Every Sunday, Mary disappears between the hours of 1:00 and 6:00 PM. She leaves somber, always dressed in the same white cotton dress and black sandals, her hair loosely flowing down her shoulders. Small silver pirate ships dangle from her ankle bracelet. She won’t tell Atlas where she goes, no matter how many times he asks, and Jordan and Max just shrug whenever he asks them for information. Apparently, she’s been doing it since before she met them.
“Maybe she’s got a hot date.” Max raises his eyes suggestively.
“More likely, she’s got a secret mission,” Jordan speculates. “She’s a lone wolf type, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s got her own project on the side.
“But why the same dress?” Atlas wonders out loud. “It’s so specific. Mary never does anything without a reason, whether she’s willing to share that reason or not.
One Sunday when Mary seems especially distracted, Atlas decides to give her a taste of her own medicine and follows her for the day. He asks Jordan for one of the ear mics, then drops it into Mary’s bag and takes the handheld tracker in his own. After she slips out the door, he traces her steps for miles until the tracker flashes red at a trash can, where it seems Mary placed the ear piece to prevent him from following her.
She is determined not to reveal her secret, but so is Atlas, and every Sunday after that, it becomes their little game. Atlas is the cat and Mary is the mouse, though a very clever, secretive mouse at that, and he never manages to get more than half an hour into the chase before she foils it and goes on her way.
And so the newest, most technologically advanced tracker is born: the Mini-Mic Tracker 2014. Jordan creates it just for Atlas, and sets the reveal date for a Saturday afternoon when Mary leaves the apartment to run errands. All week they have been exchanging secret folders with plans and hiding their notes beneath the other person’s pillow, while Mary has seemed oblivious to their plotting.
When Saturday finally arrives, Max decorates the stand with a red velvet curtain, which he whooshes off like a game show contestant as soon as Mary leaves.
“Behold,” Max says in a deep, Oz-like voice, “the Mini-Mic Tracker 2014.”
Atlas moves closer to the stand. “Where is it?”
Jordan points to the middle of the glass stand. Atlas leans in to get a better look, and he can just make out a black dot smaller than a pencil point.
“Wow.” He moves to pick it up.
“Don’t touch it!” Jordan yells, physically blocking Atlas from his new baby. “It’s very fragile, and if you drop it, it could take days to find. Plus, this baby’s worth like a million dollars. Here.” Jordan thrusts special tweezers into Atlas’s hand. “These become magnetic when you squeeze them, and demagnetize when you let go. That way, you can attach the Mini-Mic easily and remove it only by using these tweezers once she gets back. Remember, if you want to hear what she’s saying, you have to be within a mile.”
***
While Mary sleeps on Saturday night, Atlas sneaks into her room to attach the tracker to the bottom of her purse. She looks so peaceful when she sleeps, so childlike, that Atlas can finally see the resemblance between the Mary he knew as a kid and the relentless captain of their undercover missions. She must work hard to suppress it, to put on the strong front of a leader, but deep down, she has her own misgivings.
The next day, Mary hefts her purse onto her shoulder and heads out the door in her white dress and black sandals. Atlas follows a few blocks behind, then gets on the metro at Farragut North and takes the red line with Mary to Silver Springs, Maryland. Through the glass between their cars, he sees something he would never have predicted: Mary reading a book. She looks almost normal as she sits with her back to his prying gaze and lazily flips through the pages, just an average girl taking an average ride on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
When Mary leaves the metro and Atlas follows, he is happy to escape the smell of vinyl and the claustrophobic walls of the metro car. They emerges into sunlight and cool fall air. The area feels like a combination of city and suburbs, eventually trailing off into large houses with painted shutters and perfectly manicured lawns that Atlas can only imagine having enough money to buy.
Mary turns at a huge white house with a wrap-around porch and several benches out front. The house has a beautiful garden, fragrant with flowers not yet wilted and spotted with fat fall squashes, and a sign that reads “Horizons Manor.” As soon as Atlas realizes what this place is, his stomach clenches. He hides behind a short wall coated in ivy, praying that she doesn’t see him.
Mary steps onto the porch, the sound of her sandals on wood the only noise besides the chirping birds and occasional car tires. She approaches an African American man sitting in one of the rocking chairs, who looks like he’s only in his sixties but stares into the garden in a way that indicates he lives in his own world. He wears an old fashioned gray suit, tailored and expensive-looking. A blue wool blanket covers his lap. Mary takes the seat next to him, a matching rocking chair, and moves it right next to the man’s.
Once she sits down, she puts a hand on one of the blue wool lumps and says, in a whisper that the mic still picks up: “Hello, Daddy.”
The man turns his head slowly. He seems to recognize Mary, at least tangentially, and smiles.
“Hi there, Buttercup.”
Mary exhales loudly, as though she was holding her breath until she knew whether the man would recognize her or not and can now relax.
“How are you?” she asks him.
“Fine, fine. Can’t complain. Look at these exquisite flowers.”
“Yes, they’re beautiful.”
“Gives me something to look at while I wait for your mother. You know, that woman could out-dress any movie star in her heyday. I’ve never seen so many furs. She’s still trying, too, even at her age.”
Tears sparkle in the corners of Mary’s eyes. “She does take a long time. It’s all those perfume bottles. She never was,” she pauses here and corrects herself, “I mean is good with choices.”
The man chuckles. “True, she does love a good perfume. When she gets here, I won’t even be able to smell these flowers she’ll be so drenched. Better take a good, long whiff now.”
“Daddy,” Mary says, and the man turns to her. “I have someone I want you to meet.” She lifts her purse to her mouth and says loudly, “Come on out, Atlas.”
At the sound of his name, Atlas drops the tracker in the grass. He straightens up, and both Mary and the older man smile as he fumbles for the tracker and then trips on his way to the porch.
“I’m so sorry,” he begins when he’s within hearing distance.
“Atlas, this is my adopted father, Williams Williams. Daddy, this is Atlas, my birth brother.”
“So this is the boy you’ve been telling me about,” the man says. When he puts out his hand for Atlas to shake but doesn’t stand, Atlas realizes that he mistook the man’s wheelchair for one of the rocking chairs.
“Pleasure to meet you.” Atlas takes his hand, which is dry and thin compared to the man’s broad shoulders and quakes vigorously between Atlas’s fingers. “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Williams.”
“No need to flatter me, boy,” Mr. Williams says with an endearing laugh. “I know that it’s Mary’s mother who always gets the real attention. Those two are like peas in a pod, and I’m just the gardener.” He chuckles again. “Why don’t you take a seat, and when she finally finishes getting ready, you can meet her.”
“You know what, Daddy,” Mary says in a soft tone that seems reserved for him, “we actually need to get going. Important business to attend to. Atlas can meet Mom another time.”
“Alright,” Mr. Williams says, “but you know she’ll be disappointed that she missed you.”
“It’s okay.” Mary puts a hand on his shoulder as she stands up. “We’ll see her next Sunday.”
As soon as Atlas and Mary get out of Mr. Williams’s hearing range, Atlas begins to apologize profusely. He knows he’s rambling, but can’t stop himself. “I am so sorry, I had no idea this is what you were doing on Sundays or I would have stopped following you. Why didn’t you tell me? Who is that man? Why didn’t you take the mic off when you realized what it was? I know I’ve said this already, but just let me say it again, I am so sorry—”
Mary stops walking and indicates with a swoops of her hand that Atlas should take a deep breath. “Relax. I knew what you and Jordan were planning, and I wasn’t about to risk throwing away a million dollar mic for a little privacy. Besides, it was about time you met him. Come on.” She points to a nearby wall. “Let’s talk for a minute.”
Once they’re seated on the cool stones, Atlas launches back into his questions. “Who is he? I thought you said you were raised by gangs. Raised on the streets. Pirate of the underworld.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly how I put it, but yes, I was. After Mom and Dad abandoned us, a rich couple who couldn’t conceive on their own adopted me. I became Mary Williams, part owner of a line of successful grocery stories, and I lived a carefree life: a butler, a social calendar, a mansion. Where do you think all of our funds came from?”
“I don’t understand. It sounds like a great life, so where do the gangs come in?”
“It was a great life, until the day when it suddenly wasn’t anymore. We were robbed, and though the masked men weren’t going to harm us, in a botched police “rescue” my Mom was killed and Daddy…well, you saw what happened to him. I went back into the foster system, and a lot of greedy families tried to adopt me in hopes that they would get some of my inheritance, but I didn’t actually become financially responsible for the family business until I turned eighteen. In the meantime, I had to run away from a lot of nasty places, and that’s when the streets became my home. I hardened out there. That’s when I vowed to start my own kind of rescue missions with the profits from our family business. I found you, and here we are.”
“Wow.” Atlas tries to sort through all of the new information, but his mind feels like a jumble of papers put back in a different order. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“It’s okay. Listen, I’d prefer if you didn’t tell Jordan and Max any of this. I’d trust them with my life, but I just feel like the lass people who know where the money comes from, the better.” She nudges him with her shoulder. “Besides, my reputation is at stake.”
When Atlas gets home that afternoon, he places the mic on a tissue on the desk near Jordan and sighs.
“Did you find her?” Jordan asks hopefully, and Max stops sewing a wig to listen.
“Foiled again.”
************************************************
Starting on 9/18, author Kelly Ann Jacobson will post a chapter from her Wattpad exclusive book, Atlas and Mary Read: Pirates and Thieves (Part II), every day. Check back tomorrow for more!