Earthbound

Locked.

Of course.

Benson is bent over, looking under the neat stacks on Reese’s desk. “Maybe a drawer,” he mutters, opening the shallow pencil drawer at the front of the mahogany desk. “Bingo,” he says with a grin as he holds up a small key chain with one key dangling from it.

“What’s that?”

In answer, he walks over to the gray filing cabinet and inserts the key into the spring-loaded lock. His body is so near I catch a hint of his deodorant. I breathe deeply.

He turns the key.

The lock pops with a click.

“Excellent,” Benson says, drumming his fingertips together.

“Library nerd,” I mutter, mostly to cover the disappointment I feel when he steps back and gives me some space.

The drawer is full of files labeled at the top, mostly in Reese’s neat print, but some are in another handwriting. It looks male, but not Jay’s, and I wonder who she’s been working with. I’ve never seen anyone else around the house. Or, at least, not anywhere near the office. The labels are all names. I look at the front of the drawers and they show what letters are in each one.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” I say dryly, and begin sifting through the As. “Reese told Elizabeth she’d check her files for Quinn. I guess these are the files.” A-r, A-t, A-u, A-v, A- w. “Nope. No Avery at all,” I say, checking through several files on either side of where it should have been, just in case it wasn’t alphabetized exactly right. I pause, my fingertips keeping my place among the files. “So I guess the possibility exists that he doesn’t have anything to do with this.” It’s a wish more than a logical conclusion, but I’m not above wishing.

“Or that he gave you a fake name,” Benson says, looking weirdly broody leaning against Reese’s desk.

I ignore him—not to mention the butterflies in my stomach—and take a shuddering breath as I close the A–F drawer and move on to my real task. My file.

M–T.

Michaels.

The third one down.

The drawer seems to glow like a neon light, and I’m simultaneously desperate and terrified to open it.

Benson draws near and raps a knuckle softly against the label when I continue to stall. “It’s what you came in here for,” he murmurs. A soft hand touches my shoulder, and I try to draw strength from him like an emotional osmosis.

After a long moment I nod and reach for the handle, carefully pressing the latch that lets it slide free, revealing dozens upon dozens of cream-colored files. I feel my world melting around me when I see it.

Tavia Michaels.

I knew it would be there—it’s the reason we broke into Reese’s office in the first place. For answers! But confirmation is a bitch.

I pull it out and stare at it in horror and fascination.

It’s pretty nondescript. A cream-colored folder with a small graphic on the upper right-hand corner of a feather floating above a flame. I peek back into the files; the others have the image too. But I don’t know what it means and don’t have the time to theorize.

I need to look at my file.

It’s pretty thick—I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by that. I flip the top and look down at a picture of myself as a sophomore.

And, um, it’s not a great picture. Sophomore year was kinda awkward.

“Awww, look at you,” Benson says with a grin, his arm resting around my back. “You’re so cuuuuute.”

“Shut up, jerk,” I say, but he’s managed to break the tension. I lean very slightly into his arm and flip to the next page.

A birth certificate. My Social Security card. High school transcripts. A copy of my parents’ will. Exactly the kind of stuff you’d expect to find in a filing cabinet in the office of someone who had received surprise custody of an injured teenager.

But past all that—pictures of my art. And not just any pictures. I recognize these photos— I took them.

“How did she get these?” I ask aloud, holding up several.

“Hey, did you paint that?” Benson asks, pointing to an oil on canvas of my mother sitting by a window, slicing strawberries.

“Yeah,” I manage to choke out. It’s one of my best pieces. Somehow I managed to capture the … essence of who my mother really is. Was.

I can’t think about my mother right now. I swallow down the grief—push it away—then flip the photo, blocking her face from my eyes.

But there’s still another photo of a painting. And another, and another.

“You’re really good,” Benson says, taking one from me to get a closer look.

It’s strange to realize that he’s never seen my work. Art was my life for so many years. And now Benson is such a big part of my life. And art isn’t.

It feels wrong.

“I took these pictures and sent them to the art school that wanted me,” I explain, as much to distract myself as anything. “How did Reese get them?”

“Um, Huntington?” Benson asks in a wary voice.

“Yeah, how …” But my words fade away as I look down at the first piece of paper beneath the stack of photos.

It’s the letter I first got from Huntington.

No. A draft of the letter.

With notes in the margins in Reese’s handwriting.

“What the hell?” I grasp at the corner of the letter and lift it up only to find a finished copy beneath it. And the pamphlet they sent with it.

And copies of the photos in the pamphlet.

“But … but I didn’t send my stuff to New Hampshire—it went to upstate New York.”

“How hard is it to have mail forwarded?”

“But there was a website. And a phone number. I called them!” I’m almost shrieking. Huntington was the reason we got on the plane in the first place. If it’s fake …

“Here,” Benson says, pulling his cell out of his pocket. “What was the website?” He brings up the Internet on his phone and I recite the web address in a near monotone.

“Here we go,” Benson says once it loads. “Huntington Academy of the Arts. The website is still up and there’s a phone number.”

We both look at the screen for a long, silent spell.

“I can call it,” Benson offers.

I’m afraid to say yes. Despite everything we’ve discovered, this feels like a major turning point.

Benson looks down at his screen, and his thinking wrinkle appears between his eyebrows.

Every nerve is on edge as I nod. “Let’s do it.”

He waits a few seconds—giving me a chance to change my mind maybe—then touches his screen and raises the phone to his ear.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Then the phone on Reese’s desk lets out a shrill ring.

My knees collapse and I sink to the floor, drained of the will to support my own weight. “But I talked to them!” I shout, and my voice is so shrill—I hardly recognize it. “There was a woman, and it wasn’t Reese,” I add