When Lyra received the call from Visita, she was still in the bodega, scouring the documents. Lyra’s flashlight had started to flicker, but she couldn’t pull herself away from the box, let alone remove herself from the darkened shed that held a comforting stink of mold, wood, and dirt. She placed the memos in pristine piles and fought with herself on how to organize them—by date, by location sent or received. But she couldn’t shake the name of that doctor—Vincent R. Smith—his correspondences leading up to the night of heat and moonlight. If the past were a lock, the doctor’s letters were the key.
The ring from Lyra’s cell phone startled her, and she dropped the document she’d just picked up. Before answering, Lyra wiped it off and shoved it into one of the piles. It was her father’s patient file.
“¿Hello?”
“Lyra, honey.”
“¿Visita? ¡Hello!” Lyra pulled the cell phone away from her face to check the number—she glanced at the time: seven o’clock. Shit, she thought. How long have I been stuck in here?
Visita went into a long retelling of their odyssey—the bus, the crocodiles, no hotels whatsoever—while Lyra swung open the bodega door to a penetrating darkness, except for a streetlamp down the road, flickering in the rain. Gabby, she thought. I left him.
“Yes, Visita, you three can stay,” Lyra said, half listening. “Sure, sure, I understand why you’d want to get here early. Sure. Sure.”
Lyra provided Visita the address as she threw the documents back into the weathered cardboard box, slipped her poncho over her head, carefully shut the bodega door, and dodged as much rain as she could on the way back to her car. “See you soon, Tía.”
Lyra regained her head before hanging up. “Visita,” she said. “You cannot say anything.”
“No, of course not, Lyra.”
“You have to promise me.”
“You don’t have to worry about us. You know we are where secrets go to die.”
Lyra pulled off, speeding as fast as her thoughts. She didn’t know if Gabriel had torn apart the house, set it on fire while trying to fry a hot dog, or opened the windows to let it flood into a swimming pool—one never knew with hyperactive children his age. She chastised herself for being so irresponsible, but she couldn’t help herself. Those documents. All that text remained in her memory, as if typed directly onto her brain.
Her maternal instinct righted her: Gabriel. He was fine. She knew her son was fine and hadn’t gotten into any trouble.
GABRIEL’S STOMACH RUMBLED, and he wandered the house, waiting for Lyra to get home. Upstairs in Lyra’s bedroom, he rubbed his socks on the shag carpeting and shocked every object he could find. The Zenith television, an empty vase, Lyra’s hair dryer, an odd, vibrating thing on the nightstand. He opened the dresser and felt a force field around her clothes, a charge that sent the soft hairs on his arms straight up. He touched the television again to deactivate his newfound superpower.
Gabriel rummaged through the drawers. In a photo album hidden beneath a pair of old jeans, he found pages of trees, flowers, animals, and rivers. His mother and different men stood at the tops of volcanoes, waist-deep in lagoons, on tangerine beaches at sunset. As he perused the album’s contents, a picture fell out from one of the pages. Folded vertically, labeled La familia Cepeda Valverde, enero de 1966. He immediately recognized Teresa, drawing him to the center of the picture. On either side of her were two little girls. With tan, radiant little faces.
Gabriel continued digging, and at the bottom of the upper right-hand drawer, he found a pile of old comic books. The first was titled Tales of the New Teen Titans: Starring Raven (vol. 1, no. 2). On the cover, a hooded woman rose from purple smoke, poised to attack. Her blue cloak transformed into a bird’s folded wings. Behind her, intergalactic witches banished intergalactic demons. Expansive worlds orbited another woman’s face. A baby was presented before a hooded cult.
NOW THEY CAN BE TOLD! the cover read. THE CHILLING SECRETS OF TRIGON’S DAUGHTER!
Before Gabriel could open the comic, Lyra shouted to him frantically from downstairs. He put the comic back where he had found it. But Gabriel slipped the photograph of the women into his pocket. Underneath the rest of the comics in the drawer was a letter, crumpled with sweat and age. For Gabriel was written in a mother’s handwriting.