Never Say Goodbye

It was when they moved to California that Callie learned her mama was a famous songwriter and that people all over knew who she was. Callie went to a fancy school where she had to work really hard. One day at school, the fourth graders put on a performance about something called the American Revolution. Callie would never forget sitting there looking at the stage and all the scenery and decorations. She hadn’t thought about her old life for a long time. But she did now. There were pictures and posters of ships like her papa used to command. A ship just like the one he’d been trying to get them on that night she and her mama were taken by those bad men. And when the students came on the stage, she gasped at their costumes. The girls were in dresses like the ones she and her mama used to wear, and the boys were in uniforms. One boy in particular was wearing a uniform that looked just like her papa’s. Callie sat there stunned, hanging on every word.

As she watched the play, Callie wondered if her papa worked with the man named George Washington. Maybe that was why he had been packing them up that night and taking them to America. Callie thought about that book then. The one that had made her mama cry. They were still in their home in New York when she found it. Callie had opened it to the very same page later and gasped when she saw her papa’s name written there: “Alexander Montgomery.” It said her papa had been found guilty of reason and had to write a sentence about death. It had taken her a long time to sound out all those words and she didn’t understand what they meant, but shortly after that Mama decided they should move. She told Callie that Papa wouldn’t be able to find them after all. Callie didn’t believe her mama. She didn’t tell her that, of course. But Callie would never believe her papa couldn’t find them. Never.