Chapter 4

The pharmacy staff was the first person to say that to me today, and the only one.

My nose tingled, my eyes grew hot, and before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face.

She didn't try to stop me from crying. She put down the comb and offered me her shoulder to lean on.

I cried for ages, leaving a big wet patch on her clothes.

She let me cry on her shoulder, never once trying to pull me away.

When I walked out of the pharmacy, I had a paper bag in my arms, and inside was a photo that actually looked pretty good.

I squatted by the roadside for a while and suddenly remembered something.

There was something I hid under the bed in the storage room when I was a kid.

It was Mom's old diary.

I found it in a dusty corner of the attic when I was eight. Its cover was caked with dust, and the spine was coming apart at the seams.

The handwriting inside was neat and delicate, and the entries were dated from the year Mom was expecting Ayleen.

I didn't know many words back then, but I kept reading it over and over, and some sentences were still etched into my memory.

It read: [Nyomi said she saw the words on her dad's palm. I felt a tremor in my heart. Because I saw them too when I was little, only we can see those words.

[I thought I was the only one. Turns out Nyomi can see them too.

[If this is something we inherit, I hope Nyomi won't be scared of it the way I was. It's not a curse. It's that we see things others can't.]

Yes, Mom could see them, too.

I'd never told anyone about this. Because even if I did, nobody would buy it.

My brothers would think I was making up stories to clear my name.

There were a few pages left at the back of the diary, but they'd been torn out, leaving only scraps of paper along the edges.

I don't know who did it.

The diary had always been hidden under my bed, and nobody ever went poking around in any corner of that storage room.

At least, that was what I thought.

I got up and let my mind wander, gazing up at the sky for a while.

There was one line from Mom's diary that really stuck with me. [I wrote a letter to Nyomi. If I'm ever gone, I hope she'll find it. I hid it somewhere only she would know how to find.]

I spent ten years looking for that letter, but I never found it.

I searched the attic, went through Mom's old room, checked the study, dug around in the basement, and looked in every corner of the garden. But I still came up empty.

Either it never existed, or someone took it before I could.

There was no point dwelling on it now.

I glanced down at my palm. The dark red date was still there, and I felt it get hotter and hotter, like a silent reminder that I was running out of time.

I decided to go find Michael.

He was the only one in this family who had never hit me or yelled at me.

He never took the initiative to talk to me, but at least he wouldn't let anyone lock me up and starve me for three days.

That happened when I was seven. Trevor locked me in the basement storage room, with no food or water, for three whole days.

On the third day, when I could barely hold on, the door finally opened.

It was Michael.

He carried me out and set me down on the couch, and then asked Olive to get me a glass of milk.

He never blamed Trevor, but after that, Trevor never locked me up again.

I guessed that was the warmest thing Michael ever did for me.

Now that I was leaving all by myself, I figured I owed it to him to see him one last time.

Michael's company was in an office building downtown. I'd been there once. When I was eleven, I got lost. A cop was taking me home, and we passed by.

The building was tall, with a marble lobby and two girls in uniforms sitting behind the front desk.

When I walked in, the air conditioning was so cold that it made me shiver. "Hi, I'm here to see Michael Bolton."

One of the girls at the front desk gave me a quick once-over, her eyes lingering on the paper bag in my arms for a second. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No. I'm his sister."

Her expression didn't change. "Sorry, Mr. Bolton's in a meeting. If you don't have an appointment, I can't let you upstairs. Maybe try his assistant, Thomas?"

"I already called, but nobody answered."

"Hang on, please, let me check for you."

She picked up the phone, dialed a number, talked for a bit, and then hung up. "Sorry, Mr. Bolton's meeting is going to take another couple of hours. Thomas said he's not available to see anyone right now."

"I can wait," I said.

"Uh..." She glanced at her coworker, who gave a slight shake of her head. "You can hang out in the lobby if you want. But honestly, Mr. Bolton's got a full plate today, so there's no promise you'll get to see him."