The Hollow Ones(46)

She was out of the shower and wearing a towel when she picked up her ringing phone and saw that it was her mother. Due to either resignation or simply a weak moment, she answered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, you answered! How are you? Where are you? Are you okay…?”

It went on like that for a few minutes, Odessa catching her up and reassuring her at the same time. There followed a recitation of her mother’s luncheon the previous day, what she ate and what her friend Miriam—whom Odessa had never heard of before—ate and what was discussed.

“And how is Linus?”

Linus was a curiosity to Odessa’s mother. Not because she was at all racist, but to her, interracial dating was a young person’s province, like streaming music and Postmates. Odessa made the mistake of mentioning he was going to Omaha.

“He’s leaving you there alone?”

Odessa assured her she was fine.

“What’s going to happen to you?” her mother asked. “The FBI, your career?”

Odessa sighed. “I think that’s over.”

“Oh no. But did you…you didn’t…”

Her mother’s concern always made her furious. Made her feel like a failed child. Her mother knew where all her buttons were. She had, in fact, installed them there.

“Look—it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about how can I go on with this hanging over my head like a flashing neon sign,” said Odessa. “I don’t know what’s next.” Then quickly: “But it will be fine.”

“Your law degree,” said her mother, hopefully.

“Yes. My law degree.”

“Always something to fall back on. Just like your father.”

The corners of Odessa’s mouth fell at the mention of her father. That her mother still revered him was a source of fascination for Odessa…and also a source of pity.

“Mom, you were the youngest of seven, right?”

“Well, yes, of course.” She rattled off her six siblings’ names in birth order. “What makes you ask that?”

“No reason, but—”

“I always wanted seven of my own,” her mother interjected. “I suppose because that’s what I grew up with. And I was the baby, like you, so I wanted to emulate that. Funny now.”

“You had six children, Mom. That’s pretty good.”

“I know. Six is enough,” her mother said and then chuckled.

Odessa felt a pang of relief, marking the old soothsayer wrong on that one.

“Although there was a…a stillbirth,” said her mother.

Odessa shook her head, wet hair swinging over her ears. “A…what?”

“She was…it was my very first pregnancy. Ended in a neonatal death.”

“But…wait, was it…was she…born alive or dead?”

A pause on her mother’s end. “She died in my arms, Odessa. She didn’t live but an hour.”

Odessa had her free hand against the wall, leaning against it, dizzy. Stunned. “So then I am actually…the seventh daughter…of a seventh daughter?”

“Well—I guess, technically speaking. But why do you say it like that?”

“Why haven’t we talked about this before?” asked Odessa. How could I not know this?

“Because it isn’t very pleasant for me to speak about, Odessa,” said her mother, an uncharacteristic curt note in her voice.

“I’m sorry.” Odessa realized she was dredging up painful memories without thinking about her mother’s side of this. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. What the hell did this mean?

“Mom, I never…I can’t know what it was like to go through that. I didn’t really know. Sorry.”

She found herself with a newfound appreciation for her mother’s strength. It almost forgave—and went a long way toward explaining—the decades of weakness that followed.

“Odessa,” said her mother, “where are these questions coming from?”

An old soothsayer. “Nowhere, Mom. Just…soul searching.”

“Odessa…are you thinking about starting a family?”

“What? God, no…”

“Are you pregnant?”

Jesus. “No, Mom. Nope. None of the above.”

“You know your sister is expecting her third…”

Odessa lived through another two minutes of denials and trying to get off the phone, until finally the line was dead and she was staring at her screen display, deep in thought.

She replayed the Tarot reading. All the things that woman said. Still, Odessa found ways to knock down some of her statements, her predictions. She was still fighting the reading, denying it.

The counter woman wearing the headdress, translating:

She asks if you want to know about your father.

And then the old woman’s eyes rolling back when confronted by Hugo Blackwood, almost fainting.

Odessa walked into the kitchen. The teacup was on her kitchen counter, still unwashed.

The cup from which Hugo Blackwood had drunk. The one he had held.



Odessa endured the glances, the eyes following her in the hallway, as she moved through the New Jersey Field Office in Claremont Tower. Only something like this could have made her return there. Her friend Laurena was waiting for her in a secure conference room.