had one.
Whatever those numbers meant, they definitely weren’t dates.
Picking one at random, I opened it up.
It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at.
I finally realized they were blood tests––two of them––with a map comparing the different sets. The names had been blacked out, but squinting between them, I saw an analysis showing differences as well as similarities. Most of that analysis consisted of numbered shorthand.
I couldn’t make sense of the notes, which were handwritten and scanned.
Closing that file, I opened another. It was a checklist of some kind, but written in a language I didn’t recognize. I found myself thinking it might be the one I’d seen written on the walls of the Legion of Honor, but I couldn’t be certain, given that those words had been written in blood.
The third file I opened contained a scanned birth certificate––mine.
The fourth was a text document written in that same language I didn’t know.
The next five or six files I tried at random looked like lab results as well, only written in different languages than the first few. Only one of those languages even looked vaguely familiar to me. I suspected it might be the written form of Sanskrit, but I wasn’t exactly up on my Sanskrit, either.
“Damn it, Black,” I muttered. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
I clicked on a few more subfolders. A lot of those subfolders contained subfolders, too. Seeing one called images-M, I clicked on it, only to find it full of pictures of me, pretty much at every age. He even had baby pictures of me.
Another folder, named images-S had pictures of my sister, Zoe.
Some of those, I didn’t even have. A few I’d never even seen.
He had another folder, images-P, that turned out to contain pictures of my parents. Only then did the “S” make sense for Zoe.
Parents. Sister.
Two other folders lived among the image files as well, one labeled, Faustus? (with the question mark), and the other labeled Phaelen.
Opening both, I was surprised when I recognized the people in those pictures, too.
Images in the “Faustus” folder turned out to be of my Uncle Charles, the only blood relative of Dad’s I’d ever met. “Phaelen” was one of mom’s old friends, “Uncle Phil,” a man who hadn’t been an actual blood relative, but someone we’d treated as one.
I hadn’t seen either of them since before my parents died, when I was ten years old.
We’d spent a lot of time with them as kids, going on camping and kayaking trips a few times of year, as well as the more usual barbecues and dinners and birthday parties. We’d visited Uncle Charlie at his house in Big Basin at least a few times a year in addition to all that, often spending the whole weekend and hiking to the coast.
The last time I’d asked about either of them, my mom’s sister told me Uncle Phil was sick, cancer maybe, and living overseas. I never heard anything concrete about Uncle Charlie, but the rumor was he’d come out as gay and was living with his boyfriend somewhere in Asia.
I’d considered asking Nick to help me track them down. I came close to approaching him with it a few times, but in the end, I decided to leave them alone.
If either of them had wanted to stay in touch, they would have.
I didn’t even know if they knew about Zoe’s murder.
Looking at their faces now in the images on the screen, how happy and carefree they looked in most of those pictures, I couldn’t help but see that happiness as indifference. I felt my throat tighten as I realized just how much of my past I’d shoved into the untidy attic spaces belonging to the time before my parents turned up dead.
Mostly, I wanted to forget any of it ever happened.
Uncle Charles and I had been close. Closer than me and my dad in some ways.
He hadn’t so much as dropped a condolences note when his brother and his brother’s wife died. He hadn’t even bothered with a postcard for Zoe.
Feeling my
Whatever those numbers meant, they definitely weren’t dates.
Picking one at random, I opened it up.
It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at.
I finally realized they were blood tests––two of them––with a map comparing the different sets. The names had been blacked out, but squinting between them, I saw an analysis showing differences as well as similarities. Most of that analysis consisted of numbered shorthand.
I couldn’t make sense of the notes, which were handwritten and scanned.
Closing that file, I opened another. It was a checklist of some kind, but written in a language I didn’t recognize. I found myself thinking it might be the one I’d seen written on the walls of the Legion of Honor, but I couldn’t be certain, given that those words had been written in blood.
The third file I opened contained a scanned birth certificate––mine.
The fourth was a text document written in that same language I didn’t know.
The next five or six files I tried at random looked like lab results as well, only written in different languages than the first few. Only one of those languages even looked vaguely familiar to me. I suspected it might be the written form of Sanskrit, but I wasn’t exactly up on my Sanskrit, either.
“Damn it, Black,” I muttered. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
I clicked on a few more subfolders. A lot of those subfolders contained subfolders, too. Seeing one called images-M, I clicked on it, only to find it full of pictures of me, pretty much at every age. He even had baby pictures of me.
Another folder, named images-S had pictures of my sister, Zoe.
Some of those, I didn’t even have. A few I’d never even seen.
He had another folder, images-P, that turned out to contain pictures of my parents. Only then did the “S” make sense for Zoe.
Parents. Sister.
Two other folders lived among the image files as well, one labeled, Faustus? (with the question mark), and the other labeled Phaelen.
Opening both, I was surprised when I recognized the people in those pictures, too.
Images in the “Faustus” folder turned out to be of my Uncle Charles, the only blood relative of Dad’s I’d ever met. “Phaelen” was one of mom’s old friends, “Uncle Phil,” a man who hadn’t been an actual blood relative, but someone we’d treated as one.
I hadn’t seen either of them since before my parents died, when I was ten years old.
We’d spent a lot of time with them as kids, going on camping and kayaking trips a few times of year, as well as the more usual barbecues and dinners and birthday parties. We’d visited Uncle Charlie at his house in Big Basin at least a few times a year in addition to all that, often spending the whole weekend and hiking to the coast.
The last time I’d asked about either of them, my mom’s sister told me Uncle Phil was sick, cancer maybe, and living overseas. I never heard anything concrete about Uncle Charlie, but the rumor was he’d come out as gay and was living with his boyfriend somewhere in Asia.
I’d considered asking Nick to help me track them down. I came close to approaching him with it a few times, but in the end, I decided to leave them alone.
If either of them had wanted to stay in touch, they would have.
I didn’t even know if they knew about Zoe’s murder.
Looking at their faces now in the images on the screen, how happy and carefree they looked in most of those pictures, I couldn’t help but see that happiness as indifference. I felt my throat tighten as I realized just how much of my past I’d shoved into the untidy attic spaces belonging to the time before my parents turned up dead.
Mostly, I wanted to forget any of it ever happened.
Uncle Charles and I had been close. Closer than me and my dad in some ways.
He hadn’t so much as dropped a condolences note when his brother and his brother’s wife died. He hadn’t even bothered with a postcard for Zoe.
Feeling my
Similar Books
