by Alyssa Huscroft
“Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I lift up the bowl of multicolored candy hearts in silent thanks, waiting for Mateo’s knowing smile. But his face remains passive as he leans against the unsteady wall of my cubicle. He’s careful to avoid the pictures I’ve tacked up of our nights out and the portrait of me with Mateo and his husband at their wedding. He makes no secret of curling the edges of an old photo of my ex that I haven’t had the heart to remove.
“As much as I’d love to take credit for the gesture, Alina, those aren’t from me.”
“Oh.” I once drunkenly told Mateo how my nana would buy the candies in bulk and keep them in a dish on the kitchen counter year-round. Although, the story was told amidst a snot-bubble level breakdown, so I’m not sure how much of it was comprehendible.
Mateo shrugs. “Did your parents send them?”
I shake my head, leaning against my desk with the bowl still in hand. “Last Christmas, they got me a ‘Cheese of the Month’ subscription.” Mateo raises his eyebrows in question and I have to resist the urge to give him a good elbow to the gut. “I’m lactose intolerant, Mateo. Trust me when I say a gift this thoughtful couldn’t be from them.”
“Maybe your cousins?” he offers.
“I haven’t spoken to them since Nana’s funeral.” I pop one of the candies in my mouth, savoring the sugar and the sweet memories of childhood bliss. “Everyone blames everyone else for not checking in on her sooner.”
“Then maybe it’s a joke? Your breakup with Noah was pretty public.”
That’s an understatement. He shouted that we were done in front of the entire office and only spared me a pitiful glance when, in an attempt to run after him, my heel got caught on a loose extension cord and I went flailing to the floor. If Noah’s shouting didn’t cause my coworkers to pop a curious head above their cubicles, the deafening squeak of my skin against the tile did. I ended up in the emergency room with a dislocated shoulder and a broken heart.
“Yeah, maybe.” The candy heart begins to dissolve on my tongue, sugar banishing the sour taste of the memory.
Across the room, a chorus of shouts begin, which can only mean the finance douche, Gabriel, has emerged from his cubicle. He begins making his usual rounds about the office, commenting on last night’s game or recalling events of his alcohol-soaked weekend. Mateo and I exchange a knowing glance.
“If you play dead, maybe he’ll keep walking,” His eyes tick across the room, plotting his escape route as Gabriel makes his way closer to my desk. Mateo pats my shoulder with an apologetic smile, promising to take me out for drinks later.
With no appetite left for the sickly sweet candies, I reach beneath my desk for the trash can but stop when Gabriel seizes my arm with tanned, veiny hands. “Why are you throwing away perfectly good candy, Thumbelina?” If he weren’t so lacking in intelligence and creativity, I would think the candy hearts were his idea.
“Here,” I say, shoving the bowl into his frustratingly muscular chest. “They’re yours.” I turn back to my manuscript, hoping he’ll get the hint and take the candy to-go.
He pops one in his mouth and squints at another, trying to read the words printed in hot pink lettering. “the square. . . the square where?” He turns the heart over as if it’ll offer some further clue.
“Sound it out, Gabriel.” I don’t miss the irony that a man who can’t read has a full-time career at a publishing company.
He picks up another heart. “Dash en.”
“Dashing?”
“No,” he insists. “Dash, ‘N’.”
“What?” I swivel around and squint at the heart.
– N
“Give me those.” I knock the candies out of his hand and snatch the bowl back, shooing him out of my cubicle. N? Could it be a misprint? The factory ran out of ink and quality control isn’t paid enough to care?
I push aside stacks of manuscripts and notes, clearing enough desk space to dump the bowl on its side. A frantic search tells me that none of the hearts contain their normal cheesy messages or puns. None of the words or expressions even make coherent sense on their own. There are seven different phrases, repeated to fill the bowl. I spread them out in front of me, seven hearts in a neat little row.
THE SEA SQUARE WHERE THE AT THE BIRD MEETS – N TRUTH WILL BE CLEAREST THE
So a petty prank is out of the question. There’s clearly more to this than a store-bought attempt at humiliating me.
TRUTH WILL BE CLEAREST THE
I rearrange the order of the hearts, trying to make some sense of the words. The bustle of the office around me disappears as my focus narrows down to the puzzle before me. It shouldn’t be difficult; I spent a good deal of my childhood in contest with my cousins trying to prove our intelligence to our grandmother. Solving riddles, picking locks, reciting random, useless trivia. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to rescue Mateo when he’s locked himself out of his car.
AT THE SQUARE WHERE THE TRUTH WILL BE
Sea and be rhyme, which is a good place to start as any.
THE SEA AT THE SQUARE WHERE THE BIRD MEETS TRUTH WILL BE
Each phrase falls into place, one after another, until I’ve filled up a sheet of paper with scribbled nonsense and the row of hearts in front of me spells out a clue.
CLEAREST THE TRUTH WILL BE AT THE SQUARE WHERE THE BIRD MEETS THE SEA.
-N
I sit back in my chair, reveling in my mastery of puzzle-solving. But my satisfaction at unscrambling the message doesn’t last long—I’ve got more questions now than I do answers.
I snap a picture of the aligned hearts with my cell phone and make a mental note to ask Mateo and his husband about it when we grab drinks later. If the poem is referring to a physical square in the city, I have next-to-no chance of finding it. They’re both more familiar with the city and generally blessed with greater intelligence.
I repeat the words in my head, turning them over again and again until I can recite them without looking. Clearest the truth will be. The truth of what? At the square where the bird meets the sea. There isn’t a beach within fifty miles of here.
And who is N? I scroll through my contact list, sifting through the names that begin with “N”. Natalie from grad school, Neal from HR, my great-uncle Nico, and Noah. Fleeing-the-office-and-our-relationship-while-I-tend-to-my-floor-burn Noah. Maybe it’s best if I don’t involve Mateo just yet.
Noah wasn’t one for romantic gestures while we were together, unless you count the time he took me hiking as a surprise date and I ended up getting a poison ivy rash in unsavory places. But there’s a first time for everything, right? Maybe he’s been missing me too.
I spend the rest of the workday furiously typing away on my computer, searching the city for any landmark, building, or business with the mild possibility of relating to the riddle – pet stores, law firms, psychic shops, a public pool, museums. They’re all dead ends.
I’m moments away from caving and asking Mateo for help when in a moment of pure desperation, I begin scrolling through the satellite image of the city, and there it is: a memorial fountain built in honor of an old rich man on the corner of Finch Street and Pacific Avenue. Clearest the truth will be at the square where the bird meets the sea.
I pretend to work for the last half hour of the day, my mind racing about the possibilities of what I’ll find at the corner of Finch and Pacific.
~~~
The only thing I find is a handful of couples sharing chocolatey desserts or trotting by in horse-drawn carriages on their Valentine’s night out. Not exactly the romantic and heartfelt apology from Noah I was expecting, but it’s entirely possible he got caught up at work or missed his train.
I settle down onto an empty bench, resolving to wait fifteen minutes and then find my way home. Not two minutes after I’ve set the timer on my phone and opened my book, a young man wearing a baseball cap sits next to me. At least I’m not the only one in the city spending the night alone.
I offer a polite smile, but my patience begins to fade as every time I glance back down at my book, he scoots closer to me. One time is a readjustment, two times a coincidence, but anything more than that is just creepy.
I stand to my feet and pack up my belongings. I suppose it’s time I accept the fact that Noah isn’t coming anyway. The candy hearts were a prank or a message meant for someone else. As I rejoin the flow of the foot traffic towards the subway—at least I hope that’s where I’m headed—the man bumps into me once again. Before I can find a reason to use my self-defense techniques, he’s shouldered past me and is on his way. I decide not to make a fuss about it. A warm bubble bath and fresh glass of wine are calling my name.
I pull out my phone to double-check that I am indeed going in the right direction when a folded piece of paper falls onto the ground. I stoop down to retrieve the yellowed paper, ignoring the grumbles of those around me.
ALLEYWAY BEHIND BISHOP AVE
COME ALONE
-N
An alley? Alone? Common sense tells me I should cut my losses and go home to my warm, safe apartment, but the mystery behind this “N” character is driving me mad. Would Noah put this much effort into a ploy to get me back? And what would I do if he had?
I plug Bishop Avenue into my GPS and start walking. It’s beginning to get dark, and I really shouldn’t be alone downtown at night. If I get kidnapped in the name of a romantic ploy, I will be pissed.
The alleyway is dark and littered with discarded trash, and judging by the smell, it must be a popular place for delinquent teens to drink and smoke unbothered. “Noah?” I whisper, trying not to think too deeply about who could be lurking in the shadows. “Noah, this isn’t funny anymore, I want to go home.”
To my right, a high-pitched squeal rings out, like the sound of a hinge in need of greasing. I stumble away from the noise, but the dark must be playing tricks on my eyes, because I could swear the brick wall just moved.
A popping noise explodes against the wall behind me, and I instinctively whirl to face the source of the sound, which puts my back to the moving wall. My first mistake. A hand protrudes from a sudden hole in the wall, one snaking around my wrist and the other over my mouth to silence my screams of protest. I’m yanked backward, stumbling to keep myself upright.
“Ow!” The hand recedes after I sink my teeth in it. “She bit me!”
Laughter erupts from somewhere in front of me, and my hands shoot outward in a useless attempt to orient myself in the darkness as the screeching sound resumes once again.
Somewhere to my right, a door swings open and warm, flickering light floods the room, revealing a man with slicked-back hair, nursing a bite wound on his hand. Beside him stands a short woman dressed in all black, trying to regain her composure, but falling into a fit of laughter at the sight of the tall man scowling at me.
“Where the hell am I?” I shout, fumbling at my keychain for my pepper spray. “Someone tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to call the police!”
The woman sobers up, holding her hands out to me in surrender. “Whoa, Alina, calm down.” The fact that this mystery woman knows my name only makes my panic swell.
“We work for your grandmother,” the man says, wiping his hand on his jeans.
I shake my head, teetering on the verge of delirium as fear threatens to overtake me. “My grandmother is dead,” I say, grip tightening on my can of pepper spray. “She died almost a year ago.”
“Just come with us,” the woman tries, but a chorus of defiance falls from my mouth.
“What’s the commotion out here?” The quiet voice breaks through the chaos, and I fall silent immediately.
I know that voice. I’ve spent nearly every night for the past year watching old family videos just so I could hear it. “Nana?”
“Hi, angel.” The people around us fall to the background as I run toward her, flinging myself into her arms. I can’t even form the words to ask how she’s here.
“Oh my God, am I dead?”
Nana laughs, a melodic tune filling the silence. “Not yet, darling.” She pulls away, surveying my face. “It was all fake,” she begins. “The sickness, the funeral, the death certificate. I had to get away from those scoundrels that were after me.”
“Nana?” I repeat, entirely at a loss for words.
“Yes, Alina. It’s me.”
“But you died.”
“I faked my death,” she corrects, tapping me on the nose.
“But I saw you. In the coffin, I saw you.” I reach a hand out, steadying myself on the wall. Have I lost my mind?
“You saw a wax figure. And not even a good one at that. The artist put my beauty mark on the wrong side of my face.” She gestures to the small brown dot just above the curve of her lip. “I was sure one of you would notice, but thank Heavens you lot are as dense as lead.”
“Nana, you died!” My throat burns with unshed tears. We had a year of family functions with an empty chair at the table, holiday dishes that didn’t taste quite right, and a house full of old belongings that are collecting dust because no one can bring themselves to donate it all just yet. All while she’s alive, living underground and scheming? I blink furiously against the sudden onslaught of tears.
A small frown takes the place of her usual scowl as she cups her hands around my shoulders. At least now I know how to get her attention. She leans down so her nose is inches from mine, her thumb tracing comforting circles over my skin. “Did you hit your head?” She grabs my chin and tilts my face from side to side, looking for a bump or bruise. “You seem confused.”
“I’m not confused, Nana. Just a bit shocked, is all.” I lower myself into a chair, tucking my hands between my knees and trying to focus on the sensation of my feet against the solid ground. Some part of me is waiting for the entire scene around me to fade back into my real life. I’ll wake up in my tiny bed in my tiny city apartment and realize this entire day was a detailed illusion formed out of grief. But when I open my clenched eyes, Nana is still standing before me, snapping her fingers in my ear to get my attention.
“We don’t have much time, so listen up. And stop slouching— Pietro’s got money and he’s looking for a new wife.” She nods over my shoulder to a large man stationed at the door pretending not to listen to our conversation.
“New?” I whisper, slightly fearful of the answer.
“The last one had an accident,” she waves her hand in the air as if dismissing my concern. “Or something like that. No matter, that’s not what we’re here for.” Behind me, Pietro sighs and shares a glance with Nana that I don’t care to understand the meaning behind. “There’s an auction tonight. A first edition Don Quixote was stolen from a very powerful man’s personal collection, and it’s being resold in auction. I’ve been commissioned to get it back.”
“Why me?”
“Because I would stick out like a sore thumb with all those young people. I’ve got bad knees and I’m supposed to be dead, remember?”
“Right,” I sigh, not bothering to hide my reluctance. “But why me?”
“I have my reasons.”
I wait patiently for her to detail said reasons, but her attention shifts to the watch on her wrist, ticking away the seconds. “Pietro will forward you the details and one of my men will be on the inside. You just need to get into the case so they can replace the book with a decoy. Find the man with long blonde hair and he’ll take care of you from there.”
“Nana, I don’t understand.”
“You’ll do fine, angel. It’s just like all those games we used to play when you were little.”
“But wait, I have-”
She taps my face with her smooth hands affectionately. “Don’t tell your mother about this, darling. That woman couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it.” She grabs my wrists and pulls me from the chair, running a hand over my head to smooth my unruly hair. “Oh, and tell your cousin Tommy to get a haircut. He looks like a bumpkin.”
I barely have time to pull her into a quick embrace before Pietro is leading me back out to the alleyway and asking if I would be willing to cook Russian dishes. He points toward a highly polished black SUV parked across the street, with license plates appropriately displaying his title of “H3NCHM4N”. Under normal circumstances, I would refuse to get in a car with a stranger who is undoubtedly highly trained in combat. But my feet are aching, my head is spinning, and I’m still not entirely convinced this isn’t a dream.
“Where to?” Pietro asks, reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror so that he can meet my gaze in the backseat.
I give him my address and sink further into the cool leather, my tongue searching for the right words to politely ask what the hell I’ve gotten myself into. But my mind wanders back to Nana and her cryptic instructions. I’ve learned to never take anything she says for face value. For as long as I can remember, she’s spoken in riddles. Always testing, analyzing, and scheming.
At the family Christmas gathering in ’06, when Mom was on her short-lived health kick, Nana snuck in plates full of sugary cookies to replace the “gluten-free garbage”. She taught me how to use hair curlers and paint my nails and how to render the house alarm useless for the nights that I wanted to sneak out of the house. Sure, she was a bit odd, but this? Some sort of underground operation with my 77-year-old grandmother at the head? It seems more like the plot for a bad movie than it does reality.
“How long have you known my nana?” I ask Pietro, who smiles with a grunt that I can only guess means he’s feeling nostalgic.
“Going on thirty years now.”
“What exactly do you do, Pietro?”
He shrugs, waving a pedestrian through a crosswalk with a toothy grin. “Whatever your nana asks me to.” Sensing my dissatisfaction with his answer, he continues. “There are many bad people in the world, Alina. We do everything we can to right the wrongs that get swept under the rug.”
A noble cause. Nana has always been a proponent for avenging wrongdoings, even if it is on the level of first edition classics being stolen from men with way too much money.
Pietro clears his throat, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “I am rewarded with a fair wage for my loyalty to your nana. If you’ve ever considered being a stay-at-home-wife, I’ve got plenty of-”
“Pietro,” I interrupt, trying not to think of the mountain of bills on my kitchen counter, currently threatening to avalanche.
“Right, sorry,” Pietro mumbles, but I feel his eyes on me long after he’s conceded.
I type a rambling text to Mateo, giving him just enough details to get by. He’s put up with my slightly unhinged behavior for years, but if I told him the entire truth of this afternoon I would probably end up in hospital slipper socks rather than gala-worthy high heels.
Pietro drops me off in front of my apartment building with a poorly executed wink, and I climb the stairs to find Mateo waiting for me in the hallway outside my apartment. “You didn’t have to give up your date night for me,” I say, unlocking the door and slinging my work back on the couch.
“James is on baby duty tonight. I need a break from dirty diapers and you need my help.” He flings open my closet door, rifling through my clothes. “Unless you think you can put together an outfit for this auction?”
“Good point.”
Mateo sifts through my wardrobe, frowning every so often when he comes across something he doesn’t approve of. “Honey, we need to take you shopping,” he mumbles, pulling out an old sweatsuit of my mother’s.
I touch up my makeup as he continues his work – a quick swipe of gold eyeshadow to bring out my brown eyes and a bright red lip. I style my hair in loose waves and pin it away from my face, in case I need to make a quick getaway.
“This!” Mateo gasps from the other room. “This is the one.” He glides into the bathroom holding a cherry red slip dress of my nana’s that’s been stuffed in the back of my closet for years, waiting for an occasion to be brought out.
Mateo picks out heels for me and he waits outside the bathroom while I slip into the flowy silk dress. He gasps when I open the door, clapping and whistling as I give him a slow twirl and a bow. Before I leave, he makes me pose in front of the door, snapping photos like I’m headed to senior prom. He escorts me to my taxi, makes me promise to send an update text every hour, and sends me off with a kiss on the temple. “You look beautiful, Alina.”
The underground auction is fittingly being held in the basement of a contemporary art museum downtown. At the door, I give Pietro’s password to the bouncer and am ushered out of the cold and into the glowing museum. I only have a few short moments to admire the paintings decorating the walls before I’m guided down a long, enchanting marble hallway and to a curving set of matching marble stairs. I can hear the commotion of the lower level before I see it. Echoes of chattering guests and a live orchestra float up the stairs, and I have to swallow a sudden wave of anxiety.
None of the attendees even glance in my direction as I descend the staircase. They’re all too absorbed in their flirting, conning, or networking. The moment my heel hits the floor, a well-dressed attendant holds a tray filled with champagne glasses out toward me. I have to resist the urge to take multiple. “Thanks,” I manage, already scanning the well-dressed mob for a man with long blond hair. Get into the case. The ultimate puzzle—break into a well-defended case to replace a stolen artifact and make it out undetected and unscathed.
I circle the room, drinking my champagne a little too quickly and admiring the old documents, sculptures, and paintings displayed throughout the space. I briefly wonder how many of them are stolen. Near the corner of the room, engaged in conversation with a tall brunette in a navy dress, is a man with a full head of thick, golden curls.
I straighten my neckline and push back my shoulders before tapping him on the arm. Nana didn’t give me a code word or any way of identifying myself, so I can only hope there aren’t multiple men here with long blond hair.
The mystery man turns around and I plaster on a fake smile, hoping any bystander would mistake my nerves for flirting. “Excuse me, I’m. . .” The words get caught in my throat as I scan the face of my target, and I realize I’ve seen the face before. Many times before.
“Tommy?”
My cousin Tommy, who I haven’t seen since Nana’s fake funeral, who admittedly does look a bit like a bumpkin.
“Alina?” Tommy grabs me by the arm and leads us away from the crowd, excusing himself from his brunette friend with a polite smile. “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispers through gritted teeth.
I yank my arms out of his grasp, crossing them over my chest in childlike defiance. “I work at a publishing company. What are you doing here?”
Tommy surveys me for a moment, anger giving way to curiosity. “I might be losing my mind. I. . .” He searches for the right words, but they never seem to come.
“Nana?” Maybe I wasn’t the only one she decided to reveal her secrets to.
He nods. “She left notes on all my beer cans, which she replaced with green juice.” He runs a hand over his protruding belly. “She’s always got something to say that sneaky little-”
“Kat?”
“I was going to say crone, but I guess you could say that.”
“No, dumbass.” I give him a quick jab in the ribs with my elbow, keeping my eyes trained on the back of Katrina’s head. “Kat’s here, too.”
“Great, so Nana roped all the grandchildren into her business.”
It’s not the most conventional family reunion, but then again, Nana doesn’t do conventional.
From the look on Kat’s face when we approach her, she didn’t know we would be here either. I’m not entirely sure why we’re surprised, tricks and puzzles are Nana’s legacy.
“Long time no see, Tommy.” Kat gives him a nod in greeting, tucking a piece of fiery red hair behind her ear. “Alina,” she says, finally acknowledging me. “You’re both here for Don Quixote, I presume?” I nod and watch in secret admiration as Kat downs half a glass of champagne in one seamless gulp.
Tommy reaches into the breast pocket of his suit, revealing the corner of a fake Don Quixote first edition. “So, where do we start?”
Before I can answer, a security guard rushes out of a room filled with static television screens, looking flustered as he fails to rub a plum-colored lipstick off of his face. Kat ducks behind Tommy, only peeking over his shoulder once the guard had whizzed past. Her plum-stained lips curve into the hint of a smile as Tommy glares at her.
The security guard taps one of his coworkers on the shoulder, red-cheeked and stammering as he tries to deliver his message. “Everything in the surveillance room was unplugged. We’re trying to get the system back online now.”
“Everything was unplugged?” The guard questions, peering over the crowd and into the chaos of the surveillance room.
“Everything. Even the mini-fridge.”
Tommy raises his eyebrows at Kat, who simply shrugs. “I was being thorough.”
The men continue to whisper back and forth furiously, faces heating up with the conversation as they throw blame back and forth and Kat sinks deeper into the crowd. “Just get me more security,” one of the men spits.
Tommy looks down at me, straightening his suit and donning a faux concerned expression. “Wait here. I’ll get you to that case.”
Kat and I wait in uncomfortable silence, and we both snag a fresh glass of champagne when a waiter passes. “So,” Kat says. “You still dating that Noah kid?”
I laugh into my glass. “Sore subject.”
Tommy returns to us after a few minutes, fighting a mischievous grin. “Ladies.” He offers an arm to each of us, leading the way to the room in the back that houses the first edition Don Quixote. The case glows under fluorescent bulbs, locked tight against the outside air and greedy hands.
A puzzle just waiting to be solved.
Alyssa attends Youngstown State University, working towards an English degree with a minor in creative writing. When not in class or photographing weddings, she can be found typing away at her laptop in pursuit of a satisfactory story. She hopes to attend grad school after earning her master’s degree to further her literary journey.