The Progeny Read Online Free Page A

forgotten predawn sandwich—further proof that my meds are off. But if I showered sometime this morning, where the heck are my clothes?
    In the tiny laundry room just off the kitchen I rifle through the basket, peer in the washer and dryer. In the living room again, I shake out the comforter, check beneath the sofa. Hands on hips, I take in the DVD case sitting open on top of the TV, a stack of board games on a listing double shelf just to the right of it, the wooden coasters on the coffee table next to the year-old copy of Discover Maine magazine . . .
    Clare’s tao cross is lying on top of it.
    I know I left that hanging in the truck.
    I rush to the bedroom, pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Not bothering with shoes, I hurry out the front door. Outside, the sun has dappled the water gold against the pebbly shore. The johnboat is beached, the rope tied to a nearby fir exactly the way I left it. But there—at the end of the floating swim dock: a rumpled pile of clothes.
    What was I doing? Swimming in my underwear in broad daylight? It’s somewhere in the sixties. Not exactly swimming weather. And I have never once had the urge to jump off that wooden platform.
    I walk to the beach and drop a foot ankle-deep in the water. It isn’t freezing, but it’s cold enough to wake a person up.
    Or merit a comforter after getting out.
    I spend the next hour trying to retrace my steps. I can’t imagine that I drove into town in dripping-wet underwear. What did I do—swim to shore just to retrieve Clare’s cross? Why?
    But it’s impossible to retrace what you can’t remember. I begin to wonder if my activity the other evening had nothing to do with tequila.
    Back inside, I sit down with the tao cross, turn it between my fingers before looping the string over my head. And then a thought makes my hands go cold. It’s not possible that I had company—is it? No. I never told Luka where I was staying, and no one followed me home. Even Madge at the Fly Shop has only my box number at the post office. Still, I clasp the cross so hard that the string digs into my neck—and then goes slack as the pendant slides right off its bail.
    I sigh, pull the string over my head, and move to the kitchen table where I grab my bottle of head cement and brush some on the end of the thick wire bail. I’m just about to push it back into the hole at the top of the cross when I pause . . . and reach up to turn my work lamp on.
    Tilting the cross this way and that, I see it wasn’t a trick of the light; there’s something curled within the tiny opening. I pick up my needle and press the tip against the lining, slide it upward until I can grab the edge of it with my tweezers. I pull slowly, turning the cross as I do. The paper comes out in an elongated spiral half the length of the cross.
    I spread the tiny scroll open on the table with the tweezers and a fingernail. A series of minuscule numbers is written on the inside.
385911571269
    Twelve digits. No sequence I recognize.
    This was Clare’s cross. Did she know this was here when she gave it to me? I don’t recall seeing a number like this associated with anything religious. Was this series, this code—if it’s even that—intended for her or someone else before her?
    Or for me?
    I squint at the numbers. Too many for a phone number. A bank account, then. A tracking number. A ticket number. A bar code. A serial number. Latitude and longitude. I rifle through every series of numbers I can remember—even in reverse order—but I have never seen this sequence before. If I had a computer, I could search for it, but out on the Dorito I don’t even have a landline.
    I try it as a number with commas. I try adding them together. I try finding the difference between the first two, then the second two, and so on. I add up the occurrence of the digits.
    By now the sun has dropped low enough across the water that the cabin is getting dark. I retrieve the notepad from the counter, tear off my latest grocery