Liz Moore - The Unseen World

And at the library, Ada now read books for teenage girls that her friends at school liked. Sweet Valley High. Flowers in the Attic . Books by Michael McDowell and Frank Belknap Long with gruesome covers that made her afraid to be alone in the dark. Her favorites were books called the Tina Marie series, about teenage girls in a pop band: books she would never have read in front of David. With a certain sinking feeling, she realized she had no reason to hide them any longer.

Each morning, when she woke, she thought about going to visit David, and then quailed. She could not bear it, the thought of looking at his blank countenance with so many unanswered questions between them; she felt she did not know him. Some nights, unable to bear her loneliness, she called his hospital room in the hope of hearing his voice. But always, always, she hung up after one ring, before he answered. She had terrible dreams of his death, woke up crying and guilt-stricken, vowed to go see him. But the truth — when she allowed herself to think it — was that she was afraid. And the longer she waited, the more afraid she became of seeing him. Who would be there, in his room, in his chair, when she arrived? David might be gone, spirited away, she thought. And there, in his place, some changeling.

Liston still went to visit him every Sunday after church. When she asked Ada if she wanted to come, Ada made up the same excuse: she’d seen him all week, she said, and she had too much homework.

At last, one Friday, Ron Loughner called Liston to tell her he had new information for them, and Liston was careful to let Ada know right away. He came over that evening to present it, looking proud of himself, smug in a way that Ada did not like. He had been recommended to Liston by a friend on the police force, but Ada could tell that even she found him grating, maybe somewhat incompetent.

She had hoped that Melanie and William would not be home for this, and she was relieved that the house was still empty when Loughner arrived. Even Matty was out at a friend’s house for dinner.

The three of them sat at the kitchen table. Liston asked if anyone wanted a drink, and Ron Loughner asked for a Coca-Cola. Ada had the vague suspicion that he was a recovering alcoholic.

“I only have Diet,” said Liston, and he said that would be fine.

He produced a manila folder with paperwork neatly stacked inside, and opened it. From it he removed a photocopied list of Sibelius births and deaths in New York over the course of the last century.

“The extended Sibelius family is getting smaller by the decade,” he began. “At the beginning of the century they were a huge presence in New York, lots of cousins, lots of branches. In the 1920s, ’30s, Sibelius was like Astor or Carnegie. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting one at some society function. But by now a lot of the branches have died out. They weren’t a particularly fertile bunch, I guess,” he said, pleased with this turn of phrase. He took a sip of his Diet Coke.

He continued. “By now anyone with the last name Sibelius has moved elsewhere, and they’re mainly cousins, second cousins twice removed from John Fairfax and Isabelle Sibelius,” he said, naming David’s parents. “One of the first things I did when I took on the case was to try to find any living Sibelius to tell me why David’s family would have reported him missing.”

“They were estranged,” Ada said quickly. “David didn’t speak to them.”

Loughner paused for a moment, regarding Ada with something she suspected was sympathy, and then continued.

“Recently I found one living relative,” he said. “Isabelle’s younger half-sister, much younger, Ellen Palmer. She lives now in Burlington, Vermont. She’s seventy-four years old. Same father, different mother. She wasn’t close to Isabelle, but she visited New York every Christmas as a child, until she was eighteen or so. She only would have been fourteen years older than David,” said Loughner. “And therefore he presumably would have still been in the house when she visited.”

He paused for a moment, letting the weight of his statements settle over the room.

“She says the Sibelius son disappeared at seventeen,” he said finally, placing a palm delicately on the table. “And only resurfaced when he was a legal adult, at which point he indicated, by mail, that he did not want anything to do with them. The case was closed, legally, but they never saw him again.”

“That makes sense,” said Ada, looking at Liston for validation. “That’s what David said happened.” She was beginning to feel uplifted; perhaps this had been, simply, a misunderstanding.

Liston avoided her gaze.

“She also gave us a picture of David,” said Loughner. He reached again into the manila folder, and produced a large-scale photograph that he observed himself, before sliding it across the table to them.

“Ellen Palmer says this is her nephew at sixteen,” said Loughner.

Ada pulled the picture toward her.

In it were two people. One was a young woman, pretty, stout, with a high collar and a short, fashionable haircut: Ellen Palmer, perhaps. The other was a slender, sensitive-looking boy, wearing a tie and a scowl. The boy had blond hair, a slightly upturned nose, large dark eyes. He also had a birthmark, a small mole, in the middle of his right cheek.

She turned the picture over. On the back was written, in beautiful old-fashioned handwriting, E. Palmer. D. G. Sibelius. 1941 .

This was not David. This was not her father.

Liston took the photograph from her.

Ada looked back and forth between them, Liston and Loughner.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Loughner paused. “It seems likely,” he said finally, “that your father was not a Sibelius.”

“Maybe she’s lying. Maybe she’s just afraid we’re going to come after her money,” said Ada. But she doubted this as she said it.

“I’m not sure what to say,” said Loughner.

The room was very silent. Ada felt his gaze upon her, and the gaze of Liston, who did not seem surprised. It was not a surprise to Ada, either; it felt more like an awakening, a letting-go. Her identity as a Sibelius had been integral to her understanding of herself. Although David was disparaging of his family, and of their outdated, restrictive belief system, he also seemed to find a sort of dignity in belonging to such an established lineage. His identity seemed to be comprised equally of pride in his ancestry and pride in his rejection of it. He had very effectively transferred this pride to Ada; it was what she fell back on, in this new unplanned chapter of her life, when she had nothing else to be proud of. Now she was not certain what she had left to take pride in. Not even David, anymore; for she no longer knew who he was.

Ada gathered all the scraps of her fourteen-year-old self-possession, and she asked Ron Loughner very politely whether he had been able to determine anything further about David’s identity.

“Not yet,” said Loughner. “Now we know who he wasn’t, if you know what I mean. We still have to figure out who he was.”

“Thank you,” said Ada, with dignity.

Then she excused herself carefully from the table, and walked down the hallway toward the stairs.

“Ada?” Liston called after her. But she didn’t stop.

At 7:00, Liston knocked gently on her door and called to her through it, asking her if she wanted dinner. Ada declined. She couldn’t eat. She felt incorporeal. She felt she had been cut adrift from everything on earth; she felt as if she were floating, untethered, in the atmosphere.

Formerly fond memories of David now presented themselves to her, one after another, as something painful. Here was David, in his apron, in the kitchen; David, listening to his records, head lowered to his hand in contemplation. David bouncing excitedly on his toes, delivering the news of some discovery, or of a new friend, or of the engagement of a friend or acquaintance or a grad student at the lab. (He was deeply, unexpectedly romantic; he loved weddings; he loved surprise engagements, and hearing the stories of proposals. “And did he take a knee?” Ada heard him ask a former postdoc, Sheila, once, subsequently expressing great approval that her fiancé had done so.)