Part Seven: Three Days Ago
Her name — the name she had been traveling under, the name she gave when pressed — was Lena, and she was six and a half years old, and she had gotten on a bus three days ago at seven-fifteen in the morning because her mother had told her to, in the specific, concentrated way that Mira apparently told her things that mattered: full attention, clear language, no cushioning.
She told Thomas this in stages, not because she was reluctant but because she was thorough. She had been taught — he understood from the way she gave information — to give it accurately and in order, which was not how most six-year-olds communicated and which suggested that she had been raised with an awareness that information might be needed and should be given well.
Three days ago, before dawn. A sound outside — not a loud sound, which was why it was alarming. Her mother had learned, apparently, to be alarmed by the quiet sounds.
Mira had woken her gently. Had dressed her. Had given her the locket, which lived on a chain that Mira wore always, and had explained — not all of it, as much as was needed — what the locket was and what she must do with it. Go to the city. Go to Ashmore Park. Find the fountain. Look for a ring on an elderly woman’s hand, dark stone, old gold. If the ring was there, go to her immediately. Give her the locket.
“She said the lady would know what to do,” Lena said.
She had traveled by bus. She had been on four buses over three days, which he calculated meant she had slept on buses or in bus stations, had managed herself with the resourcefulness of a child who has been raised in circumstances that required a certain level of self-sufficiency. She had money — a small amount, enough for the buses and for food. She had eaten, she said, though not much.
“Were you frightened?” Thomas asked.
She considered this with the seriousness she brought to questions. “A little,” she said. “But my mom said I could do it. She said I was good at being careful.” A pause. “And I was.”
He thought about Mira — a woman he had never met and knew only through the note in the locket and the ring and the documents in the back room — putting her six-year-old daughter on a bus with a locket and an instruction and a small amount of money and saying: you can do it. You are good at being careful.
He thought about what that decision had required. The calculus of it — the terrible mathematics of a parent who understands that the choice is between the danger of sending a child alone and the danger of keeping her close.
“Your mother knows you’re capable,” he said.
Lena looked at him. “She said I was the bravest thing she’d ever made.”
