I smiled at her, more genuine now. “Thanks.”
—
With the arrival of that letter, my enthusiasm for work soured. There were no calls on my leads, and I wasn’t sure I’d have set up an interview even if I could. I finished what I could do, and at eleven I was rapping on Gabriel’s office door.
“Come in,” he called.
He was at his desk, surrounded by papers.
“I’m taking off.”
He looked up, as if startled, and checked his watch.
“I wasn’t scheduled to work today,” I said. “If you need me to do something, I’m happy to stay another hour or so, but otherwise I wouldn’t mind getting home and grabbing a nap before my diner shift.”
“Yes, of course.”
I turned to leave.
“Olivia?”
When I looked back, he waved me in. I closed the door and he said, “Have you given any more thought to quitting the diner?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be considering it.”
“I’d like you to. Yes, you don’t want to depend on me for your income, but your trust fund comes due in a few months. Your expenses are low. I suspect that, in a crunch, you would be fine until then.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “You also mentioned applying for your private investigator license.”
I made a face. “I was just talking. I’ll get it if this works out, but I’m not in any rush. The real issue is those few months until my trust fund. I’d rather keep my job at the diner. It’s not interfering, is it?”
He hesitated.
“You don’t want me working at the diner,” I said. “Why?”
“Because it puts you at their mercy and under their watch.”
“The elders, you mean.”
“Yes. I know they don’t pay your wages, but I’ve seen the way Larry treats them. If they wished you gone, he’d do it. Of course, that would leave you no worse off than if you quit, but . . . The balance of power makes me uneasy.”
I wasn’t eager to quit the diner. It felt like saying two months as a server was as much “real-person life” as this former socialite could bear.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Do you want me to check in later—?”
His phone rang, Lydia patching in a call. He glanced at it.
“Take that,” I said. “Just call me later if—”
“Hold on.”
He answered. It was a short call. His end was just “Yes” and “No” and “Are you certain?” and “Please send the results to my office.”
“That was the laboratory,” he said.
“With the results already?”
“I put a rush on them.”
Which would have cost extra. Another time, I’d have joked about him docking it from my wages, but now that seemed uncharitable.
“Your theory was correct,” he said. “Macy and Ciara were, indeed, switched at birth.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Using hairs from Macy’s brush and from one in her parents’ room, the lab confirmed that the familial match was reversed. Macy was the Conways’ daughter. Ciara was the Shaws’. As for how that happened, it did no good to speculate. We had the information. Now I had to figure out how to act on it.
I went home to think. And to nap, though I got little sleep. I tossed and turned until I gave up and went to my laptop and started punching in terms.
It took nearly two hours of searching before I found it. Not a connection. Not a direct one, anyway. But another case, pulled from the archives of a Chicago newspaper. In the late sixties, a family claimed their young son was a changeling. The boy was “severely troubled,” according to his grandmother. The child told intricate stories of “another world,” a fairy realm, ergo he must be a changeling.
People had been sensible enough to dismiss the idea as amusingly primitive. The boy’s grandmother was a first-generation Irish immigrant. Clearly, she’d brought some of that old-world nonsense over with her. After all, she was the one who made the claims by taking the child to the local priest. The priest had refused to help, so she’d found another, and somehow—to the parents’ shock and dismay—the story leaked to the paper, where it seemed to have been included merely for entertainment. Or to show how much more progressive Americans were, dismissing old-world nonsense and superstition.
So what caught my attention in this tale? The grandmother claimed that her real grandson had been switched with a fairy child from Cainsville. Her daughter-in-law had family there, and the parents visited often. That, she said, was where it happened. And her proof? Well, she had none. Only that there was “something wrong with that town.” Something she felt every time she visited. The town took far too great an interest in her grandson and his problems, and the old folks there went out of their way to convince her that the boy was fine, and that if she loved him and raised him well, he would grow into a strong and capable young man.
Of course, all of that was dismissed, with the columnist waxing poetic about the tight bonds and loving care that a small town bestows on its own. How much different was life in the bustling, impersonal city? How much better might troubled children like this one be if they were instead raised in the pastoral perfection of the countryside?
I read that article and I saw that my blossoming theory, however mad it seemed, might actually be right. I just needed to prove it.
—
When Macy called me shortly before my diner shift, I swear there was a moment, after she introduced herself, where I was unable to find my voice, certain that . . . I don’t know. That the universe had prodded her to call me, knowing I had information that could change her life? It was merely coincidence, of course, given that I’d handed her my card only twenty-four hours earlier and asked her to call if she remembered anything.
“The man who took me said something else,” she said. “Something weird. One of those things that you think you’ve heard wrong, but then you can’t figure out what else it could have been.”
“What’s that?”
“He asked if I’d had any tests done.”
“Tests?”
“That’s what I thought. I figured . . .” A pause, and when her voice came back, it was lowered, as if sharing a secret. “I don’t sleep around, Ms. Jones. I really don’t, and I don’t want you to get the wrong impression when I say this.”
—
With the arrival of that letter, my enthusiasm for work soured. There were no calls on my leads, and I wasn’t sure I’d have set up an interview even if I could. I finished what I could do, and at eleven I was rapping on Gabriel’s office door.
“Come in,” he called.
He was at his desk, surrounded by papers.
“I’m taking off.”
He looked up, as if startled, and checked his watch.
“I wasn’t scheduled to work today,” I said. “If you need me to do something, I’m happy to stay another hour or so, but otherwise I wouldn’t mind getting home and grabbing a nap before my diner shift.”
“Yes, of course.”
I turned to leave.
“Olivia?”
When I looked back, he waved me in. I closed the door and he said, “Have you given any more thought to quitting the diner?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be considering it.”
“I’d like you to. Yes, you don’t want to depend on me for your income, but your trust fund comes due in a few months. Your expenses are low. I suspect that, in a crunch, you would be fine until then.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “You also mentioned applying for your private investigator license.”
I made a face. “I was just talking. I’ll get it if this works out, but I’m not in any rush. The real issue is those few months until my trust fund. I’d rather keep my job at the diner. It’s not interfering, is it?”
He hesitated.
“You don’t want me working at the diner,” I said. “Why?”
“Because it puts you at their mercy and under their watch.”
“The elders, you mean.”
“Yes. I know they don’t pay your wages, but I’ve seen the way Larry treats them. If they wished you gone, he’d do it. Of course, that would leave you no worse off than if you quit, but . . . The balance of power makes me uneasy.”
I wasn’t eager to quit the diner. It felt like saying two months as a server was as much “real-person life” as this former socialite could bear.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Do you want me to check in later—?”
His phone rang, Lydia patching in a call. He glanced at it.
“Take that,” I said. “Just call me later if—”
“Hold on.”
He answered. It was a short call. His end was just “Yes” and “No” and “Are you certain?” and “Please send the results to my office.”
“That was the laboratory,” he said.
“With the results already?”
“I put a rush on them.”
Which would have cost extra. Another time, I’d have joked about him docking it from my wages, but now that seemed uncharitable.
“Your theory was correct,” he said. “Macy and Ciara were, indeed, switched at birth.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Using hairs from Macy’s brush and from one in her parents’ room, the lab confirmed that the familial match was reversed. Macy was the Conways’ daughter. Ciara was the Shaws’. As for how that happened, it did no good to speculate. We had the information. Now I had to figure out how to act on it.
I went home to think. And to nap, though I got little sleep. I tossed and turned until I gave up and went to my laptop and started punching in terms.
It took nearly two hours of searching before I found it. Not a connection. Not a direct one, anyway. But another case, pulled from the archives of a Chicago newspaper. In the late sixties, a family claimed their young son was a changeling. The boy was “severely troubled,” according to his grandmother. The child told intricate stories of “another world,” a fairy realm, ergo he must be a changeling.
People had been sensible enough to dismiss the idea as amusingly primitive. The boy’s grandmother was a first-generation Irish immigrant. Clearly, she’d brought some of that old-world nonsense over with her. After all, she was the one who made the claims by taking the child to the local priest. The priest had refused to help, so she’d found another, and somehow—to the parents’ shock and dismay—the story leaked to the paper, where it seemed to have been included merely for entertainment. Or to show how much more progressive Americans were, dismissing old-world nonsense and superstition.
So what caught my attention in this tale? The grandmother claimed that her real grandson had been switched with a fairy child from Cainsville. Her daughter-in-law had family there, and the parents visited often. That, she said, was where it happened. And her proof? Well, she had none. Only that there was “something wrong with that town.” Something she felt every time she visited. The town took far too great an interest in her grandson and his problems, and the old folks there went out of their way to convince her that the boy was fine, and that if she loved him and raised him well, he would grow into a strong and capable young man.
Of course, all of that was dismissed, with the columnist waxing poetic about the tight bonds and loving care that a small town bestows on its own. How much different was life in the bustling, impersonal city? How much better might troubled children like this one be if they were instead raised in the pastoral perfection of the countryside?
I read that article and I saw that my blossoming theory, however mad it seemed, might actually be right. I just needed to prove it.
—
When Macy called me shortly before my diner shift, I swear there was a moment, after she introduced herself, where I was unable to find my voice, certain that . . . I don’t know. That the universe had prodded her to call me, knowing I had information that could change her life? It was merely coincidence, of course, given that I’d handed her my card only twenty-four hours earlier and asked her to call if she remembered anything.
“The man who took me said something else,” she said. “Something weird. One of those things that you think you’ve heard wrong, but then you can’t figure out what else it could have been.”
“What’s that?”
“He asked if I’d had any tests done.”
“Tests?”
“That’s what I thought. I figured . . .” A pause, and when her voice came back, it was lowered, as if sharing a secret. “I don’t sleep around, Ms. Jones. I really don’t, and I don’t want you to get the wrong impression when I say this.”
