And behind the lava? Anger.
“What the fuck?”
“Diana!” her mother admonished, crunching into another saltine cracker. She had taken a sleeve from the pantry sometime between the sixth and seventh letter, and was down to less than half a sleeve. “Language.”
“Mother. Language is the least thing you should worry about.” She flapped the letters in the air. “I mean. What the hell is this? Is this a prank?”
Of course it wasn’t a prank, though Diana had to ask. Every envelope’s postmark seemed authentic, the peeling stamps real.
Her mother shook her head, her fingers lightly touching her lips. “And your granny isn’t here to say otherwise.”
“Well, then we have to find out. There has got to be more—there must be clues.”
And Diana was off and running, in her head at least. This was what made her a good doctor—it wasn’t her ability to work without sleep, and it wasn’t her photographic memory. Nor was it her empathy, which was quickly waning these days. It was her zeal for the answer, the diagnosis, the algorithm through which a coordinated series of questions turned a choose-your-own-adventure puzzle into a solution.
Diana stomped to the garage before she heard her mother answer. She flipped the lights on. Junk greeted her—three generations’ and an ex-boyfriend’s worth. Her eyes darted away reflexively to stifle her increasing claustrophobia, and she sidestepped to where her grandmother’s things were stacked.
But when she came upon them, the tops of their boxes were unsealed.
“I’ve already gone through them,” her mother said from behind her. “Before you came home.”
Diana opened the boxes anyway and looked inside. She found framed pictures, books, Christmas ornaments. Little snippets of her grandmother, though the boxes were free of anything truly telling. Diana and Leora were similar in this respect. Everything in her granny’s house had had a function. When Diana was growing up, it’d been a relief to trounce through Granny’s home in comparison to her own mother’s, who had walls of photographs staring back at her, papers littered about, her workspace spreading out into the entire house.
Margo had a paper trail that could have pinned her down at a diner in West Virginia in 1996 for a photography assignment. Leora, on the other hand, was a mystery.
But now Diana wished Leora had been a pack rat.
“Sweetheart.”
She looked up then, at her mother leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve already looked. There are no other clues.”
“That’s it? You’re not gonna do anything else?”
“Like what? I’m seventy-five years old. We have no other blood family. Whatever those letters show—well, too much time has passed.”
“The truth is still the truth.” A notification beeped from inside the house, interrupting Diana’s launch into her philosophy that the truth was best, no matter how much it hurt. Out of instinct, she patted the pocket of her long-sleeve fleece, only to find it empty.
Realization dawned. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Ancestry sites. Plain old Google. The internet kept the stalest of information alive and relevant. “I think you’re wrong, I think the truth might just be easy to find.”
part two Sunset
The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color …
—Anna Godbersen
USS General John Pope
April 6, 1944
My dearest Leora,
As promised, I wrote as soon as the ship left port. The mood is somber, and in my cramped rack, no one is saying a word. It seems everyone has taken to paper, probably writing their sweethearts like I am.
Be proud of me, my heart. I can’t remove your sad expression from my memory. It has only been two days, but I can still feel you with me, your bare arm against mine, my fingers in your hair. I can still see your look of regret. I, too, am sad. I wish I didn’t have to go, but I could not have turned my back when called to duty. Our world is under attack, both yours and mine.
I can’t ignore my country’s needs. I know this was not what we discussed. But sometimes our world dictates our actions. Sometimes the world tests us, but I believe it rewards us, too. By doing this, I honor my father so he can be proud of me. I will also earn the right to go before your father proudly. I know you think I’m too optimistic, but I’m hopeful.
Write to me? I may not receive your first note until we get to New Guinea, but your letters will be my lifeline. Tell me all about home. Tell me everything about my father, the town, and what kind of fun you’re having with your friends. Do you remember my friend Onofre, from the barbershop? He has promised to send you my letters as soon as he receives them, and he can mail your letters to me. We can trust him.
Until then, I will think of you every moment of the day. At sunset especially, when I imagine you are in the orchard, under our tree, thinking of me at the same time.
Iniibig kita.
As ever, yours,
Antonio
Chapter Seven
Flora Reyes Philippines
Flora Reyes Cruz Manila
Flora Cruz Manila Philippines
Diana faced page upon page of internet search results for what had to be two of the most common Filipino last names and the biggest metropolitan city in the Philippines. She methodically clicked on each news and image link, each address and profile—ranging from a Flora Reyes in the United States who had previous addresses in the Philippines to the hundreds of women of the same name in the Philippines—even adding the name Cruz in case the two had truly married. But the Flora she was looking for had to be at least in her nineties. Maybe a hundred years old. And maybe she was dead.
Which would make this entire search pointless.
The sun peered through the blinds in front of Diana’s desk, and she blinked at the glare. It woke her from her trance after her nights on call and staring at the half-dozen tabs open on her computer, at the notes she had jotted down on the notepad next to her.
She’d spent the last day and night researching without a tangible lead.
How hard was it to find a person in the internet age? Still hard, apparently. Despite technology, digital footprints, and degrees of separation, the world’s population had increased at the same feverish pace. And what if Flora Reyes wasn’t even on the internet?
Diana’s phone dinged a text notification, from Sam.
Run today?
Half hour? New revelations.
This sounds exciting.
That is a fair, though not adequate, explanation.
I expect you here in 20.
A second notification, an email this time. Diana bent over the laptop, changed tabs to her email. And upon seeing the sender, she scooped the laptop into her arms, energy renewed, and flipped the lights on as she made her way to her mother’s bedroom.
She rushed to her mother’s bedroom door. With a customary knock that was more of a wallop than a rap, she entered, not bothering to mask her steps on the hardwood floors. She approached Margo, who was asleep, with her eyes covered with a leopard-print eye mask, and clothed in pajamas with caricatures of Mona Lisa in varying expressions. Diana touched her mother’s wrist. “Ma?”