Rosa felt fear swoop through her, then in the next breath, shook it off with the aid of some facts. “I don’t think that’s the case, Pedro. There was no sign of any kind of disturbance in the house.”
“Was she there alone?”
“No. Camelia was there too, sulking in her room.” Rosa hadn’t quite managed to keep the bite out of her voice, then felt a stab of guilt as she remembered that she had also been too involved in her own mind and had left the house. If either she or Cam had been with Lucia, maybe she would have said more, or perhaps she wouldn’t have left at all.
“Then maybe Lucia didn’t make a fuss to spare Camelia,” Pedro had said, his voice filled with dark foreboding.
Rosa had stood, trying to push the thought away. “No. I…A neighbor would have seen and said something if she left with some stranger. You don’t understand how quickly a town like ours can spot someone who isn’t a local or how much they like to spread gossip about us.”
Pedro had seemed to swallow the urge to press his point and merely nodded. “I hope you are right.”
Lunch had followed, the only mark on it, her aunt asking about their papers and Rosa’s unsatisfactory answer.
Pedro had walked her to the door. “Rosa?”
“Yes?”
“Lucia would send us food every month,” he began, and Rosa frowned.
“I know, but what do you mean ‘send’? I always thought she came herself.”
Pedro’s thick eyebrows had raised a touch. “No. She said it was too dangerous to come out this way often. So she had a network of trusted people. She didn’t leave you any of this?”
Rosa caught the genuine worry in his tone and had reassured him that she would do her best to fill her sister’s shoes, just as Lucia had apparently filled their mother’s.
She finally reached home and put the visit to the side in her mind, relishing in the coldness of her kitchen, taking a tin of iced tea from the fridge, and downing half. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the seal, wondering what it was for. She had thought her sister may have only wanted to weigh down the note holding her apology, inadequate explanation, and second clue. Yet in their father’s hunts, any object with the clues had always meant something.
She shook her head and spoke to the empty kitchen. “She dances on the turn of the crescent moon.”
Perhaps it was the clarity gained by being out of the sun or the refreshing drink. Maybe it was the effect of seeing family she usually had to pretend didn’t exist, but an old memory surfaced.
She was six, standing with her mother, looking down into a wooden crib, where a three-month-old Camelia lay, giggling and trying to catch the dangling toys on the mobile.
There was music playing in the background, the kind with a mechanical tang to it. The song ended abruptly, and Camelia immediately began to fuss.
“Will you put it playing for her again?” her mother had asked, hazel eyes bright with happiness.
“Yes, mama,” Rosa had said, bouncing over to her mother’s treasured music box.
She carefully turned the box around and twisted the lever, rewinding the music box. As she released it, the music began to play again. Rosa had turned the box around to face the room, also taking a moment to watch the figure in a flamenco dress, spin to the tinny music.
Rosa gasped, dispelling the memory and looking at the ceiling as if she could see through it to her mother’s old music box. The lever was shaped like a crescent moon.
Filled with adrenaline, Rosa raced up the stairs two at a time and almost fell before reaching the landing.
She froze at the door to her parents’ bedroom, her hand hovering above the handle. Rosa rarely entered this room. She took one steadying breath, then opened the door, faint traces of her mother’s perfume hitting her in the face, bringing tears to her eyes.
Ruthlessly brushing that weakness away, she moved to the dressing table and pulled the old music box towards her. With shaking fingers, she opened the carved cedar wood box —the tiny dancer popping up as she did so. Inside, set neatly atop her mother’s jewelry, was the last note, marked with the image of a scroll.
As she pulled it out, she saw the small, flip-style cell phone hidden underneath.
She took the phone out as if it might bite her, placed it on the table, then opened the note.
In Lucia's hurried handwriting, the note read, “There is a message waiting to be sent on the phone. As soon as you find it, send it, and know that the reply is the true scroll. I’m sorry I can’t say more. Good luck, and maybe, if we are insanely lucky, we will see each other again.”
Rosa felt the bright warm day turn shadowy and cold. What the hell had her sister gotten her involved in?
4
Rosa walked to the mission, for once wholly unaware of the stares and whispers that followed her. She was too busy trying to guess who she had sent the message to. That person presumably held the actual ‘scroll’ that contained the information that Lucia had wanted to pass on. The message itself was no help at all. It spoke about a first edition volume of some book called ‘Wisdom and Destiny’, and about how a contact had been found, but they were awaiting their response. She let her feet follow the familiar route mindlessly, trying to
