, Henry met Sophie, a nightclub singer and the most intriguing woman Henry had ever seen. He went to hear her sing every night of his leave, and every night he had a single flower delivered to her by a waiter. Finally, on the last night of his stay, his flower was returned, with a note.

“This flower looks wilted. It needs liquid, and so do I. Put the poor thirsty thing in a glass full of gin and bring it to me yourself.” It was signed, simply, “Sophie.”

The gin was terribly diluted. Their romance was 100 proof. Every chance Henry got, he came to visit her and hear her sing: in one tawdry nightclub full of drunken soldiers after another, he would sit, more at attention than for any drill. When he was discharged, Henry went back to Seattle to build a home for Sophie.

Sophie finally made it to Seattle in 1922. They were married and lived one of those rare, joyfully companionable partnerships, their house full of laughter and song and the wittiest, edgiest, most charming friends Seattle had to offer. They had fabulous children who led interesting lives, and by all accounts they loved each other and even liked each other, and their children remember them dancing and laughing through the hallways of the house.

The years from 1922 until 1952 were the most prolific in Henry’s life. In addition to dozens of articles for The New Yorker and Life and the Saturday Evening Post, Henry wrote some 19 novels. He was neither hugely popular nor critically acclaimed, but he made enough for them to live comfortably. As he sat in his study, Sophie would sing in the room just below the attic. He could faintly hear her as she sang and pounded on the old piano, and if he took his shoes off, as he usually did, he could feel the vibrations of her music through the hardwood floor. Every book was dedicated to her, and because she was so instrumental in the creation of his manuscripts, Henry insisted that she sign every one, just below “The End.” She always signed, simply, “Sophie.”

Sophie’s death was completely unexpected. In 1952, while visiting family in England, she boarded a train near Harrow-Wealdstone. Two express trains crashed into a commuter train, leaving Sophie and 112 others dead.

Sophie had long ago made known that she intended to be buried in Seattle. “It’ll be wet. I’ll be dead. I won’t know the difference,” she told Henry, and he promised her they would be buried together atop Capitol Hill. Her body was brought back to Seattle, and Sophie was laid to rest. For 4 years, Henry didn’t write a word. He sat in his house, drank too much whiskey, watched too much television, and missed his wife. Henry’s children and friends were sure that Henry wouldn’t outlive Sophie by long. They were less a married couple and more a set of Siamese twins, people said. One can’t survive long without the other. But as much as Henry might have wanted to die, he didn’t, though the existence he had without Sophie barely qualified as a life.

One day, almost four years to the day after Sophie’s death, Henry needed paper. He knew there was a ream of unused paper in the attic, so for the first time since her funeral, he climbed the stairs to the attic and opened the door. He was winded – too many cigars and too much whiskey – so he sat for a moment at his desk. He may even have drifted off. The warm sun was coming in the attic window, the chair was comfortable and familiar and still molded to the contours of his body, even four years changed. He awoke to the sound of singing. It was faint, at first. Henry sat listening quietly for a moment or two, then picked up a pencil, still sharp, and wrote the first words of what would become his most famous novel: “It itches where my wife used to be.” The music and voice grew louder. Henry leaned down and pulled off his slippers and felt the faint vibrations through the floor.

In the fifteen years that Henry outlived his wife, he wrote another 8 novels, each one more haunting than the last. Critics raved about his writing during this period, saying that the books were so melodic it was “as if they were written to music.”

In the last year of Henry’s life, his eldest son had gotten into the habit of checking on Henry every day. In August of 1967, Jessie found his father upstairs in the attic, slumped over the last page of his final novel. Just below the words “The End,” was a signature: Sophie.

Sophie and Henry were still in the house, Compass knew. She'd heard the music a few times when visiting her mother, and once dreamed of a couple of jazz-agers dancing and laughing in the hall. Compass stood now at the attic door, her hand still on the doorknob, her cat bumping its head against her ankles.

“I'm not a real writer, not like Henry was,” she whispered, by way of excuse. Compass turned away and walked back down the stairs, not even sure what she was really afraid of.

Chapter Eight: In Which the Mystery not only Refuses to Unravel, It Refuses to be a Mystery

2007-02-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Hokusai Katsushika, Chinese Bellflowers and Dragonfly,

about 1830-31, color woodblock print

Mark was in equal measure horrified and thrilled by the dragonflies. Horrified that someone had captured them and encased them in plastic, thrilled that someone had captured them and encased them in plastic so he could enjoy them from every angle without guilt and with a frisson of self-righteousness.

“It’s terrible. Such lovely creatures, and look what’s been done to them.”

“And you’ve never caught a bug in one of your little killing bottles.”

“Only in the name of research.”

“Look, bugman, I just want to know what these mean. What’s the message here? What is she trying to tell me? Or not to tell me.”

“What makes you think there’s any message here? Is it possible that your mother just likes them? Thinks they’re pretty? Or hey, maybe she has the hots for a sexy entomologist. I tell you, the groupies we get waiting outside the lab every night . . . ”

Compass tossed the last of the Three Buck Chuck down her neck – and down her chin. It had been a long, blurry day of students and teaching into the void, and now Todd was acting weird and not returning her calls, and she had this pile of bugs that were beautiful and tragic, and she would not compare them to her mother, because that would make her mother even more interesting, and if Mina got any more interesting, the next thing to get beaten to pieces would be she. Her. Whatever. It was well past midnight and working its way toward dawn, and Compass knew there was some sort of message here if only Mark would pull his sweet, shiny-bald head out of the nether orifice in which it currently resided and give her the clue she needed.

“Come on,” she urged. “What can you tell me about them? Where do they come from? What do their names mean? Is there anything here I can work with?”

“Ok, see the one with the big green lips?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“In ancient Mesopotamian mythology – that is unbelievably hard to say after this much wine. Try it: ancient Meso-po-tam-ian myth-”

“I’m going to hurt you.”

“Sorry. In ancient-”

“Heard that part. Skip it.”

“Back then, in that place, dragonflies were worn as living jewels. Particularly this one, since green lips were a sign of good fortune. The bugs were wrapped in gold filament wire, gently wound around the thorax, between the forewings and the hindwings. Just there, see? Another wire was wrapped around the tail, just above the anal appendages. Then the living, buzzing jewel was suspended in the middle of the forehead of the wearer, the gold wire wrapped around the ears, usually of an emperor or empress. They put the bug on the forehead, between the eyes, because they believed that dragonflies had excellent sight, given their big eyes. And they do, actually, the Meso- Mesopeople were right about that. The dragonfly gave the wearer a keen sight, they thought, but not of the outside world, rather of the unseen world beneath the surface.”

Compass was rapt. There was no other word for it. Rapt up like a Christmas present.

Mark took another long swig of wine. “And because the dragonfly can change direction in mid-air, fly backwards, forwards, sideways, hover, swoop, all of that, they were the Gods of Thought. They flew the way people think: all over the place and changing direction in an instant. And just as quickly as a thought, poof! they can disappear. Oh, and when they mate, which can last for hours, they form a wheel in mid-air, which I guess the Mesos thought was pretty sexy.”

“That’s so great. That’s so cool!”

“Ah, shit, now I feel bad.”

“Why?”

“I made all that up. Come on, Compass, they’re just bugs. Pretty, wonderful bugs. People collect all kinds of weird crap. It doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“Then why did she make such a big deal out of me never opening the box? Never never never?”

Mark looked at the box, now in splinters all over Mina’s bedroom floor. “How does this not count as ‘opening’?”

“I can’t believe you made all that stuff up. What a shit.” Compass grabbed the big-lipped dragonfly from Mark’s hand. “For that, you are disbarred from the mystery. My magical mystery tour is now short one entomologist.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am. And you’re a shitheel, but I’ll be sober tomorrow.” Compass flopped down on the couch. Mark, sitting on the floor, stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back against the couch. Compass leaned over and breathed on his head and rubbed it with her sleeve. He waved his arms over his head to shoo her away.

“Quit. There is a Japanese Dragonfly of the Dead. This one’s true, I swear. It carries dead ancestors back to their families for the Obon festival. He’s called Shoryo Tombo.”

“And green lips are a sign of good luck.”

“Ok, that was bullshit. But this one isn’t. Maybe your real father is Japanese.”

“Mark, do I look half-Japanese?”

“No, but you don’t look half-raging-bitch either.”

“True. Where the hell is she?”

“You still don’t know, huh.”

“Not a word. Six days and not so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps she has caught ride on giant dragonfly and gone to join venerable ancestors.”

“Ah so.”

“She’s that too.”

“I said, ‘ah so,’ Compass.”

“Oh. Tell me more lies about dragonflies.”

“There was a maiden in Scotland who was so kind to animals that it was said of her that dragonflies and damselflies would land in her hair to decorate her.”

“Was she beautiful?” Compass pulled her legs up under her and rested her head on the arm of the sofa.

“Beautiful, no. Compelling in lots of ways, but not beautiful. She would brush webs of honey into her hair so that the dragonflies would have something to feed on. Scarab beetles of deep green and gold wrapped their legs around her fingers to serve as rings, and luna moths and irridescent Morphidae butterflies adorned her dress, because she was poor and had no money for fine things.”

“Bugs are better.” Compass’ voice was drizzled with wine and sleepiness.

“That’s what she said, too, when people told her how sad it was that she couldn’t afford jewelry and expensive clothes. The prince of the realm wanted to marry her because she was clever and quick and funny-”

“But not beautiful.”

“No, not beautiful. Shut up about the beautiful. She refused to marry him, though. She didn’t want him to know that . . . that . . . she slept standing up so she wouldn’t crush all the bugs.”

“What?” Compass came groggily back to life. “That’s your idea of a big secret?”

“It could be important. He might think she was weird or something.”

“She has dragonflies in her hair and probably a ring of ladybugs around her neck. I don’t think she’s worried about weird.”

“Ok, then, she refused to marry him because he was a scientist and he sometimes captured bugs in jars. And she didn’t care for that. And . . . .” his voice trailed off for a moment. “So he invented a formula that would turn him into a hobby hawk and he ate her dress and they all lived happily ever after.”

There was one of those uncomfortable moments in which one person realizes he’s said too much but maybe he can still get away with it, while another person wonders if she’s just heard what she thinks she might have, and the world splits in a thousand directions with all the possible paths they could take from this moment. And then, with an audible pop, the paths rejoined into the one, cowardly one they chose. Again.

“You’re a dork.”

“I’m a dork. And I’m leaving. We’ll hash out your mystery tomorrow.”

“Thanks for your help, amigo.”

“Good night, Compass. Get your ass off the couch and go to bed.”

But she didn’t. Instead she opted to lie there for awhile longer, balancing a dragonfly on her tummy and feeling the affectionate disarray he’d made of her hair on his way out.

Chapter Seven: In Which Compass Remembers Why Her Mother is Such a Pain in the Ass

2007-02-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

(For this photo, I thank lejun, a remarkable and prolific photographer. His work can be found at http://www.pbase.com/lejun/profile)

Compass sat back amid the shards of her mother’s most intimate secrets and reflected on a conversation she’d once had with her high school English teacher, Mrs. E. Compass had been in college then, and had recently changed her major from political science to English literature, a fact which she related rather proudly as though she’d managed some great evolutionary leap all alone and in plain sight. The horror on her former teacher’s face wiped the smug from her own.

“You’re not planning on becoming a . . . . teacher, are you?” the woman asked.

“No, why?”

“You won’t like it,” Mrs. E told her. “No one ever does.”

Back then, Compass had fat, fabulous dreams of being a writer in a turret of her own, surviving, somehow, on not very much money, glamorously gaunt, windswept and interesting. Being an English teacher was a career path she never once considered. She had novels within: great, sweeping dramas with lots of words juxtaposed in new and eye-opening ways. She would invent worlds and inhabit them with creatures both fantastic and amusingly mundane. Micro-goddess of her own little cosmos, she would wreak a sort of benign havoc on her creations, and all the dogs would be happy.

Now, at 39, her dreams were tempered. Ill-tempered. She had crabby, restless dreams of beating the skins from Republicans and shoving mufflers up the nethers of unmuffled-motorcycle riders. She still wanted to write those books, still felt they were latent and lingered, but in reality she was just the host to a colony of lampreys: she spent her nights grading papers in a sort of stupor, all creativity sucked from her as she circled misspelled words and replaced “to” with “too.” Her life felt hopeless in its littleness, an exercise in futility, and even her cats were cranky.

“English teachers can’t possibly be interesting.” It was a theory she’d bumped up against a thousand times. No one ever actually said it out loud, but it was implied in the glaze of the eyes at parties, the slight tilt of the head to see if there were someone more interesting behind her or perhaps perched on her shoulder. Dead Poets Society be damned, no one thought English teachers would ever yawp, no matter how called-for a hearty yawp might be. English teachers were the quiet, mousy ones, a step sideways from librarians, who held slim books of poetry tight to flat, unyearned-after breasts and recited lengthy monologues and lived life at one, thick-lensed remove. Compass was beginning to agree: English teachers were dull. They could spell “juxtapose” and argued fervently for the retention of the subjunctive, but they were dull. She was dull.

And yet, here was something interesting.

The box was full of dragonflies.

Fortunately, the dragonflies had been individually encased in clear, heavy plastic that even Compass’ hammering couldn’t damage. There were seven of them, all beautiful with translucent wings and narrow, waspish bodies. Compass held them gingerly, on her fingertips, as if waiting for the plastic to melt away so the dragons could fly again. Their flying days were, clearly, over, but the mounting had been done with such care that Compass almost forgot about the lucite caskets that stilled their wings. That and the fact that they were dead, of course.

Compass held one specimen up to the light. It had wings that were brown close to the body, then white at the ends, tipped at the extreme front ends with a black line. The brown part formed a dark, four-leafed clover, and its body was dusty white. Another had huge green lips, like some sort of Martian dragonfly minstrel. The third one she pulled from what was left of the box had vivid brown and yellow stripes on its wings. The fourth had a head like a hammerhead shark, and the fifth was a vivid, fluorescent blue with lacy black wings. The sixth was a sort of sunset gold – a reddish, yellowish, brownish color with bright red lines at the front tips of its wings. The seventh was perhaps Compass’ favorite: it had a gray, uninteresting body, but its wings were nearly translucent – except for the black lace veins running through them and a black line along the front of each wing that turned into a deep, dark curve at the extreme ends. Wings dipped in twilight.

Compass sighed. This was interesting. Finally, she was living in interesting times. She had lost a father and a mother, and she had a box of bugs to show for it. Her mother had left her a mystery. Compass was crap at mysteries. She was, at best, a lazy researcher, and if the answers weren’t to be found on the web – and no more than, say, four mouse clicks away – Compass wouldn’t find them. She was interested in the world, but not interested enough to look it up. However, in this case she was fortunate. She had a friend who knew bugs. She had an entomologist in her intimate circle, and she wasn’t afraid to use him.

Chapter Six: Wilhelmina Something-Like-Carbuncle

2007-01-31T21:38:00.000-08:00

Mina Jones had started life as Wilhelmina Corberson, a name that sounded to her like it belonged on a fat girl who chewed on her own hair. Which she was, and she did. When she got to be a teen-ager, she overheard someone telling her mother that there was a glamorous pair of cheekbones just begging to be released from under all that lard. She grew curious about these cheekbones, was fascinated that there could be a glamorous anything under all the peanut-butter-covered Twinkies and four-cheese pizzas. She wanted to meet those cheekbones. She wanted to be the kind of woman who had cheekbones, real ones, not rumors. She went on a diet that day, eating nothing but carrots and celery for a week, despite the tortured cries of her abandoned candy stash.

On the last day of that horrible week, her clothes were noticeably looser. She started walking to school instead of riding the mile-and-a-quarter on the bus. One day, almost exactly a month after she’d started dieting, she got to school to find that she had her skirt on backwards. It was so loose that it’d spun clear around her as she walked. She wanted to wear it that way all day, as a trophy, but fortunately survival instincts kicked in and she twisted it back the way it went before the popular girls kicked her ass for daring to wear her skirt wrong-way-round.

In six months she was slim, in seven svelte, by the nine-month mark she was willowy, then scrawny, then she had a milkshake and returned to willowy which was where she stayed. At 5’9” she was several inches taller than most girls, and with cascades of reddish-brown hair and wide-set, chocolate-brown eyes, by the end of the school year, she was Mina, one of the popular girls, meting out ass-kickings of her own.

Even when she was pregnant with Compass, she would not allow herself to gain more than 20 pounds. The doctors shouted at her, her husband berated her, but Mina believed that the baby had enough, and she wasn’t about to start spoiling her child in utero. She hated being pregnant, hated what it did to her elegant lines, hated the stupid, childish clothes they made for pregnant women. “I’m having a baby, not becoming one,” she said, when a friend presented her with a blouse decorated with teddy bears. Fortunately, she never had to resort to maternity clothes -- she just bought clothes a couple of sizes larger and promptly burned them in the back yard once she had delivered and was back to her usual weight.

Being a parent was never her idea; Jeremy wanted a child, so she gave him one. She never really thought it through, though. She had this vague idea that she’d get pregnant, spend nine months in a feminine soft-focus, do some decorous panting for a few minutes to show that she was working really hard, then present her husband with a cooing, sweet-smelling little bundle which she would hand off to a nanny until it became interesting. All her visions of parenting revolved around what she might wear to parent-teacher meetings and piano recitals and how the baby could set her off to her best advantage. Her child was an accessory, if you got right down to it: something to make her look brave and womanly and Madonna-ish, like an angel painted by Bottacelli.

Instead, she got a wheezy little bundle of cough and nerve and spittle. Babies were gross, there was no way around it. They had stuff coming out of every possible orifice. She supposed her baby must be kind of grossed out too, by all this mess, because as soon as she was able, Compass spent her days trying to stuff things in to nearly every orifice, seemingly to stop the flow of material in the other direction. Mina appreciated the gesture, if not the hospital visits they invaribly required.

And of course, the sweat had not yet dried on her brow from the labor when they told her that she’d be raising this child on her own. Jeremy Jones: father of seven minutes, idiot all his life. His mother had wanted the phrase “Devoted son, beloved father,” on the tombstone, but Mina wouldn’t allow it.

“They never met,” she told her mother-in-law. “He spent the duration of his fatherhood sucking a Camel. If you’d like to put that on his tombstone, you’re welcome.”

She and her mother-in-law never got along. Mina told her little daughter that her four healthy but hugely irritating grandparents were dead. It was a lie that got truer, over time. It was certainly not the only lie she told her child: it wasn’t even the biggest.

Mina loved alcohol, she genuinely did. She knew she drank too much, but she couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to quit. Alcohol tasted right. It felt good. It made her funny and charming and uninhibited and relaxed. Some people loved babies, some puppies, some people loved the rodeo and some loved angel-food cake. Mina loved booze. If there was scotch in angel-food cake, she might be able to eat it. If you could squeeze a baby and get whiskey, she’d juice all the babies you handed her. But until there was something booze-like about a baby, she would forego the pleasure of their company and get quietly schnozzled in her own home.

The need for this schnozzling dated back to the precise moment at the hospital when they simultaneously placed the freshly-washed baby in her arms and yanked her husband out from under her nose. “Here you are, darling, and oh, by the way, . . .” She’d gripped the baby so tightly, in that instant, terrified that someone would try to jerk her away. She felt so incredibly vulnerable, so helpless – who was going to help her get through this? She named the child Compass then, in hopes that the little girl might give her some direction. She later wished to amend the name to Anchor or Little Ball and Chain, but she thought that might hurt her daughter’s feelings, and besides it cost $40 to file the papers.

Those bloody doctors. They had stitched her back up so neatly; the doctor had wanted her to know that he’d done a careful job with that, ho ho ho. Well, ho ho who would care now? Mina lay back on the king-sized bed in her hotel room in Prague. The phone call from Todd had sent her spiraling, and she’d picked the first city name she could think of when she got to Sea-Tac Airport.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Hmmmmm? Who is this? Todd? Whyever are you calling in the middle of the day?”

“You shouldn’t have given her all that paperwork. It was right in front of me, plain as spades.”

“Don’t be mysterious. You haven’t got the right coloring to be mysterious. You just look dyspeptic.”

“Dyspeptic? You can’t even see me.”

“I can picture you. Now why are you being cryptic all over my lovely quiet morning?”

“How come you never told Compass that Jeremy Jones wasn’t her real father?”

There was a lengthy, hostile silence down the phone line.

“Did you tell her?”

“I had to; she has a right to know.”

“You stupid, stupid little boy.”

“She’s a grown-up, Mina. She’s been grieving over that man all her life, and it’s the wrong man!”

But it’s the right grief, Mina thought. She hung up the phone and started packing. Thirty-nine years of keeping this secret, and Todd had blown it all to shreds in an afternoon. In less than an hour, she was ready to go. She phoned for a taxi, asked Gurmit across the street to keep an eye on her house and fled.

Prague would keep her safe for a day or two while she decided what to do next. She loved this city, loved the tangled streets and the quiet elegance of the people. She briefly hoped Compass wasn’t too worried about her, then forgot about everything over a few glasses of slivovice, the only alcohol it was possible to pronounce when she started slurring.

Chapter Five: And Then There was One

2007-01-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Compass sat on her mother’s sofa, quietly contemplating her rapidly vanishing family. This time yesterday she’d had two parents – one inarguably dead, but still a parent, still a genetic presence, a half-contributor to her Frankenstein body (her hair, his nose, her chin, her eyes, his long legs, his smile) – but now that half of her came from god knows who, and the progenitor of the other half had scarpered, taking her answers with her. All the solid things in Compass’ life were being replaced with air and shadowy figures in the mist. Then the dryer buzzer went off and Compass screamed like a nine-year-old girl.

Upstairs, she opened the dryer, steaming her glasses slightly. Todd had already left for work, but Compass didn’t teach on Fridays, so she rattled around her mother’s house alone, pinballing from shock to numbness, shock to numbness and back to shock again. She was unsure what to do next. Did she go to the police and file a missing person report? She’d trolled through the house a little bit already, looking in the places she knew her mother stashed her favorite things. All of those favorite things were gone, as was the frozen cash she kept in a Tupperware container in her freezer. To pack all these things, make preparations to disappear, that must have taken time. Why didn’t she say anything on the phone? Was it Compass she was running from?

Compass laid her head on a pile of freshly dried towels. They were warm and smelled wonderful and for some reason Compass wanted her mom to come home to clean sheets and fresh towels. It was bait, perhaps. Compass wanted to burrow inside and curl up like some small mammal – a gerbil, perhaps, or a rabbit – and sleep until the owls and the hawks and the foxes were gone.

If this were a movie, there would have been a handsome cop. He would have been tall and leonine and brave and sensitive and sparks would have flown between them (inappropriately perhaps, considering her mother had just disappeared), and when he patted her hand sympathetically, the camera would have focused on their touch, his hand lingering on top of hers, the warmth palpable even through a movie screen. He would have looked into her eyes just a second too long, a small smile playing across his lips; he would have been in plain clothes since all cop uniforms made her think of ChiPS and there was nothing sexy about that at all. Alas, there had been no such cop. All the ones crowding her mother’s house last night had been of the pudgy, irritable, we-don’t-get-much-action-around-here-and-that’s-the-way-we-like-it type. Compass wondered about this, idly; do you become a cop because you think it’ll be relaxing?

The phone rang, causing Compass to shriek again. Did everything have to be set at pant-wetting volume in this house?

“Mina Jones’ residence.”

“Compass?” It was Todd.

“It’s me. Where are you? I can hardly hear you.”

“I’m out back of the building, having a cig.”

“No garbage trucks around, right?”

“No garbage trucks.”

“Keep an eye out. You’re the only family I have left.”

“No word from your mom?”

“No. But I’m pretty sure her disappearance was voluntary. Unless the kidnapper was willing to wait while she gathered up all gram’s jewelry, mom’s passport, her laptop, eight pairs of shoes, some 'darling' summer skirts, her bathing suit and goggles and ski boots, and I’m pretty sure there was a box of condoms in the bathroom.”

“Ah. A better class of kidnapper.”

“I’m thinking of not involving the police further. She went on her own.”

“And no cute cops to bring back for an ongoing role. Maybe they’re all on day shift?”

“Did you feed my girls?”

“I did. They were fast asleep on the bed when I arrived, and fast asleep on the couch when I left.”

“Them’s my girls. Thanks for that.”

“No worries. If you need me to watch them for a few days, I’d be happy to.”

Todd’s apartment was even smaller than Compass’ and didn’t have the view; he was therefore always willing to catsit on the rare occasions when Compass was away.

“Would you? I think I might hang out here a day or two.” Her commute to work wouldn’t be much longer, and maybe she could dig up a clue as to her mother’s whereabouts. They sounded nearly identical on the phone; that might help if she needed to do sneaky stuff.

She made a quick trip home to get some clothes, her laptop, her school stuff and to spend a moment explaining the situation to her girls. She left strict instructions as to their feeding, knowing that Todd would likely ignore her directives and the girls would be even fatter and more spoiled by the time she got back.

Once she was thoroughly burrowed in at her mom’s house, she began a less dainty search for answers. She dug through drawers instead of glancing at whatever lay on top. She used her laptop to look through the pile of floppy disks for interesting files. She checked the trash, tried for clues in the clothes her mother had packed, but she’d taken a bit of everything. At one point, as she was trying to make sense of the shredded documents in the recycle bin, Compass laughed out loud. Her mother’s helter-skelter approach to life had worked in her favor – there was no rhyme or reason to any of it, and it amused and mightily pissed off Compass that her mother had derailed the Search for the Father by turning it into a Search for the Mother.

In the bedroom, there was a wooden box with a lock that Compass had been avoiding all morning. This was the box that she had been told she must never go into unless her mother was dead. “If you’ve seen my corpse,” said Mina to the then-eleven-year-old Compass, “If I’m riddled with bullets and dry as a bone, if the doctors are backing away from the operating table and saying things like, ‘TOD 8:48 am,’ if people are patting you on the back and looking consoling and there are lots of dark clothes and lawyers around, then you may open the box. But not one minute before, do you understand?”

Compass knew her mother wasn’t dead. She knew there was every chance in the world she’d come waltzing in the door in a couple of weeks, full of explanations, lies, funny stories and airplane booze. She would undoubtably claim that she’d told Compass ages ago about the trip, it’d been planned simply forever, and all her daughter’s worrying was her daughter’s own stupid fault for not paying attention.

Compass could hear her mother’s voice in her head, berating her for being so foolish as to worry about the well-being of another human being. That was something Mina never did. There was the time Compass had had stitches and the nurse held her hand because her mother was off harassing the hospital’s plastic surgeon about his rhinoplasty rates. Or when Compass had passed out giving blood and came to to find her mother had eaten her cookies and drunk her juice. What about when she’d stayed out all night as a teen, just to force her mother to worry? When she finally came home the next morning, stiff from trying to sleep at the bus station, her mother had pilfered her favorite skirt, her best pair of shoes and $35 from her piggy bank.

Compass hammered the shit out of that box.

Chapter Four: Mom

2007-01-16T10:03:00.000-08:00

It was just after 4.30 in the afternoon. It was winter in Seattle, so it was raining, cold, already dark. Though they shared the same city, it took as much as 45 minutes to get from Compass’ tiny apartment on Capital Hill to Mina’s palatial house in Green Lake. The house wasn’t actually in the Lake, though Compass often wished it were; it was in the rather fancy, very pricey Green Lake district. It meant an additional slog up the nefarious I-5 corridor, through the center of Seattle and some of its worst traffic.

Far enough away to be a pain the ass to visit, Compass thought yet again as she grimly gripped the wheel and steered around another slow-moving Subaru stationwagon. Close enough for her to expect me to. Her windshield wipers screeked across the window, not quite enough moisture to put them on a regular wipe, not quite dry enough for the intermittent. The noise of the wipers was like sandpaper on exposed nerve endings just now, and Compass had to force herself to loosen her grip, to shake the tension from her shoulders.

She finally got to her mother’s house shortly before 5. Ducking her head to keep the mist off her glasses, Compass darted up the front steps and into the house. The house was, unusually, very dark and quiet. Mina Jones hated dark, hated quiet and usually had every light in the house on. On a normal evening, an expensive sound system piped music or talk radio to every corner: not tonight.

“Mother?” Compass ducked her head into the sitting room where a roaring fire wasn’t. That too was out of the ordinary. Rail-thin, Mina was always cold and had a fire burning year-round. Compass nearly went back outdoors to check the number on the front of the house. “Mom? Come on, I know this is your house. Where are you?”

She began moving cautiously through the house, peering around corners rather than just walking in, or standing stock-still to listen for any movement other than her own, and this in itself was starting to creep her out. The front door had been unlocked, her mother’s car in the driveway. It was unthinkable that Mina would have walked somewhere. Walking was for thick-ankled peasants with dirt between their toes, according to Mina.

Quietly, Compass headed up the stairs and in to her mother’s bedroom. It was empty. It wasn’t just empty-of-people empty, it was empty entirely. All her mother’s clothes were gone. The furniture had been plastic-sheeted like the closing up of a summer cabin or possibly that hotel where Jack Nicholson went crazy and started trying to carve up his family. Mina was gone.

When the police arrived nearly 2 hours later, Compass was sitting quietly on the couch. Todd was in the kitchen making them some hot chocolate laced with generous splashes of vanilla vodka. In her shoes, Todd would have been sobbing and hysterical; Compass’ calm, almost careless demeanor on the phone had freaked him out more than screaming would have.

“I’ve lost my mother,” she'd told him. “That’s two parents in one day. That’s just careless. Please come here now."

Her voice was so wooden on the phone; wooden to match her eyes when he arrived and tried to hug her. The police had taken their time arriving. No signs of violence; obviously the woman had taken time to pack. There was no reason for them to suspect any foul play except that her daughter kept insisting something was wrong. They took a cursory glance around the house, but they refused to file any paperwork until a good 24 hours had passed without any word.

Todd starting calling taxi companies to see if any of them had picked Mina up. As he was talking to someone named “Al,” he picked up the notebook and pen by the phone. The notebook was Yves Saint-Laurant, the pen a vintage Mont Blanc fountain pen. He hung up without a word and started dialing the limos instead. No luck.

“Is your mother rich?” he asked Compass.

“Rich as in oh, that’s rich, or rich as in possessing a lot of money?”

Todd handed her the pen. Compass stared at it as if expecting it to channel her mother and start auto-writing an explanation. “Why are you giving me this?”

“We have so very much to learn, don’t we? Baby, that’s a really expensive pen. Antique. Gold nib. See the diamond set in the tip? That’s several hundred dollars worth of pen. People don’t own these unless they are very rich or serious pen sluts.”

Compass held the heavy pen in her hand. “She isn’t rich. I think she’s comfortable; the insurance from my f-father’s death meant she never had to work, or at least she never did that I remember.”

“Huh. That money lasted a long time, then. Help from grandparents?”

“Orphans all round, actually. We aren’t very lucky with our parents in this family. Maybe there was some inheritance somewhere.”

Todd patted Compass’ hand. “The mysteries just pile up, don’t they.” He watched a police officer wander from the kitchen through the sitting room to another part of the house.

“I’d just like to know she’s OK. It doesn’t matter where she is or why she left. I just want to know that she left because she wanted to, that she’s where she wants to be and that she’s safe there. A note would have been nice.”

“Once you can file a missing persons they can start prowling for real: credit card charges, plane tickets, whether or not her passport has been through a border. We’ll find her. You’re just going to have to be patient.”

Patience was not a trait that Compass possessed. Mina had always blamed this on Compass’ father, the father who couldn’t wait five minutes to find out he hadn’t had triplets after all, the father who couldn’t walk around until he found an exit that didn’t have a garbage truck barrelling down on it. Given what Compass now knew, she no longer blamed Jeremy Jones for the froth that built up on her lips in bad traffic or the unreasonable rage at hangars that wouldn’t separate.

“I’m going to stay here tonight,” Compass decided. “Just in case there’s a reason to.”

“Then I’ll stay with you,” said Todd. “It’s too creepy to be here alone.”

Compass looked at him with real gratitude, the first emotion she’d shown since he’d gotten here hours ago. The cops gatherered ‘round and mumbled something about not finding any reason to be concerned, call tomorrow, paperwork, file some documents, keep an eye out, stay off the phone just in case, mmmrmrmrmm mrmrmrmrm mrmrmrmrrrrm. Todd took on the responsibility of nodding agreeably as they spoke while Compass stared, glassy eyed, at the pen still in lying in her hand.

“I know this pen,” she said suddenly, when everyone but the two of them had gone. “I remember it now, sort of. I remember an old hand gripped around it, a veiny old hand like a grandmother’s or someone. I can see it in my head.”

Todd pried the pen from Compass’ white-knuckled grip. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “It’s late. You bunk out in the guest room; I’ll take the couch. Let it go until tomorrow.”

“You’ll still be here in the morning, right?” she whispered, not looking up at him.

“I promise. I’ll call in sick; we’ll play junior detective.”

Compass nodded. “I’m glad you’ve been at both ends of a terrible day,” she told him.

He watched her walk carefully up the stairs, walking like she was balancing something that would spill if she stepped wrong, and hoped she’d be able to sleep. Regretted making that phone call earlier this afternoon. Finally fell asleep himself.

Chapter Three: Having Class

2007-01-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

When Compass stood in front of her class, the sea of faces seemed like some kind of code. She had every variety of skin color, every shape of eye and lip and nose, a language from every continent, a representative of each major religion and some of the minor ones, heads wrapped in turbans and hair hidden under scarves, some faces scarred from rituals, violence, disease or plain bad luck, others smooth and untouched by time or life. If she could only read them, the ups and downs of tall heads, short heads, bowed heads, if she could only unravel the code, she would be able to make sense of what the universe was trying to tell her. Usually this idea amused her; today it seemed urgently necessary.

There was a reason to the way the students assembled themselves that went beyond politics – here, Kurds sat next to Turks, Afghans next to Russians, Ethiopians cheek-by-jowl with Somalis – or religion. It wasn’t just that the “good” students sat up front, closest to the teacher, the “bad” ones in back, slouching and eyeing the door. There were really no “bad” students in ESL. They were all adults, all here willingly, even eagerly, and in all their home countries teachers were treated with respect that bordered on reverence. No, there was a greater plan at work here. Their seating arrangement had meaning, it was fluid from day to day, students shifting a seat here, a row there, all seeking out their place in the grand design like a marching band that had been let loose on a football field with no direction, unsure of what they were spelling.

“So. Perfect tenses. Present perfect is the verb 'to have' plus another verb in the past participle form. So, I have been to Safeway three times this month. Or I have never seen the Grand Canyon.” She wrote on the ancient chalkboard as she spoke, a board so old its pores sucked up chalk and would not let it go. You could see the ghosts of former teachings, dating back weeks, maybe years, a palimpsest of grammar, spelling, pedagogy, pedantry.

It was tempting to treat as children these students who spoke like children. It was easy to assume that their thoughts were as limited as their ability to speak them, and Compass fought against that assumption every day. Many of her students were refugees from war, from hate, from intolerance, from violence, from persecution. She was an educated, middle-class white woman whose closest brush with violence was a slapfest with an older brother when they were teenagers. Today a bomb had landed in her lap, but it still did less violence than the one that landed on the Eritrean woman’s schoolyard when she was a child.

“Tee-cha,” said the tiny Vietnamese girl who spoke rarely but at startling volume. “You pale.”

Discussions of personal appearance were only taboo in America, it seemed. She frequently had students discussing, for example, how to solve a student’s bad acne. Where Americans would politely pretend the woman’s face wasn’t covered in angry sores, there was no such hypocrisy in much of the world. One Nigerian recipe had helped; a good argument for airing your problems out loud.

“I have a headache,” Compass told them, reticent American to the hilt. “So today, you must do all of the talking. What are some remedies that you have used to cure headaches? Saisombat, how about you?”

Sometimes the best lesson plans were born of desperation.

Somehow, she staggered through the class without dissolving into tears. She would forget, for a moment, when the class got into a discussion of interesting cultural differences, but then the knowledge of her paternity would blindside her again, knocking the breath from her lungs and the color from her face.

She decided to call her mom on the long drive home. She knew that talking on her cell phone while driving was dangerous, but she liked the idea of having easy access to bridges to drive off of or walls to drive into if the conversation got too horrible.

“Mmmmmmm?”

“Why do you answer the phone like that?”

“Because it shows interest without unattractive enthusiasm. I hate people who fawn.”

“Saying ‘hello’ is fawning?” They were three questions and one answer into the conversation and already Compass was eyeing possible road hazards to aim at.

“It’s not the word, really, so much as the way people say it. So hopeful, like they think the person on the other end is going to save them or fix them or something.”

Compass heard a familiar rattle of ice cubes in a glass. For Mina Jones, cocktail hour was any hour that had 60 minutes in it. She spoke in italics when she was lit, which was nearly always. You could hear the italics in her voice, just as you could hear the ironic quotation marks and occasionally, the parentheses.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Must we? Are we going to spend the next 30 minutes with you telling me what a terrible mother I am and me using the mute button so I can bad-mouth you to the dog?”

“You don’t have a dog.”

“Really? Then what is this furry thing curled up on my couch?”

“Probably a frat boy. Nudge it and see if a beer bottle falls out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Beer bottles drop out of the potted plants in this house.”

“ 'Potted.' Interesting word choice.”

“I got a dog. I’ve always wanted one, so I finally went and got one.”

“What kind?”

“A Pomeranian. So slimming.”

“You got a dog to make you look thinner?”

“Ah, there’s the judgmental tone I was waiting for. Now I know it’s you. I did not buy a dog, don’t worry. As per your warnings, I have no living things in my house.”

Mina's lack of nurturing skills had been a frequent topic of conversation between the two of them. Everything you touch comes back stamped ‘failure to thrive,’ Mom, Compass often thought but did not say. And you know I mean me.

"I need to talk to you. Can you make time for me or not?"

"Fine. Come now. Bring appropriate liquor: white wine for light conversation, boubon for the heavy stuff. Mixers. Lots of mixers. Little plastic swords for olives, onions and duelling. Gauntlets to throw down and gimlets to throw back."

"Yes, you're very clever. I'm on my way."

Compass turned south with resolution. She turned north with trepidation, then forced herself to turn south again. Indecision on foot looked stupid; indecision behind the wheel of a car was dangerous and invited police attention. She stopped, briefly, at a liquor store and bought supplies, including a set of glass skewers in case things turned ugly.

As Mina herself might say, things always turned ugly.

Chapter Two: Alphabet Soup

2007-01-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

In Which Compass Gets a Lesson on Alphabet Soup

It was the central, sad joke of Compass’ life that she was one of those rare individuals whose father had died in childbirth. Jeremy Jones was in the hospital lobby buying flowers for his wife and new baby when his jokester brother rushed in, blurted, “triplets, it's triplets; two girls and a boy!” and rushed out again. Jeremy, terrified, bought a pack of cigarettes (these were the days when you could buy a pack of cigarettes in the hospital shop or for that matter, be surprised by triplets), stepped outside to smoke one and was promptly hit by a garbage truck. Compass was seven minutes old. She knows this because his watch stopped at the moment of impact. She still has that watch. It still says 8:38. Her birth certificate says 8:31. She is capable of this much math. That seven minutes, that handful of time when they shared the same world, existed simultaneously, breathed the same air, has colored all of her life since. She is aware of every morning’s 8:31, and she often finds herself breathing shallowly until 8:38 flips to 8:39. At 39, she’s older now than her father ever was, and every year she adds makes her feel both guilty and lucky.

Her self-styled fairy godmother is actually her gay neighbor, Todd. Todd is tall and handsome and sets off gaydar like some sort of radioactive hot-pink fanny pack. Like most of the gay men Compass knows, he isn’t any of the convenient, conventional stereotypes of gay men – he isn’t fey and frilly; he thinks Liza Minelli was better in Arrested Development than in Cabaret, and he only lisps when heavily dosed with Novocaine. And yet, he is unquestionably gay – his shirts are, perhaps, two sizes too small. He has great abs from pumping iron but can’t climb six flights of stairs without having to bivvy overnight somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors. He holds his cigarette a shade too far out from the center of his hand, too close to the top knuckle. He once said “fabulous” and sounded ridiculous, and yet, his inability to bring off that word had more to do with inexperience than inappropriateness. Compass has no life and has therefore spent far too much time trying to put her finger on the elusive quality that had her romance organs shutting up shop on Todd before they’d even spoken.

Todd was doing a project for a class. He was supposed to use all available research tools to track his family origins. Because doing this often involved harassing Mormons, it was a task he took on gleefully. Once finished with his own family, he’d launched into researching the histories of everyone on his floor. To keep him happy and occupied, Compass provided him with birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses, everything she had or could pry away from her mother. Todd came over now, several family documents in his hands and a worried look on his face.

“What’s up?” Todd never looked worried. It was part of his charm that they could be together in a plunging elevator and chances were, Todd wouldn’t look worried. Compass wasn’t eager to try out this scenario, but the smart money would be on Todd having placid-face.

“I don’t know if I should say anything.”

“Well, you’re already several words to the bad on that, so you might as well spill. What is it?”

"It's just that . . . . things don’t match up here.” He waved some important looking papers under her nose.

“Todd, I've got to leave for work, like, 15 minutes ago. Don’t match up how?”

Todd’s worried face grew another wrinkle. “Maybe you should talk to your mom.”

Now Compass had a worried face to match Todd’s. "Come on. I already know what’s in a Fuzzy Navel. What more could she possibly have to teach me?"

It was a polite fiction between them that Compass didn’t talk to her mother because her mother was an alcoholic. She was an alcoholic, but Compass didn’t talk to her mother because, additionally, the woman was a vicious hemorrhoid of a human being.

Fortunately, Todd's love of drama was stronger than his reluctance to be bearer of weird and world-changing tidings.

“The blood types. They don’t work out.”

“Explain?”

“Genetically. They don’t work.”

“Don’t. Work.”

“Right.” Todd spread the papers out on Compass’ only table. “Your dad’s death certificate lists him as being a Type B.”

“Okay. . . .”

“Your mom’s an O.”

“Uh huh . . .”

“Baby, you’re an A. An A minus, even. See here on your birth certificate?”

“Always the underachiever.”

“You’re not getting the point. Didn’t anyone teach you about genetics?”

“Don’t get all snooty with me, Mr. I-Took-a-Class; you didn’t either six months ago.”

“Baby, it’s not possible. Your dad had to be either an A or an AB to have an A child with an O. Get it?”

“Wow,” said Compass, through lips that had suddenly gone numb. “Look how smart you’ve gotten. It’s all alphabet soup to me.”

“ ‘Albabeb soob’? Oh. Maybe you’d better sit down.” Todd pulled out a chair, poured a fat cat off the seat.

“All right, [aw ribe],” Compass agreed, amiably, though she remained standing. It was rather pleasant, just standing here, though her knees had gone a bit wobbly. A moment later she realized it was rather pleasant, though unexpected, just lying here on the floor. Her fatter cat came over and batted at her nose. Todd shooed the cat away, helped Compass up and into the chair.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Compass rubbed her lips with one hand, hoping the feeling would come back. When she spoke, it was painful in more ways than she wanted to list.

“So my dad wasn’t my dad.”

“It looks that way. Unless your mom isn’t your mom, but that’s tough to fake.” Todd smiled, just a little, but Compass didn’t, so he quit.

“Is there a chance of that?”

“I doubt it, Baby.”

“Seven minutes.”

“What’s that?”

Compass cleared her throat. “Seven minutes. My father was a father for seven minutes before he died. He spent most of that time buying cigarettes and looking for a place to smoke them. Would you want to spend your only seven minutes of parenthood setting a bad example?”

“I’m sorry, Compass. He would have loved you.”

“Turns out he wasn’t ever a father at all.”

“You know that this means you could still have a father out there somewhere.”

Compass cranked her head up to look at Todd. “The A to my mother’s O?”

“Or the AB.” Todd smiled and this time Compass joined him, just a little, just for a second.

“You’re sure about this. You’re sure Jeremy Jones played no part in my paternity?”

“I called my prof. to double check. There are wild and weird mutations that can happen, but the chances against it are pretty astronomical.”

“Well, I feel a little like a Martian right now.”

“Insert joke about heavenly body here?”

They both stared at the complicated cracks in Compass’ linoleum and didn’t smile.

“I suppose I should try to find him.” Compass followed one crack in the linoleum to where it disappeared under the refrigerator.

“Only if you want to, Baby.”

“If he turns out to be a great guy, I’ll have a great father, thanks to you.”

“And if he’s a jerk?”

“Then I’ll go back to believing my father is dead, genetics and your prof be damned.”

“Fair enough.”

“It’s all alphabet soup anyway.”

“Just soup,” Todd agreed.

Todd took her hand, and they stayed like that, her sitting, him standing, both of them staring at the floor, for quite awhile. Compass was very late to class that day.

Chapter One: Her Own Private Hiroshima

2007-01-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

Compass Jones -- Part the First

It was that very special hour, very early in the morning, when the first light of dawn can only be described as rosy, and the air is as fresh and clean as city air will ever be. It’s the hour when Compass is at her strongest, her smartest, her most energetic and creative. It’s the hour reserved for the most dedicated, the most disciplined: lone runners making contrails of warm breath in the cold air, next-year’s best-selling author tapping quietly in the silence of a 21st Century condo-turret.

Compass Jones is, as every day at this time, fast asleep.

There are two cats, one curled in the curve of her stomach, the other on her pillow, between her head and the wall, its chin perched on her ear. This cat purrs quietly and will continue to purr until the alarm goes off. Because of the purr and the fact that the cat is fat and has several sound-muffling chins, Compass won’t hear her alarm. She will wake up 28 minutes late, and the Frantic Morning Circles will commence. It’s Thursday. This always happens on Thursdays.

Just once, she thinks to herself as she sprays panicked toothpaste on her mirror and her less-fat cat, just once I’d like an easy Thursday. This will not be that Thursday. Nor will any Thursday in the near future. Things are about to get a great deal . . . worse is too strong a word. Different. Things are about to get different.

Compass doesn’t know that yet as she scratches at a rapidly drying toothpaste slick down the front of her brown turtleneck sweater, and her mind is not on the small, localized, thermo-nuclear explosion that is about to become her life. It is instead focused on regretting the three hours of City of Heroes that replaced lesson planning last night. She has responsibilities, a City to save, after all; those Sky Raiders aren’t going to kill themselves. And besides, she’d just assembled a really kick-ass costume with cape and glowy effects. Still, there are those students and those 3 hours to fill. She stops circling for a moment and leans her head against the cool of the be-speckled bathroom mirror.

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she whispers to her reflection, her face so close to itself that she’s all eyes. “Survive today, and tomorrow’s cake.” She makes some variation of this promise to herself nearly every working day, the permutations as consistent as day-of-the-week underpants. “Today’s insert day of week here; in some number of days, it’ll be Friday.” In this manner she both survives her life and wishes most of it away.

Compass fires up her computer, though she doesn’t really have time to sit at it. Still, she can squeeze out a few extra minutes to see if she’s gotten a response to her posting on SuperDates.com. She’s had a few responses since putting together her profile some three months ago, but she’s starting to feel like “Super” Dates might be something of a misnomer if not an outright lie. The first guy she met after exchanging a series of luke-warm emails brought a portfolio of cat pictures. Compass likes cats, has a chubby pair of her own, but she found herself bolting her cider and wishing she’d ordered a schooner instead of an overly optimistic pint.

The second guy had written a play and was having some fairly significant success. Professional jealousy about the writing she hadn’t been doing allowed her to dismiss him as having pretentious hair. Several weeks later she'd heard him talking about his play on NPR and had narrowly avoided driving her car off the Jose Rizal bridge.

Guy three was pointless but had fun friends. She would spend several weeks not quite becoming close pals with a woman she met at his party. Neither had the time or energy to commit to a friendship that would obviously be both fulfilling and exhausting, and they admitted as much to each other with equal parts relief and regret. The guy’s name she forgot as early as during his party, if in fact she’d ever known it at all.

There had been no guy four. Lots of email exchanges, some fabulous and fun, most stupid. In the manner of all things e-whatever, the dating service allowed people to send “packaged” messages instead of having to go to the trouble of crafting one of their own, so she generally had to wade through a few “Call the fire department, you’re smokin’!” messages to get to the rich vein of no-hopers who crowded her inbox. Her profile was chatty and humorous, her picture . . . . non-threatening, so she tended to get hits from the guys who were scared of rejection and had every good reason to expect it. If you are the company you keep, Compass Jones is uneducated, unemployed, unambitious, physically . . . irregular and facially . . . asymmetrical. Her social skills are limited to not throwing up when addressed, and her calendar is littered with big, empty squares.

Today is Thursday. It will not get any better. She goes through her inbox and e-shreds them all. She feels vaguely offended that these guys think that they are the best she could do, then tries to swallow that feeling as unworthy and unkind.

Then her fairy godmother swoops in and everything is different.