Before Chess knew it, Ms. Morales was pulling up in front of the Greystones’ house.
“You can park in the driveway,” Finn volunteered. “Mom won’t mind. And Rocket stays in the house, so it’s not like he’d come out and make you sick. Because of your allergy.”
“That’s okay,” Ms. Morales said. “I’m already parked. I’ll just stay here and take care of some work email. Natalie can go in with you and help you carry out your suitcases.”
Natalie Mayhew is going to come into my house? Chess wanted to scream.
“Ooo—let’s see if she obeys this time,” Emma whispered in his ear. “Can Natalie put down her phone that long? What’s your prediction?”
Chess watched Natalie. She seemed to be texting one-handed as she shoved her door open. She slid out the door in one smooth move and began walking up the driveway. As far as Chess could tell, she didn’t take her eyes off the phone screen once. She also didn’t stop texting.
“Never mind,” Emma whispered to Chess.
Chess followed Natalie, Finn, and Emma toward the house. He was a little afraid Finn would suggest, Hey! Let’s race like we always do! And then probably Natalie would laugh at the way Chess ran. But even Finn seemed weighted down, his steps sluggish.
Even the cowlicks in Finn’s hair seemed to droop.
When they got to the door, Chess pulled out the key and turned it in the lock. The house already had a closed-up feeling to it, as if it had been empty for days, not just a matter of hours. Three suitcases sat by the door: Chess’s was an ordinary blue, Finn’s had a giant Pokémon logo, and Emma’s was bright red and covered in stickers.
“Really, I can carry my own suitcase,” Finn said, and his voice echoed a little. “Natalie doesn’t have to help.”
“Mom would have made me come in here anyway,” Natalie muttered without looking up from her phone. She leaned back against the wall by the door.
“Why?” Emma asked, as if this was something that deeply fascinated her.
“Don’t worry about it,” Natalie said. “Just take care of your cat. Or dog. Whatever it is.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Finn said. He sounded offended. “Rocket’s a cat!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Natalie said. She kept her head bent over the phone. But Chess could have sworn he saw her eyes dart right to left, her gaze shooting past the phone.
Maybe she really was looking around their house. She just didn’t want them to know she was looking around the house.
Chess wanted to share this observation with Emma, but he couldn’t do that with Natalie standing right there.
“I’ll help you with the kitty litter,” he offered to Emma. “Finn, why don’t you go pet Rocket and keep him company for a few minutes?”
“I’ll have to find him first!” Finn said. He bent down and looked under the couch.
“He’s probably on the window seat in Mom’s room,” Emma said. “That’s where he goes when no one’s home.”
Chess was a little worried that Finn would say, How do you know where Rocket goes when no one’s home? If nobody’s home, nobody’s here to see him! And then Emma and Finn could get into one of those “If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody hears it, does it still make a sound?” discussions. And Natalie Mayhew would just stand there rolling her eyes.
But Finn said, “Okay,” and raced toward the stairs.
Oddly, Natalie followed him.
Chess wanted to call out to her, Hey, who said you were allowed to go upstairs? Who even invited you into our house? But that would have been rude. It would have made it seem like he didn’t trust Natalie.
Was there any reason not to trust Natalie?
Mom trusts Ms. Morales. Mom knew Ms. Morales had a daughter. So . . .
“Are you going to help me or not?” Emma asked, backward-walking toward the kitchen and the door down to the basement.
“Oh, er—yes,” Chess said.
He and Emma were partway down the basement stairs—past the step where he’d stood in darkness the night before, listening to his mother’s phone call—before he figured out what he wanted to say to his sister.
“Do you remember Natalie from last year, when she went to our school?” he asked.
“No,” Emma said.
Chess guessed there was a big difference between him being just one year younger than Natalie and Emma being three years younger.
“Natalie was part of this group of girls . . . they all wore lip gloss,” he began.
“Really?” Emma said, as if he’d just said something like Cheetahs can run up to seventy-five miles per hour or Bats are the only mammals that can fly. “Girls wear makeup in sixth grade? Do girls in your class do that this year?”
“Um . . . some do,” Chess said. “I guess. But it’s not the same as . . .”
Why was he having so much trouble explaining this to Emma?
Emma got ahead of him again, jumping past the last three steps. Now she was almost where Mom had stood the night before.
Maybe Chess should tell Emma what he’d heard Mom say on the phone, instead of trying to explain about Natalie.
But what if that just scares her?
It was scary that Mom had said, “You have to fix this. Or so help me, I will” to some strange person—Joe?—at three a.m. And then just four hours later she was announcing an unexpected business trip.
It was scary that her last words to Chess had been “Don’t forget anything.”
But telling Emma about all that wouldn’t make it any less scary.
Mom’s the one I need to talk to, Chess decided. She’ll call tomorrow morning, I bet. I’ll just have to take the phone somewhere private, away from Emma and Finn. And away from Ms. Morales and Natalie. And then I’ll get Mom to explain.
Chess needed to hear Mom say, “Everything’s under control. Don’t worry.” Maybe he even needed to hear her say, “The police have found those kids in Arizona and they’re perfectly safe. They’re back with their parents, and the kidnappers will be in prison for the rest of their lives. And, really, it was just a false alarm, me thinking those kids had anything to do with us.”
“Can you hold the bag for me?” Emma asked.
She crouched down beside the litter pan, the scoop in one hand, a plastic grocery store bag in the other. Chess walked over and took the bag from her.
“Natalie’s a teenager,” Emma said as she dug the scoop into the litter. “Mom told Finn and me that sometimes kids start acting weird about the time they turn thirteen. Or even just twelve. Like you.”
She dropped the clumps of litter into the bag and jokingly flicked the empty scoop at him.
“I don’t act weird,” Chess said.
“Oh yeah?” Emma challenged, taking the bag from him and tying the handles together so it wouldn’t leak. “Then why are you just standing there all moony, talking about Natalie? Why is it different if she wears lip gloss than if girls in your class wear lip gloss?”
“I’m not—” Chess began.
But just then he heard Finn shout from upstairs:
“Chess! Emma! Get up here now!”
Thirteen
Finn
Finn had really wanted to pet Rocket. It could have made everything at least a little better.
Finn hadn’t even had a chance to tell Chess or Emma about Tyrell saying Mom was a bank robber. Mom would never do that, and even if she had, wouldn’t the police have already caught her? Wouldn’t they have come for Chess, Emma, and Finn, too? Finn was pretty sure that was how things worked.
Still, Finn wouldn’t have minded snuggling with Rocket and whispering into his furry ear, Tyrell says Mom robbed a bank, and Mom went to Chicago, and Chess and Emma and I have to stay with some lady we don’t know, and, oh yeah, some kids with our names were kidnapped, so . . . purr, Rocket, purr! I need to hear you purr!
Finn looked in his and Emma’s and Chess’s rooms, but Rocket was nowhere in sight. He saved Mom’s room for last, because he thought looking there would m
ake him miss her even more. But Emma was right—Rocket loved sleeping on Mom’s cushioned window seat, especially on sunny afternoons.
Finn walked into Mom’s room, and the blinds were drawn, so there wasn’t any sunny spot on the blue cushion by the window. The whole room was dim.
Someone flicked on the light behind him. It was that girl, Natalie. He hadn’t even heard her come upstairs.
“You go walking around in the dark, you’ll run into something and get hurt,” she said. “Then my mom will get mad at me for not protecting you.”
“I can walk around my own house without getting hurt,” Finn said. He waited, because he was pretty sure she was going to say, Oh yeah? And then he’d have to say, Yeah, what’s it to you? Something about Natalie made Finn want to argue with her. And Finn didn’t even like to argue.
But Natalie just gave a half snort and tilted back against the wall. She kept her head down, looking at her phone, and her long brown hair slid forward, hiding her face.
Good, Finn thought. I don’t want her watching me pet Rocket.
He didn’t want her in Mom’s room, either, but he decided to ignore that and focus on finding Rocket.
Rocket wasn’t under Mom’s bed.
Rocket wasn’t curled up in the chair where Mom piled clothes sometimes when even she was too lazy to put things away.
Rocket wasn’t perched on the top of Mom’s dresser, where sometimes he acted like he was a lion or a tiger out in the jungle waiting to pounce on his prey.
“Is that your cat’s tail under the dresser?” Natalie asked in a bored voice.
“Huh?” Finn said, looking down. “Oh. Yeah.”
Rocket’s striped gray-and-black tail curled out from behind the dresser. Finn bent down and saw that Rocket was lying upside down, his paw swiping up toward a cord plugged into the wall behind the dresser.
“Rocket! Don’t play with electrical cords,” Finn said, reaching for the cat.
But Rocket seemed to think Finn was playing, too, and batted his paw at Finn instead. The cord caught on Rocket’s claw and whipped toward Finn.
“Is that—? Oh no!” Finn said. “Mom forgot her phone charger! How’s she going to call and text us when her phone dies?”
“I bet she has a backup charger,” Natalie said, sounding more bored than ever. “Or she can buy one.”
“No, she—” Finn was not going to explain to Natalie that this was Mom’s special charger, with a sticker on it from each kid: Finn’s was a grinning cat; Emma’s, a pink robot; and Chess’s, a tiny zigzag like a Harry Potter scar. “We have to mail it to her! Overnight!”
Finn unplugged the charger and tugged on the other end of the cord, which went under the back of the dresser.
The cord did not come snaking out. It seemed to be caught inside the dresser.
Finn switched to yanking on the bottom drawer. If he could move that out of the way, he could see where the cord went.
The drawer slipped out and sagged toward the floor. This drawer held Mom’s sweaters, neatly folded and stacked. Finn tilted sideways, his eyes even with the top of the drawer, so he could see the cord winding down from the back of the drawer and into the middle pile of sweaters. He shoved the top sweater away—and there, hidden beneath it, still attached to the cord, was something that almost made Finn’s heart stop.
It was Mom’s phone. She’d left it behind, too.
Fourteen
Emma
Emma took the stairs three at a time, right alongside Chess.
“We’re coming, Finn!” she yelled. “What’s wrong?”
Emma and Chess were only at the top of the basement stairs; all she could hear from Finn was, “Because Mom . . . Mom . . .”
Emma raced through the kitchen and then sprinted through the living room to the next flight of stairs. Rocket came galloping toward them from the opposite direction, streaking down the stairs and then around the corner toward the basement.
“That’s not good,” Emma muttered.
“Cats spook easy,” Chess said. “And Rocket—”
Emma stopped listening and lunged for the stairs. She saw Finn and Natalie in the doorway to Mom’s room. They appeared to be playing tug-of-war with Natalie’s phone—had Finn tried to take it away from her?
That didn’t seem like Finn.
Then Finn turned the phone to the side and Emma caught a glimpse of the case: hard plastic with a crookedly drawn heart and the words “We love you, Mommy.”
The phone they were fighting over wasn’t Natalie’s.
“You’ve got Mom’s phone?” Emma said, screeching to a halt when she reached the landing. “So Mom’s home?”
“No,” Finn said. “She left her phone in her drawer. Where she never leaves it. So who put it there? And who just texted us pretending to be her?”
“I tried to tell him,” Natalie said breathlessly. “She’s probably texting from her laptop or an iPad or something like that. Some other device. You tell him. Maybe he’ll believe you. He tried to bite me.”
“That wasn’t my teeth, that was the cat’s claw,” Finn said with great dignity. “You shouldn’t have tried to grab the phone away from Rocket and me. Emma? Chess? What’s going on?”
Natalie made a sweeping gesture with her arm, the kind that clearly said, Be my guest. You talk sense into him.
“I . . . I guess Mom could text from her laptop,” Emma said, trying to remember if she’d ever seen Mom do that. It seemed possible. “But—”
“Mom would never leave her phone behind on purpose,” Chess said firmly from behind Emma. “She wouldn’t forget it, either.”
Emma wanted to cheer, Go, Chess! He might have been acting kind of moony and weird about Natalie down in the basement, but now it was almost like he’d sprung in front of Finn, put out his arms protectively, and shouted, Don’t you make fun of my brother! He knows what he’s talking about!
And Chess wasn’t just talking about Mom’s phone. He was talking about the crooked heart and the “We love you, Mommy” on the case, too.
Mom wouldn’t forget that, either.
“Something’s wrong,” Emma said. She reached out and grabbed Finn by the shoulders, pulling him closer. She kept both arms around him, with her face nestled against his messy hair. So now it was all the Greystone kids together facing off against Natalie. Three against one.
Natalie held up her hands in an “I surrender” pose. But, oddly, she didn’t lean back against the wall or mutter “Never mind” or let her hair hide her face while she did nothing but text. She peered directly at the three Greystone kids, with a look in her brown eyes that might have even been kindness. Or . . .
Pity? Emma thought.
“Look,” Natalie said softly, her hands still up in the air. “Usually when my mom tells some friend—or acquaintance—that she’ll babysit her kids for a few days, no questions asked, it’s because . . . well, you know. Sometimes parents fight. And sometimes a woman needs to go away, while things cool down. So she can work things out. And . . . cell phones have GPS, and sometimes even when you think you’ve disabled it, well . . . Haven’t you heard your parents fighting? Don’t you see—”
“Our dad is dead,” Chess said flatly.
“It happened eight years ago,” Emma said.
“Oh, sorry,” Natalie said, and Emma liked that she didn’t make it all fake and dramatic, I feel so bad for you! What a terrible thing! It was more like Natalie was sorry, but she was distracted from that by trying to figure everything out with this new information.
That was how Emma liked to deal with information, too.
“Then I guess in your mom’s case,” Natalie went on, “it’d be a boyfriend who—”
“Mom doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Emma said.
“Are you sure?” Natalie asked, and it was almost like she was taunting Emma and apologizing, all at once. “Maybe she just hasn’t wanted to introduce you to him yet. Maybe she goes out at night after you’re asleep, and—”
“Mom does
n’t go anywhere at night but the Boring Room!” Finn roared.
“The what?” Natalie asked.
“Her office,” Chess said tonelessly. “In the basement.”
Natalie took a step back.
“Okay, look,” she said. “Do any of you know your mom’s code, to unlock the phone? I think maybe there’s a way to see what other devices the texting is linked to, and then at least the little guy will see that she really did send those texts, and there’s nothing wrong. Or . . .” Natalie winced and finished in a hurried mumble, “At least, there’s nothing wrong that she isn’t trying to fix.”
“I don’t know any code,” Finn said.
Emma looked back to find Chess shaking his head silently.
“Emma?” Natalie said.
Emma didn’t say anything.
Finn whimpered.
“All right! All right! I know the code!” Emma admitted. She glared at Natalie. “But you do not get to watch me type it in. And you don’t type anything on Mom’s phone we can’t see. I don’t want you changing anything. And you just look at the texting.”
“Sure,” Natalie said.
Finn slipped the phone into Emma’s hand. Emma could have sworn she felt the crooked heart against her palm, even though it was just a Sharpie drawing on plastic and perfectly flat.
Mom loves us, Emma told herself. Mom would never go off without us—or her phone, to link to us—without a good reason. Either Natalie’s right, or something weird happened and Mom’s in danger, or . . .
Emma couldn’t think about the rest of that sentence. She kept one hand on Finn’s shoulder and used the other to tilt the phone out of everyone else’s sight and type in Mom’s passcode: 111360. The reason Emma remembered it so well was because she knew where it came from. One time she and Mom had been talking about numbers, and Mom had said that they were symbolic. Three ones in a row, she said, always reminded her of Chess and Emma and Finn, not just the number 111.
“But the three of you together add up to a way bigger number,” she’d said.
“Like three hundred sixty?” Emma had answered. “That’s two squared times three squared times ten. And there are three hundred sixty degrees in a circle. And the line that makes a circle goes on and on and on, without any end.”
Greystone Secrets #1 Page 5