Long Lost, стр. 37
“Ma’am?” Mrs. Rawlins called softly. “May I have a word?”
Minutes later, the girls’ mother and the housekeeper climbed the stairs together, with tight lips and anxious eyes.
Mrs. Rawlins stood guard outside the bedroom door. Pixie lay at her feet.
When Pearl’s mother emerged, her face was so bloodless it might have been sculpted of snow.
“Please call Father Carson,” she told Mrs. Rawlins. “I must speak to my husband.”
That evening, a long, murmured conversation tinged the silence of the house. Father Carson, Dr. O’Malley, and Mr. Bronty, the family’s longtime attorney, remained locked in the study with the girls’ parents until nearly midnight.
The door opened at last, sending the doctor and the attorney hurrying out of the house. Father Carson lingered, paying a brief visit to the quiet bedroom at the end of the third-floor hall. Then he too rushed out into the dark.
“Thank you, Mrs. Rawlins,” said the man of the house, stepping out of the study to meet her in the great room. “You should retire for the night.”
“Are you sure, sir?” Mrs. Rawlins asked. “I’m glad to wait up. I could bring a fresh pot of coffee or tea. . . .”
“No. Thank you.” He clasped her on the shoulder. “We’ll never be able to thank you for your kindness. And your loyalty.”
Mrs. Rawlins still didn’t depart. “Pearl. The poor child. Will she be all right?”
“It’s the grief and shock of it all.” Her employer shook his head. “She hardly knows what she’s saying. After some more rest, we shall see. Now, Mrs. Rawlins.” He managed the semblance of a smile. “Off to bed with you. I insist.”
Mrs. Rawlins nodded.
There came the snap of a turning bolt as her employer withdrew into the study once more. Mrs. Rawlins turned toward the back staircase. But before departing, she caught the click of a lifting earpiece, and a low voice speaking into the telephone.
By morning, the joyful news had spread through half the town.
Hazel had come home.
“What?” Fiona whispered to herself, just a second before Charlie muttered, “What?”
They glanced at each other and whipped to the next page.
Of course the poor girl was exhausted.
She had been out in the elements for days, scrounging for food, sleeping in the cold and damp. It was no wonder she had a fever, or that she looked so thin and worn. For the time being, she would be shut in her room, tucked into bed, fed by Mrs. Fisher’s broths and visited frequently by Dr. O’Malley.
All of this news the family put out themselves.
The other statements that spread through the town—that Hazel had run away from home just to give her parents an awful fright, that she was a reckless and spoiled girl who had wasted everybody’s time, and that she was lucky the Searcher hadn’t taken her after all—spread on their own, like seeds from a weed, growing faster and stronger than the tended plants around them.
Several days passed. The hush that filled the grand brick house changed only slightly, from one of shock to one of illness and worry.
A new rumor began to travel the town: Hazel’s fever, contracted during those long days and nights of exposure, had worsened. The doctor’s car was seen in the drive of the quiet brick house at least once each day. To prevent contagion and too much excitement, only he, the girl’s parents, and Mrs. Rawlins were allowed into Hazel’s room.
Charlie Hobbes tried to visit her once, creeping up the stairs with an eagle feather and a bright-winged moth in a jar, but he was caught and turned away by the stalwart Mrs. Rawlins.
“Can you at least give these to Hazel?” he asked, passing over the gifts.
Mrs. Rawlins sighed and held out her hands. She gave Charlie a look that was softer than usual. “I will,” she promised. “You go on now.”
Charlie hurried back down the stairs. The gift he would have most liked to bring to Hazel was her own pocketknife, still hidden in the soil beneath the oak tree. But it was Pearl who had hidden it, and he knew better than to get himself into the middle of a battle between the sisters. Besides, Pearl would surely return it eventually.
This is what Charlie told himself as he stepped out of the house onto the back lawn. He was only a moment too late to see Mrs. Rawlins opening a third-floor window and releasing a moth into the June air.
Another day ticked by.
The house, impossibly, grew quieter still, as though every door and wall and window was holding its breath. One more bit of news slipped across its threshold.
Hazel had succumbed to the fever, and died.
And died. And died. And died.
The words repeated again and again, to the bottom of the page.
Fiona flipped forward, not even checking to see if Charlie had kept up this time. The rest of the pages were still blank.
“So . . . it was a lie, right?” Fiona whispered to Charlie, her throat tight. “Hazel didn’t really come home at all.”
Charlie shook his head, still staring down at the pages. “The family just pretended she did.”
“And they got everybody else to pretend, too. But why?”
Charlie didn’t answer. Which meant he didn’t know.
Fiona brushed her fingers over the dusty bed. The bed where Evelyn Chisholm hadn’t died after all.
“Hey,” she said, barely able to believe the unscientific things heading out of her own mouth. “What if the book only tells the whole story if it trusts the person reading it? What if that’s why we found it in the first place, and that’s why it’s showing us more of the story now? Because it thinks we’ll understand?”
Charlie looked thoughtful. “That’s an interesting theory,” he said. “And if someone, or something, can move the book, it makes sense that it could alter the book too.”
They stood side by side in the hush for a moment.
“What do we do now?” Fiona asked, thinking aloud. “Do we take the book with us, or—”
“I think we