Tai’s voice shakes. “What the fuck?” She looks at me, eyelashes fawn-wet. “She’s alive? I knew it. I fu—”
“Keep reading,” I urge.
Here is my truth: I saw her with my own two eyes in this very forest, one month before writing this letter. I think she wishes to contact us but cannot find the right way. I am certain she does not live on the property, for I and my team have searched every inch of this place since, and we would have found her. Unless, of course, she does not wish to be found by me.
I hope you can find her, and I hope you can accomplish what I could not, in these past nine years. I hope you can determine what happened to your beloved mother on and after that fateful night of her disappearance. What she discovered, where she went, and why. I cannot, with any certainty, tell you if she ran away or was kidnapped. I have myself cycled through those and far more punishing possibilities over the years.
But I know now she did not want to leave us forever.
Tai pauses, eyes refilling with tears, and looks at me.
I encourage her with a nod, a painful lump caught in my throat.
Asking you to look into her disappearance—and to look for her now—is a decision I will struggle with forever more. Alas, that decision has now been made, as I put pen to paper, and there is no going back.
I understand that this is no easy task. I hope that the two of you might work hand in hand to indulge this final wish of mine. No private detective has succeeded. No avid fan of hers, no colleague. Not even myself. I can only hope that her own daughters—who possess pieces of her—might better understand my precious fox.
She lives on Viloxin, my daughters. Find her.
I hope that you will forgive me one day for asking this of you, and for allowing you to remain ignorant of her true nature. My aim was to protect you from our humanity. I only realize now, as my body fails me, that we are all only human, that there is a beauty in this, and that parents must, in the end, have faith in their children to cultivate and manage their own humanity as adults.
I will warn you, whether or not you choose to take on this task: Viloxin and Hero Pharmaceuticals itself are much changed since you lived here. Take care in choosing whom to trust. I have not barricaded myself inside of Stökéwood simply because of ill health: There are those who wish our downfall, all of us. I leave this note with Mina now, because it is the only way I know it will be secure, and I only hope you meet her before too long. She’s been my most loyal companion for these past eight years.
From a man to his daughters: I have loved you both, I love you both, and I will love you both, as long as a single spark of consciousness allows. I know that your mother felt the same, for as long as I knew her.
Tai folds the note in half, ignoring the careful creases, and I sit in silence, lost for words.
“We love you too, Dad,” Tai says into the empty air, breaking into a sob and rubbing her nose on her shirtsleeve.
But I am not Tai.
It is impossible, at first, for me to think about the actual specifics of the letter. His proclamations of love. His confession that Mama wasn’t who she said she was—and that not only did White Fox exist, but she wrote it for us. His assertion that—my God—he saw Mama and thinks she’s living on Viloxin.
That’s all overshadowed by a storm cloud electric with rage—full of confusion, of all-consuming fear, of the nagging suspicion that there’s so much more we don’t know. Why leave this letter upending our understanding of Mama with this … thing, when he could have called us and told us himself? If he privately entertained the idea she might be alive, why say nothing when I claimed she was gone for good?
Who is this man who claims to love us as long as a single spark of consciousness allows?
All I know is I wish he were here now so I could scream these questions at him, though I know I would break down in tears the moment I smelled his papery skin.
“This is ridiculous,” I whisper to myself, head throbbing, hands blue with cold, as I lead my sister into the hallway and shut the door. As if not to disturb him. “We tell no one about this, Tai. Not a soul.”
Tai swirls to face me, blue eyes charged. “I need to tell Saxim. And Teddy and Marion, at least—”
I grip her by the arm. “No one, Tai. He gave us nothing real to go off of, no one to trust but Mina—”
“He’s gone, Manon. Cut him some slack. And you’re missing the point. He said she’s living on Viloxin. She’s out there.”
“And gave us what proof?”
Her hands clench into fists. “He saw her. And Dad never lied.”
I scoff. He could have been hallucinating on meds when he saw her. He could have been dreaming. She saw the tabloid headlines just like me: Sick, Paranoid, and Irresponsible. That’s why we can’t tell a soul. No matter that he sounded sharp as ever in his letter. I’m picking at my hangnail—a bad habit, like the lip biting. But it reminds me I’m in control. Besides writing, it’s the little things like this that keep the fizzy pennies of anxiety at bay.
“Read between the lines, Tai. It was one last-ditch effort by a guilty old man to make us feel like Mama didn’t kill herself and abandon us, since he did ditch us,” I blurt. My thumb bleeds as Tai stares at me with barefaced shock. Another memory reaches me with a searing flash: Mama quaking with fury in this very hall, jabbing a ringed pointer finger into Dad’s lab-coated chest, telling him, If it was up to you, I would remain trapped at Stökéwood forever, an empty-headed Marie Antoinette playing in her Petit Trianon. Only I will die here. Mama tried her hardest to convince us of her brightness, but it was there, the shadow side, strengthened by the disappointment of motherhood and the murmurs about Dad. “She didn’t want us more than her career, than the rest of her life. Neither of them did. It’s best we come to terms with that and move on.”
It takes her another moment to digest my words. My mouth tastes sour. I feel cut open, my fears exposed. But a part of me knows I’ve also said the words to hurt her, because I need her to be as hurt as I am; I need her to understand that no matter what Dad saw, Mama can’t be alive, she can’t, she can’t, but I regret that when Tai’s face wobbles and she hides it by rubbing her cheeks with her hands.
“Fuck. I can’t believe the way your brain works,” Tai says, dropping to the floor, her back against the wall. “That’s the first conclusion you jump to.” She’s trembling, even though her jaw is set.
“You’re wrong,” she says. “They both loved us more than anything.”
And it burns to watch, to listen as she convinces herself of a truth she felt so assured of as a child.
I cross my arms so they won’t betray me by shaking.
“Stop looking at me like that. Please stop.” Tai wraps her arms around her knees and squeezes tight. “If she’s on Viloxin, hiding…” She wipes her face. “We’ll find her and hear the truth from her,” she finishes, looking up at me with sweet, drooping eyes designed to skewer hearts. “I know we haven’t exactly been on the best terms. But we need to at least try to do this together. How is that not the most obvious thing in the world to you?”
“Try? Try how? What can we do that the actual police can’t? If she’s here, she’s hidden herself from them for the past decade. Our mother is dead, and we’re here for the retrospective. Well, I am,” I snap. My arms won’t stop vibrating, loose in their sockets, and my teeth are chattering, too. This house.