The Peregrine Passage

Chapter Ten: Hazel

Thanksgiving was lovely and all, but I can't get my dad's journal out of my head. Was he really an Order member? It would explain his friendship with Audrey, I guess. I just figured that they went to high school together or something, but maybe that wasn't the case. I keep on thinking back to my childhood, now. I can't stop questioning everything.

I vividly remember running around the backyard while they'd sit on the porch swing with cups of black coffee. Before my dad died, we used to live in a little Victorian house just outside of town. It had a ton of land, all captured by a picturesque white picket fence. We even raised chickens at one point when my mom went through her farming phase. I still romanticize the house's gingerbread trim and yellow paint coat. My parents homeschooled me until the second grade, so we spent a lot of time together. Some of my best memories are running around with a soccer ball, even though I had no athletic abilities. Audrey would babysit me during the weekends when my parents wanted to go out alone. She taught me how to bake all sorts of things like lemon tarts, chocolate chip cookies, banana pudding, snickerdoodles, brownies, and the best strawberry shortcake of all time. Every Saturday morning she would bring us fresh cinnamon rolls from the bakery—back when she had first started the business. Somehow they were always warm, no matter how long it had taken her to get there.

Ms. Merriam always put in the extra effort to align her baked goods with whatever my mom was teaching me that week, too. When we were reading The Secret Garden, she made us tea with scones and jam to snack on while we discussed. My favorite was her Anne of Green Gables raspberry cordial and liniment cake. I was obsessed with the entire series. Gilbert Blythe was my first ever book crush (my first true love, if you will) and I still remember wearing my hair in twin braids every day to look like Anne. I always referred to my mom as my 'kindred spirit', too.

I love our apartment, don't get me wrong. It's simply a little less whimsical, but that might just be me growing up. It also always feels lonely without my dad here—or any visitors for that matter. It's a small apartment, but sometimes it feels like the biggest empty space in the world.

I try to recall what Ms. Merriam and my dad were actually talking about when they were out on the swing, and one specific memory comes to mind. It had just rained, so the grass was all muddy. I wasn't allowed back in the house with my dirty cleats on, but I didn't care much about that, so I just kept on running around. I was sliding and kicking in the mud when my dad told me to be careful. Obviously, I tuned him right out and kept messing around. It was as my ankle gave in and I slipped that I realized something was going on. The lowered voices and concerned speech wasn't for my bloody knees and fractured wrist, it was for something else—something secret.

I sat in the backseat of my dad's SUV on the way to the hospital as the rain pounded the windshield. Audrey drove while my dad reached back to my hand. I was crying too loudly to hear their conversation, but I desperately try to remember now. She had mentioned something about being afraid for him, that much I know. At the time, I thought it had to do with the bone sticking out from my wrist. Now, I'm not so sure. He had told her not to worry about him, and that he was doing the right thing. He'd also said something about things going too far and that it had gotten dangerously out of hand. What could it have been? Was it about the Order? One thing's for sure, it definitely had nothing to do with my lack of soccer abilities.

I look down at the scar on my left wrist and shiver.

As I was leaving the apartment this morning, my mom asked me what was wrong. I didn't tell her about what I had found in the box of Dad's things, mostly because I didn't want her to know that I was looking through it. It's hard enough for her to deal with missing him; she shouldn't have to carry the weight of my feelings on her back, too. I can't help but wonder if she knew about the Order, though, but I'm not going to ask.