Notes from My Captivity(3)

“And if you read the article—” Dan retorts.

“I’ve read the article, Dan.” Mom’s getting pissed.

“If you read the article,” he insists, “you’d know that I don’t believe he was ever in any danger. Yuri exaggerates. But I do believe he was at their campsite. Too many details ring true. The Osinovs wouldn’t have hurt him.”

The Osinovs. He must have said that name ten thousand times. And I’m really sick of hearing it.

Mom flips the burned pancake onto a plate. I know she will eat it herself because she hates waste and because she’s the mom. She tries one more time. “Okay, Dan, but something you’ve never explained is why now? What’s the hurry?”

I study Dan’s face to see the reaction. He looks flustered. He doesn’t say anything at first.

I know a secret. I know why now. I know what’s the hurry.

There’s a very fine line between being a reporter and a snoop, and I crossed it last month, a few days after Sydney Declay’s article came out. I got the mail that day and noticed a letter for Dan from the chairman of the anthropology department. That night, I watched Dan’s face as he read it. Something was up. Something urgent and serious. That night, after everyone was asleep, I went into his office, found the letter, and took a photo of it with my iPhone. It began: “Dear Dr. Westin . . .” A sure sign that Dan was in trouble because he and the chairman had been friends for thirty years. Why such an icy greeting? As I read on, I found out why: Sydney Declay’s article had not only humiliated Dan, it had embarrassed the entire university, and if Dan didn’t find proof of the Osinovs, they were going to pull his grant.

He’d already taken out a second mortgage on the house. I had learned that from another midnight raid. So that’s why now. I watch Dan’s face go dark.

“Because,” he says at last. “Next year it will be too late.”

“Too late for what?” Mom asks.

Dan doesn’t answer.

The look on his face makes me wince. But whenever I start feeling too bad for him, I think of all the things he’s ruined. Like my life. Like our well-built, well-balanced family that liked to hike in the woods and believed in very little except one another. Then my dad died and Dan swept into the house, bringing his dumb son and his belief in the Osinovs. It reminded me of a particularly fervent brand of Christianity, except the Osinovs weren’t coming back; they were supposedly here already. Dan has the glassy-eyed stare of the true believer. He never misses a chance to tell me about some new detail he’s found through his research—all word-of-mouth, legend, rumor. Things my father would have dismissed from any trial. The tool that Yuri Androv, his main source, claimed the eldest son used to cut firewood. The mystical powers of the father. The fishermen downstream who claim to get a glimpse of two brothers fishing from a crude boat. The shoe sole—Grigoriy Osinov’s size—found at the remains of an old campsite, along with a charred biography of the life of Carl Linnaeus, the botanist with whom Osinov was obsessed. The letters Osinov wrote his cousin detailing his escape plan. Every tiny item in the proof of their existence has been discussed at the dinner table.

And I’m tired of that life.

Tired of Dan’s religion.

Yes, I want to write the article and get into journalism school. But I also want to be free. Free of the Osinovs forever.

Jason doesn’t go to the airport with us. He’s got a very important Call of Duty: Zombies battle to fight in the rec room downstairs. Mom, of course, has to go with us to make me feel guilty every mile to the airport. Soon as we pull out of the neighborhood, she starts in again. Am I sure I’m going to go? Why don’t I stay home with her this summer? In return, she’ll take me to Montana. Haven’t I always wanted to go to Montana? It will be just the two of us. . . .

From the back seat, I watch Dan’s hands tighten on the wheel. I know they are dying to join the argument. “Martha, stop trying to bribe her with a trip to Montana. She wants to go with me!”

He and Mom start at it again, and I decide it’s a good time to tune them out. I take out the Dictaphone I bought online—the same one Sydney Declay uses—and speak softly into it.

It’s a bright, clear summer day outside as we set off for Denver International Airport, full of those plans and dreams and expectations that always happen before a trip, but this trip is bigger, deeper, darker, and more vast than any I’ve taken in my life. I wonder, What is the day like in Siberia? Will the landscape represent the one whose—

Dan gasps. The tires screech as the car brakes hard, out of nowhere, jerking me out of my reporting. I can hear Mom shriek as I’m jerked forward and back again. The Dictaphone flies out of my hand. The car is still. A brief silence and then Mom whips her head around.

“Adrienne! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Mom,” I manage shakily. I’m confused and disoriented and rattled. It’s like Siberia reached out a paw from across the world and disrupted a simple thing like a car moving down pavement.

Dan peers into the road ahead.

“Dan!” Mom has a hand on her chest, breathing hard. “Why did you slam on the brakes? Are you trying to get us killed?”

He turns to her, eyes wide. “Did you see the little girl?”

“Little girl?” Mom echoes. “What little girl?”