A clue? Emma thought. And she wanted so strongly to believe that, that she left the light on and circled around to the other side of the desk. She pulled out the drawer, and the paper got stuck, smashed into accordion-style pleats. Emma gently eased the paper out, flipped it over, and smoothed it out.
The paper was a fuzzy copy of the back of Mom’s phone, a reproduction of the crooked heart drawn on it. But it was only the heart; the words “We love you, Mommy” didn’t show up.
Emma wanted to cry all over again. Nothing made sense. Why would Mom have made a copy of that drawing when she always had her phone—with the original drawing on the case—right with her?
Except Mom didn’t have the phone with her now.
She doesn’t have this copy of that drawing, either.
Emma started to shove the picture back into the drawer. But then Emma saw what had been hidden in the drawer beneath the paper: Mom’s work computer. The one she always used in the Boring Room.
So Mom went on a business trip and she didn’t take her business computer with her? Or—any computer? Emma thought. She left every single one of her computers at home?
It wasn’t exactly foolproof logic, but Emma was pretty sure she could make a deduction: Mom wasn’t on a business trip at all.
Eighteen
Chess
The sun was still shining brightly when Chess stepped outside. That surprised him. It felt like the whole world should have gone dark while they were inside the house, like the sun should never come out again.
This was a feeling Chess remembered from when Dad died.
Mom isn’t dead, Chess told himself. I’m sure she’s fine. And we have all her computers now. So we’re going to find her. And everything will be okay.
Still, Chess felt like his feet got ahead of him as he climbed down the porch stairs. His suitcase pulled him off balance, and his legs just didn’t feel sturdy. It didn’t help that Finn kept trying to walk so close beside him that the two of them might as well have been glued together.
It also didn’t help that he could see how pale and drawn Emma’s and Finn’s faces were, or how they were weaving and stumbling just as badly as Chess.
“Don’t say anything about any of this to my mom,” Natalie hissed to Chess, Emma, and Finn as she turned to lock the front door. Evidently she’d taken the key from Chess while he wasn’t paying attention. Evidently now she was slipping the key back into his hand.
Chess felt like there could be all sorts of things happening that he might have missed.
“Why shouldn’t we tell your mom?” Emma asked Natalie.
Chess was aware enough to see Natalie bite her lip.
“Mom will go crazy,” Natalie said. “She’ll call social services and the police and the FBI and the TV news.”
“Don’t we want the police and the FBI helping us?” Finn asked, so innocently he practically chirped the words. “Don’t we want grown-ups who know what they’re doing finding Mom?”
Natalie shot a glance at Chess over Finn’s head.
“Your mom said she wrote a letter that’s just for you,” Natalie said. “Don’t you want to see that for yourself before anybody else sticks their nose in your business?”
Chess didn’t know why Natalie kept looking at him like that. He kind of wanted to say, Can’t you tell I’m not really that much older than Emma and Finn? Can’t you tell that when I saw that text message from Mom, I went back to being a four-year-old again?
Chess, Emma, and Finn tripped down the driveway toward Ms. Morales’s SUV. Somehow Natalie got ahead of them. She guided them into putting their suitcases into the back of the car. Then she yanked open both doors on the passenger side, one for her and one for the other three kids.
“That was stupid, Mom,” Natalie complained as she slipped into the front seat. “Why didn’t you pick up the suitcases before you picked up the kids? The bags were right beside the front door—you wouldn’t have sneezed too much. And now these kids are homesick and missing their mommy, and it’s all your fault!”
Chess helped Finn up into the SUV, into the middle row of seats again. Chess and Emma followed, as Ms. Morales answered Natalie, “For your information, young lady, I was working right up until I had to pick you up from school. Would you have preferred taking the bus?”
“No! Why would you even say that?” Natalie snarled back. “You don’t understand anything! I’ve got all this homework to do, and I just had to spend a whole hour helping that little boy find his lovey so he could sleep tonight. . . .”
Chess noticed that Finn was clutching a teddy bear that was missing an ear and an eye because he and his friend Tyrell liked to use it as a football. It wasn’t Finn’s “lovey.”
“Natalie told me to bring this,” Finn whispered in Chess’s ear. “As a prop.”
“If you spent less time texting, you’d have plenty of time to do your homework,” Ms. Morales told Natalie, even as she started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Anyway, you weren’t there an hour. It was barely twenty minutes.”
“Right, and you still thought you had to come in and hurry us up?” Natalie moaned. “Mom, you are so embarrassing!”
And then, while Ms. Morales was peering right and left, preparing to turn onto the next street, Natalie spun around and winked at Chess, Emma, and Finn.
Oh, Chess thought. Is she fighting with her mom on purpose? To distract attention from Finn’s teary face and from the fact that all three of us are just numb and clumsy and stupid right now?
Ms. Morales made the turn, and then Chess could see her eyes peering back at them in the rearview mirror.
“Kids, I’m sorry that my daughter is being so rude,” she said. “I promise, we’ll make this a fun night for you. We’ll order pizza, and you can have any kind you want. And, well, Natalie says she’s outgrown it, but we still have a trampoline in our backyard, and . . .”
Chess’s ears buzzed; he felt too dizzy to listen well. He kind of grunted when Ms. Morales paused and it seemed like she needed an answer, but he had no idea what he was agreeing to. Or disagreeing with. A grunt could mean anything.
And Mom’s text messages? Could those mean something different than what we think, too?
He needed to see her phone again, to force himself to read the horrible words again. Maybe he’d just imagined them. Maybe he’d find an April Fools! or a Psych! Got you! or a Hahaha! Just kidding! right below.
But they’d stuffed Mom’s phone and charger and all the computers into the suitcases, and Chess would have had to take his seat belt off and climb over the back row to reach them.
He knew that wouldn’t go over very well with Ms. Morales. He didn’t know if Natalie was right that they shouldn’t tell Ms. Morales what they’d found. But he felt overwhelmed at the thought of saying anything. Even uh-huh or hunh-uh seemed beyond him now.
How well do Ms. Morales and Mom even know each other, if none of us remember Mom talking about her? Chess wondered. What if Ms. Morales just decides that Mom is a bad person?
He didn’t quite understand what Natalie meant when she talked about Ms. Morales calling social services, but he could see why it would be a problem to call the police. What if they thought Mom was a bad person for leaving her kids behind and saying she was never coming back? What if they tracked her down just to arrest her?
Some time must have passed—fifteen minutes? Twenty?—and then Ms. Morales aimed the SUV into a long driveway that wound up a hill. The house at the top of that hill was easily three or four times the size of the Greystones’ house, and Chess got a lump in his throat thinking about how Mom always called their house “a cozy Cape Cod.” She had a way of saying those words that made Chess feel a little sorry for anyone who didn’t live there.
“Is that your house, Natalie?” Finn asked, gaping at the mansion ahead of them. “It’s enormous!”
Maybe he’d been chattering away all along—Finn talked whether he was happy, sad, worried, or (sometimes) even sound asleep.
“Yeah, Mom got the house in the divorce,” Natalie said bitterly.
“Natalie!” Ms. Morales scolded. “Stop being so difficult! You don’t have to tell the whole world everything!”
Beside Chess, Emma let out a sound that could have been a snort or a nervous giggle.
Oh. It was kind of funny—or ironic, anyway—that Natalie was getting in trouble for telling too much, when really she and the Greystones was keeping a gigantic secret.
They took the suitcases inside, and Ms. Morales pointed out where everyone would sleep. Chess couldn’t keep the rooms straight—maybe Ms. Morales and Natalie had so many bedrooms that they could each use a different room every night of the week if they wanted.
“I’ll give the kids a tour of the rest of the house while you’re ordering the pizza,” Natalie told her mother. Then, as she shepherded them down a hallway, she said in a softer voice, “Mom likes to eat dinner early and go to bed early. Because she gets up at five a.m. to exercise. So we’ll meet at ten p.m. in her office, where she won’t be able to hear us.” She made her voice loud again, loud enough to carry down the hall to her mother. “And this is Mom’s office!”
Chess thought time would drag until they could finally meet and pull out the computers. But evidently weird things happened when you were feeling completely numb and stupid. Ms. Morales made them play on the trampoline, and then they ate and did homework, and then she made them play Wii for a while, and then she made them play a long, boring game of Monopoly right before bedtime. And during all those times, Chess would just be sitting there thinking about Mom, and suddenly realize half an hour had gone by.
Finally they’d all brushed their teeth and Ms. Morales had tucked the younger two into bed and said to Chess, “Are you like Natalie, saying you’re too old for a bedtime story?” and he shot out a panicked “Yes!”—and she left him alone.
And then it was time to creep back down the stairs, clutching the laptop that had been shoved into his suitcase. He was joined in the dark hallway by Emma and Finn, each bearing laptops of their own. Emma also held Mom’s phone.
“Don’t giggle,” Chess whispered, because normally both of them would have. But now they looked up at him, their faces shrouded in shadows, and he could tell that tonight neither of them found anything amusing. Chess switched his whispered instructions to, “Don’t worry. We’re going to find out everything.”
They tiptoed down to Ms. Morales’s office. Natalie stood in the shadowy doorway and waved them in.
“Everybody’s here?” she asked. “And you’ve got everything? Good. Now I can shut the door and turn on the light.”
The four of them stood blinking in the sudden brightness. Chess’s eyes took forever to adjust.
“Are you sure your mom won’t hear us in here?” Emma asked, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She’d lost her ponytail rubber band on the trampoline, and her hair had puffed out again like so much dandelion fuzz. Chess was torn between wanting to smooth her hair down himself and wanting to snarl at Natalie, Don’t you dare say anything about Emma’s hair being a mess! She’s in fourth grade! Fourth graders don’t have to care about stuff like that!
But Natalie was moving briskly toward her mother’s desk, a piece of furniture so vast and shiny that it seemed like it might have its own gravitational pull.
“I’m sure,” she told Emma. “This room is soundproofed.”
“Soundproofed? Why?” Finn asked, his eyes wide. “What does your mom do? I mean, besides making big pictures of her own face.”
He pointed behind the desk, and Chess noticed a whole pile of signs leaned against the wall. They all held the words “For sale!” or “Sold!” along with Ms. Morales’s picture.
“She’s a Realtor,” Natalie said, as if that was completely unimportant. “She sells houses. At least, that’s the job we can talk about.”
“Does she have another job you can’t talk about?” Emma asked. “Can you tell us?”
Natalie tilted her head to the side, which made her hair stream down like silk.
“We told you everything our mom does,” Finn said.
“Okay,” Natalie agreed. “On the side, Mom’s a private investigator. That’s what she calls it. I call it a professional snoop. My grandmother called it being a busybody. Mom spies on men who are—” She glanced at Finn. “Let’s just say they’re not very good husbands. Mom gives the wives proof, so they have the upper hand in the divorce.”
Chess thought about what Natalie had assumed about his mom—that she had a bad boyfriend, and that that was why she’d had to go away.
Mom didn’t have a boyfriend. Chess would have known.
But she was talking on the phone to some man last night, he remembered. Joe?
Mom had not sounded like she was talking to a boyfriend. More like . . . a coworker? An employee? A boss?
Mom didn’t have any coworkers, or employees or bosses, either. And she never used such a surly tone with clients. She was always nice to them.
She was always nice to everyone.
Chess saw that Emma was peering at the screen of Mom’s phone.
“Can I—?” he whispered.
She handed it over, and Chess opened the call history. If he could find out who Mom had talked to last night, that would be a huge clue.
But the call history was empty.
So were Mom’s contacts.
So were all her emails and text messages—except for the automatic ones she’d set up for Ms. Morales.
Natalie had stopped talking and was watching Chess stare at his mom’s phone. Chess gave the phone back to Emma.
“Let’s talk about our mom,” he said, and he didn’t care that now he sounded rude. He slid the HP laptop he’d been carrying onto the desk. “This is the computer that Mom uses the most often. She doesn’t usually let us use it to do homework or play games, so it’s probably the one she’d write a letter on, if she didn’t want us to see that letter until . . .” He had to gulp. “Until next week.”
“Okay, you should start with that one,” Natalie agreed.
“This is the computer Mom lets us use for homework and stuff,” Emma said, putting the battered Dell laptop beside his and opening the screen.
“And this one’s from the Boring Room,” Finn said, adding the third laptop.
They powered up all three of the computers. Chess felt a gurgle of tension in his stomach like before a huge test, only much, much worse.
“How about if I look through your mom’s phone while you three—” Natalie began.
“You stay away from Mom’s phone!” Emma said, hugging it to her chest.
Didn’t she know there was nothing on the phone worth seeing?
Chess didn’t say anything.
“Okay, okay,” Natalie murmured. Still, she hovered behind the three Greystones. It made Chess even more nervous.
Finn elbowed Chess.
“Do you know Mom’s password for this laptop?” he asked. “Or Emma, do you?”
“No,” Chess and Emma said together.
“Then I can’t see anything,” Finn said dejectedly. His shoulders slumped, and he looked like he might start crying again.
“Next time we go back to your house, we can look for your mom’s password,” Natalie said in the fake cheerful voice people used with toddlers. “Maybe she has it written down somewhere.”
He’s eight, not three! Chess wanted to yell at her. Stop being so . . . so . . .
“Patronizing” was the word he was looking for. But maybe he also meant stop being so helpful. Natalie was acting like this was her problem, too. And it wasn’t. Now that she’d shown them the soundproof room, why didn’t she just go back upstairs with her mom?
“Here, Finn,” Chess said, stepping back. “Why don’t you stand between Emma and me, and you can go back and forth between looking at both of these computers with us. You might see something we miss.”
He shut down the laptop from the Boring Room and maneuvered Finn between him
and Emma. Oddly, Emma didn’t move to the side to make room. She stood frozen, staring at her laptop screen.
Chess followed her gaze. She’d reached the desktop, with the background picture of all three kids at Halloween last year: Finn as a clown, Emma as a ninja, and Chess as a skeleton. Finn and Emma were totally cracking up, but Chess’s face was hidden behind his mask. Though, actually, the image of all three kids was largely hidden, because they had so many files and games and shortcut links strewn about the desktop. It would be hard to find anything in that mess.
Then Chess saw that Emma had the cursor hovering over a file marked “FOR THE KIDS.”
“Was this here before?” Emma asked.
“I never saw it,” Finn said, but his voice was so hushed and scared he sounded like someone else.
Chess just shook his head.
Emma clicked the mouse. Chess started to object—did he want to warn his brother and sister that maybe he should read the file first; maybe he should protect them from whatever it was going to say?
A box appeared. Emma hadn’t opened the file. She was only checking its properties.
“Mom saved this at four a.m.,” Emma whispered. “Just this morning.”
“So open it!” Natalie cried behind them.
Emma looked back over her shoulder.
“I—I’m afraid,” she admitted.
Emma, afraid? Emma was fearless. Emma could face down math problems that made Chess’s head hurt. And one time when she was only a third grader, Chess had seen her wade into a pile of sixth graders who were fighting, and she’d screamed, “Don’t hit the little guy!” And then the kid who was being bullied just walked away.
But this was scarier than that. Chess himself felt like he’d forgotten how to breathe.
“We open it together,” he suggested. “All three of us.”
He put his hand over Emma’s, and Finn put his hand on top.
Chess thought maybe it was actually Finn who had the courage to push down.
The file opened, and Chess blinked the words on the screen into focus:
Greystone Secrets #1 Page 7