Chapter two: Questions

  Ivy woke up to her phone vibrating against the solid red wooden side table in her childhood bedroom. The sun snuck through the purple curtains and settled a beam across the center of her room. Ivy slowly sat up, pushing the straight black strands out of her face. She checked to see William written on the screen of her cell phone.

"What the fuck does he want?" Ivy wondered to herself before answering, not bothering to hide the anger in her voice as she answered. "Hello William. What do you want?" Ivy answered the phone with no effort to hide her distaste for his name in her mouth.

"Ivy.... I know I wasn't there, but being the mayor, I can't just drop everything and go over to Shoreside city." Ivy couldn't hold back the irritated scoff that escaped her lips in response to his lies' an excuse to miss her mother's funeral. The woman he married. Even if it wasn't the best marriage, he must have loved her at some point. Otherwise, what bother with marriage at all?

"William, this is total bull shit and we both know it. You knew her time was coming, you had time to prepare. To be here at any point toward the end."

William kept quiet for a moment, clearly caught in a lie. Ivy overheard her mother tell Dylan when he asked one day as to why William wasn't ever around. Ivy's mother being an honest woman, she told him about their rushed marriage when they were eighteen and how William was verbally abusive and cheated on her openly, how he had no regard for women in general. Ivy was sick of this man, he never bothered to be her dad, not that she needed it with Dylan, but was really no family bond ever drawn? She wondered to herself for a short moment. “What did you call for? To Apologize? Listen, I don't need you in my life, William. I have an amazing dad."

    Ivy spat out with venom, admittedly in a harsher tone than intended, but the words could not have been any truer. William was now angry hearing Ivy call Dylan her dad, even though for Ivy it felt like fact. For William, it felt like a vicious jab. "You don't know half of the truth; I have all the stories and evidence. Your mother would never have told you the true history of your family." Ivy, not believing Williams' words, rolled her eyes and let out a harsh laugh. Ivy was certain her mother had, she even knew the history of the Mayfair’s and how they founded the Island of Mayfair. How her mother’s family came to the Island in the early 1700s. "She told me the history, William, I know she has." It was Williams' turn to let out a harsh laugh but one of disbelief. Yes, Lillian was an honest woman William had always known. But some things were best left unsaid. "Then answer this question, Ivy. Where were my family or yours from before Mayfair?"

Ivy kept quiet for a beat, her mind reeling, trying to pull up that fact. She was told on countless occasions, but that was never a part of the history lessons in Mayfair or the family that Ivy had never met before. She had to admit that maybe her mum forgot, but her mum was so vigilant about details and gave her parts with dates and the odd old letters that she knew were stored in her mother's attic.

"Well, perhaps she forgot William or didn't know?" Ivy spoke with all the confidence she could muster. Her voice trembled ever so slightly, and she hoped that William didn't pick up on the change in her voice. "I know where they came from." With that, William hung up, leaving Ivy in the silence with questions multiplying, chattering in her head, making her sigh with a heavy tiredness her shoulders slumped.

 she turned to see her tired reflection in the long mirror that stood by her dark oak dresser. Her normally slim body looked thinner and pale, her slightly rounded cheeks looked gaunt, her slightly pink cheeks now like the rest of her ivory skin.

Ivy's gray eyes looked at her faded sleepwear and noticed the weight loss brought on by stress and lack of food the last few months. Ivy was always naturally slim. But now she looked at herself and could see why her aunts looked so worried yesterday. Ivy found herself hugging herself as tears began falling in streams. She didn't know what it was about her reflection that started it. Perhaps it wasn't about the reflection that was looking back at her. Maybe it was because her mother wasn't here to make her the muffins she loved or the fact that her waist-length hair braided was done by Dylan and not her mother.

Maybe it was simply because the call with William frustrated her. She was now no longer able to hear facts about her family from her mother. She collapsed to the floor curling up and sobbed uncontrollably. The tears unshed from the past months fell, the ones from yesterday too. It all felt like drowning and felt unbearable. As she felt panic beginning to stir, arms wrapped around her, Dylan sat on the floor stroking her hair. It was a comfort that only served to increase her sobs and gasps for breath as she let it all out. Her mother was gone. There wasn't any way to see her again. She had to come to terms with it eventually, just not right now, or even today.

After time, the tears slowed, and Ivy's breathing slowed again. Her puffy eyes looked at Dylan with love. He was a dad. He never had a child with Ivy's mother, but he always said that Ivy was his daughter, and he never made her feel like anything less. "So much for me being your rock for a while, huh?" Ivy spoke softly with a small smile trying to lighten the mood she had created with tears.

Dylan smiled this time. The smile reached his eyes filled with love for his daughter. "We can easily be each other's strength. You're choosing to stay here with me. That's already so much help." Dylan's words eased the worry in Ivy, calming her. She hugged her dad tightly and they both stood up. They made their way down the dark wooden walled hall down the matching dark wooden stairs.

 Walking to the right into the kitchen open to the living room via a wooden double sized frame. They sat with the TV blaring in the living room to hear the news while they ate. We sat at the kitchen table with cereal in our bowls in front of us picking at taking small bites awaiting the coffee that was being brewed in the machine, the smell tickled our noses as it danced in the air

Ivy's mother had always wanted to listen to the news while eating breakfast. She always said it was important to stay informed about the world around you. Ivy and Dylan sat in silence listening to the tragic news of three missing girls all last seen at Shoreside City Park.

Ivy stood up and walked to the family room to watch the images of the three missing girls pop up on the TV. The first girl that was taken was a 10-year-old named Leah, a brunette with doe brown eyes and rounded cheeks and an angelic smile. The second one was a 9-year-old named Drew. She was pretty with fiery red hair and sharp green eyes and, lastly, was Little Anna, a black-haired blue-eyed girl with a scar on her left cheek just under her eye. She was apparently 7 years old. One thing Ivy learned while studying criminal justice and forensics and going through old case files is that children often don't get to go back home.

Ivy watched the faces of the girls and then their desperate parents, their tired eyes and wary looks. They probably know the same thing as Ivy did but are in deep denial. Ivy walked back into the kitchen shaking her head and slumped back onto the wooden chair, the cooled wood touching the back of her legs as a reminder of the cooler winter mornings. This morning felt cooler, however. The kitchen felt as if it were thick with cold air that burned her lungs. She looked at her dad to see if he seemed to notice the cold. He simply continued to eat and listen to the news with smiles toward Ivy but no shiver or any change.

Ivy felt the hairs on the back of her neck slowly rising as the atmosphere of the room shifted with a heaviness that hung around her. It was a thick cold feeling that wrapped itself and a mild ringing started in her ears, first as a low hum but slowly began to increase its volume and pitch.

Ivy felt as if a pair of eyes were taking in her movements, mapping out what she was doing with an intensity she had never felt before. Whipping her head around to see who was watching her, only to find it was only her and Dylan in the kitchen. Ivy felt a shiver creep over her as the uneasy feeling settled in her gut. The cold thick air was heavier around her now. Ivy stood up and decided to go and see if her mother's boxes in the attic would answer Williams' question from earlier. Ivy stood up hoping the feeling that clung to her would leave her alone. The skeptical part of her brain came up with reasons for the doom in her gut and the hair that stood up on her skin as a cold pocket of air seemed to follow her.

  Ivy made her way up the stairs when the ringing started again. A heavy breathy feeling brushed against the back of her neck and coldness brushed over her wrist. Her heart pounded and her gut wrenched. That feeling of doom felt heavier. As she turned, her phone rang. Ivy jumped, her heart thrashing in her chest cavity, her face drained of colour.

"Jesus." Ivy muttered under her breath as she looked to see William was calling again. Ivy answered cautiously, as she didn't know what other games he wanted to play, but she was curious.

"Ivy. I'm thinking it's time to come to the Island. Mayfair is your birthplace, and I can help you learn more. There may be other things your mother didn't tell you, and we have stuff here at your grandparents' house. Your mother's parents... were so broke when she left with you and my father wants to meet his granddaughter."

Ivy calculated how she could use this opportunity and avoid William and still get answers to questions William was asking. He brought up gaps in knowledge she hadn't worried about before. Ivy didn't see much of her mother’s family. Only her aunts came off Mayfair Island, which she had always questioned in her mind but accepted as her mother didn't seem close to her family. She had Dylan's parents and brothers' family as her extended family and loved them all. "I'll go if you buy my dad a ticket too. I can't leave him alone."

William sighed, clearly irritated at the request, knowing it would be the only way to get Ivy to the island. Ivy ends the call and goes back to the kitchen to find her dad sitting there reading an article on his phone. Ivy fills Dylan in on the impromptu trip to Mayfair and that they will be going tomorrow. Dylan nods okay with this and organizes to stay with the aunts and addresses for their first trip to Mayfair Island. "Ivy? I will happily go to support you, but what brought this on?" Ivy sighed. She never really explained how William always seemed to get into her head. But there was this nagging feeling like there was more to her family than she knew. "William knows stuff about mum and I want answers."