“No, I was no more than a day or two old. I assumed my mother knew she was dying from complications of my birth when she wrote the note and arranged for someone to bring me to Philadelphia. It was a far better fate than ending up in an orphanage.”
“So what about your father’s family? Why didn’t they take you?”
Oliver shrugged as Felipe’s arm slipped around his shoulders. “I don’t know. My mother was a widow by the time I was born, and she said trying to reconcile with them was a mistake. Maybe they didn’t get along. Either way, I know nothing about them. Barlow wasn’t even their surname; it’s my grandmother’s maiden name.” A wet laugh escaped Oliver’s lips. “I don’t even know my father’s name. My nana never told me. There were times I tried to ask about him as a child, but she managed to distract me or lead the conversation into generalizations.He was a good manorhe loved your motherwas as much as she would say.
“I don’t know how those things could be true when my mother and grandmother did everything in their power to obscure my connection to him. I once asked my grandmother if I was a bastard because I had her maiden name instead of his surname. She insisted I wasn’t, not that it mattered.” Tears burned the backs of his eyes. “None of it ever made sense to me, and I didn’t want to hurt my nana by asking too many questions about my parents. She raised me like her own child and gave me all the love I could possibly need. She was enough.”
He said it so emphatically, but he wasn’t certain if he was trying to convince Felipe and Gwen or himself. His grandmother had been enough. They were all each other had, and while he wanted for nothing, his traitorous mind always wondered about the parents he had nevermet. When he found the note, the questions and longing only intensified, and somehow, that felt like a betrayal after all his nana had done for him. Oliver pressed his knuckles into his eyes at the wave of grief cresting over him. He was thirty-seven; he was too old to be cross with ghosts.
“She did a good job raising you,” Felipe replied softly, giving Oliver’s shoulder a squeeze, “and wanting to know more doesn’t change that.”
“I know. It’s just that so many things in my life have been left unanswered. My grandmother was a necromancer, but she never talked about our powers apart from the moral and ethical implications. My mother shared her gift, but I don’t know what she could or couldn’t do. It wasn’t until after my nana died that I realized how little I knew about anything. I didn’t know how my powers worked, I didn’t know about my parents, I didn’t know about anything that felt important. The funny thing is that I hadn’t really thought about my parents in years, but then, when we started spending more time with Teresa over the summer, I noticed so many little things she did that remind me of you. Sometimes, she says something, and it sounds exactly like Louisa.”
“Don’t tell her that.”
Oliver laughed with a sniff. “She also has Agatha’s eye for color and her laugh. Teresa shares so much with each of you, and it made me wonder how many things I do that come from people I’ve never met. I don’twantto go to a murder town and deal with a vampire panic, but—”
“But you want to go to the town your family came from?”
“Yeah. I thought about going to Aldorhaven a few times after I found the note, but I worried about what would happen if I did go. I didn’t want to just show up and make a nuisance of myself, especially since I had no idea if there was a hotel nearby or how I would even go about finding my relatives without a name. I couldn’t just go up to random people and say, ‘Oh, hello, do I look familiar to you? Could you point me in the direction of my father’s family?’ Maybe, if I had gone back when I was twenty, I might have found someone, but it’sbeen nearly forty years since my parents were alive; there may not be anyone left who knew them or even remembers them.”
“Even if they didn’t know them well, you might still have younger cousins or aunts and uncles left.”
“You know, Ol, you being from a murder town explains a few things,” Gwen replied with a cheeky grin as she looked up from the mess of papers floating around her. When she glanced into the strong box, her face brightened. “Ooh, is this your mother?”
The open ambrotype levitated out of the box and hovered a few inches from Oliver’s face. Plucking the glass and metal diptych out of the air, Oliver nodded and stared down at the woman in the portrait. She had a round face and bright, wide eyes framed by sleek black hair that had been parted down the center and pulled into a simple bun. She stared directly into the camera with a look of surprise rather than the aloof poise or solemnness women typically adopted in photographs. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or twenty when the picture was taken. Oliver swallowed against the knot in his throat knowing what came next. Only a few years later she would be gone. When he handed the photograph to Felipe, his partner’s gaze flickered between the picture and Oliver’s face.
“She was quite pretty. I can see the resemblance around the eyes and mouth.”
“Really?” Oliver squinted at the picture but still couldn’t see it. “My nana always said I took after my grandfather.”
“Your coloring is the same,” Gwen added.
“The photograph’s black and white!”
“Exactly.”
When Gwen let out a peel of stifled laughter, Oliver tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t help but join her. His laughter came out somewhat closer to sobs, but they were tinged with relief. He had kept so much to himself for so long, afraid that others might think less of him for never knowing his father or having no connection to those he came from. Somehow, with Gwen and Felipe, it all felt easy. The knot in Oliver’s chest loosened as he wiped at his eyes and drew in a raggedbreath. As he sat back, Felipe carefully closed the ambrotype and set it back inside the box before taking Oliver’s hand in his.
A wave of apprehension followed by the probing slide of Felipe’s presence on the tether came a second before his partner slowly said, “I have a proposal, so hear me out before you agree to anything. I would like to take a look at the file on the Aldorhaven case tonight and do some research on my own. I want you to visit and see if there is any way you can find out more about your family, but I need to make sure we aren’t walking blindly into danger by agreeing to this case.”
“All right.” Oliver tried not to let his disappointment show. Felipe was being reasonable,morethan reasonable, but now that Aldorhaven was a real place with actual problems and not just a name on a piece of paper, he couldn’t imagine anyone but them going to help, even if it was a murder town. “And if the case doesn’t sound horrible?”
“Then, we’ll go.” Releasing his hand, Felipe plucked the note from Gwen’s invisible web and carefully set it back in the box. “Even if we do decide to take the risk and accept the case, I don’t think we should tell anyone about the whole family thing until we better understand what’s going on.”
“So we won’t tell the head inspector?”
“We won’t tell anyone, especially in Aldorhaven. We don’t know who might be connected to the case, and I don’t want you to needlessly put a target on your back.”
Oliver nodded. He was never good at lying, but it wasn’t particularly hard when he didn’t really know anything, though he couldn’t imagine what sorts of problems it could even cause.
“If you’re going to take the case, I will get started on putting together athoroughdossier on vampires. And don’t you dare say there’s no such thing, Oliver Barlow,” Gwen said sternly as she used her telekinesis to carefully put the rest of the pages she pulled out into orderly piles. “I’m sure Mr. Turpin will be cross with me for disappearing for so long, but it was for a good cause.”
As Gwen handed Oliver the letters, his eyes drifted to what remained in the strong box. He had shown Gwen and Felipe the piecesthat had stuck in his soul like barbs, but there were things still untouched that he once found comfort in but now shied away from because their absence hurt more than he could admit. Then again, so many things in his life stung less once he shared them with the people who loved him most.
“Before you go, would you like to see a picture of my nana?” Oliver asked softly.
Chapter Five
