With just a week left before moving to London, Valentina received a letter from the program director of Denvellia. The letter congratulated her, and confirmed her acceptance into the department that studied Extrasensory-Americans, though they were referred to as gifted. The letter advised her to start considering a topic of study, as the group is small and highly competitive, and the start of the semester proceeds at a very quick pace. The director also instructed Valentina to bring an important item to the topic of study. And she knew just what to bring.
Still in her pajamas made up of a camisole and matching shorts, Valentina slipped out of her room, her bare feet padding silently across the floor. The penthouse was silent on the Saturday morning. Valentina called out to the empty apartment, “Dad? Dad, you are at church, right? So if it’s okay for me to go into your room, just continue to not being home!”
No one answered.
As Valentina had planned, the apartment was empty. Her father always spent his Saturday mornings at the local Russian Orthodox Church, gone from dawn until nearly noon. It wasn’t anything unusual; this had been his weekly habit since Valentina had come to live with him. Valentina had always attributed it to the emotional trauma her father carried. She crossed the living room, pausing at the closed door of her father’s bedroom. Valentina knocked again, just to be sure. When no answer came, she crept inside.
Her father’s room was kept very dark. The shades were drawn over the room’s only window. Murroh’s room was smaller than Valentina’s. He had given his daughter the master bedroom, though she hadn’t noticed his things being moved. For all she had known, Murroh had always kept the smaller room. After some groping around, Valentina found the light switch. She had never been invited into her father’s bedroom, and now Valentina knew why.
Murroh’s room was remarkably clean, his bed was made, and the tops of his dresser and nightstand were free of dust. The room smelled so clean, it was almost sickening; like the sterilization of a doctor’s office, or hospital room. Murroh didn’t seem much for decorating either. None of his military recognitions were displayed, nor were his awards from his work for the government. The walls were bare. There were few indications that anyone even used this room on a daily basis. Murroh kept out only two framed photographs on his dresser. One from Valentina’s baptism, featuring a much younger Murroh wearing in his military dress uniform and a nervous smile, as he held the infant Valentina in his arm on the steps of a church. The other was a picture of Murroh sitting with another man on the hood of a black SUV. The other man had dark hair and eyes, and tattoos on his arms. They shared cigarettes and smiles. Murroh was genuinely smiling.
Valentina’s eyes caught on the pictures. She picked up the second, taking a long look at it. Murroh never looked this happy. This must have been his best friend, the one that had died. The best friend that Murroh was so easily brought to tears over. After setting it back down, Valentina looked around. She did not see any pictures, or mementoes of her mother. She’d never known her parents as a couple, but now she wondered if they’d ever even been in love. She shook her head and continued on her search. She cautiously checked drawers, and under his bed, then behind the bottles of whiskey next to the bottles of antidepressants. Valentina finally found what she was looking for, slid under Murroh’s dresser.
Suddenly worried she would be caught, Valentina wanted to be back in her own room. Carefully, she switched off the light and shut the door, hoping nothing was so disturbed that he would notice. Murroh was usually out all morning, but Valentina didn’t want to take her chances. Back in the safety of her own bedroom, Valentina placed the slim document box down on her bed and carefully opened the lid. Inside were handwritten pages, words in Cyrillic scrawled in charcoal, ink and graphite, a prisoner’s first-hand account of his time held against his will. If that was not intriguing enough on his own, the prisoner was Extrasensory-American, though he was not American. Valentina looked at a few more pages before putting them back into the box. She wasn’t sure, but Valentina thought she might just have an idea for her research at Denvellia.
YOU ARE READING
Looking For A Legend (Book 1)
Mystery / ThrillerA young telepath is unexpectedly left with leading his class when his teacher takes leave. One of Elijah's new students Valentina leads him down a path where mysteries only get more mysterious and nothing is as simple as it looks.
