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“Thesearecopies. The originals are locked away for safekeeping. This will not do.”
“May I see the originals?”
“I suppose. I can’t stop you, as they are public records. Wait here.” She drifted away, church keys jangling, and disappeared into a side room.
Was it a coincidence that the missing pages were right after Rosemary Barella’s death and Devere’s birth? Perhaps it was a mistake, nothing more. I checked the entries again and found my birth and my parents’ marriage all as they should be. Contrary to their beliefs, I wasn’t some kind of goblin or changeling, left in place of their real boy, who must have been snatched away by the fae.
I knew now, as a grown man a long way from that confused boy, that the fact they’d even suggested such a thing madethemthe monsters.
Miss Romano returned with the original tome under her arm. She waved at me to clear a space, then placed the weathered book on the table and peeled open its aged pages. Her silence felt like the kind that ought not to be broken, so I waited and watched her quick hands flick through the pages, until they came to a sudden stop.
“Ah,” she said. “Here it is, the original.” She ran her finger down the names and stopped, her nail resting beneath one name in particular.
Devere Barella.
“That’s not possible.” I grabbed the book by its edges and turned it toward me.
The entry was clear.
Devere Barella: Age: 6 months.
“There must be a mistake.”
“Missing pages are a mistake, Mr. Anzio, but I can assure you names are not entered into the death registry in error.”
“He clearly did not die when he was six months old, so this entrymustbe a mistake.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. The entries are never wrong. As unlikely as it seems, the man we know as Devere Barella may not be him at all.”
“That’s absurd. Is there perhaps a brother, and the babes were muddled?”
“No.” Miss Romano peered at me through her glasses.
How else could Devere be deadandalive? “What about adoption? Are there records of such things too?” Perhaps Devere had been adopted after Jacapo’s real son’s death?
“Yes, but adoption is rare in Minerva, and I can assure you his name did not appear within the registry of adoptions. I searched for all instances of the Barella details, as you requested. If he was adopted, no such record exists.” She glanced again at the books. “I can tell you where the toymaker’s real son is buried, if that helps?”
My heart fluttered too fast. This was wrong. It didn’t make any sense. “Yes, thank you.”
She left again, returning moments later with a coat. “I’ll take you to the gravesite.”
I gave the woman a small nod and walked from the church behind her. Devere Barella, the infant boy, had died not long after his mother. Then who was Devere Barella, the toymaker’s son of today?
Miss Romano hurried down the meandering path, passing into the graveyard through its gate, and continued on. The sky was still an azure blue, and the gravel crunched underfoot, startlingly loud.
We approached a flattened area of grass—an area I knew well.
“Here…” Miss Romano stopped beside the weeping angel. “This is the poor child’s grave. Devere Barella was buried here.”
The weeping angel.
The place Devere and I had come to play hide and seek as boys. I’d hidden behind the angel and Devere had found me. The place we’d made and shared our secrets. The place we’d kissed.
The significance was no fluke, no random happenstance. Nothing in Minerva happened by chance. Wasn’t that what Devere had said?
“Thank you,” I said, my voice distant in my head.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Mr. Anzio,” Miss Romano said with sympathy, and left me standing, numb, at the graveside.
