Cainsville: Visions Part 46

I hung up.

CHAPTER SIXTY.

I went in to work with Gabriel. I didn't have an official shift, but I'd sent out some feelers, building those victim profiles for my parents' case, and I hoped one of them might have paid off in the form of a possible interview. Calls would come to Lydia. I didn't even get a chance to ask her about them. As soon as we walked in, she stood, motioning that she needed to speak to me. Gabriel continued on to his office.

Once the door closed behind him, Lydia picked up an envelope off her desk. "This came for you."

It was a letter-sized white envelope. On the front, it said OLIVIA TAYLOR-JONES in careful block letters. As soon as I saw those letters, I went still. I saw that handwriting, and I flashed to a Christmas gift label. My name on it, in the same printed letters. TO EDEN. LOVE DADDY.

"Todd," I whispered.

My gaze shot to the return address on the back, which confirmed it. Lydia caught my elbow, and I realized it was shaking. She nodded toward the meeting room door. I let her usher me inside. I made my way blindly to the table, dropped the letter on it, and sat there staring at it.

"I could call Gabriel in, if you'd like," she said. When I shook my head vehemently, she said, "That's what I thought. Not exactly Mr. Empathy. He means well..." She trailed off, then checked that the door was closed before sitting beside me.

"Todd's probably telling me why he won't see me," I said, indicating the envelope. "He doesn't think it's wise. Or he just doesn't want to, after all these years."

I thought of what Gabriel had said, that Todd had kept looking for me long after Pamela had given up. Now that I'd turned up, had he realized he wasn't going to get that fantasy reunion with his little girl? That I wasn't his little girl anymore, but a grown woman, a stranger?

I remembered going to a state fair with my adoptive dad when I was eight. It was magical-all bright lights and whirling rides and delicious treats. I'd returned at eighteen and wished I hadn't-the lights had been garish, the rides dilapidated, the treats seeming to guarantee food poisoning. Memories forever tainted. Is that what Todd feared?

"That might not be why he's writing," Lydia said.

I nodded and dropped the envelope, unopened, into my bag. "I'll read it later."

"If you want to talk about it..."

I smiled wanly. "Thanks. I might take you up on that. Not a lot..." I trailed off. Not a lot of people I can talk to about it these days. That sounded sad. Pathetic, even. The truth was that I'd never had a lot of people I could unload on. I was the shoulder to cry on. I'd never needed that myself, because I'd always had it, with my dad. Then he was gone, and ...

And no one was there to replace him, and maybe I was looking for that in Todd. Which was the worst possible thing I could do. Not because he was a convicted serial killer, but because it wasn't fair to Todd. Expecting him to take the role of my beloved dad would be like him expecting me to take that of his two-year-old daughter.

"I'll let you know what it says tomorrow," I said. "If he doesn't want to see me, you can stop trying."

"If you want to talk before that..."

I smiled at her, more genuine now. "Thanks."

With the arrival of that letter, my enthusiasm for work soured. There were no calls on my leads, and I wasn't sure I'd have set up an interview even if I could. I finished what I could do, and at eleven I was rapping on Gabriel's office door.

"Come in," he called.

He was at his desk, surrounded by papers.

"I'm taking off."

He looked up, as if startled, and checked his watch.

"I wasn't scheduled to work today," I said. "If you need me to do something, I'm happy to stay another hour or so, but otherwise I wouldn't mind getting home and grabbing a nap before my diner shift."

"Yes, of course."

I turned to leave.

"Olivia?"

When I looked back, he waved me in. I closed the door and he said, "Have you given any more thought to quitting the diner?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to be considering it."

"I'd like you to. Yes, you don't want to depend on me for your income, but your trust fund comes due in a few months. Your expenses are low. I suspect that, in a crunch, you would be fine until then." When I didn't answer, he said, "You also mentioned applying for your private investigator license."

I made a face. "I was just talking. I'll get it if this works out, but I'm not in any rush. The real issue is those few months until my trust fund. I'd rather keep my job at the diner. It's not interfering, is it?"

He hesitated.

"You don't want me working at the diner," I said. "Why?"

"Because it puts you at their mercy and under their watch."

"The elders, you mean."

"Yes. I know they don't pay your wages, but I've seen the way Larry treats them. If they wished you gone, he'd do it. Of course, that would leave you no worse off than if you quit, but ... The balance of power makes me uneasy."

I wasn't eager to quit the diner. It felt like saying two months as a server was as much "real-person life" as this former socialite could bear.

"I'll think about it," I said. "Do you want me to check in later-?"

His phone rang, Lydia patching in a call. He glanced at it.

"Take that," I said. "Just call me later if-"

"Hold on."

He answered. It was a short call. His end was just "Yes" and "No" and "Are you certain?" and "Please send the results to my office."

"That was the laboratory," he said.

"With the results already?"

"I put a rush on them."

Which would have cost extra. Another time, I'd have joked about him docking it from my wages, but now that seemed uncharitable.

"Your theory was correct," he said. "Macy and Ciara were, indeed, switched at birth."

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE.

Using hairs from Macy's brush and from one in her parents' room, the lab confirmed that the familial match was reversed. Macy was the Conways' daughter. Ciara was the Shaws'. As for how that happened, it did no good to speculate. We had the information. Now I had to figure out how to act on it.

I went home to think. And to nap, though I got little sleep. I tossed and turned until I gave up and went to my laptop and started punching in terms.

It took nearly two hours of searching before I found it. Not a connection. Not a direct one, anyway. But another case, pulled from the archives of a Chicago newspaper. In the late sixties, a family claimed their young son was a changeling. The boy was "severely troubled," according to his grandmother. The child told intricate stories of "another world," a fairy realm, ergo he must be a changeling.

People had been sensible enough to dismiss the idea as amusingly primitive. The boy's grandmother was a first-generation Irish immigrant. Clearly, she'd brought some of that old-world nonsense over with her. After all, she was the one who made the claims by taking the child to the local priest. The priest had refused to help, so she'd found another, and somehow-to the parents' shock and dismay-the story leaked to the paper, where it seemed to have been included merely for entertainment. Or to show how much more progressive Americans were, dismissing old-world nonsense and superst.i.tion.

So what caught my attention in this tale? The grandmother claimed that her real grandson had been switched with a fairy child from Cainsville. Her daughter-in-law had family there, and the parents visited often. That, she said, was where it happened. And her proof? Well, she had none. Only that there was "something wrong with that town." Something she felt every time she visited. The town took far too great an interest in her grandson and his problems, and the old folks there went out of their way to convince her that the boy was fine, and that if she loved him and raised him well, he would grow into a strong and capable young man.

Of course, all of that was dismissed, with the columnist waxing poetic about the tight bonds and loving care that a small town bestows on its own. How much different was life in the bustling, impersonal city? How much better might troubled children like this one be if they were instead raised in the pastoral perfection of the countryside?

I read that article and I saw that my blossoming theory, however mad it seemed, might actually be right. I just needed to prove it.

When Macy called me shortly before my diner shift, I swear there was a moment, after she introduced herself, where I was unable to find my voice, certain that ... I don't know. That the universe had prodded her to call me, knowing I had information that could change her life? It was merely coincidence, of course, given that I'd handed her my card only twenty-four hours earlier and asked her to call if she remembered anything.

"The man who took me said something else," she said. "Something weird. One of those things that you think you've heard wrong, but then you can't figure out what else it could have been."

"What's that?"

"He asked if I'd had any tests done."

"Tests?"

"That's what I thought. I figured..." A pause, and when her voice came back, it was lowered, as if sharing a secret. "I don't sleep around, Ms. Jones. I really don't, and I don't want you to get the wrong impression when I say this."

"Okay."

"I thought he meant STD tests. I thought-" She swallowed. "I thought he was taking me somewhere for s.e.x, and I was okay with that, which is why I think I must have been drugged."

"It did seem like it when I met you."

"It did?" An exhale of relief. "Good. So I thought he was asking if I'd been tested recently. I said I hadn't ... been with anyone in a while. He laughed and said that wasn't what he meant. And then he asked if we'd had other tests, me and my parents, and I was so embarra.s.sed about the STD thing that I figured I was hearing wrong and said no. He said we should." Macy paused. "Do you know what he meant?"

Yes. And I can't tell you. Not until I've figured it all out, and even then I don't know if I will. If I can. Despite what a difference it could make to your life.

"No, I don't know," I said. "Did he say anything else about it?"

"That was it. I should have asked, but it didn't seem important."

"It probably wasn't. But if I find out what he meant, I'll let you know."

"Please."

At the diner, I got a text from Ricky saying he needed to talk as soon as I got a moment. I called him back between orders.

"You know how I mentioned my dad was taking off to Florida for a few days?" Ricky said.

"Miami, on business."

"He just told me he has other obligations, and I need to take his place."

"Huh."

"Yeah, huh. Any other time, I'd be thrilled at the chance to prove myself. But this is because I promised him our relationship wasn't going to interfere with my club duties..."

"He's testing you."

"Right."

"Go," I said.

"I'd rather not. This s.h.i.t with James ... I feel like I should be here, in case you need me."

I hesitated, thinking of what the Huntsman had said about keeping Ricky close. I dismissed it. The man wanted something from me and would say whatever was needed to make me run to him for protection and answers.

"I'll be fine," I said. "Go."

During my shift, I pa.s.sed a note to Patrick, asking him to meet me after work. He agreed with a smug smile.

He was waiting in the park for me.

"Changelings," I said as I walked over.

He blinked, then recovered as he smiled and said, "Good evening to you, too."

"Tell me about changelings."

"Mmm." He waved for me to join him on the bench. "That's a very old piece of folklore, used to explain children who weren't quite right. A mentally challenged child. A mentally ill child. A wild and uncontrollable child. No parent wants to believe they've created such a thing. So according to the folklore-"

"I know the folklore. I want to know how it works in Cainsville."

He paused, then said slowly, "How it works?"

"How you do it. Why you do it. You and the other elders."