Setting the phone to the side, I try to decide how best to go about learning whether my mother’s accident was real. Atlas suggested that like the words being taken away, hundreds, quite possibly thousands, of people have been removed from the city by those who work for the government. Well, accidents are reported in the news, right? My mother’s accident was, of that I’m certain. Maybe there is a detail in that article that I missed before, one that can help me now.
I grab my tablet, type my mom’s name into the search field, and hit Enter.
Links appear for dozens of articles discussing the accomplishments of the City Pride Program—most I’ve never thought to look for, much less read, before today. My heart squeezes as I click through the various articles that praise the parks and murals and buildings in sections of the city that once were plagued by gangs, violence, crumbling buildings, and homelessness. Atlas’s voice whispers in the back of my head that not a single article mentions what happened to the gang members, criminals, or homeless who had been there before. Only that the revitalized areas sparked a renewed interest and pride in community, which led to lower crime rates and better living. Something I believed with my whole heart to be true. And now? Now part of me wants to shut off the device and ignore it all. But I can’t, because I need to know if my mother died in an accident or if she was deliberately killed.
Taking a deep breath, I do another search for the article I read the day before my father and I stood in the cemetery and watched my mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. The article was about the accident. It referenced the unseasonable snow and the driver losing control on the black ice—all facts the police officers shared with me on the night it happened. Only, the online column that I once read through tears doesn’t appear. I search again and get the same results.
I must be doing something wrong.
I move to my desk and turn on my computer to find the bookmark that I created for that column. I click the link and get an error message telling me the page I am looking for no longer exists.
My phone signals I have a message from an unknown number.
WILL BE AT YOUR HOUSE THIS AFTERNOON. BE READY AND DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID BEFORE I GET THERE. —A
Atlas.
Part of me wants to call him and ask what he knows about my mother’s accident. The other part knows I won’t be able to trust anything he tells me. Not without learning it for myself.
Frustration simmers as I shove the phone aside and try several more searches using different key words. Finally one link does appear—Mom’s obituary. It cites a car accident as the reason she died. But that’s the only reference to the accident that I can find. The rest has vanished, which only strengthens my need to know the truth.
The computer won’t help me. My father can’t. But there is one person I can think of who can help me understand. She might not have wanted to talk to me before, but I’m not going to give her the option of turning her back on me again.
Eleven
I hurry upstairs and do a search for the address of Kacee Anderson—my mother’s friend from work—the one I spotted when I was there the other day. She hugged me at my mother’s funeral. She promised she would be there if we needed her, and yet she pretended not to see me when I was at the City Pride Department this week. It’s time to find out why.
I hide the Stewards’ books, leave my father a message on the kitchen tablet letting him know I’ll be out for the day in case he gets home before I do, and quietly slip out the back door so the men in the car out front won’t see me.
The trip to Kacee’s condominium building, which has a view of the sun-kissed, sparkling sapphire lake takes twice as long as I zigzag up and down alleys and side streets to make sure no one is following behind. I’m drenched with sweat and quivering as I climb off my bicycle and awkwardly navigate wheeling it into the building’s oak-paneled entryway. I punch the apartment number into the keypad and wait as the intercom signals Kacee upstairs.
“Hello?” a young girl’s voice chirps.
“Hi . . . April,” I say, digging up the foggy memory of the little girl I’d seen smiling from Kacee Anderson’s personal screen. “Is your mom around?”
The girl babbles something incomprehensible before yelling, “Mommy!”
The intercom crackles, and a few seconds later I hear a warm, familiar voice ask, “Who is it?”
“It’s Meri Beckley, Mrs. Anderson. I need to talk to you.”
A woman with a cotton-candy-pink double-wide stroller rolls down the sidewalk. Somewhere cars protest something with offended honks. Finally, the door-lock buzzer sounds and Mrs. Anderson instructs me to come up.
I leave my bike in the lobby and press the elevator panel for the twelfth floor. A short, sandy-haired man and a skipping girl in a yellow dress with matching hair bows are coming out of a door just down the hall as I step off the elevator.
“You guys play on the swings,” Kacee calls to them from the open doorway. “I’ll be right behind you with the picnic.” Her eyes meet mine. “Ten minutes. Tops.”
“Don’t worry about us, right, Munchkin?” The man tousles the girl’s hair and gives me a smile dripping with the pity that I despise. “Maybe there will be some ducks for us to feed.”
“Duck, Daddy. Duck,” the girl babbles. Kacee waves and smiles as they get on the elevator. When her family disappears, both her hand and smile drop. “Come inside,” she says. She then turns her back and heads into the apartment.
“You don’t seem surprised I’m here,” I say, following her inside. The Andersons’ living room is colorful, with a pink dollhouse and at least a dozen dolls of varying colors, sizes, and hairstyles sitting in the middle of the floor.
“I was hoping you would have found a way to move on, but after the other day I knew you’d find your way here.” Mrs. Anderson pulls the tie out of her hair and shakes out her long curls. She then paces the toy-laden floor and stares out the window at the glistening lake beyond the glass. Quietly she says, “You’re too much like your mother, Meri. If you’re not careful, it’s going to get you in trouble.”
“The other day you pretended not to see me.”
“I had to, for my family’s sake. For both our families’ sakes.”
“Was my mother in trouble when she died?” I ask, taking a step toward her. “Was her death really an accident?”
“Your mother used to love the job we did,” she says with her back to me. “She believed in it, just like I did . . . do. But something changed. She asked questions that were unusual about the project sites.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About the history of the sites. About people who she seemed to think had once lived there. She claimed she was looking for inspiration for her designs. I would have believed her, but . . .”
“But what?”
Mrs. Anderson takes a deep breath. “I was tired. April wasn’t sleeping because her molars were coming in. When I put her down and couldn’t get back to sleep I decided to just go into the office to try to catch up on work. I saw your mom getting onto the elevator, but she wasn’t on our floor when I arrived. And when I asked her about it the next day . . .” Mrs. Anderson takes a deep breath and turns toward me. Fear shines bright in her eyes. “She said she was in the archives. She found some kind of information about a future project site that couldn’t possibly be true. When I told her she was crazy for wanting to look into it she told me about other things. She said she was working with people who were going to share everything they knew with the city. They had a plan and . . .” She shakes her head as if to clear the memory, but I still see it shining bright in her eyes.
“Plan?” I ask. “What plan?” Mrs. Anderson shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Did my mom tell you about the meaning of ‘verify’?”
“I don’t know what that is,” she insists, but the way her eyes dart to the side tells me she is lying. “I don’t want to know what that means or what she thinks she saw in the archives. It’s not sup
posed to be my concern.”
She picks up a stuffed elephant from the floor and clutches it to her chest. “Look, I like my job. I love my family, and I don’t want anything to change. I’m happy.” She crosses the room and drops the elephant on the top of an overflowing toy bin. “Everyone I know and care about is happy. Your mother didn’t understand that when I told her I wasn’t interested in whatever she had to say, but it’s true and I have nothing more I can tell you.”
“Did they kill my mother?” I ask quietly.
Her eyes shimmer with emotion. “Your mother died in an accident.” She fiddles with a prism hanging from a chain around her neck. “They said it was an accident, Meri.”
“They can say a lot of things,” I press. “Just because they say it doesn’t make it real. I never knew that before. I do now. Please. I deserve to know what actually happened. She was my mother, and your friend.”
Mrs. Anderson goes completely still—like a deer in headlights trying to decide which way to flee in order to avoid the collision. Then she blinks as if breaking free from a dream and reaches for the doorknob. “They say it was an accident. That’s all I know for certain. Now I have to get to the park. I only have so much time to spend with my family. Work has been so busy. Most of the team your mother and I were a part of has been transferred to other cities. Now Mr. Beschloss and the other government administrators are evaluating my work to make sure I’m still a good fit for City Pride. Just after your mother’s funeral, Mr. Beschloss came to find me. He was curious as to whether I would follow in your mother’s footsteps. He wanted to know if I had her interest in spearheading unique projects. If I did he planned to reward me as he had rewarded her.” She lifts her eyes to meet mine. Fear shines bright. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Meri?” she asks carefully.
I nod as the truth slams home. Mrs. Anderson suspects they killed my mother and they are threatening her with the same fate.
“So you’re just going to pretend you don’t know what you know?” Bile churns as I look at a woman my mother called her friend. “How can you do that?”
“I don’t know anything. Neither do you, and I can’t tell you anything more. A good mother wants her child to be safe.” She looks back at the view of the lake. “I miss your mom. I wish she was here, and I sometimes can’t help but think about the things she said. If she was correct about . . .” Mrs. Anderson shakes her head. “What happened in the past is in the past. No one can change it, no matter what your mother might have thought. All I can do is make things better now. When I look at the city I realize how far it has come. . . . I don’t think any of us would be happier or safer if we went back to the way things used to be. Do you?”
“You’re working for the people you think might have killed my mother.” My voice cracks. “How can you put that in the past?”
Her lip trembles. “I loved and admired your mother, but I can’t live the way she did. The things she wanted people to know would only lead to unhappiness. I very much hope you won’t make her mistakes.”
She opens the door and shifts to the side for me to pass. “I’m sorry. But please don’t contact me or my family again.”
“The truth should matter,” I insist.
“Maybe.” Kacee Anderson shrugs. “But if everyone believes in something, isn’t that just another kind of truth? Who’s to say your version is better?”
Mrs. Anderson shuts the door on me and the truth I represent. I know she won’t open it again. But now I have confirmed that she’s scared of the government she works for and worried that they might do to her what they did to my mother.
The weight of that snaps the last thread tethering me to the lie I was living.
My mother was murdered.
The words whisper in my head as I retrieve my bike. They grow louder as I roll it down the sidewalk, past people walking their dogs, laughing in the sunshine, or going about their day. Every couple of blocks a weatherproof public screen chirps out the news, even though almost no one is paying attention. I never did until yesterday. But the screens were always there. The stories were constantly on the edge of my awareness. Part of my life. I trusted the anchors on those screens to tell me if there was something I needed to hear. I never questioned that. Now I wonder if any of them know they aren’t giving me the truth. If they made that choice or if those choices were taken away from them, too.
Like the words were taken. Like my mother was.
Anger churns. I climb on my bike and start to pedal. Only, I know I can’t go home. I can’t just pretend everything is okay, and it’s not like I can tell Dad what I’ve learned. Not without more proof than an old textbook and a battered dictionary.
According to Mrs. Anderson, Mom found information in the archives she wasn’t supposed to have and planned to share it with the public. I saw the sign for the archives when I interviewed with Mr. Beschloss. It had the same security keypad as the elevator did in order to reach that floor. Maybe it’s reckless, but I’m determined to get into the archives myself to see if I can find what she found. And I have an idea of how to do just that.
I pedal hard along the city streets, looking behind me every few blocks, just in case anyone is following. When I pull up in front of Rose’s condo, I watch the street for several minutes as I catch my breath. No cars appear. When I’m as certain as I can be that no one is watching, I head inside. I punch the code that lets me into the building and replay what I’m going to say in my mind as the door to Rose’s condo opens.
“Hey, Meri.” Isaac’s eyes go flat when he spots me. He’s dripping with sweat and wipes the back of his neck with a towel as he snaps, “Rose isn’t home and I was just about to get in the shower.”
I’d forgotten Rose wasn’t home. I was hoping she would distract her brother while I got his badge. But Isaac’s rude welcome gives me another idea. I offer what I hope is an embarrassed smile and say, “I’ve been trying to send her a message, but my phone has been acting strange so I figured I’d stop by. If nothing else, it gave me a chance to apologize again. For making you late.”
“It wasn’t that big a deal,” he mutters.
“I’d still like to make it up to you,” I say. “I was thinking maybe I could do a portrait of you in your security uniform? Your mom’s birthday is coming up.”
Playing to his vanity does the trick. “That would be really great.” He smiles and steps back, letting me into the condo. “You really don’t have to go to the trouble, but Mom would love the portrait. And it would save me from having to come up with a gift.”
“It’s no problem. Really. And since I have pictures of you to use as a reference, I just need to see your uniform and badge.” When he brings everything out to the living room, I add, “If you need to take a shower now, I can put it all back in your room when I’m done.”
“Wow. Thanks, Meri.” He grins. “Man! Mom’s going to flip. I’ll tell Rose your phone is on the blink.” And with that he’s gone.
When I hear the shower running, I pocket the identification badge, take several pictures of his uniform (since I’ll eventually have to draw the portrait I promised), then return the clothes and head out. Now I just have to use the card and get it back to Isaac before he realizes it’s missing.
By the time I bike from Rose’s house to Liberty Tower, I am feeling less confident about my plan than I was when I started. But it takes only a thought of my mother and how she died to shove my doubt aside.
I stash my bike in a rack and glance through the window at the security guard sitting half-asleep at his desk. The building is always open on weekends, since the architecture makes it a popular tour stop and wedding reception location. Today, aside from the drowsy guard the reception foyer is empty. There’s no way to get to the elevators without him seeing me.
Unless . . .
I spot a frazzled woman outside, herding a group of children. Their behavior ranges from out of control to loudly petulant. She’s turning a tablet around in her hands, a map displayed on the screen
.
“Excuse me,” I say. “If you’re lost, I’m sure the guard in there will be happy to give you directions.”
The lady blinks up from the screen. “Are you sure?” she asks with desperate hope. “We’ve been going around in circles and they’re getting tired.”
“I’m positive.”
She gives me a grateful smile, then makes a beeline to the security guard. The kids follow, chasing each other at high volume.
Holding my breath, I ease into the lobby, hurry past the woman and her hyped-up charges and into a waiting elevator.
Please don’t let all this be for nothing, I think as I wave Isaac’s security ID in front of the scanner and hit the button for the eighth floor. The doors close. After what seems like an eternity, the elevator starts to rise.
The eighth floor is as still as a tomb as I step off the elevator and hurry to the door marked “ARCHIVES.” Isaac’s badge works its magic on the door lock there, too. A small red light next to the scanner turns from red to green. As I open the door, I can’t help but wonder—does the security guard downstairs get an alert when this door is opened? If so, I have to move fast.
After setting the alarm on my phone for five—no, ten minutes to search, I hit the light switch and step inside.
The room is filled with large metal cabinets that all appear to be marked with the status of City Pride Department Projects: “Current,” “Future,” “Completed,” and “Unexplored.” I pull open the drawer closest to me, one marked “Completed,” and find . . . paper.
Lots and lots of paper.
All grouped in individual folders marked by the project’s address.
All my life, I’ve heard that the government cares about the environment and that using paper was selfish—unpatriotic—bordering on treasonous. The government claimed to have electronically stored all records before recycling every scrap of paper in their possession. And yet, here this is.
Verify Page 16