Rivulet by Jamie Magee Page B

ancestors or the fact that your birth mom knew that.”
    A beat later, I came to my senses, went to my desk, and wrote down everything I could about those images, those articles that were photographed. I knew Gavin could uncover what they meant, the story behind them. Research was his passion. I didn’t want to wait for the film to finish developing before he started.
    At a second glance, I noticed the shadows on the three blank images, when pinned across the strings side by side, looked like a key; a really old key.
    I turned back for the camera and started to feel around in the place behind where the film had rested for countless years. I did feel something, but my insane emotions were causing the camera to freeze. In frustration, I grunted and handed it to Cadence.
    “There’s a key in there. It’s taped down or something.”
    Questioning my sanity, and still unraveled by what we’d seen, she took the camera and gently dug around. She pulled a piece of tape out, then a skeleton key.
    “The mystery deepens,” she mumbled, looking closely at it. “It says ‘Falcon M’ on it.”
    “‘Falcon M?’” I repeated as I took it from her. How or why would my birth mother have this?
    “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your mom had every intention of having the Falcons raise you. The question is, was she for or against Rasure, and how did she know Rasure would surface years later?”
    I let out a sigh, almost wishing I hadn’t listened to Gran and opened this Pandora’s Box. “It doesn’t matter either way. I’m a Falcon. And I’m against Rasure. When Gran gets back, I’ll ask her if she knows what this key might unlock.”
    I stuffed the paper with the info on it along with the key in my back pocket, glanced at my image that was hanging before me, then walked up the stairs with Cadence trailing behind.
    My favorite eternity scarf was on the edge of my bed. I almost didn’t put it on. I kept seeing that dream, me wrapping it around Mason so I could pull him out of the water. I put it on anyway so I would at least look like I was acknowledging the frigid weather.
    Cadence had to layer on the jackets, though. She was perpetually cold, even in a room that was set at eighty degrees.
    On habit and on purpose, we locked our room, eight bolts in all. We only locked three, hoping it would drive anyone who tried to break in mad, simply because they would always be locking five as they worked their way through picking the locks. We even had a pattern, a different one for each day. That alone was a testament to just how little we trusted anyone in the employment of Rasure.
    Just before we reached the stairs, we both heard music coming from a room that should be vacant. We also heard girls singing, Bye bye, Miss American pie, I drove my Chevy to the levy ...
    We froze in place. That was our sisters’ favorite song; a song they sang on purpose each time Dad took us out on one of his boats. The song they sang all night long the day before they died.
    I gripped Cadence’s arm and stormed forward. I wasn’t an idiot. Mrs. Rasure was trying to prove I was still ‘paralyzed by grief,’ as she put it. This was the lowest thing she ever could have done. These rooms were sealed, left exactly how our sisters had left them seven years ago. I had no idea where she could have found a recording of their voices, though I doubted it was hard to do; Mom filmed almost every moment of us growing up. She called them her caterpillar films because she wanted us to remember our transformation into butterflies under the Falcon name.
    “Indie, NO,” Cadence said with a gasp. “I don’t want to see what sick game she is playing with us.”
    “I just want to turn the music off, whatever tape recorder she has on,” I argued as she forced me to stop in the hallway.
    “For all you know, she has a camera in those rooms filming your reaction. Let’s just walk away. Don’t let her do this to you—us,” Cadence pleaded.
    I stared