Archive of Our Own ^beta

Prelude

Growing up it was just the two of us, my mother and me. We lived in a series of dwellings, from a fin-de-siècle Viennese townhouse to a shoebox-sized Tokyo apartment to even a surprisingly comfortable yurt. No matter where we lived, our house had the magical ability to feel both empty and crowded; missing a father, siblings, friends- and yet packed to the gills with my mother's secrets. Wherever we went, she always took them with her.

I don't know when I first realized that my mother was not like other mothers. One of my earliest childhood memories involves waking to find myself cradled in her strong arms as she spirited me out of my bedroom, then the house and ultimately the country. We moved a lot, rarely staying for more than a year in any one location. It had happened so often to me at such a young age, that I suppose I grew accustomed to it. Like army brats and other vagabonds, I learned to easily make friendships and then break them again, to slip right in to a given situation and slip right out just as easily. Perhaps it was encoded in my DNA; my mother's legacy.

It never seemed to weary her, but as I got older I found it harder to keep saying goodbye.

I don't mean to paint my mother's chosen lifestyle with a wholly negative brush. When I was younger, it was the greatest fun, just me and her, taking on the world. I had the kind of childhood most kids could only dream of. I rarely had to attend regular school; my mother preferred to educate me herself and was given to indulge my every intellectual whim. A childhood fascination with castles and dragons turned into a chateaux-hunting cruise along the Loire. I skipped across the Great Wall of China and played hide and seek at the Parthenon before I ever read about them in a textbook. Birthday scavenger hunts were the stuff of legend.

Left to her own devices, my mother would spend Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Easter in Jerusalem. And she probably would have continued raising me in perpetual motion, had I not asked her to stop.

---

i.

For my tenth birthday, I got a razor scooter, a new chess set, and the shock of my life. I learned my mother's true identity on a lazy afternoon while hunting for the aforementioned presents. I had emptied out every closet, ransacked the attic and the garage until only my mother's bedroom remained unsearched. I hesitated. It wasn't as if she had forbidden me from going in there, but I had been wary of entering ever since I found a handgun under one of her pillows, nestled in the place where a father should be.

But very little will deter a nearly-ten-year-old in search of birthday presents. In the end I thought she really wouldn't be that angry. Part of her might actually be proud that I had found her out. This was, after all, the mother who liked to leave notes written in invisible ink to let me know she was going to the store.

Her drawers turned up nothing more interesting than a sachet of lavender and an assortment of lacy undergarments that made my preteen self blush with awkward incomprehension. Nothing notable in her closets either, except for what seemed at the time to be an overabundance of shoes and purses.

Which only left under the bed. I crouched down on all fours and shimmied into the dusty space between the bedstead and the floorboards. Something long and metallic winked at me and I bubbled over with giddy delight: my scooter. Gotcha, mom. As I extracted myself, my hand brushed up against something cold and smooth and not at all floor-like. It was the door of a safe with a keypad like a telephone.

What I did next astounds me to this day. I pressed my child's fingers to the keypad and typed out 6-2-4-4-4-3 to spell M-A-G-G-I-E, my name. The door swung open. Perhaps I knew the combination because my mother fed me codes and ciphers the way other parents push broccoli. Or perhaps it was because I knew, even then, with childlike certainty, that I was the center of my mother's world.

My heart beat fast and rabbit-like as I reached inside. I pulled out first stacks and stacks of money. Next came a colorful assortment of passports; they had pictures of my mother and me in them, but the names printed inside were not ours. Last, a layer of old newspapers followed by a spectacular red hat with a wide floppy brim. I tried it on, and it sank comically over my eyes.

I took off the hat to get a closer look at the newspapers. They were yellowed with age and in a variety of languages, some I could read and some I could not. But all had front-page headlines concerning the latest crimes of the famous master thief, Carmen Sandiego.

The long dark hair of the lady in red was painfully familiar. And that mysterious smirk- I had known it all my life. I felt sick and dizzy; someone had switched off the Earth's gravity and I was in freefall.

Not caring about my own breaking and entering, I fled our house and ran to the only safe place I could think of. There was a cave about a half mile away that the neighborhood kids and I thought of as our secret hiding place. Seized by a fear I didn't really understand, I wrote my mother's name on a scrap of paper in red crayon, Marina de Cengos. Then, as I had done so many times in the games my mother taught me, I moved and flipped the letters around to reveal the answer I didn't want- Carmen Sandiego.

My mother's grand secret, hidden in plain sight. I started to cry uncontrollably. I was still sobbing over that piece of paper when she found me, hours later.

"Maggie," she said in that deep voice of hers and extended her arms as if to hug me, but I didn't come. She hung her head."Oh, querida."

I was about to tell her that she shouldn't know about our secret hiding place, but thought the better of it; my mother was the infamous Carmen Sandiego and hiding places were her business. I turned my face away from her in stubborn defiance.

She knelt beside me and took the tear-stained paper in hand. "So, now you know."

I nodded. There were so many things I wanted to say. But I was tired and angry and scared all at once. So, I just blurted out, "Why didn't you tell me?"

My mother's eyes looked sad and she closed them as if in pain. "I didn't know how." A thoughtful pause. "I suppose I was afraid you would be ashamed of me." When she opened her eyes, a film of tears had clouded over the bright blue, the same color as my own.

I touched her hand cautiously. "I'm not ashamed." I wasn't really. "Just a little afraid."

She smoothed my hair and I let myself relax into her arms. "Don't be. That life is behind me now. Let me worry about the police."

"It's not the police I'm worried about, it's you." I pulled away so I could look my mother in the eye. "I'm afraid that…that you'll leave me behind."

"Never," she told me, tears slowly rolling down her beautiful face. And wrapped her arms around me so tightly as if to press that sentiment into every cell of body.

It was only many years later as an adult that I realized I had not learned by mother's identity by accident, but by design. The present placed in such close proximity to the safe, the code that was just challenging enough- all the hallmarks of one of her carefully choreographed games. She let me discover what she could not bring herself to tell me.

Learning the truth about my mother was a shock to be sure. But actually, the main sensation I felt was relief. Suddenly our lives, with all their strange wanderings, made some kind of sense. I no longer worried that my mother possessed a bizarre form of obsessive compulsive disorder that required her to cross international borders every six months. And with this knowledge, there was one less secret in the house, getting between my mother in me, sitting down to dinner with us like an unwelcome ghost.

One less secret. But there were still plenty of others.

My mother, for her part, seemed to act as if what I had learned about her was no more interesting a piece of trivia as her favorite color or her shoe size. One night however, she came to tuck me into bed- something she rarely did anymore as I was a big girl and didn't like to be babied. My mother kissed me on the forehead and said haltingly, "I know…who I am…must come as a shock to you. But please know, Maggie, I love you very much and I will never leave you."

"I know." I wanted to sound confident, but I bit my lip, a nervous gesture that betrayed me.

"You're frightened," my mother observed. "Of me?"

It was true. I nodded.

"Why?" she asked, curious even when she was heartbroken.

"I've done some research on you, on the computer," she raised her dark eyebrows and I'd like to think she was a little impressed. "I don't understand…even when you were a thief, you never carried a weapon, never hurt anyone." I took a deep breath and balled the comforter in my small fists, "Why do you keep a gun under your pillow?"

For a brief moment, my normally composed mother looked surprised; whatever question she was expecting from me, it wasn't that one. A strange glint came into her blue eyes and she spoke to me very seriously, "Motherhood…changes you."

Hilarious in hindsight to hear such a commonplace sentiment come from such an uncommon woman.

"Before you were born, life was a game to be played. Not carrying a weapon only raised the stakes. But now," she paused and her voice grew dark, "to protect you, to keep myself alive and out of prison and you out of the foster care system, I would not hesitate to use deadly force."

Her answer chilled me as much as it reassured me. Perhaps my mother was not so different from ordinary people after all. A lot of parents said they would take a shot at someone to protect their children. The difference being, I knew my mother would not miss.

---

Sometimes pieces of my mother's former life found me without me ever consciously trying to look for them. One afternoon, as I was flipping channels after school instead of doing homework, I came across a program on "History's Lost Women." They were speculating about the final resting place of Amelia Earhart's plane, which drew me in because the daring aviatrix was one of my heroes. But then a voice-over announced, "For our next segment, we ask- Carmen Sandiego, where on Earth is she now?"

I know I probably should have changed the channel and watched some cartoons or something, but I was totally entranced. There was my mother, dressed in a long red coat and that large hat, ruby lips smiling with a secret only she knew. She jumped off buildings, flew through the air, escaped from the clutches of the police with only heartbeats to spare, a glamorous lady Houdini. She was beautiful and fascinating and mysterious and cunning. I felt I had no right to see her like this and yet I couldn't look away.

They cut between old footage of my mother swiping Rembrandts and world landmarks with interviews with two of her greatest adversaries, a brother-sister team of ACME detectives. The woman, Ivy, had shoulder length red hair and a tough, unsmiling expression. Her brother, Zack, was casual in the extreme; his rumpled hair and wrinkled shirt made him look like he had just rolled out of bed.

"What was Carmen like?" Detective Ivy's expression wavered between thoughtful and annoyed. "She was brilliant, no doubt, frustrating as hell to know. Yet, she lived by her own rules, had her own morality in a way. But with a mind like hers, she could have done anything with her life, made such a difference to the world. Instead she squandered her talents to chase one selfish thrill after another," the young woman concluded with a scowl.

Detective Zack took a more positive view. "She was one of a kind, Carmen. I can't pretend to say I'll ever really understand her motivations, but I learned a lot from her. She'd have these moments of totally unexpected kindness….saved my life and my sister's more than once." He leaned into the camera and said conspiratorially, "I know I'm not supposed to say it, but yeah, the things she did were so incredible, sometimes it was a kick just to watch her run." He grinned.

As I watched the footage, I felt pulled by the girl detective's anger and pushed by her brother's admiration. Seeing your mother backflip off the Eiffel Tower can be very disconcerting. Considering her cavalier approach toward her own life, it was a miracle I was ever born at all.

They had come to the part of the show where they speculated as to where my mother could have disappeared to. One expert suspected she had gone into the criminal underground and was running operations for the Russian mafia. Another theorized that the whole decade long crime spree had been an elaborate cover and that Carmen had been secretly working for ACME all along. Some kook said she had been abducted by aliens and was hanging out with Amelia Earhart on Alpha Centauri.

Finally they turned to the detectives who had known her best. Detective Zack said, "I've seen that woman cheat death a hundred times over. Carmen's reasons for becoming a criminal were always mysterious, I suppose her reasons for going straight would be the same. So maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think she's out there somewhere."

His sister's commentary was an unusual blend of anger and sadness. "Is she alive? Could she have given up her life of crime? It's possible, but unlikely. The Carmen Sandiego I knew was addicted to the games she played. I don't think anything could have made her stop running- except perhaps her own death," Ivy told the cameras harshly.

I never heard the rest of what the detective had to say. The television clicked off. My mother had snuck up behind me, stealthy and silent, the remote dangling from her hand. "I see you've found something more interesting than homework," she observed, a playful edge in her voice more suited to the dashing thief on the television screen than the caring mother I had always known.

I thought about the detectives' comments, especially Ivy's last words, and wondered how much my mother had heard. The program had unsettled me. And the obvious intimacy the two detectives had once shared with my mother caused a wave of jealousy to wash over me. "Detective Ivy doesn't know you as well as she thinks," I said haughtily, crossing my arms.

My mother rested her hands protectively on my shoulders and I could hear the smile in her voice, "She didn't count on you, querida." I beamed with pride. "But there was once a time when her words were all too accurate."

I turned to search my mother's face. Her fine features seemed to me mask-like, her expression as impenetrable as a Swiss bank vault. She was right there living and breathing in front of me but the look in her eyes told me she was miles and years away, running over museum rooftops, her favorite adversaries in hot pursuit. She had given up that life to be my mother and it made me feel oddly guilty. "Do you miss it?" I forced myself to ask.

"Being a thief? Some days a great deal."

Her words settled around me like a weight, heavy and sad. "Oh. But do you regret it then, having me?"

"No," she told me, an unfathomable depth of emotion in her simple response. Seeing my confused expression she explained, "Mija, it has been my experience that nothing truly valuable can be gained without sacrifice. I still think I got the better end of the deal," she smiled with a hint of wickedness she would never lose no matter what she did.

I grew toward adulthood like a vine creeping toward the sunlight. For years we had been content, careful, and even the revelation of my mother's criminal past was not enough to drive a wedge between us. But there was one secret, one stubbornly unanswered question that threatened to destroy our bond. On this, my mother would not yield and I would not give up. I speak of my father.

When I was little and asked why other children had two parents and I had only her, my mother explained that there were many types of families and none was superior to any other. Some had a mom and a dad, others two moms or two dads, some with step-parents and step-siblings, some with grandparents, and some with just a mother and child, like us. She spoke of ancient Chinese emperors with their multiple wives and hundreds of royal children and of the Iroquois tribe of North America where families lived in large longhouses and traced their lineages through the mother's line. For a time, this answer was enough. But as I grew older, it satisfied less and less.

So, I resolved to discover who my father was, one way or another. I remember trying to broach the subject delicately over breakfast one morning, as subtly as a twelve year old can. I had finished my eggs and orange juice; my mother was only halfway through her inaugural cup of coffee and had barely started reading her first of several newspapers.

"So, um, mom. I was wondering, was I planned?" I asked overly casually.

My responded from behind her curtain of newsprint,"No."

Delighted to be getting somewhere, I followed up. "So, then I was an accident."

My mother put down her paper. "I'm not sure I believe in accidents," she told me enigmatically.

I squared my shoulders back and tried my best to seem grown up. "You can tell me, you know. Because I know. All about sex." My mother arched one of her perfectly plucked brows but said nothing. "Annke's parents have these videos..."

"Really. Do enlighten me," my mother deadpanned.

I gave her the extent of my knowledge on the subject, the things I'd seen in the videos and overheard in giggled whispers from schoolkids in a dozen countries. My mother for her part treated the topic with a clinical detachment. She corrected my misconceptions and actually pointed out a few things I hadn't considered. By the end, I was blushing and stammering with embarrassment, nowhere near as grown up as I pretended to be.

My mother returned to her coffee, satisfied. "Well, then. I'm glad we had this talk. I hope for the time being your explorations will be strictly theoretical in nature. I have no desire to become a grandmother anytime soon."

Though I was blushing to the tips of my ears, I stood my ground. "I know all about human reproduction now, you've seen to that. So why won't you tell me?"

"Ah. Well, unfortunately for you, I reproduce by parthenogenesis," my mother said, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, never a good sign. When I pressed for an explanation, she would say no more. So, of course I was forced to go and look it up, which was probably her intention all along. Only she would ruin a perfectly interesting conversation with a biology lesson.

I typed "parthenogenesis" into the search engine and was bombarded by images of snakes, reptiles and sharks. The encyclopedia definition read "from the Greek parthenos, meaning 'virgin', and genesis, meaning 'birth,' a form of asexual reproduction found in females, where growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by a male. If the chromosome number of the haploid egg cell is doubled during development the offspring is 'half a clone' of its mother. If the egg cell was formed without meiosis, it is a full clone of its mother." Well, my mother certainly was special. I doubted she was that special.

I returned to the kitchen, where my mother had moved on to her second cup of coffee and third newspaper. "You're not a snake or a shark," I told her.

"I've been called both on occasion," she said without rancor.

Thinking back to the encyclopedia text, I was momentarily seized by a feeling of horror gripping at my insides. "You didn't have that mad scientist of yours…Dr. Bellum…cook me up in a lab, did you?"

At this my mother nearly did choke on her French roast. "Heavens, no. As if I would have let Sara anywhere near my reproductive system." She sighed. "You were conceived in the usual fashion."

I was relieved but still wary. "So I'm not your clone or half-clone?"

"I never wanted you to be." An answer with multiple layers of meaning.

"Who was my father?" I matched her sapphire gaze with my own and would not back down or look away.

"No one particularly special," she said dryly. An answer that wasn't an answer at all. I pressed and wheedled and pleaded with her, but she was deaf to my entreaties. She did not raise her voice or shoo me away, but grew icy, silent and immovable. My mother's reticence was always a more frightening weapon than her anger and she knew it. I finally resigned and walked away to mull over the crumbs of information she had thrown my way. I had lost this battle, but I would not lose the war.

Late that night, I lay in bed, unable to sleep. The revelations of earlier that day played themselves out again and again and again. I was not planned, but I was not an accident. "Conceived in the usual fashion" seemed to rule out artificial insemination. Yet my father was "no one particularly special." Had she known how much it would hurt me to hear that? The problem with asking my mother for the truth was that she often gave it in the most unvarnished way. I don't think she ever learned the value of a well-intentioned white lie.

And then, a flash of genius. My mother had never met a puzzle she didn't like. Thinking back to how she had once hid her own identity in plain sight, I shot out of bed and switched on my desk lamp. I wrote out the letters of my name and painstakingly tried to unscramble them into an answer. I tried nicknames, full names and aliases, every combination and permutation possible: Maggie Sandiego, Maggie de Cengos, Marguerite Sandiego, Marguerite Vivienne Sandiego.

After about an hour of frenzied scribbling, I was nearly cross-eyed from my efforts and had gotten nothing for my troubles except a nasty paper cut. It was then that my mother gently opened the door and crept into my room. It was past midnight but she kept odd hours- vestiges of her former life, I suppose. Her long graceful fingers flipped through my notebook and then she frowned. "I give up, there's no clue there. Or if there is, you're too smart for me." I hung my head, dejected.

She lightly caressed my hair and seemed to swallow a chuckle. "There is, but not the way you're going about it."

I whipped around. "What do you mean?"

My mother seemed to hesitate but finally took pity on me. "Marguerite was my mother's name. She died many years ago."

She never spoke of my grandparents. The accounts I had read said she was an orphan. But there had been rumors, a wealthy gentleman who got caught up in one of her final heists…

"And Vivienne?" I asked.

"Remember your Arthurian mythology," she prompted in a professorial tone.

"She was the Lady of the Lake, she gave Arthur the sword Excalibur…."

"And at the end of the story…"

"She bore his body away to the Isle of Avalon." I gasped. "Avalon! The businessman. He really was your father?"

My mother nodded. "I had some tests done. Malcolm and Marguerite Avalon were my parents, your grandparents."

"But how come we've never met him?" The revelations had left me breathless, like the endless twists and turns of a giant roller coaster.

My mother sank gracefully down on my bed and looked at me sadly. "He is an old man now, querida, and not well. My presence in his life brought him nothing but pain. He has suffered enough." I have suffered enough, , the unspoken sentiment she would not voice.

I thought back on our travels. We had been all over South America- Caracas and São Paulo, La Paz and Machu Picchu. Even to tiny Suriname. But we had never gone to Argentina, and this now seemed a glaring omission. I still didn't know what to say. I had gained and lost a grandfather in a handful of minutes.

My mother's deep bell-like tones brought me back to the present. "Earlier you asked me if you were 'planned.' I wasn't clear." She picked up an old teddy bear, my favorite toy from childhood, his fur worn from too much play and travel and smiled a sad secret smile. "For many years before you were born, I thought I would make a poor parent. How could I give to a child what I had never known? Somehow, I found the love I needed to give you, unknown reserves I never knew I had. And the more love I gave you, the more I had to give away." Her voice was calm and serene, but my mother's midnight blue eyes had grown unmistakably shiny in the lamplight.

"No, you were not planned, but when you came, I was ready. I learned then that I did not need Malcolm Avalon to have a family of my own," she told me with finality.

It was very hard to be angry with her when she said beautiful things like this. I threw my arms around her, and fell asleep in her embrace, a small child again. Our disagreement had been tabled for another day.

---

I suppose it was inevitable. Practically a law of the universe. What goes up, must come down. An object in motion will tend to stay in motion. And a child will rebel against her parents.

My mother, for all her idiosyncrasies, was not what you would call "strict" by any sense of the word. She had high expectations for schoolwork to be sure, but I don't remember her ever telling me what time to go to bed, what TV shows I could watch or books I could read, what I could wear, or even who I could hang out with. While my friends marveled at her libertarian approach to parenting, I grew to resent it, interpreting it as a lack of care. My rebellion happened in subtle ways- she was naturally aloof, I became outgoing and friendly. She was footloose, I craved stability.

One day, it all fell apart.

I had just come home from dinner with my friend Evgenia's family. Seeing them all together, mom and dad, daughter and son, all seemingly happy on the surface, eating a homecooked meal, filled me with so much envy, I had to pass on dessert. (My mother could order take out in two dozen languages, but she remains to this day a terrible cook.). When I got home, spoiling for a fight, I found my mother in her office, typing away on her laptop, lost to the world.

"I'm home," I called. My mother simply nodded and went back to her work.

"Don't you even notice?" I muttered sarcastically.

My looked at me absently. "I'm trying to find a synonym for 'exotic'…"

"Bizarre? Strange? Foreign?"

"Ah, foreign. That works."

"You could have just pressed shift plus F7 instead of using me as a human thesaurus." I peeked over her shoulder. "What's this for anyway?"

She closed the file before I could get a decent look. "I'd like to keep it a secret for now," she said, a Mona Lisa smile playing about her ruby lips.

The word "secret" had become something of a trigger for me. "You like to keep everything a secret." I could feel the anger building within me, like a locomotive picking up speed. "There are so many secrets in this house, I can barely find room to sit down sometimes. For example, I've always wondered how a clever woman such as yourself, who had a backup plan for every conceivable situation, could have failed at a simple thing like birth control."

Color rose in my mother's cheeks, but she said nothing. I continued, trying to provoke some kind of reaction. "And my father. Is it that you won't t tell me? Or were there so many men you don't actually know?"

The air crackled with electricity between us. I had touched the third rail and I had never seen her so angry. Finally, she said in a deadly whisper, "I know, Marguerite."

"Then tell me."

She looked at me with pity. "If I tell you, it will not bring you the life you desire."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" I shot back.

She shrugged it off. "When you're eighteen, you can obtain a paternity test."

"A paternity test would require a DNA sample from a possible father."

"Well, three years should be sufficient time for you to assemble a list of likely suspects," she rejoined smoothly.

Her insufferable nonchalance about the whole thing sent me over the edge. "Bullshit."

"Pardon me?"

I slammed my fist down on her desk, setting the papers flying. "You. All of this. It's bullshit," I sputtered. "Two parents, the same house, the same school for more than a few months at a time- is that too much to ask? I have to give up a shot at a normal life because my own mother can't stay still?"

"Maggie, you know why we move…" my mother began, in her elegant and (to my ears) bored voice.

"After all you've been through, growing up not knowing your parents, how could you do this to me?"

"I have my reasons. You're just going to have to trust me."

I ignored her. "And then you treat it like it's some kind of game. I mean, is that why you had me? You got tired of playing with Zack and Ivy and so you created me instead, the perfect opponent." My mother stared at me, a glacial look in her eyes. "Silence means you agree. Well, mom, I'm not going to play anymore. This is me, walking away from the gameboard. I'm going out. Don't follow me," I warned. I made sure to give the front door a satisfying slam as I left.

I went back to Evgenia's, but couldn't tell her about the fight. We did our homework and gossiped and watched old movies. But it barely managed to distract from what I was feeling.

At the center of it all was a truth so horrible, I was ashamed to express it, even to myself. My mother loved me desperately, I knew that. More than the thrill of the cops on her trail, more than the feel of a stolen artifact in her hands, my mother loved me. And sometimes that love was almost too much for me to bear. It was too much of a responsibility, being the anchor that kept her grounded. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but where was my village? The collection of friends and acquaintances we met in our wanderings- aid workers and diplomats, bohemians and aristocrats- those relationships were broad, but they were not deep.

The truth was, I was enough for my mother, but she was no longer enough for me. I had said many hurtful things to her that night. But this truth, more than any accusation, would surely break her heart.

When I came home early in the morning, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table. Her blue eyes were tired and red and there was a large dent in a whiskey bottle that I don't think was there before. But when she spoke her voice could not have been more sober, "I owe you an apology, Maggie."

"Mom, don't…"

She held up her hand. "Hear me out. I do not pretend that I am a perfect parent, by any means. Trying to reconcile being your mother with…my own restless nature…has always been a challenge. But I am trying my best."

I felt a lump in my throat. "I know."

She ran her hands through her long dark hair, now streaked with silver. "Perhaps I have been selfish. I cannot give you all that you desire, Maggie, and for that I am very sorry. But I can give you something." She paused and handed my passport to me. "We have done things my way. Now we will try doing them yours."

"Where are we going?"

My mother sighed, whether with relief or resignation. "Home," she breathed.

For my mother, "home" would always be San Francisco.

When she told me where we were going, I was both excited and worried. Excited to finally have something that resembled a "normal" American childhood, with football games and homecoming and student council and all of the things I thought I was missing out on. And I was scared, because, as the home of the ACME Detective Agency, San Francisco was probably the worst place imaginable for my mother to take up residence. Which is precisely why she chose it.

"San Francisco? Wouldn't some place a little more low key, like…Omaha or Cedar Rapids…be safer?" I asked her on the plane ride over.

My mother shot me a glance that could freeze lava. "Tell me, Maggie, do you have a burning desire to become an orphan? Because if we have to move to Nebraska," she wrinkled her nose in disgust, "I might just put a bullet in my brain." The frightening thing was, she was only half-kidding.

So, we moved to San Francisco- or Berkeley to be precise. My mother bought an airy bungalow built in the Mission style, the front porch overgrown with vines of blood-red bougainvillea that camouflaged as much as they caught the eye. From the west-facing window of my mother's bedroom, you could catch a glimpse of the city rising from the waters of San Francisco Bay. Close enough to still be home, far enough away that she could still maintain her self-imposed exile.

Within days of moving in, my mother installed a security system worthy of the Pentagon. She also tripled the number of guns in the house, cancelling out whatever feelings of security the alarm system might have brought me. There was now a Smith & Wesson in the oven (perfect because she never turned the damn thing on) and a sniper rifle hidden in a bag of golf clubs in our hallway closet. ("Going to the country club" was her twisted euphemism for target practice.) Despite all of these things, it was still the nicest, homiest place we'd ever lived.

My enthusiasm for "normal life" quickly evaporated in the hellfire that is the American high school experience. I don't know what I had expected. I had been the new kid before, tons of times, in schools all over the world, and somehow always managed to find my niche. But Berkeley High had a byzantine caste hierarchy worthy of something out of an anthropology textbook. And though I spoke American English as well as everyone else, my pop culture references and slang were so out of date, I may as well have been trying to converse in Quechua. In short, my first day was a total, unmitigated disaster.

I came home and threw my bookbag across the sofa in disgust.

My mother's mouth gave a little quirk. "That bad, huh?"

"Sucked. Totally, totally sucked. First period was math. We were trying to find the surface area of objects. I got all the answers wrong because I measured in metric instead of the English system and everyone laughed at me. Who uses the English system, I ask you? Not even the English!" I lamented.

"A honest mistake."

"Then, I met with the guidance counselor. She had no idea what language class to put me in. My Spanish is near-fluent, so I should be in the AP Spanish Literature class, but it's already full. Same thing with Advanced French. The Chinese teacher said my accent is the best she's ever heard from a non-native speaker, but I have the handwriting of a first grader."

"Well, you were six when we lived in Shanghai." my mother said in an impossibly sensible tone.

I growled. "Whatever. They stuck me in first year Chinese. And I have to take double periods of gym because those ballet classes I took at Lycée Rousse last year apparently don't count. I hate it here."

My mother smiled slyly. "Hard, isn't? Being normal."

"You could send me to that boarding school in Lucerne. The one with the nuns. Just drop me off and then you can gallivant around the world as you please," I said hopefully.

Her bright eyes sparkled. "Very tempting. But, no."

"You're punishing me, aren't you?"

"By giving you exactly what you asked for? How cruel of me."

"You are a cold, unfeeling woman. A total sadist."

"I know," my mother said in her most satisfied voice. I scowled; having already been called every name in the book made it impossible to insult my mother properly.

I marched upstairs to my bedroom only to find that my assortment of servers, mainframes and painstakingly assembled computer hardware had been reduced to a single laptop. Computers and gadgets were one of the few interests my mother had successfully passed on to me. Though I stayed away from hacking, I did take satisfaction in the problem-solving and codebreaking programming required. Having my equipment taken away was the final indignity. "Mom!" I yelled. "What on Earth did you do with my computer?"

She came upstairs. "Querida, you said you wanted to be normal. Normal people do not have computers capable of storing the entire contents of the Library of Congress on their hard drives. If your friends came over and saw it, what would they think?"

"Since I'm never going to make any friends, it's not going to matter, is it?"

"Think of it as a challenge," she instructed, gently but firmly.

---

The transition from globe-trotting only daughter of an ex-criminal mastermind to "normal" American teenager did not happen overnight, but it did get happen eventually. Whether or not "normal" ever got easier for my mother was hard to tell. She never complained, just kind of stoically carried on, trying to do what was best for me at any cost.

And then, one day, I did something that nearly ruined everything for us.

Every year the honors students at Berkeley High were invited to one of the Bay Area's most famous institutions- the ACME Detective Agency. In general, it was a win-win situation for all involved: ACME got access to some of the area's best and brightest and students got a day off from school and a trip to the big city. Now, I probably should have played it safe and told my teacher that this particular field trip violated my religious beliefs or something. And I didn't tell my mother either, partly out of spite. I had learned deceit and intrigue literally at my mother's knee- it was a simple thing to forge her signature on the permission slip. If she could have secrets, well, so could I.

Why would I do something so potentially dangerous and harmful? Let's just say that as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, my mother is not the only person in the family prone to bouts of curiosity and boredom.

The ACME campus was something of a mashup between a sci-fi novel, an office park and a college quad. Gleaming steel and glass buildings surrounded a grassy rectangle where young agents lounged around playing Ultimate Frisbee and dissected case files. A peppy blonde woman with a slight southern drawl gave us a tour, showing us state of the art crimelabs, a vast library, even the legendary C-5 corridor. The last stop was the Hall of Fame, housed in the oldest ACME building. One wall featured framed pictures of every Academy class since 1932. On the other were winners of the prestigious Detective of the Year Awards. I was not surprised to find photos of Ivy and Zack there, but was stunned to see photographs of my mother as a teenager; she had won the award every year from 1980 to 1985. It was hard to believe she had accomplished so much, so young. And, well, it was nice that ACME had not tried to erase her from her place in their history. Though I suspected she was easier to deal with as a ghost than as a living, breathing traitor.

And then it was time to take the entrance exam. They ushered about fifty of us into a large room filled with individual cubicles. The test was administered on the computer and adapted to meet an individual's response- the more questions you answered right, the more the questions increased in difficulty. If you got too many questions wrong, the computer would shut down and the test was over. The exam seemed to contain everything and the kitchen sink- testing geography, verbal acuity, math problems, spatial intelligence, music trivia, crossword puzzles- you name it, it was on there. It culminated in a chess game against an artificial intelligence.

It may sound nuts, but I actually found it a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Much more enjoyable than listening to my English teacher drone on about the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time. When I made the final move that placed the computer's queen in check, the screen erupted in fireworks and confetti was released from the ceiling. I was startled and embarrassed- our tour guide came over and shook my hand, as if I had just won the lottery.

Bubbling over, she escorted me to a small conference room. "Now you just wait right there, sugar. The Dean is going to be so excited to meet you!"

The Dean? I had come to ACME headquarters to indulge my curiosity about my mother's old stomping grounds, but I had little desire to become an actual agent. This could be problematic.

The door swung open and a tall woman in a businesslike grey pantsuit strode in. Her dark red hair and apple green eyes gave her identity away before she could even open her mouth. This was no faceless bureaucrat, it was my mother's greatest adversary, Detective Ivy.

The woman smiled at me and shook my hand firmly. "Marguerite de Cengos, it is a pleasure to have you here at ACME. I'm Dean Kaplan and I'm in charge of the training program at the Academy."

"Nice to finally meet you," I murmured shyly.

The woman pulled out a manila folder and laid it across the table. "I have your test results here. Very impressive. The highest we've ever seen. You beat the old record set back in 1979."

Mom's. At this I had to smile. I estimated she would be 33% annoyed that her record had been beaten but 67% proud that I had been the one to do it.

"So, Marguerite…Maggie…I'd like to personally invite you to become an ACME detective. You are exactly the kind of girl we are looking for," Detective, now Dean Ivy said confidently, as if my acceptance was a foregone conclusion.

I gulped. "I'm sorry. But, I'm really not interested."

Ivy's green eyes narrowed. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you need some time to think about it…"

"It's just not for me." I've never been a very good liar, so instead I told the truth. "You see, if I became an ACME agent, I would have to travel a lot and leave my mother behind. I don't think she would like that, Dean Kaplan."

"I'm sure your mother would want you to pursue your dreams, Maggie."

"I'm the only family she has. And I wouldn't want her to be lonely," I said quietly.

"My parents had reservations, too, when my brother and I joined ACME. I could talk to her if you like…"

"No!" I blurted out, startling us both. "It's just…to be a good detective requires you be a person of action, wouldn't you agree? Well, I guess I'm more of a person of thought," I said, unthinkingly quoting one of my mother's favorite aphorisms back to her.

"I see," Ivy said in a curious voice. "Would you wait here a moment, Maggie? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

She left the room for a minute and I dreaded that I had somehow given myself away. I tried to stay calm, but I could already feel the sweat beading at the back of my neck. I wondered how far I could get if I tried to make a break for it. Thinking of the labyrinthine corridors we had walked through on the tour, probably not far. I sighed.

Ivy returned with a lanky, bearded blond man who could only be her brother. He seemed to be here under protest. "This had better be good, Sis. Inez is working late and I have to pick up Emilio from day care. Some of us have responsibilities, you know," he complained.

She rolled her eyes. "This will only take a second, Mr. Mom. Maggie, I'd like you to meet my brother, Zack. He works in R&D and helped design the exam you just took."

Zack looked me over and something suspicious flashed across his face. Perhaps it was the way my dark brown hair fell over my bright blue eyes. "This is the kid who beat my program."

"She beat the record, too.

"The record?" He whistled. "So tell me, what was your strategy for the chess game? We've had grand masters test it out. It's unbeatable."

"It was unbeatable," I couldn't help correcting. "Well, Mr…Zack. A computer can only know what it's programmed to know. But a person's mind can think up, you know, any number of possibilities. So, I tried to act erratically and avoid the more commonly known defenses."

Zack shared a significant look with his sister, who nodded. "Ivy says you're worried about your mom? Tell me about her. What does she do?" He asked nonchalantly.

"Well, it's Wednesday…so yoga, I think." Mom wasn't the only one skilled at giving answers that weren't answers.

Ivy frowned. "He means, what does she do for a living."

"She's a writer. She does the travel blog for The Chronicle." If anyone was fit to tell you how to visit Ulaanbaatar on fifty dollars a day, it was my mother.

"Your mom writes Wanderlust? I love Wanderlust! I read it every week," Zack gushed. "She's right, you know, Osaka is so overrated…" His sister elbowed him in the ribs. "Ow!"

"What about your dad? Doesn't he get a say in this?" Ivy asked.

The sorest of sore subjects. "He's not really in the picture," I muttered.

Brother and sister locked eyes and seemed to communicate telepathically. No wonder they had made such a formidable team. Finally, Ivy said, "Your class left hours ago, Maggie. Why don't Zack and I take you home?"

"That's ok. I can take the BART." My voice was shaking.

"Oh no. We insist," Zack said in a firm tone that left no room for protest.

There were no chains to bind me. Why did I feel like I was under arrest?

---

The car ride from ACME to my house was the longest, tensest thirty minutes of my entire life. I repeatedly tried to call and text my mother, but it all went straight to voicemail. She had picked a helluva time not to answer her phone. In the meantime, I kept trying to persuade Ivy and Zack that this visit was a bad idea.

"She probably won't be home. I think she has…a date tonight. Or was it bridge club?"

"We'll just come back tomorrow, then."

"What if I promise to become an agent now? Does that mean you'll leave me alone?"

Zack turned to look at me, "Since you're a minor, we'd have to get her permission anyway. No time like the present." He paused. "Why don't you want us to meet your mom?"

"She's kind of a…difficult person. And doesn't like strangers coming to our house uninvited." All true.

"Don't worry about it. I have a lot of experience with difficult people. My sister is practically a professionally difficult person…"

"Hey!"

When we got within a few blocks of the house, my nervousness erupted into full blown panic. All I could think about was what my mother had told me years ago. I had paid enough attention in English class to know that a gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third. What had started out as a silly adventure this morning was either going to end with a bloodbath or my mother going to prison. Possibly both. And it was all my fault.

Ivy pulled her sky blue Prius in front of our house and shut off the engine. I briefly contemplated making a run for it, but I knew the tall muscled ex-detective would surely beat scrawny me in footrace. And like Zack said, they would just keep coming back. I walked to the front door with the solemnity of a convict about to face the gallows. I turned the knob and heard the familiar deep timbre of my mother's voice call out from the kitchen. "Maggie, where have you been? It's so late."

"Mom, there are some ACME detectives here to see you," I stammered, the words falling from my lips like pieces of shrapnel. Terror warped time and space into a twisted, slow-motion waltz.

The sound of a dinner plate crashing to the floor.

The imperceptible twitch of my mother's hand in the direction of the oven.

A redheaded blur swept by me, knocking me aside.

I closed my eyes and prayed to any god that might hear me.

 

In those terrifying seconds, I braced myself. I waited to hear the blistering crack of a gunshot or Miranda rights recited like a psalm of thanksgiving in Ivy's merciless voice. But instead I heard only a silence that was deafening.

I found the courage to open my eyes.

Instead of a tackle, Ivy's muscular arms were wrapped around my mother in a tight embrace, her head tucked into the corner of my mother's shoulder, the muscles of her back quivering. For once my mother's clever hands looked helpless, hanging there like limp noodles, as if she did not quite know how to return the younger woman's hug. Ivy pulled away and I could see her green eyes were clouded with tears. She sniffed, as if to banish them, and the look on her face was some strange emotion caught between love and rage and desperation. Zack walked over slowly and rested his hand on my mother's elbow. "We never thought we'd see you again, Carmen," he told her, quietly speaking the words his sister could not.

My mother stood as still as a statue. I could see the whirring of her brain as her steely gaze flicked from Zack to Ivy before coming to rest on me. She spoke in her calm, clear voice, "I did not expect to see you again either, Zack. This is certainly a surprise. Maggie, why don't you go to the kitchen and fix everyone some tea." I blinked. Tea? "The oolong, I think. Now," she commanded.

For once in a very long time, I did exactly as I was told. I would like to think I knew my mother better than anyone else, but there were times she was still a cipher, even to me. Like her way of responding to an Armageddon-level disaster with tea. As I set the water to boil and fetched her favorite crimson and black lacquered teacups, I knew I had been shooed out to leave the adults to discuss their business. I did not know what was going on in there. Interrogation? Negotiation? One last cup of tea before they hauled her off to prison?

Barely audible beneath the shrill whine of the tea kettle was the sound of something I recognized as my mother's own dark laughter. Well, I suppose this situation called for a bit of gallows humor.

I brought the tea out to the living room and served our guests and tried my best not to scald them, although my hands were shaking. I sat next to my mother on the couch and grabbed her arm possessively, trying to hang on to her for as long as I could. I did not want them to take her away from me. I looked at my mother and then at Zack and Ivy and said, "I'll join ACME. I'll do anything you ask. Just don't send my mother to jail."

Ivy shook her head. "That's really not necessary, Maggie."

"Please!" I begged.

My mother squeezed my hand affectionately. "Mija, the three of us have come to an understanding. I have agreed to provide intelligence and contacts in return for my freedom. Provided I do not commit any further crimes, Zack and Ivy are willing to pretend this meeting never happened."

I was stunned. I did not think these two, Ivy especially, would let my mother go for anything. I asked the girl detective, now a woman grown, "Why?"

Something seemed to crack open in her eyes, eyes that had always seemed so tireless and hard in the footage I had seen. "Several years ago, Zack and I made a promise to each other," she began, though the words seemed to get caught in her mouth halfway.

Zack turned to my mother and continued, "When it became clear that your trail had really gone ice cold, when most people thought you were gone for good…

"We decided that if we ever crossed paths with you again- and you were not doing anything criminal- we would not try to arrest you. Because we felt you deserved a second chance...if that's what you wanted," Ivy explained, her voice quavering.

"If you had found peace, Carmen," Zack's gaze shifted toward me, "we did not want to be the ones to steal it from you," he said softly.

For a moment my mother said nothing, which I knew was her tell for when something truly touched or pained her. When she spoke, her normally elegant voice trembled with emotion, "Thank you. That is so very…generous of you."

"Thank you," I echoed, stunned.

My mother took both of my hands in hers and spoke very sincerely, "Querida, Ivy and Zack told me you took the ACME entrance exam and did remarkably well."

"Try remarkably outstanding. She beat your record," Zack interrupted.

The corners of my mother's mouth tugged up in a ghost of a smirk and I could tell she was proud. "I want you to know, if it is your desire to become an agent, you have my permission and my blessing."

I blushed and then felt guilty. I hated to disappoint them all. "I don't want to become an agent. Really. I'm sorry, Dean Kaplan, I meant it when I said it wasn't for me," I told Ivy.

She shrugged. "Fair enough."

My mother eyed me quizzically. "Why take the exam if you didn't want to join ACME?"

Now I really wanted to fold myself up and hide behind the couch cushions. "I was curious about your past. And maybe a little…bored. I thought the exam would be challenging," I admitted sheepishly.

Out of the corner of my eye, Zack coughed to smother a laugh, while his sister suddenly looked like she feared for the future safety of major world landmarks.

"Well, I suppose that is almost understandable," my mother remarked dryly.

"Apple doesn't fall very far from this particular tree, eh, Carmen?" Zack joked. "Though, Maggie, honey, it's probably not a good idea to go following in your mother's footsteps too much."

Zack's half-teasing comment was not funny to me at all and I exploded with typical teenage fury, "If you haven't noticed, Zack, I am a very bright and talented young woman. I'd like to think there are more than two things I can do with my life!" I thought of the most boring, sedentary occupation I could think of, just to gall them. "Perhaps I'll become a postmistress. I like mail. Think of all those stamps."

"I'm sure you'd do splendidly," my mother soothed.

"Or maybe I'll sell insurance. In Terre Haute, Indiana."

"How exotic," she rejoined.

Zack looked confused; Ivy looked like she thought I might be mentally ill. My mother explained, "This, detectives, is Marguerite's idea of trying to torture me." After years of chasing my mother all over the world, my little joke was not lost on Zack and Ivy.

Over the course of the next hour, we swapped stories and life updates with the brother-sister pair. Ivy told us about her recent promotion to Dean at the Academy and the new training curriculum she was developing. Zack pulled out his iPhone and showed us pictures of his beautiful wife, Inez, and their eighteen month old son, Emilio. He was very much the proud papa and beamed with joy as he flipped through photo after photo of first crawls and first steps and first birthdays. And if Inez, with her wild dark hair and laughing eyes, looked like a younger version of my mother, well, we were far too polite to mention it aloud.

"Fatherhood suits you, Zack," my mother observed with approval.

"I never thought I'd say it, but motherhood suits you too, Carmen. Speaking of the fam, I'd better be going, I need to start dinner and pick up Emilio from the sitter." Ivy tried to rise from her chair, but Zack gestured for her to sit down. "You stay, sis. I'll take the train."

My mother and Ivy practically radiated Unfinished Business in glowing neon letters. I caught Zack's drift and wisely gave them some space to talk alone. "I can walk you to the station. It's not far from here."

---

I led Zack away from our house down the main artery of Shattuck, past very Berkeley-ish collections of organic yogurt shops and dive bars and medical marijuana dispensaries. He was warm and casual and funny and I relaxed around him in a way I don't with most people.

"I don't suppose you babysit," he inquired.

I shook my head. "Not really."

"I should only be so lucky," he muttered. "You're smart not to want to work for my sister. She's a slave driver. But how 'bout you come and work for me instead? We could use an intern." Zack fished around in his pants pocket and drew out a battered business card, which he handed to me. Red Hat Dynamics LLC, it read.

"At ACME?"

"Nah. Got my own little start-up on the side. The Bay Area is techie El Dorado, Maggie. It's the Gold Rush all over again."

"But I'm only in high school…"

"From what I've seen, you could run circles around most of the people in our office. And I have a feeling you're a pretty quick study," he winked. "Think about it."

We had come to the end of the sidewalk and the underground entrance to the BART station yawned open before us. "Well, here we are," I announced.

Before he left, Zack got a curious look in his eyes. "Just look at you, kid. You're really something," he marveled and I blushed. "You've got a lot of your mother in you."

"The good parts, I hope."

"Mostly," he said, not quite teasing.

There was something about him that totally disarmed me. A kind of familiarity I had searched for the world over and never found. Having never had anything that resembled a consistent father figure in my life, the attentions of kind older men would always be like catnip for me. (I have the therapy bills to prove it) And all the panic and worry I had been feeling all day suddenly rose to the surface. I felt my eyes water with tears.

"What is it, Maggie?" he asked, concerned. "Is it my sister? Because I'll make sure she keeps her end of the deal. When your mother disappeared, even Ivy admitted she felt totally lost without her."

I had trouble picturing this and said so. "Really?"

"It was a very memorable Margarita Monday," he told me conspiratorially. Zack folded his long arms around me and drew me into a comforting hug. "We're going to take care of you. Both of you. Everything's going to be okay, Maggie, I promise."

For the first time since I discovered my mother was Carmen Sandiego, I actually believed that.

---

I took the shortcut home, wandering about as if in a dream. This day in turn had been exciting, challenging, terrifying and oddly heartwarming. There had to be a limit to the amount of emotions a person could feel in a day before the central processing unit of their soul short-circuited. I was actually looking forward to doing my schoolwork of all things, even the boring subjects, because my heart really couldn't take any more excitement. Unfortunately, this also was not to be.

I came in through the backyard. The windows to the living room were open and I heard two female voices float through on the breeze. One was unmistakably my mother's, the other was Ivy's. I probably would have continued through the kitchen door and announced my presence, were they not discussing that most elusive of topics, my father.

"You've changed, Ivy," my mother remarked.

"So have you."

"Not too much."

"For the better, I think," the detective said sincerely. There was a lengthy pause and then Ivy asked, "Carmen…Maggie…how did this happen?"

"Surely you don't require a lecture on the birds and the bees from me, Detective." My mother's voice at her most arch and mocking.

Ivy would have none of it. "Don't be cute, Carmen. You know what I mean."

I thoroughly suspected my mother would rebuke Ivy for her nosiness, so I was surprised when she actually answered her. "I realized I was pregnant with Maggie about a month or so after the whole business with my father's…Avalon's…kidnapping."

"Oh." A beat. A gasp. "Wait. Not…"

"Yes," my mother answered.

"Carmen, I am so sorry…" Ivy's voice was both shocked and sympathetic.

"I'm not. Where Maggie is concerned, I regret nothing. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me," my mother told her.

"Does Maggie know about her father?"

"No, and I'll thank you not to tell her."

"You can't keep it from her forever, Carmen. You're going to have to tell her the truth someday."

"I know. I will." My mother sounded sad and tired. "I just want to protect her a little while longer."

How Ivy had managed to guess in a few seconds the riddle I had pondered most of my life, I'll never know. But if the answer was that shocking and scary, maybe I really didn't want to know. The Maggie of this morning would have burst in and demanded my mother tell me about my father on the spot. But our brush with disaster had changed something. I had faith in my mother. I owed her that much.

---

I don't know how long Ivy stayed or what else she and my mother talked about. I spent the rest of the evening in my room, trying to plaster a façade of normalcy on what had been a remarkably trying day. Just before bedtime, I stole into the kitchen for a glass of water and found a handgun resting on our immaculately clean kitchen table and my mother beside it with an expression of utter self-loathing on her face.

She really would have done it.

Guilt and shame wrapped their clammy hands around my heart and squeezed. I felt awful. I wanted to console my mother, but in that moment, I didn't feel like I had the right to comfort her. It all poured out of me, a verbal avalanche of remorse. "Mom, I'm so sorry for what I did today. It was stupid and reckless of me. When I think of what could have happened…Oh my God…"

My mother cut me off. "Things happened as they happened."

I hung my head. "I shouldn't have taken that dumb test."

"And I should have taken you to Omaha." It would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic. "So, you see there is fault on both sides."

"I'm so sorry." It didn't make it better, but it was all I could say.

My mother walked over to me and lifted my chin to look me directly in the eyes. I stood there as the steely twilight blue pierced right through me, like x-ray vision. "Oh, querida. There is more of me in you than either of us would like there to be. Next time you feel like doing something impulsive or reckless on such a scale as this, promise you'll talk to me about it."

"I promise."

"I do have some amount of experience in these matters," she said wryly.

I smiled a little. "I know." I passed her Zack's business card. "Zack wants me to intern at his company."

"He's trying to keep an eye on you. And me."

"I thought so, too. But I kind of want to do it anyway," I shrugged. "He promised me that everything is going to be okay from now on."

"Do you believe him?" my mother asked, the most adult question she had ever asked me. And I glimpsed it there, a vulnerability and a desire that so mirrored my own.

"I want to."

"Perhaps between the four of us, we can make it so."

---

Postscript: I have left some clues here as to the identity of Maggie's father, but I have left it ambiguous on purpose. Readers should feel free to form their own interpretation. If you want to discuss it, PM me. 

Going to ACME is to this day the most harmful and wantonly reckless thing I have ever done. But I wouldn't undo it even if I could. Because as close to the precipice of tragedy as we skated there, it was the catalyst that brought Zack and Ivy into our lives. We stayed in San Francisco and they (in a role that was part parole officer and part old family friend) helped make the city our home. More of a home than any we had ever known before. I had found my village at last.

I graduated high school and went on to college. With my brains and test scores and my mother's bottomless Swiss bank accounts, I could have gone anywhere. I say this not to brag but as a statement of fact. But I chose to go to Caltech, only about an eight hour drive from doorstep to dorm. (By my mother's estimation, if you're not required to go through Customs, it's practically around the corner ) I had learned that just because you can go anywhere doesn't mean that you should.

One weekend halfway through my first semester, my mother came to visit me in sunny Pasadena. She took me for high tea in the gardens of the Huntington Library, a repository for rare 17th and 18th century manuscripts. Sort of the equivalent of a recovering alcoholic visiting a distillery, but after eighteen years, I suppose she had gotten it out of her system. Maybe.

"So, what have you been up to now that I'm finally out of your hair?" I asked.

"Oh, this and that. The Chronicle is sending me on a little trip next week. I'm doing a piece on Diwali in Mumbai." My mother had odd ideas about what constituted a "little" trip.

I smiled. "It seems a lot of people want to see the world the way you do. I guess I never really appreciated it when I had you as my personal tour guide." I paused. "I was thinking maybe we could go somewhere together for Christmas break. Somewhere I haven't been before."

"Where would you like to go?" My mother's voice sounded neutral, but her sparkling eyes gave her away. She was delighted.

"Montreal might be nice for Christmas. Very wintery."

"The poor woman's Paris will be freezing in December."

"How about Reykjavik? There should be some nice hot springs there to warm your old bones."

My mother cocked an eyebrow. "Much more ambitious."

"Or Zanzibar. Oooh, and we could do a safari in Kenya first."

"Now you're talking."

"We could ask Ivy and Zack to come along, too, if they don't have plans. Traveling's always more fun when you share it with someone," I said, unsure of how she would take this suggestion.

"So I have learned over the years. I'll ask them." My mother's eyes had turned soft. "But querida, I would have thought you would want to come home for the holiday break." Translation: Don't do this for me.

"Well, mom, home is wherever you are."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

My mother took a sip of tea, for courage, and for once her face fell open before me, as easy to read as the pages of a picture book. And then she told me.

In giving my mother the radical acceptance she had gone without her entire life, I had spoken the magic words that unlocked the secret of who my father was. My father was not a good man or even a remotely nice man. In hindsight, my mother calling him "no one special" bordered on high praise. It is to my mother's credit and all of the love she so generously gave me that I never let this revelation diminish my own self worth. And if I had thought my mother brave, complex, conflicted before, my estimation of her now increased a thousandfold. She is without a doubt, the strongest person I have ever met or expect to meet.

The truth, when I finally heard it, was hard to hear. It did not bring me a fairy-tale ending. But then again, I never really needed one.

The world trends toward entropy and chaos, "things fall apart, the center cannot hold" the poet William Butler Yeats famously wrote. I suppose no one knew that better than my mother, whose life fell apart and came together more times than I could count. But after years of wandering, we had finally found our center. People say that there is a lot of my mother in me. I'd like to think there's a bit of me in her as well. And in the end, I think that's what allowed us to make the center hold.