The Flight of the Silvers
Daniel Price
PROLOGUE
Time rolled to a stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Construction and wet weather clogged the westbound lanes at Chicopee, turning a breezy Sunday flow into a snake of angry brake lights.
Robert Given puffed a surly breath as his Voyager merged with the congestion. Two long hours had passed since he hugged the last of his grieving siblings and herded his family into the minivan. The rain had followed them the whole way from Boston, coming down in buckets and thimbles by turns. Now the sky dribbled just enough to make the windshield wipers squeal at the slowest setting.
After five squeals and ten feet of progress, he pushed up his glasses and studied the speedy trucks on the overpass. He had no idea which highway he was looking at, aside from a better one.
“Don’t,” said Melanie, from the passenger seat.
“Don’t what?”
“I see you putting on your explorer’s hat. I’m saying don’t. I’d rather be stuck than lost.”
His wife had spoken the words gently, and with a small twinge of irony. Melanie was typically the flighty one of the duo, the titsy-ditzy actress who rarely reached noon without making some heedless blunder. Today’s reigning gaffe was her choice of funeral dress, a clingy black number that was a little too little for the comfort of some. Worse than the sneers and leers of her stodgy in-laws was the scorn of her ten-year-old daughter, who chided her for disrespecting Grandpa with her “showy boobs.” That hurt like hell. It wasn’t so long ago that Amanda needed help buttoning her blouses. Now the girl had become the family’s stern voice of propriety, the arbiter of right and wrong.
Melanie straightened her hem, then turned around to check on her other brown-haired progeny, the sweeter fruit of her womb.
“You all right, angel?”
Hannah warily chewed her hair, unsure if it was safe to be honest. At five years old, she was too young to understand the grim rituals she’d witnessed today. All she knew was that she had to be on her best behavior. No whining. No showboating. No wriggling out of her itchy black dress. She’d spent the morning on cold metal folding chairs, staring glumly at her feet while all the grown-ups sniffled. It was a strange and ugly day and she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“I want to go home.”
“We’ll be there soon,” Melanie said, prompting a cynical snort from her husband. “You want to sing something?”
Hannah’s chubby face lit up. “Can I?”
“Sure.”
“No,” said Amanda, her stringy arms crossed in austerity. “We said no songs today.”
Her mother forced a clenched smile. “Sweetie, that was just for the funeral and wake.”
“Daddy said it was for the day. Out of respect for Grandpa. Isn’t that what you said, Daddy?”
Melanie winced at the buckling to come. She knew Robert would eat his own salted fingers before disappointing Amanda.
Right on cue, he bounced a sorry brow at Hannah in the rearview mirror. “Honey, when we get home, you can sing all you want. Just not now, okay?”
Friends often joked that Robert and Melanie Given didn’t have two children, they each had one clone. Nearly all of Amanda’s genetic coin flips had landed on her father’s side. She bore his finely chiseled features, his willowy build, his keen green eyes and ferocious intelligence. The two of them doted on each other like an old married couple. Rarely an evening passed when they weren’t found curled up on the sofa, devouring one heady book after another.
Hannah was Melanie’s daughter through and through. While Robert and Amanda were made of sharp angles, the actress and her youngest were drawn in soft curves. They shared the same round face, the same brown doe eyes, the same scattered airs and theatrical temperament. Hannah had also been born with a gilded throat, a gift that came from neither parent. The child crooned like an angel and never missed a note. She could perform any song flawlessly just by hearing it twice. Her mother worked with her day and night, honing her talent like a fine iron blade. Hannah Given would carve her name in the world one day. Of this, Melanie had no doubt.
Sadly, the skews in parental attention—the balanced imbalance—were starting to bear bitter fruit. With each passing day, Amanda treated her mother more and more like a rival while Hannah increasingly saw her father as a stranger.
And the girls themselves weren’t the tightest of sisters.
Magnanimous in victory, Amanda rummaged through her neatly packed bag of backseat boredom busters. “Look, why don’t we do a puzzle out of my book?”
“Why don’t you shut up?”
Both parents turned around. “Hannah . . .”
Amanda fell back into her seat, matching her sister’s pouty scowl. “I was trying to be nice.”