Prologue
Xander, Age Ten
It was the Fourth of July, and my mother was walking out on us.
“I’m leaving you.”
She said it to my dad, but it was a pluralyouthat included me too. The words traveled from Mom’s mouth to my heart at the speed of sound (v= 343 meters per second). I thought it must have been faster than that given how hard they punched me in the chest. Faster than the speed of light, even. Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity states that nothing in the universe travels faster than light (c= 186,282 miles per second), but surely this was an exception—a bullet in my heart, shattering my insides.
My mind turned the chaotic pain into a manageable equation:
F—M(Pd) = e^∞ (D + C)
Whereas, after she had an affair with a Parisian diplomat (Pd), our family(F) had now lost one mother (M), resulting in emotional devastation raised to an infinite power(e^∞)for both dad (D) and child (C).
In plain English, it meant my mother didn’t think her only sonwas worth sticking around for.
People had told me I’d inherited my genius from my father. But that morning, he was slow to catch on when I’d already done the math.
“Oh, come on, Sharon,” Dad said wearily. “Not this again. It’s just one week.”
Every summer, we’d drive the six hours from our little home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to Dad’s family house in Castle Hill, Rhode Island. Mom hated these trips. The Rhode Island house was too small, too dark, too full of Dad’s books and papers, and crammed with my grandparents’ antique furniture Dad inherited after they passed away. Mom would always try to talk Dad out of these trips, then threaten to stay home, then finally give in and complain the entire time.
That morning, my father believed she was keeping to tradition, until he finally analyzed the situation: He and I were packed and ready to go, the Buick loaded with our luggage for the week. A sleek black sedan idled next to said Buick. Mom’s luggage was in the front entry. She was dressed up in a dark skirt suit, pink blouse, and heels with her makeup done. Then there were all those hushed phone calls and late nights with her “colleague” at the State Department that past month, hanging over us like a black cloud.
Mom bent and touched her fingertips to my cheek. “It won’t be forever.”
I stared at her from behind my black, square-framed glasses. What did that mean? She was coming back? When? At some future date between today and forever? It was a statement made of inconclusive data, which was worthless. It was her walking out the door but leaving it cracked behind her, trapping me in a perpetual state of mystery as to when (or if) she’d ever walk back through it.
I sort of hated her for that.
Then she turned to Dad. “I can’t do this anymore.” Mom shouldered her big bag and took the handle of her rolling suitcase.
Whatever “this” was remained an unknown too; I wouldn’t ask,and my father couldn’t. He stared at my mother’s retreating back as she stepped out the front door and slipped—long-legged and elegant—into the diplomat’s waiting sedan and drove away. Then Dad turned to me with a fixed, shell-shocked smile.
“We’d better hit the road if we want to beat traffic.”
***
I hardly felt a minute of the six-hour drive to Castle Hill. Philadelphia flew past me in the west, then New York City in the east, without notice. Next came the green of Connecticut, which gave way to the endless bridges and shorelines of Rhode Island. All those miles slipped out from under me as the shock of my mother’s abandonment jolted around my brain, animating thoughts like Frankenstein’s monster:
I did this.
It’s all my fault.
She doesn’t want me.
These were the facts as I saw them, since moms don’t leave—but mine did.
“Look, there.” Dad pointed out the windshield to a park straight ahead of us where several families were having a Fourth of July party. We’d arrived in Castle Hill. It was the first time he’d spoken in more than an hour. “There’re a bunch of kids. How about you go play with them for a while?”
“What…?” My heart that had been thudding with a dull, heavy clang, sped up. “Now? Aren’t we going to the house?”
“Sure, sure. But I need to go alone for a bit first.”
I stared at him. “You’re going to leave me here? Dad, I don’t know those kids. I can’t just walk up and invite myself…”
But he was already pulling the Buick into a parking spot. He rested his pale, long-fingered hands on the top of the steering wheel, his gaze on the party in front of us but not really seeing it. “I need to get some numbers on paper before I lose them. You understand that, right? If I don’t write the figures down, they might—whoop!”He made a fluttering motion. “Fly straight out of my head, never to return.”
