Page 55 of Dying to Meet You
But her mom doesn’t seem to know where she’s been. She’s staring at the medallion Natalie has worn for much of her life. It’s precious to her. She only took it off this morning so her father wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t know how tightly she’s held on to it. Even now, it takes great stores of restraint not to snatch it from her mother’s hand.
Theynevertalk about her father. And her mother—who comments on everything Natalie says or does—never mentions the medallion. As if it’s invisible. As if there’s no gaping hole in her life where her father should be.
“What the hell, Mom?” she asks shakily. “Why the sudden interest in Saint Raymond?”
“Raymond? Is that a joke?”
Natalie shakes her head. “No, that’s who this saint is supposed to be. I looked it up on a website that sells Catholic stuff.” She holds out her hand, reaching for the medallion. When her mother passes it back, her fingers close around the silver.
When she was younger, she used to pretend it had magical powers. She’d press it between her hands and pray for her father to appear. Because that seemed like the right thing to do with a magical medallion, even if she isn’t sure that saints are real.
Her mother slides into a dining chair and points at another one, indicating that Natalie should sit, too. “I have to tell you something.”
A chill races up Natalie’s back. She sits, bracing herself. Maybe her motherdoesknow her secret.
“Today the police interviewed me again about Tim’s death. They showed me a bunch of pictures of things they found in his car. And one of them was a medallion just like that.”
Natalie’s heart actually skips a beat. “Seriously?”
Her mother nods, and Natalie notices the dark smudges under her eyes, the exhaustion in her expression.
Natalie’s anger cools by a few degrees. “And you thought it wasmine?”
“I guess? I didn’t know what to think. Have you ever seen another medallion like that one?”
“No,” she admits. “Raymond is not a very common saint.”
“SaintRaymond.” Her mother smiles suddenly. “Trust Harrison to run with an off-brand saint. So tell me—what is our man Raymond the saint of?”
Natalie fingers the chain. “Believe it or not, Raymond is the patron saint of prisoners and the falsely accused.”
Her mother’s eyebrows jerk. “Prisoners?How prophetic.”
Natalie has thought the same thing many times. And since the topic of her father is on the table for once, she has questions. “Where did this come from, anyway? Is, uh, Harrison religious?”
Her mom shakes her head. “But maybe his mother was. The medallion was hers, I think. I never met her. She died the year you were born.”
“Oh.”
“She wasn’t a well person. And your father didn’t hear about her passing until months later. A friend of hers mailed him her driver’s license and that medallion. That’s all he had left of her.”
Natalie looks down at the medallion in her hand. “And you gave it to me?”
“Didn’t have much choice,” her mother says. “When you were five, you found it in my dresser drawer, and I said it was your daddy’s. You put it on, and you didn’t want to take it off.”
Natalie can’t even look her mother in the eye right now. She’s afraid her mom will be able to read her treachery off her face. “So what you’re saying is that it’s basically cursed.”
Her mother lets out a sudden laugh. “I don’t believe in curses. Your father made a whole string of poor choices. He sealed his own fate.”
It’s hard to argue with that, which makes Natalie’s stomach sink. “Isn’t it weird, though? That Tim had a Saint Raymond, too?”
“Maybe?” Her mother shrugs. “I’m not Catholic. I don’t know how it works. I never saw him wearing it. The cop said they found it somewhere in his car.”
That weirdo. “It couldn’t have a thing to do with me.”
Even as she says this, she feels a prickle of unease. Tim might have seen the medallion around her neck. He had two opportunities.
But so what? Why would he have cared?
