The first time I met anyone from my family I was sixteen years old.  

On July 7th, 2005 I was discovered by the night guard patrolling the Cape Cassidy Medieval  History and Arts museum and swiftly became property of the State of Massachusetts. Over the  next sixteen years I would live in nine different homes, some kind, some cruel, but none  permanent. When I was younger I hoped to be adopted, and even came close a few times, but  nothing ever stuck. Through no fault of my own, bad things would begin to happen soon after I  arrived. Basements would flood, pets would go missing, cars would crash, people would slip on  ice-slicked pavements. I quickly gathered a reputation among prospective parents. No one would  say “cursed,” that seemed outdated and superstitious, but word soon got out and people began to  avoid me at adoption events. I was the image of a perfect child reflected in a cracked mirror.  

Like any good orphan I would often fantasize about the parents who abandoned me, a mother  with pale skin and auburn hair like my own, a father who had lines around his eyes when he  smiled. They were off exploring the world, curing diseases, saving princesses from dragons, but  spent every moment thinking about how they could get back to me.  

I’m not telling you all this to gather sympathy, I don’t really know why I’m telling you this at all,  except it seems that writing it down is the only way to try and make sense of what happened.  

I started my Junior Year in Wrentham, Massachusetts, a town most famous for its outlet mall.  My latest foster parents, the O’Connell’s, were devout Catholics, strict but fair. By that point I  had given up hope on adoption, I was lucky if I managed to start and finish the school year in the  same town. Now time was marked by the number of days until my eighteenth birthday, when I  could leave New England without worrying about saying goodbye to anyone.  

On an uneventful Tuesday in September, I got off the bus and spotted my caseworker’s Prius in  the driveway, parked next to a vintage car I’d never seen before. My caseworker, Diana Taylor,  was a well-intentioned but exhausting woman, eager to let me know that I could tell her  anything, although I never had much to say and most of her visits passed by in a blur of nervous  small talk. The thought of an afternoon with her exhausted my already tired mind, and I  considered turning around, but my curiosity pushed me towards the door. As far as I could tell,  the stranger’s car had no make or model, and if it weren’t for the plates, it could have driven  straight off a road in the ‘40s.  

Diana and the O’Connell’s were waiting for me when I walked in, stiffly perched in the living  room. I left my shoes by the door and stepped into the dim light, a crucifix ominously looming  over my entrance. Diana jumped up.  

“Thea! It’s so good to see you again, look how you’ve grown!” I hadn’t grown in two years, and  certainly not in the six weeks since I’d seen her last, but I smiled and accepted her awkward hug.  

I was about to ask what she was doing there a week before our scheduled visit when a man  entered the room and quickly absorbed all of our attention. Without his silver hair to give him  away it would have been difficult to place his age, he stood remarkably straight, and his dark suit  gave him an air of quiet authority. His gaze rested on me and I saw his eyes mirrored my own,  green with gold centers, like a leaf at the tail end of Summer.

Seemingly allergic to any amount of silence, Diana was quick to fill the gap his entrance had  created. “Mr. Beaumont, we were wondering where you’d got to! Thea, this is Arthur Beaumont.  He is, well, he’s your uncle.”  

He gave a slight nod, the rest of his body remaining utterly still. “Pleasure to meet you, Thea.”  Everyone was acting as though a family reunion was an entirely normal thing to occur in my life.  “Um…” I stuttered idiotically.  

Mrs. O’Connell cleared her throat, until that moment I had forgotten she was there. “Tea, Thea?”  She asked. I nodded. I hated tea, but I was too confused to remind her of that. Mr. and Mrs.  O’Connell went into the kitchen and Diana gently forced me onto the couch.  

“Now, I know this is a lot to take in. Heck, I was as shocked as you when I first found out, which  is why we had the department look into Mr. Beaumont’s claim thoroughly. But all the paperwork  checks out, and he is, in fact, your uncle.”  

“How?” I had thousands of questions eager to get out, but this seemed like a start. Arthur  Beaumont walked and sat down opposite me, the silent force of his presence causing even Diana  to go quiet.  

“My apologies that I have not come sooner, Thea. I’ve been away for many years now, but I  assure you, as soon as I learned of your existence, I returned to New England. Your mother and I  had eighteen years between us, but nevertheless, she was my sister, and you my niece.”  

“Do you know what happened to her?” I asked, suddenly feeling more clear minded than I had  all day.  

“Thea” Diana said gently “the police closed the case on your parents.”  

I felt a flicker of rage and quickly suffocated it. I was prone to violent tantrums as a child,  eruptions that would lead me on a single-minded path of destruction, which later I would have no  recollection of, a black smudge on my memory. As I got older I learned to suppress anger, or any  strong emotion, as soon as it announced itself.  

He seemed to sense the shift in me. “Thea, I know you want answers, and you deserve them,  that’s why I’m here. The court has granted me temporary guardianship and if you’re willing, you  can live with me and I can begin to fill in some of the gaps in your history.”  

At that moment the O’Connell’s entered with the tea tray and Arthur stood.  “Don’t you want to stay for tea?” Diana asked eagerly.  

“I hate tea” Arthur replied, turning to me. “Of course, the decision is yours, Thea. But my door  remains open to you.” A square of sunlight flooded the room as he opened the front door,  quickly evaporating as it shut. We sat with only the sound of ceramic cups to fill the silence.  Finally Diana broke and opened her verbal floodgates.

“Don’t worry, Thea. I know you’re comfortable here with the O’Connell’s, and as you’re sixteen  the court respects whatever decision you-“  

“I’ll go pack” I interrupted, standing abruptly. I was almost out of the room when a question  occurred to me. “Where does he live?”  

Diana smiled. “Cape Cassidy. Back to where it all began.”  

* * *  

Eve Lewis tried to move silently as she took the milk out of the cupboard and returned it to the  fridge. When she opened the door she spotted the TV remote in the cheese drawer and liberated  it. It was getting harder to deny that her mother was getting worse. A year ago it had been  occasional words that would slip out of her mind mid-sentence, now Eve would find her gripped  by terror as she looked around a room without recognition. She wondered how much longer it  would be before she became a stranger to her mother as well.  

Friends, the few from New York who still checked in, had begun to gently suggest nursing  homes, but Eve would never let her fall into the hands of strangers, people who saw her mother  as just another patient, not the vibrant, intelligent woman who would skinny dip in the sea and  kidnap her kids from school for impromptu road trips. Sometimes she wondered how much of  her mother was lost with each memory. She had always been so independent, stubbornly so, a  single mother who had raised her kids with just her ingenuity and her Bostonian grit to help her.  Now she would forget to get dressed in the morning and Eve would have to rescue her from the  supermarket where she was wandering around the cereal aisle in her pajamas.  

With her mind still on her mother, Eve didn’t notice her phone vibrating. She finally picked it up  and saw a message from her partner, Kyle Thompson, asking her to meet him down by Abbott’s  Pond. Eve sighed. In the year she’d been working for Cape Cassidy PD, the most sinister forces  

she’d come up against were a few drunk teenagers. Her job on the NYPD had come with its  added baggage of long shifts and sleepless nights, but she fed off that energy, it seemed to signal  she was actually making a difference. The biggest difference she’d made in Cape Cassidy so far  was when she’d once rescued Twinkles, the neighbor’s cat.  

She couldn’t imagine what was so urgent down at the pond that she needed to come in hours  before her shift started, but she got dressed simply, warmly and checked on her mother. Rachel  Lewis was sound asleep, looking utterly at peace, with no trace of the chaos that was going on in  her mind. Eve tried to set her guilt aside and focus on what was waiting for her at Abbott’s. If it  was another missing cat she was going to kill Thompson.  

With Summer over and the harsh coastal wind seeping in, the town was quiet as Eve drove  through, empty of the tourists that had packed its souvenir shops and ice cream parlors a few  weeks ago. She had hated Cape Cassidy ever since her mother retired here a few years ago, she  thought it was full of Kennedy cast-offs and Frat boys with too many Polo shirts. Eve would  never trust a man who wore pastel.

When she got to Abbott’s Pond Thompson was waiting for her, leaning against his cruiser with a  mouthful of Dunkin’ Donuts. She parked and joined him.  

“You’re an utter cliché, Thompson” she called as she walked over.  

“Hey Seinfeld.” He had started calling her that when he found out she’d moved from New York,  in spite of the fact that she’d grown up ten minutes from Fenway Park. He extended the box  toward her “Cruller?”  

She shook her head and he shoved another in his mouth. “I’m a nervous eater” he said  defensively.  

“What are you nervous about?” she asked.  

He looked at her and his eyes lost any traces of humor. “Come with me.”  

Their boots muddied as they worked their way towards the pond, thick morning fog stagnating  the air. The stillness was oppressive, Eve couldn’t hear a single birdcall, their footsteps seemed  to be the only thing breaking up the silence. As they got closer to the water the temperature  dropped sharply and their breath appeared in clouds with each exhale.  

Eve almost didn’t see her at first, the fog blended seamlessly with the white sheet Thompson had  used to cover the body. It was the nail polish that stood out, chipped bright blue splashes that  clashed with the mud below.  

“A dog walker found her this morning, was pretty shook up by it. She’s giving her statement  down at the station now. A forensic team is coming in from the city, they should be here soon.”  Thompson tried to deliver the information professionally, but Eve could hear a faint tremor in his  voice. She guessed this was the first body he had ever seen.  

“Any ID?” She asked gently.  

“No, no wallet, nothing in her pockets or anything either.”  

Eve worked her way closer to the body while Thompson held back, careful not to disturb the  ground around her.  

“Cause of death?”  

“Um, I’m not exactly sure” Thompson stammered. “There’s no wounds, nothing from a gun or a  knife, no head trauma. Drowned, maybe?”  

Eve tried not to get annoyed at his amateur detective work. The pond was no more than three feet  deep. She extracted a pen from her pocket and gently lifted back the sheet. The girl was young,  Eve guessed early twenties at the oldest. Her hair was dyed jet black and her original mousy  brown was beginning to show at the roots. Thompson was right, her body was free of injuries, so  they would have to wait for the forensic team to arrive. Eve guessed the toxicology report would  hold the answer, probably a party spun out of control, an accidental overdose that caused the kids  to panic and dump her here. She was about to replace the sheet when she spotted something, a  red line on the victim’s collar bone, reaching out from under her shirt. Careful not to make

contact with the body, Eve pulled down the fabric to reveal an intricate symbol that looked  freshly stamped on her skin.  

“What is that? Some sort of…brand?” Eve wondered.  

Thompson reluctantly took a closer look.  

“That’s the Beaumont Crest.”