Long Lost, стр. 27

“We can talk more when you get home,” she continued into the phone. “Yes. How’s Arden doing? Really?” Her face softened slightly, happiness touching it like a thin ray of sun. “That’s great.”

Fiona felt a spear of resentment. She couldn’t even get through a scolding without Arden stealing the spotlight.

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t all be there. Yes. Sorry to have made you panic too. See you later.” Her mom tapped the screen, her eyes slicing back to Fiona.

“Can you imagine what it feels like to come home and find your child gone, without a trace?” She didn’t wait for an answer, which was fine, because Fiona didn’t have one. “It’s lucky I hadn’t already called 911.”

Her mom finally set down both phones and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “All right. We’ll talk specifics when your dad gets home. But I can promise that you will not be leaving this house for several days. You will lose your phone privileges. And it will be a long time before we trust you to go anywhere on your own.”

Taking the cell phone out of Fiona’s hand, her mom turned and strode toward the staircase.

Fiona rushed after her. “Mom . . . I’m really sorry. I should have left a note. And the phone thing was an accident, I swear.”

“Really?” said her mom, reaching the creaky upper hall. “This wasn’t your revenge for having to miss Cy’s birthday?”

“No,” said Fiona, after a telltale pause. “I mean, I was really disappointed. But—”

“That makes two of us,” her mom interrupted.

She opened Fiona’s bedroom door and lifted the laptop from the desk.

“Computer too?” Fiona gasped. No contact with friends. No Kon-Struct. No way to research any of the names or dates or places that were whirling around the borders of her brain like enraged wasps. “Mom, please—can I just keep the laptop? I need it for research. Please.”

“You think you should only get punishments you want?” Her mom shook her head. Her face was sad, like something empty that should have been full.

It reminded Fiona of the dresses dangling in that musty closet.

She needed to learn more about that bedroom. Evelyn’s bedroom. And her mom was taking away every tool she had.

“I said I was sorry.” Fiona’s voice came out too hard. Too angry.

Her mom looked down at her with those hollow eyes. “I heard you. And I’m glad you’re all right. But that’s all I’m glad about right now.”

Holding Fiona’s things, she stepped out the bedroom door, closing it soundly between them.

Fiona stood still, the wasps buzzing out of her brain and down through every vein in her body. Her mom’s words weren’t even true. That wasn’t all she was glad about. She was glad about Arden doing well at her competition.

Perfect Arden.

Fiona threw herself down on the bed. An instant later, she bounced up again.

Cautiously, she inched open her bedroom door. The thumps and clunks of her mother moving around the kitchen drifted up from below. Fiona slipped out into the hallway. Keeping close to the wall, where the floorboards were less loose and creaky, she tiptoed to Arden’s room.

The door was shut, but not latched. Fiona darted inside. There was still no trace of The Lost One, but her sister’s tablet lay on the desktop, between a mug of perfectly sharpened pencils and a stack of sparkly notebooks. Fiona snatched it up. With the tablet pinned under her arm, she scuttled back to her own room.

Arden’s background image was a picture of French skater Surya Bonaly in the middle of a backflip. Fiona rolled her eyes. Of course it was. But at least Arden hadn’t broken the family rule about setting up a lock code.

Fiona hunched over the tablet and got to work.

She began by searching for “Evelyn Chisholm.” She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find. But if Evelyn and Margaret Chisholm had even more in common with Hazel and Pearl than matching bedrooms in a matching town, there would have to be some information about them—something to link them irrefutably with the girls in the book.

She found an old British lady named Evelyn Chisholm, and a few Evelyn Chisholms scattered through the US, but no one from the right era. And nothing about a girl who disappeared.

She tried “Margaret Chisholm” next. There were a million listings, all of them about the Margaret Chisholm Memorial Library. That was a dead end.

Fiona tried “Lost Lake disappearance” and “Lost Lake Searcher,” which turned up nothing but newspaper stories about a missing pet cat.

Fiona’s eyes were beginning to sting. And she was running out of time. Her dad and her sister could be home at any minute.

“Evelyn.” Fiona tried again. But this time she was typing so fast that she hit enter without adding anything more.

Evelyn. Evelyn. Evelyn. A long list of baby name sites popped up. Fiona was about to start over when a word halfway down the screen halted her.

Evelyn, read one entry. From the Norman French “Aveline,” meaning hazelnut.

The back of Fiona’s neck prickled.

Hazel.

With shaky hands, she typed “Margaret” and hit enter.

Margaret, read the very first line on the page. From the old Persian word for pearl.

Pearl.

The threads braided themselves together so fast that Fiona’s mind spun.

Hazel and Pearl from The Lost One and Evelyn and Margaret Chisholm from Lost Lake weren’t just similar. They were the same. They had lived in the same house—the house that was now the Lost Lake library. They had played in the same woods. And one of them had vanished in the very same way.

Whoever had written The Lost One must have known the whole story. But they’d written only half of it down, changing enough details to make a reader dig for the truth.

But why? Fiona pummeled her brain with the question. Why tell only part of the story? Did whoever had written it expect—or hope—that some reader would finally figure it out?

A downstairs door slammed. Voices echoed through the house.

Switching the tablet off, Fiona scrambled back along the