Into the Tiger's Hour

Chapter Three

"...so kind of Bertram, including the photos you took of the garden! David was very impressed when he saw how well the pansies were blooming..."

"...a few weeks longer, no doubt, considering how he's still adjusting. I do wish Bertram had given me a bit of warning about his situation, but I can understand why he wanted to be discreet."

"...sorry to have missed your call! David didn't let me know the phone had even rung until long after sunset, and I didn't want to disturb you by calling back in the middle of the night."

"I'd like to be back before autumn arrives-I love watching the trees in my backyard change colours. I'll ask David again just when he'll be ready to leave his summer home and return to the city."

The pages were thin, worn with age and slim in the envelopes. Each one was at least two pages, some counted five, and all written in a flowing script that was easy to read. It was a woman's handwriting; Iris would've been able to tell that just by looking. The signature was one she didn't know--she'd never met anyone named Dia nor heard her referred to--but some of the other names were familiar.

Bertram was someone she'd known all her life. He and his best friend Andrew Wiggin ran the Hearth Home daycare that Iris had spent most of her early childhood in. Even now, it was one of the "safe" locations she was allowed to go to, and Andrew always dutifully picked up the phone when she came in, calling Jonas to let him know she'd arrived. They were both elderly fae who loved children; Bertram and his wife Kamilah had adopted several before she'd passed away. Iris had known some of those children all her life as well. She'd grown up walking the halls of Hearth Home, playing with the children who lived there, had known many of those who visited it for as long as she could remember.

Judging by the letters, by the way Bertram and Andrew were mentioned, they had been close to this Dia. And clearly, she'd known Jonas before Iris was born. Had known him well enough to write well over thirty letters, each one spaced out by no more than a week, and to talk about the minutiae of everyday life with him.

...so who was she?

Iris rolled over on her bed, the last letter in her hand, and gazed at the ceiling. The soft rainbows painted there were as familiar as her own features; her bedroom hadn't been redecorated at any point in her life. Ax had told her repeatedly, perhaps trying to assure her that her adoption had been sorely wanted, about how he and Jonas had carefully decorated the room. Every piece on the walls had been selected by one of the three men in the house and only hung after Jonas had personally approved its addition. Waterfalls, horses, wildflowers and rainbows predominated, echoing the soft cream of the walls that shaded to blue near the ceiling. And the ceiling itself was the sky, shading from a star-sprinkled midnight blue to the radiant colors of the sunrise, stretching from one corner to the other.

She knew the constellations of the stars that her desk sat beneath. Knew the exact gradient of warm tones that were poised over her reading chair. And the rainbows over her bed, positioned in the center of the room, had been her greeting sight every morning.

With such familiar surroundings, there was nothing to distract Iris from the puzzled thoughts that she kept turning over.

Jonas Foster had been a man of no ambition before he'd met Betre and decided to adopt her, an infant born in Versailles, France. It had taken them several months to arrange the paperwork necessary for an international adoption, and she had been nearly five months old by the time Jonas had been able to bring her home. Ax had already been a part of that household, helping prepare the penthouse for her arrival, and Iris's first memories were of Jonas's dark, smiling face leaning over her. The baby album that he and Ax had meticulously updated held everything from her adoption paperwork to her most recent report card. Every photo in it had either Jonas or Ax in it, Betre occasionally in the background. Bertram had his own album that he and Andrew had maintained, and there wasn't a milestone in her life that hadn't been photographed.