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Dear Nicholas:

By now you know why I had to send you away. There's no need to be sad because I'm already grateful that I can keep you safe, and if you read this, I'll be at peace.

My parents are good people but they couldn't accept my child if I wasn't married. That meant I had to leave them, too. Their name is Chance, like mine, and they live in San Francisco. I want you to know this because it's your right. I am their only child.

Your father never knew about you. He left for college on the East Coast before
I
knew about you. Don't blame him for anything. He married the girl he broke up with before his high-school prom. I was the thrilled replacement for the ball, all starry-eyed to be invited by a senior. This sounds tawdry but it wasn't. I had loved him in that intense, teenage-girl way for a long time. He's an honorable person and he apologized afterward because he felt he'd led me astray. I wouldn't change a thing about having you.

You think you look like me, but you haven't seen your father!

When I left my parents' home I worked in a shop in the city. One day I saw Delia Board, who graduated a year ahead of me. Her family was very wealthy and she had an apartment and went to USF even though she could have gone to any school in the country. She saw me one day and ran after me till she caught me. It wasn't hard. You were born a few weeks later.

I expect you know what I mean about Delia's strong will. She wouldn't leave me alone until I'd told her everything, then she moved me into her apartment and she's the only person I have, apart from you, who has always loved me for myself.

Delia knows about Colin although I don't suppose she's ever said his name to you. She begged me not to have anything to do with him, but I hated her feeling responsible for me and I thought I was in love with Colin then. He was good with you and that was something I longed for, a man around my son. We met in a bookshop, and met there again and again and eventually I told him I would stay with him. Three months later we left with a group of people who wanted to make a quiet, simple life. Colin found the place and he called it The Refuge.

I've liked it here, except for seeing Colin change. He's been changing for a long time and I'm frightened. I'm frightened for you and all the young people, and I'm very afraid for these children he has brought here. He says he unites them with their families, but no family has ever come for one of them. They're just taken away, supposedly to a meeting place.

I don't believe any of it, but I haven't found out otherwise. Muriel and Ena won't go that way—whatever it is. At least we'll save them. Ena told me they don't have a family but I'm scared what Colin might do if I pressed him about it.

The ruby? Colin's obsessed with the thing but he doesn't tell me how he got it. Sometimes he takes it out and shows it to me, and tells me it'll make sure we have everything we ever need. This isn't the Colin I met, the simple man who wanted a peaceful life.

I'm sending the ruby with you to Delia so it can be sold to pay for bringing you up, and Muriel and Ena. Colin will lose his mind when he finds out it's gone and he'll know it went with you. He'll blame me but I won't tell him where you are. And none of that will matter when you're reading this letter.

The ruby is very old. He said it passed from hand to hand until the true owner wasn't known anymore. That's why he said he had just as much right to it as anyone else, but he didn't. I'm sure it was in payment for something awful.

According to Colin's story, a king was once saved by the ruby. He used it to buy his life back from assassins. And there was a legend that the ruby had been stolen a number of times but always the thief ended up being staked out in the sun and eaten alive by vultures. There's a nice bedtime story for a mother to tell her son! Colin was vague about what happens to whoever has the ruby now but I haven't seen any vultures around.

So please help Delia get the stone sold, Nicholas. Delia won't know how to handle something like that, but you are so resourceful. You'll find out. If Colin's stories are right, there should be enough money to keep you—and the girls—until you can make your own way—with plenty left over to help get you started in life.

I'm sorry, Nicholas. I made bad choices. You should never have been in this place, especially when we all know what's being grown here. The adults are breaking the law. But we did come here looking for a refuge and I made an excuse to stay by telling myself how hard it would be to get away. And Colin warned me never to try. I don't love him. I never have, really.

My love goes with you, all of it. Live and love and be happy, then everything that's happened will have had a purpose.

Mom