“Well, who’s your mother?” he asked the million-dollar question.
“Margo Winter. Dr. Margo Winter. She told me once that you knew each other in college and worked at the same place for a few years and that you knew my dad—” I let my voice trail, hoping he’d jump in and help me because I was feeling like a complete idiot.
“Margo,” he almost whispered. “Your mother is Margo? Wow, I’m floored! I thought I’d never hear from her again. Where is she? Where are you? Are the boys with you too?” His questions bubbled to the surface so fast; I didn’t know which to answer first once he paused.
“Mom is at a conference in LA, I’m in Texas, and yes Alik and Evan are here with me.” I tried to answer specifically.
“Margo had my name on an emergency list?” Dr. Andrews wondered aloud. He was putting it together now. “What’s going on? What’s the emergency?”
“She hasn’t contacted us in,” I stopped to look at the wall clock, “twenty-three hours, and she was supposed to call us last night when her flight landed. We—we’re worried and we didn’t know who to call for help.”
“You said she was at a conference in LA? What kind of conference? Was she presenting? Did she tell you who would be there? Where is she staying? Why did she leave you alone? Don’t you have family you can call? Friends? Neighbors?” Dr. Andrews sure had a way of squeezing a lot of questions into what sounded like one run-on sentence.
“We live out on a ranch here in Texas. Our nearest neighbor is twenty-five miles from here. We don’t really have friends, besides one another. Mom homeschools us. She likes us to live an ‘unpolluted way of life that focuses on our intrinsic gifts and the development of our intellect’.” I quoted mom’s mantra without thinking.
“Let me make some calls, and I’ll call you right back. I can’t leave you three alone. Listen, if I can’t locate her right away, I’ll come get you, and you’ll stay with us until your mom returns.
“I know this sounds far-fetched, but you have to understand me when I say if your mom is gone, it’s not because she wants to be. You and your brothers need to be hidden until she’s safely returned.”
“What are you talking about? Our mom was just going to give a speech on biogenetic engineering to a bunch of other egghead scientists. What could have happened to her?”
“You’re going to have to take a leap of faith here, Meg. I’ll call you back within the hour.”
Click.
Chapter 8 What The…?
Have I mentioned how impatient I am? I relayed the entire conversation to the boys. They were both looking as confused and frightened as I’m sure I did.
“Leap of freaking faith!” Alik spat the words. He seemed to chew on that statement with a look of disgust. “What the heck is going on?”
“I don’t know, honestly I don’t.” I groaned miserable with worry.
“I wonder if this has something to do with the documents I found in the library.” Evan commented calmly.
“What?” Alik and I both barked.
“What documents are you talking about?” Alik looked like he was about to wring someone’s neck and Evan was looking like the perfect someone.
“Well, you both know what a voracious reader I am. I discovered, quite by accident really, an expandable folder full of documents on the uppermost shelf in the library between The Encyclopedia Britannica copyright 1939 and the biography of William Dursel.”
“Forget Britannica and Dursel! What were the documents?” I yelled. (Told you I was impatient.)
Evan didn’t have time to answer before the phone started ringing. I slapped my hand on it and threw it up to my ear. “Dr. Andrews?”
“Meg, I’m coming to get you and the boys right now. Pack a bag for each of you. Bring enough clothes for several days.”
“Wait a minute, who did you call? What did you find out about our mom? Where is she? Is she all right?”
“Meg,” the doctor’s voice was strained and for the first time I could hear the fear in it. “You’re going to have to take that leap we talked about before. You’re the oldest; the boys will do what you tell them to do because they know you love them. You want to keep them safe, right?”
“Of course, I want them safe. But you’re not answering my questions. Where is…”
Dr. Andrews interrupted me, “You are not safe there. Do you understand me? You are not safe now that your mother has been found out.”
My mind was racing. Mom’s been “found out” by whom? What was she hiding and why? We are “not safe” in our perfectly secluded little ranch? What was that supposed to mean? What was happening?