Long Lost, стр. 29
“Wait,” said Fiona, feeling like time was suddenly reeling backward. “You know all about the book. But you told me the library didn’t even have it.” She gripped the book harder. “Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie. Honest.” Ms. Miranda gave a small smile. “That book is not part of our fiction collection. No one is supposed to check it out. Or even know about it, really.”
Fiona frowned. “Then . . . why is it here?”
“It belongs upstairs, in the private rooms. It’s one of the Chisholms’ personal possessions. They’re supposed to stay undisturbed.”
“But someone disturbed them anyway,” Fiona pointed out. “Because I found this on the shelves in the mystery room.”
“Really?” Ms. Miranda tipped her head to one side. The violets tipped too. “You weren’t possibly poking around in staff-only areas . . . ?”
“No!” said Fiona. “Well . . . I mean—not then. It was in the mystery room. I swear.”
Ms. Miranda ate another chocolate. “Okay. Maybe it was.”
“Which means someone else moved it,” Fiona pushed on.
“Maybe.” Ms. Miranda shook a few more chocolates out of the box. “That book is supposed to stay on the third floor, like I said. But it has a habit of traveling all over the library. It will turn up in one of the reading rooms, or on top of a shelf somewhere. Today I found it under a chair in the research room.” She shrugged, shaking her head. “I always return it to the third floor, where it belongs, and eventually it pops up somewhere else.” Her bright eyes met Fiona’s. “My guess is you’re not the only library visitor who likes to wander through our off-limits areas.”
“So is that how the book got back to the library now?” Fiona asked. “Did you steal it from my house?”
“From your house?” Ms. Miranda looked at her dubiously. “No. I’ve never stolen a book from a reader’s house, no matter how overdue or off-limits it was.” She gave a little grin. “If you smuggled that book out, and it ended up back here somehow . . .” The grin faded slightly. “I’m honestly not sure what to say.”
“But . . .” Fiona shook her head. The hundreds of questions inside sloshed around. “Wait. Why didn’t you tell me all this about The Lost One back when I asked?”
One of Ms. Miranda’s eyebrows rose. “Well, first, if you had found that book, it was fairly likely that you’d been snooping in off-limits parts of the library. That didn’t make you seem one hundred percent trustworthy. Second, if I’d told you that the book you’re holding is a one-of-a-kind, unfinished mystery that’s not supposed to leave its bedroom, wouldn’t I basically have been telling you to steal it?”
Fiona chewed a chocolate, stalling. “I guess I might have tried to take it,” she answered. “Probably.”
“And third . . .” Ms. Miranda’s eyes flickered over Fiona’s face, and Fiona had the sensation that she was being read like fine print on a page. “You know what? Why don’t you tell me what you’ve figured out about the story first?”
Fiona swallowed.
How far could she trust Ms. Miranda? And did it even matter, when she was already caught, trapped in a dead end of unfinished stories?
“I know the story is set here, in Lost Lake,” she began slowly. “I know Hazel and Pearl were really Evelyn and Margaret Chisholm. I know they lived here, in this house.”
“Very good,” said Ms. Miranda. In her eyes, which were still focused on Fiona’s face, there wasn’t a single glimmer of surprise. “You’re right. Hazel and Pearl were obviously inspired by Evelyn and Margaret Chisholm.”
“That’s why I need to find out the ending,” said Fiona, speaking faster now. “I know about the Searcher, and how Evelyn disappeared—but I need to know what really happened. Because if the place and the people are all real, then the story must be true.”
Ms. Miranda kept quiet for a beat. “I used to have that theory too,” she said at last. Her voice was gentler than before. “After I read the story for the first time—the part of the story that exists, anyway—I looked into it. But the problem is: it isn’t true.” Ms. Miranda’s words came out softly, slowly, clearly. “Evelyn Chisholm didn’t disappear at all. She died.”
Fiona rocked back. “You mean—did somebody—”
“It was nothing criminal,” Ms. Miranda stopped her. “She got sick. Probably pneumonia. She passed away in her own bed, right upstairs.”
A shiver ran from Fiona’s feet to the top of her spine. No wonder there had been a strange hush in that room. “But . . .” She shook her head again, trying to pull these new ideas together. “But if Evelyn just died, and everyone knew where and how, then why would someone turn it into a mystery? Why would somebody make up just half of a story?”
“That’s what people do,” said Ms. Miranda simply. “When they don’t know a whole story, they make one up.” She leaned back on the table. “I’ve lived and worked here for six years now. I know a few things about local history, including the kinds of things that don’t always get written down. Like that there were rumors about the Chisholm family long before Evelyn died.”
“Rumors?”
“This is a small town,” said Ms. Miranda. “And the Chisholms didn’t quite fit into it. They moved here, instead of coming from here. They were rich. They were a little odd. And Margaret and Evelyn were the oddest, running around in the woods all day, getting into all kinds of trouble. It’s not what people expected little rich girls to do back then. So the rest of the town spread stories about them. Some of them are still going around. Like that Evelyn ran off with the circus. Or she was snatched by the Searcher. Or that she was killed by someone in her own household, and they all covered it up.”
These words seemed to dangle in the air for a moment.
Fiona suddenly felt the entire house looming around them, as though it were listening in.