Chapter 100: The Midnight Revelation

We drove all night.

Mrs. Bell drove the truck and Ada Kessler sat in the front with a blanket over her knees and Hannah beside her. June and Arthur Renn and Silas were in the back with the crates and the stones and the record. I sat in the middle of the back seat with Elias on one side of me and the photograph in my jacket and my mother's page from Ruth's box in my hand.

The road went south and the sky went from black to gray and the snow turned to rain and the rain turned to nothing and by four in the morning we were on the highway and Boise was still four hours away.

Nobody talked for a long time.

And then Elias said, "Wren."

I turned my head.

"There is a thing I have not told you," he said. "I have been carrying it since Walla Walla and I have been trying to find a way to say it and I have not found one. So I am going to say it badly."

"Say it."

He put his hands on his knees.

"Your mother was not the only one," he said. "There was another one. There was a woman who came to me in the churchyard in 1968 with a green scarf and your mother's chin and she told me to run east. And she was not your mother."

I sat very still.

"What?"

"She was your mother's sister," Elias said. "Her name was Ruth and she was born in 1930 and she was a triplet. Your mother was Mary and the second was Ruth and the third was a girl who was born in 1930 and died in 1932." He looked at me. "Except she did not die. She was taken to Boise in 1932 and she was raised by the Renns and she married a Renn and her grandson is Arthur Renn."

I stared at him.

"Arthur Renn," I said. "Arthur Renn is my cousin."

"Arthur Renn is your mother's sister's grandson," Elias said. "And there is more of it. The woman who came to me in the churchyard was not Ruth of Boise. She was the third one. She was the one who was born in 1930 and was supposed to have died and was hidden in the Kessler pack instead." He looked at me. "She was Ada Kessler's daughter. And she was your mother's sister and she died in 1971 and she was Hannah's mother."

The truck went south on the highway.

"Hannah's mother," I said.

"Hannah's mother." Elias put his hand on my arm. "Your mother had two sisters. One went to Boise and her line is Arthur Renn. One went to the Kessler pack and her line is Hannah. And the woman who came to me in the churchyard in 1968 was the Kessler one and she was your mother's sister and she was the one who told me to run east." He took a breath. "And she told me a thing about your mother. She told me your mother had a third sister and that the third sister was the one who was supposed to have died and that your mother did not know. And she told me that your mother was the only one of the three who did not know what she was."

I sat in the truck.

"She did not know," I said.

"She did not know. She knew she was the fourth daughter's line and she knew about the curse and she knew about the bargain. She did not know she had two sisters." Elias looked at me. "And there is one more thing and it is the worst of it. The woman in the churchyard told me that your mother was the one the curse was waiting for and that if the curse was not broken your mother would die and her children would die and the line would end. And she asked me to find you. She asked me to find you and to protect you and to tell you what your mother was."

I sat in the truck with the photograph in my jacket and my mother's page in my hand.

"Then you have known about me since 1968," I said.

"I have known about you since 1968," Elias said. "I did not know your name and I did not know where you were and I did not know that the curse would drag me to this territory seventeen years later. But I knew there was a girl in a wheat pack who was the fourth daughter's line and I knew that one day I would have to find her." He looked at me. "And then the new moon took me to the north field in July and I woke up in the dirt and I found a woman in a combine yard and I knew who she was before she told me her name."

The truck went south.

"Why did you not tell me?" I said.

"Because I did not know how to say it without sounding like a madman," Elias said. "Because I did not know if your mother had told you and I did not want to break the last thing she had given you. And because I was afraid." He put his hand on my arm. "Afraid that if I told you I had known your mother and that I had been looking for you for seventeen years, you would think I had come to you because of a promise and not because of you."

I looked at him.

"I did come because of a promise," he said. "And I stayed because of you. And there is no version of my life where the promise and you are not the same thing."

I sat in the truck.

And then Ada Kessler turned around in the front seat.

"Beta," she said. "There is a car behind us and it has been behind us since we left the highway."

I turned and looked through the back window.

There was a car. It was black and it was long and it had its headlights on and it was coming up fast.

"It is the Council's car," Ada Kessler said. "And there is a man in it and he is not driving. He is sitting in the back and he is looking at us."

I looked at the car.

"Mrs. Bell," I said. "Can you go faster?"

"I can go faster," Mrs. Bell said. "But if I go faster I am going to lose the crates and the crates are the whole of it."

"Then do not lose the crates," I said.

And then the car pulled up beside us and the man in the back of it rolled down his window and looked at me.

He was old and he had white hair and he had a face like a closed door and I had seen that face in the pack square and in the kitchen of Maeve's cottage and in the yard of the pack house.

It was the chief clerk.

He looked at me for a long moment and then he said something that I could not hear through the wind and the road and the engine.

And then he raised his hand and the car pulled ahead and went away.

"What did he say?" June said.

I sat in the truck.

"He said the Council is waiting," I said. "And he said there is a seat for me in the chamber."

The truck went south and the sun came up over the mountains and Boise was three hours away.