Page 51 of If Anything Happens To Me

“It did,” she said. “I had the same blood type, but somehow I lived. It never seemed fair.”

She closed her eyes and looked pale, as if my words had brought all her grief flooding back. I couldn’t help taking her hand. She tilted her head, reading my expression. “You understand,” she said. “You’ve lost someone you love.”

“Yes,” I said. “My sister. And I think she died right here. At the Miramar.”

“Please, no!” Daphne said.

I knew she could see the sorrow in my eyes. We shared that emotion; it came from the unbearable fact of losing a sister. She still gripped my hand.

“Do you know what your great-nephew does upstairs?” I asked.

“Fitch?” she asked, and gave a half laugh. “He’s a sad case. He pretends to be a scientist. Some people present themselves one way, when they are really another.” Daphne paused and shook her head. “You’re never too young to learn that truth of human nature.”

“Do you ever go up to the attic, to see him?”

“Heavens, no.”

“He never takes you up there? Does he do tests on you?”

“What kind of tests?” she asked, clearly puzzled.

“To work on his cure, for the family disease?”

She snorted. “What silliness. How can a boy with no medical or advanced scientific training work on a cure? He’s probably just playing with that obsolete equipment from the old days. He does worry about his sister, I will give him that much credit.”

“She’s up there with him, right?” I asked. “And the other girls he brings here?”

“Dear, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What girls? I find him tiresome. He has appropriated the Agassiz Foundation for his own reasons—to make himself seem like a big shot. He struts about, but I’ll tell you this, Oli: Scratch the surface of a self-proclaimed genius and you’ll find either a pathetic soul or a megalomaniac.”

The latter, I thought. I saw her staring at my wrist.

“Who gave you this?” she asked, tapping the Turk’s head Matt had given me just hours earlier, when everything had been so different.

“A boy I thought I liked,” I said.

“It’s a sailor’s knot,” Daphne said. “A romantic gift.”

I had actually believed that. But that was before I knew, before I heard Matt’s voice whispering for me while he and Fitch scoured the waterfront looking for us.

“It’s a sign of strong feelings—going all the way back to the days when sailors left for months, even years at a time,” Daphne went on. “The gift of a sailor’s knot was a promise, a sign of love. My father gave one to my mother. Their love—for each other and for us—was stronger than anything on earth.”

“They sound wonderful,” I said, thinking sadly how I’d been imagining that for me and Matt.

When I shook myself out of that momentary reverie, I saw that Daphne was staring over my shoulder, where Iris had been standing. She was frowning so intensely, I turned to follow her gaze. There was no sign of Iris. “Your friend—she was there just a minute ago,” she said. “But someone beckoned her inside.”

“Who did?” I asked, upset that I’d been distracted and hadn’t noticed.

“The boy,” she said. “Not Fitch—one of his friends.”

“What’s his name?” I asked. I could hear the ocean roaring in my ears, only it was really my blood, my heart pounding as I waited to hear her say “Matt.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t introduce me.”

Matt, I thought. The friend was Matt. I didn’t wait to hear anything else. I needed to catch up to Iris and Matt.

“Oli, come back when you can. I enjoyed our visit,” I heard Daphne call as I ran across the wide porch, into the Miramar’s open door.

But they weren’t the last words I heard.

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