42

V

V COULDN’T QUITE SAY WHAT HAD COMPELLED HER TO LEAP into the back of that truck (not that she could say much of anything). She didn’t know where the chameleon was going, or what she planned on doing when she came face-to-shifting-face with him. Perhaps this chameleon was nothing like the one who had charmed her Caroline right out from underneath her. Perhaps Caroline hadn’t needed much charming to begin with. But what if V could have stopped it all if she’d only said something? What if, by exposing this chameleon, V could stop a similar mother from experiencing a similar heartache?

She had to try.

V smoothed her hand over the photograph she’d ripped from the book, the faces tinted lightly brown from the sun shining through the tarp above. Three people, working on an archaeological dig in the blazing sun, smiling together for the camera.

The mother.

The father.

A baby girl.

V clutched the photograph to her chest with one hand, sloughing her way out from under the tarp with the other. She lifted herself from the truck bed and did her best to take in her surroundings.

The convention center. The chameleon had driven them to the convention center in New York City. V knew the towering glass building well. She’d given many talks here in her time. V followed the stream of visitors in chef’s hats and colored aprons, some toting cake pans under their arms, others simply fidgeting nervously.

V snuck her way through the side entrance, past a greasy-haired young gentleman pushing an enormous barrel of flour. (The man was too engrossed in his book to notice her entrance, which V supposed she should take as a compliment.) She steadied herself, taking one last look at the photograph for courage, then—bumping only slightly against the flour barrel as she nudged past—V made her way inside.

She did not, at that moment, realize that she’d dropped the photograph.