Long Lost, стр. 41
Charlie nodded. “Ready.”
They scurried up the central staircase. As they passed, the night-light’s glow struck the portrait of grown-up Margaret Chisholm. Her painted eyes glittered at them before fading back into the darkness.
Evelyn’s room was just as they had left it: hushed and eerie, waiting for someone who had never returned. The Lost One and the pocketknife still lay on the bed.
Fiona dove for the book. “Charlie,” she breathed, opening it. “There’s more of the story.”
“I knew it.” Charlie set the octopus on the bedside table. “It wants to tell us the truth.”
“Maybe,” Fiona whispered back, barely able to push the word past her thudding heartbeat.
They bent over the open book.
After a small funeral attended by only the immediate family and Mrs. Rawlins, and after a similarly swift and private interment in the family’s cemetery plot, the grand brick house entered a period of mourning.
One it never left.
The house stood quietly amid its towering trees as summer’s flowers withered, as oak leaves browned and fell, as frost whitened the surrounding ground. Quiet weeks turned to quiet months, and finally to quiet years.
The man and woman of the house, always fond of travel, spent increasing spans of time away. Eventually they went abroad by ocean liner, taking so many trunks and cases that it was clear they might never return at all.
The neighbors tutted with sympathy. Naturally the place bore too many painful reminders. And if Pearl had been less delicate, her parents would surely have taken her along.
But they did not.
Pearl remained at home, under the care of Mrs. Rawlins. With Mr. Hobbes and Charlie to maintain the place, and Mrs. Rawlins and Mrs. Fisher to run it, the house managed to keep a faint air of its former elegance, or at least of respectability. And yet only a glance at its curtained windows, its empty lawns, and its dozens of unused, unlit rooms told passersby a fragment of the story concealed inside.
As for Pearl, she grew up.
She did it alone but for the paid help that had always surrounded her. She became a young woman, and then a woman who was no longer called young. She left the house less and less, and fewer and fewer guests stepped through its doors.
Her parents passed away while still abroad and were brought home to rest in the family plot, next to Hazel’s stone. Mr. Hobbes passed on, and Mrs. Fisher, and finally Mrs. Rawlins too, until there was no one left who remembered what Pearl had whispered to Mrs. Rawlins after Hazel’s disappearance.
Mrs. Rawlins certainly never forgot it; not for as long as she lived. She never forgot Pearl’s pale face and wide, haunted eyes, or the broken sound of her voice as she whispered, “Mrs. Rawlins . . . the Searcher was a lie. I killed her.”
I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.
The awful words echoed down the remainder of the page.
The next page—one of a very small number now—stayed blank.
Fiona and Charlie sat still.
The ancient mattress sagged beneath them, pressing their shoulders together. Fiona wasn’t sure if the shaking she felt came from Charlie or from her.
Fiona clasped her fingers tight together. No. She wouldn’t believe it. It couldn’t really be Margaret’s fault. Evelyn was the one who had started it all. Evelyn was to blame.
“What do you think it means?” she whispered, glancing at Charlie. “What do you think really happened?”
Charlie nodded at the pocketknife lying on the bedspread. “Maybe that’s why she buried the knife.”
Fiona stiffened. No. No. Margaret couldn’t have done that.
“What about the Searcher?” she asked instead. “She didn’t say it wasn’t real. She said the Searcher was a lie. What do you think she meant?”
Charlie didn’t answer. Which meant he didn’t know.
“We must still be missing something,” Fiona whispered.
Charlie nodded. “Plus, there are still blank pages. This isn’t the end.”
“So . . . whoever is telling the story . . .” Fiona suppressed a small shiver. “How do we get them to finish it?”
Again, Charlie didn’t answer.
“Hey, Charlie?” Fiona asked, after a moment. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because this is a library,” he whispered back.
“But there’s nobody else here.”
Charlie paused for a second before answering, still in a whisper, “We both know that can’t be true.”
They were quiet for another heartbeat.
And then, from somewhere far below, there came the thud of a closing door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fiona and Charlie darted to the bedroom doorway.
The third-floor hallway remained deserted and dark. But from a distance there came another sound, like heavy footsteps stalking across a floor.
Side by side, Charlie gripping the night-light, they padded along the corridor to the stairs.
They had just reached the second-floor walkway when the lights of the central chamber flashed on. Fiona reeled back into the staircase alcove, half blinded. Charlie nearly lost his grip on the night-light.
“Charlie?” shouted a voice. “Charlie!”
“Uh-oh,” Charlie breathed, a look of defeat washing over his face. “Grandma.”
“Charlie Hobbes!” the voice blared.
“You’re sure he’s here?” asked another familiar voice.
Fiona and Charlie crept toward the banister. Below them, in the central chamber, stood Judy Hobbes and Ms. Miranda.
Fiona’s heart cannonballed into her stomach.
“Oh, I’m sure.” Judy stalked across the room toward the grand staircase. “CHARLIE!”
Charlie whirled toward Fiona. “You should stay here,” he whispered. “Don’t waste our chance.”
“What if Ms. Miranda guesses I’m here anyway?” Fiona whispered back.
“Charlie?” Judy’s heavy steps creaked up the stairs. “If you can hear me, you had better answer!”
Charlie shoved the night-light into Fiona’s hands. “Up here, Grandma!” he shouted back. Before Fiona could argue, he took off toward the staircase.
Fiona clicked off the light.
“Charlie Hobbes.” Judy stopped on the third step, her fists on her hips. “Do you know how many rules you’re breaking?”
“Yes, I know.” Charlie climbed very slowly down the steps.
“What were you thinking, breaking into the library after hours?”
“I didn’t break in,” said Charlie. “I just stayed in.”
Judy huffed like a hot teakettle. “Well, why did you stay in?”
Fiona glanced from Judy to Ms. Miranda. The librarian’s sharp brown eyes were fixed on Charlie too.
Charlie reached the foot of the steps