Nico pointed out a line on one of the pages. “I found a ton of other files like this. It looks like she was running DNA tests looking for this specific marker.” He pointed at a line someone had circled repeatedly with red ink.
“Is this her way of trying to trace the Edemas line or something?” I asked.
“That’s all that makes sense. Ithasto have something to do with that. Why else would she be doing this? All these other files were tested for the exact same marker, and the kids are all pretty much the same age as you. That’s weird.”
“Show me.” I wanted to see what he was talking about.
Nico showed me the filing cabinets, and I flipped through the files to see for myself. He was right. Almost every kid here had a birthday within a month of mine. It was like she was trying to match these other kids to me. Or see if they had the same markerI did? I scanned through every file, desperate to figure out what exactly she was looking for. I wasn’t a geneticist, and neither was Nico. Without more information, there was no way we’d figure out what this marker was or what it meant.
Between the files and the closet, it was obvious Doctor Stanford had been keeping tabs on me my whole life. It was enough to take away almost all the doubt I had about her being my birth mother. Why would a random pediatrician do all this? Why would a pediatrician have pictures of me in her closet? Sure, there were unhinged people who created relationships in their heads. Stalkers. But this didn’t feel like that. This wasn’t sinister. Most stalkers tried to make contact with their target. She’d gone out of her way to keep things as distant as possible, only seeing me a few times a year at her office.
It should have given me some relief knowing, for sure, that she was my biological mother, but it didn’t. Instead, it made me wonder.
“Where do you think she is?” I asked Nico.
“No idea. It’s weird that she’d keep track of you for so long and then vanish off the face of the earth. What was the oldest picture in there?”
“Looked like there were a couple of pictures of my college graduation. Nothing later than that.”
“So she pulled up stakes and vanished six years ago?”
I shook my head. “I guess.” I didn’t know how to feel about any of this. I felt drained. “What do we do now? This was our biggest lead.”
“If she’s half as careful as I think she was, I doubt we’ll be able to find anything about her whereabouts. It looks like she’s spent decades maintaining a very careful façade. As far as we know, the royalsstilldon’t know she’s alive.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, gesturing around the room. “It looks like she left in a hurry. She didn’t take any pictures orpersonal items. She ran, and she ran fast. I bet all she had time to do was get rid of anything that might lead them to her. Maybe they didn’t know it was actually her—maybe they only thought this was one of Kenneth’s safe houses. Either way, she got out of here in a hurry.”
“True,” Nico conceded.
I glanced back at the closet of pictures. I’m sure she had to run for her own safety, but she’d left behind all those pictures. The only things she had of her only child. It stung a little bit even though I knew she had to have cared. I’d read the letters she’d sent. No matter what I told myself, I was still feeling rejected and abandoned, as silly as that seemed.
Nico and I searched the rest of the closet and found nothing. It was disheartening. This had all felt like some sort of treasure hunt. We’d found and followed clues, traveled so far. Not having some sort of closure was almost unbearable. What had it all been for if this was a dead end?
We were putting everything back and doing as good a job as we could to clean up the little office. I nudged Nico. “Do you think it really did help?”
Nico stopped what he was doing. “What do you mean?”
“The very last letter she wrote to me alluded to the fact that she’d done her best to protect me. I think she’s talking about the suppressants. Do you really think they helped? I mean, the royals found me anyway. I almost feel like it would have been better without them. At least then, my wolf could have come out. I’d be able to defend myself if I was a full shifter.”
Nico put his arm around me. “I think she did what she thought was best. Keeping your lineage secret probably saved your life. Remember what Javi said? They found those three little kids in South America. If you’d been a shifter, the odds of them finding you were probably way higher.”
He was probably right. The entire thing was crazy. My life over the last few months had gone from wholly mundane and blissfully quiet to a never-ending, drama-filled chaotic mess.
“Do you want to look around the rest of the house?” Nico asked.
I shrugged. “We can walk through it. I doubt we’ll find anything, though.”
We went through the two bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs, then glanced around the kitchen, giving the drawers a cursory open as we went. Nico made the inexplicably bad decision of opening the refrigerator. I’d thought my parents’ place had been awful, but this was a million times worse. The inside was almost black with mold. Every item had spoiled, rotted, liquified, then dried into a black-and-gray paste that covered almost the entire interior.
Nico slammed the door. “Holy shit. That was awful.”
Seeing the disgusted look on Nico’s face sent me into giggles, then into a full belly laugh. Tears streamed down my face as I tried to catch my breath.
Nico nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, I know. Dumb move. You can stop laughing.”
I only laughed harder. I doubled over, clutching my knees—until we heard the front door slam shut. My heart nearly leaped into my throat, and Nico was by my side in an instant, snarling. I caught a whiff of something in the air. The same familiar scent I’d noticed when we’d walked in, only now it was stronger. Nico took me by the arm and led me toward the living room. As we rounded the corner of the hallway and came into the den, everything seemed undisturbed. No one was waiting to jump us, but one thing had changed, and both of us were staring at it. On the wall beside the coat closet, a picture had been taken off the wall. Where it had been, there was a wall safe sitting with the door wide open.
Someone had snuck in while we were in here and opened the safe? The thought made my skin crawl, knowing a stranger had been right here in the house and neither of us had noticed. The scent must have mixed with the faint smell of the home. I couldn't help but glance around the house, furtive and afraid. Were they still here?
