don’t know what you’re getting at. What about the date has you so upset?”
“It’s Emme,” he says, grimly. “This is the night that some legends say Jack the Ripper murdered his first girl. I think it could be Emme.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
If my hands were cold before, they are frozen solid now. Although my first instinct somehow was to pull away from Israel and run out in the night, he has held me fast. Now I’ve begun to shake as the weight of my dad’s words sink into my flesh, through my skin and soft tissue, right through the marrow and bones of my very self. My heart feels as though it is in a vise.
“Just hold on,” Israel whispers into my hair as he holds me tight. Maybe it’s his rock hard arms that make me feel as though I’m in a vise, albeit a welcome one. “We’ll figure this out.”
“It’s quite possibly his first victim and most authorities believe she never existed because the body – if there was one – disappeared. She was never truly identified the way the other victims were. The press called her Fairy Fay.” Dad’s history lesson sounds like a professor, but his voice is shaky and full of sadness. “What a time to remember my trivia…” he trails off.
You look like a fairy princess. In a corset.
That’s what the boys call me.
“Emme Fay,” I whisper. This time I do pull myself out of Israel’s grasp, but he reaches for me again and holds me still a moment longer.
“Coats,” he says. “It’s snowing. We can’t help her if we freeze to death on the streets looking for her.”
I know he’s right, but I hate the precious wasted seconds, the miniscule time it takes to find and then button my long coat. The costly moments it takes to wind a scarf around my hair and ears. I hate the cold, hard fact that there is no telephone, no way of communication, no instantaneous way of locating Emme, no warning for Bea. I hate what I already know we will find. Because the name is right. The timing is right. The story is right. Who else but one of the Lost would be hard to identify? Would only have a nickname? What kind of body just disappears besides the Lost? She doesn’t belong here. It would be as if she never was. As if she never existed. She would be a legend.
The door slams behind us as we run.
********************
I am beginning to hate winter. I don’t want to be cold any longer. I want to wake up tomorrow in a tropical paradise, with Emme by my side. We can swim in the ocean and wear grass skirts. Grass skirts; inwardly I laugh at what Emme would say to that. They would go the way of my poor Garfield T-shirt.
My mind can’t settle down. We run through the night, my long dress a bother that whips around my legs as I force them to move faster. Dad is leading because he has checked in with Bea only yesterday and knows the way. I have been too nervous to venture near this part of town since the first time and now the guilt I feel for it eats away at me and invades my every thought.
“What other details do you know, Dad?” I shout to him, as we run. The three of us and our six long legs eat up the ground beneath us.
“I can’t think of anything else. No one even knows if Fairy Fay ever really existed, much less was murdered. The real Jack the Ripper murders begin in earnest soon.” His voice is muffled by the time it floats back to me on the air. “I can’t believe I didn’t connect the time period earlier.”
You’re better at history than I.
Emme’s words come back to haunt me. Why didn’t I see this before? One of the most famous stories in history is going to begin with the death of Emme.
When we reach the door to Bea’s home, our breath comes in ragged, gasping puffs. My lungs ache. Israel bangs on the locked door with excessive force and shouts Bea’s name. It seems an eternity before Joe swings open that door and when he does, Is shoves me inside and slams it shut behind me without a word. He and Dad leave me there with a confused Bea, and I know the reason.
They do not want me with them because they do not want me to find Emme’s