Within hours Semele and Theo were en route to Admont, Austria, the place Simza had stayed every winter and the only place during her lifetime where she could be found on the lungo drom, “the road with no destination.”
Semele looked out the plane’s window, unable to fathom that the madman who had killed her father and Cabe now had her mother. She didn’t know if she could survive losing all of them.
She thought back to the day before her father died. She really had called him on a whim, just to say hi. Right before they hung up he had said, “There’s something important your mother and I want to tell you when you take the train up next week.”
She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but looking back she knew he had meant to tell her the truth about her adoption. He and her mother had gone to their favorite neighborhood restaurant the night before, a little Italian joint, and discussed it at length; her mother had cried as they walked home hand in hand. Semele had no idea how she knew all this, but she did. She could see the moments strung together like a movie of someone else’s life.
“What are you thinking?” Theo asked her, taking her hand.
“Just thinking about my father.” She looked over to him, not sure how she could explain.
“Was he the one who encouraged you to work in antiquities?” he asked.
Semele gave him a sad smile, knowing he was trying to distract her. “I was fascinated by handwriting as a teenager. I used to study it as a hobby. For a while I thought about becoming a professional graphologist after college.” She shook her head at the idea. “I used to give all my friends handwriting analyses.”
“I’ll have to show you mine,” he offered and kissed her hand.
“That’s not even negotiable.” She couldn’t wait to analyze his handwriting, to see which way his words slanted, how sharp the angles were, how hard he pressed to impose his will on the page. Every little idiosyncrasy had meaning.
“So that led you to manuscripts?” His finger absently stroked her palm in a soothing motion.
She nodded, staring at their joined hands. “I’d request volumes of antique letters from Beinecke to study the penmanship, but over time, I became more interested in the letters themselves.” This had prompted her interest in paleography, the study of ancient writing and manuscripts. Slowly, she began to find her niche. “My father was the one who suggested I learn Greek my freshman year in college.”
“Funny, that…” Theo murmured, shaking his head.
Now she wondered if Nettie had asked Joseph to make sure she learned Greek, or if his encouragement had happened naturally. With both of them gone, she would never know for sure. He had kept her mother in the dark; had that been to protect her? How much had Nettie told her father?
Semele was surprised by how much she wanted to talk about her parents. Since her father’s death and learning about her adoption, she had tried to shut them out. Now the memories were flowing freely again.
“While other kids were at the beach, we would visit libraries and tour collections on our vacations.”
“Where you saw countless treasures,” Theo surmised with a smile.
“The earliest known copy of the I Ching, Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Magna Carta, the Dead Sea Scrolls. We went everywhere. The Bodleian Library, the Vatican Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale…”
“So you traveled the world and stayed home for college?”
“I moved to Michigan for graduate school, Ann Arbor,” she pointed out. Ann Arbor had the largest collection of ancient papyrus and parchment in North America and a top conservation program. That program had launched a career in which she handled every kind of rare book and manuscript—early printings, maps, atlases, heirloom books, and first editions. She’d worked with libraries, museums, and private collectors around the world. Looking back, she could see that everything had led, one stepping-stone at a time, to finding Ionna’s manuscript, and Theo.
Strange how she and Theo barely knew each other and yet she felt as if she’d known him forever. Now they were forty-one thousand feet in the air, on their way to find the place where her ancestors once lived. She had the seashell from Paris in her purse and the necklace in her hand. Ever since she had found her mother’s pearls, she had yet to let them go.
Message from VS—
You’re angry.
One day you’ll understand.
Reply to VS—
Flying home tomorrow. We can talk when I arrive.
Message from VS—
No longer there.
I love you.
Reply to VS—
What have you done?