I really wanted to see this Mama Hale. 

She was a reverent personality in the lives of all the Hales I made met so far. I wondered how old she must be, too.

Evie's great-grand uncle had loved her dearly, so maybe, she was his daughter. Or his wife. A sister, maybe?

The enigma that was Mama Hale would soon be revealed to me, and I couldn't wait any longer.

Evie's parents had said that she would have the solution to our problem. I wasn't even aware we had any problems, but I suppose Evie would need answers, if nothing else, about the entire 'I-shouldn't-have-a-soulmate' thing.

It was just my luck that I got matched with the one girl who was never supposed to be matched at all. Did cupid hear my pleas and decided it would be funny to mess with me like this?

He was a real dick if that was the case.

Why else would he pick me, out of the billions of people in the world, to be the first person to be matched with a Hale?

I suppose Evie wasn't the only one looking for answers.

She knocked on the solid gold door (this was a level of wealth even my family had never displayed) and waited for it to open. After waiting for a few beats, the massive doors swung in, revealing the weirdest room I had ever seen.

The wealth outside had made me assume that the insides would be just as lavish, if not more. However, no gold could be seen inside.

The lights in the room were much dimmer than the outside too, probably because that one chandelier had cast off enough light to greatly be amplified by the reflecting gold. 

Without the golden glow, the insides fell dull. A big old conversation pit took up most of the empty floor space in the centre of the room. The walls were lined with shelves containing the most absurd and useless things, that I soon realised, would be a historian's dream come true. 

They weren't the regular kind of old stuff in the sense that I find an abandoned pen in the back of my drawer from five years ago. This stuff looked older than five centuries. 

The room was a shrine, a museum, to the times that had passed.

There were name tags below every object. I found an old accordion, still in pristine shape, kept over the tag saying 'William Farrow Hale II'.

"It's a family ritual," Evie said, as she came to stand beside me. I hadn't realised when I had taken a step towards the wall to get a better look. "When we turn 31, all of us pick an object- a sort of memorabilia to present to Mama Hale. A thing that means the most to us. She takes care of it, and keeps them with her over here."

I was beginning to have a lot of issues with this 'Mama Hale'. Some of the things, like a beaded necklace next to accordion, was definitely not from this century, or even from the one before. 

It was old.

She couldn't possibly have been personally taking care of that since it was given.

I would have assumed that 'Mama Hale' was, perhaps, a title given to the matriarch of their family. That there had been several Mama Hales over the course of the centuries that they had run their business, but a gnawing cold feeling swept through me the more Evangeline talked about her. 

Just who was Mama Hale?

Evie didn't let me inspect any more of those items and kept a hand on my arm to lead me away. 

I stared at the place her hand had touched even after she let go. I could've sworn she had branded me through the fabric of my shirt. I finally knew what Estelle and Misha had been talking about when they had told me that they had found the one meant for them. 

You know it from the first touch.

Did Evie realise it, too?

I thought we would go and sit in the conversation pit and wait for Mama Hale to come to us, but Evie lead me to the spiral staircase at the other end of the room. I hadn't noticed it before because of the massive rows of shelves in the entire room, but once I did, it seemed as plain as day. 

It was a thin black structure with wooden planks for each step, and my heartbeat raced at the creaking sound that echoed around the room with every step that Evie took.

It looked like a sneeze away from totally collapsing.

Evie reached the top and looked back down, crossing her arms across her chest, "Are you coming or what?"

"Is this even safe?" I asked, not in the slightest mood of watching my demise at the hands of a rickety staircase.

She rolled her eyes, "Did you or did you not just watch me take those stairs, too?"

"I would have stopped you, but you climbed up there faster than an orangutan." Her eyes narrowed and I grinned, "A very cute orangutan, don't worry."

"I can just do this part on my own and meet you back here in a few years, maybe?" She arched an eyebrow for a few seconds before turning to walk away.

"Wait!" I grabbed the railing of the staircase and took a deep breath, "I'm invested in this story, too. I'm going to come, now."

She murmured something that sounded suspiciously like, "Title of your sex tape."

I stopped on the first step. "Did you just crack a joke?"

"No."

I grinned the entire time as I joined her at the top, feeling like the iciness could melt away and this could actually work.

When I did come and stand next to her, she was staring at me with an expression I couldn't quite place. I opened my mouth to ask her about what she had been thinking, but she turned abruptly and walked away before I could.

So much for progress.