Notes from My Captivity(71)
People have finally stopped asking me questions. Requests for interviews have been denied so many times that the news outlets have given up, and the fan club on Instagram that sprang up overnight for me and earned one hundred thousand followers just went off-line.
There were no photos, no updates to post. No explanations. No exclusives. Just that one interview that was as much of the truth as I could possibly tell.
My story does not belong to the world. It does not belong to me or even to the Osinovs. What I have learned is that we are all the same story, and in this story we love and we hate and we pray and we sing and we search for food and shelter. We want our fathers to come back, real and solid and breathing again, and embrace us, as our fathers wanted for their fathers, and their fathers, and their fathers. We love certain colors. We wonder what is up in the sky. We wish for things and we believe in magic, and when that magic fails, we don’t understand. We enter people’s lives and bring them joy; we also bring them sorrow. We forgive and we do not forgive, and we in turn are forgiven and are not forgiven. We do things we cannot take back. We perform heroic deeds that no one ever sees. We fold laundry and we play in snow. We try to comfort one another. We wish the summer days were longer. We wonder what it means to be alive.
The girl who killed my father is almost thirty years old now. She’s started a foundation to educate college girls about drinking and driving. She speaks at high schools around the country.
She says my father’s name.
William Cahill.
I know this because I came to hear her speak, sat in the back row and listened. She cried when she told the story, after all these years. I still wanted to stop her before she hit my father. Still wanted that magic to work, even in a story.
I emailed her later. Told her who I was. Invited her over to my house, the same house she’d brought so much sadness into. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. But I know that I will be kind to her and understanding. I know that I will finally say her name.
A knock on the door.
I open it.
She’s standing there, looking nervous.
“Hello, Lisa,” I say. “Come in.”
I myself am part of a family. I have a wife, a son, and a daughter. We are not a perfect family. But studying the Osinovs made me understand what families really mean.
Dr. Daniel Westin New York Times article
Do you think I don’t want to believe? Who doesn’t want to believe?
Sydney Declay
Washington Post article
It is true the Osinovs existed, that we found proof before the crew died and my stepfather drowned in the river. The proof was irrefutable: the remains of their cabin, their graves, some scattered bones, and tucked into an old cabinet near what used to be the hearth, the diary of the second son. We will never know what killed them: the elements, the cold, wild animals, illness. What we know is that, like all families, they sought sanctuary. I hope they found it.
Adrienne Cahill New York Times article
Love is very simple. And I love her.
Vanya Osinov from the book A Voice in the Forest: The Letters of Vanya Osinov published posthumously, translated from the Russian
Acknowledgments
Thanks go first to Mollie Glick, überagent, whose early faith launched my YA path. Thanks to Claudia Gabel and her ferocious talent for finding and shaping a story.
Thanks to Katherine Tegen, Rebecca Aronson, Stephanie Guerdan, and all the gang at Katherine Tegen Books.
Thanks to Heather Daugherty and Helen Crawford-White for the home-run cover.
And Bess Braswell, Ebony LaDelle, and Rosanne Romanello for getting this novel into the hands of the readers.
Also thanks to Jon Howard, Robin Roy, and Dasha Tolstikova, as well as Mariana Olenko and especially Yelena Makarczyk, whose knowledge of Siberia greatly informed this book.
Thanks always to Polly Hepinstall and Becky Hepinstall, tireless readers, supporters, and friends.
And a shout-out to the Cool Kids: Rachel Johnson, Kelley Coleman, Anthony Grieco, and Joe Whyte.