Dearest Chess, Emma, and Finn,
I love you so much, and that is why I had to do this. I’m sure you have questions, and this letter will tell you everything you need to know. Only the three of you will be able to read it.
Eagerly Chess moved on to the next paragraph. But it was all gibberish.
He raked his finger down the touchpad, scrolling through the rest of the letter—page after page of more gibberish.
After the first three sentences, nothing in the rest of the letter made any sense.
Nineteen
Finn
Finn stopped trying to read at the start of the second paragraph.
Those must be all third-grade words, he thought. At least third grade. Good thing Emma and Chess are older than me and will know what they mean.
But Emma and Chess were squinting harder and harder and harder.
“Is it . . . code?” Emma finally asked. “Or a cipher? I forget which is which—one is where each individual letter or number or symbol stands for a different letter, and one is where the whole word is replaced by a different word, which you can only figure out if you have the key to the code. Or the cipher. Whichever.”
Finn could tell that Emma was doing what he did sometimes, where she was so upset she was just talking and talking and talking to keep herself from thinking about how upset she was.
If Emma was rambling on like that, she didn’t understand either.
“Chess?” Finn whispered, tugging on his brother’s arm.
“Mom wanted us to know about this,” Chess said. He swayed a little. “But . . . I guess . . . she must not have wanted us to know yet. Not right away.”
“And she thinks a little thing like a code is going to hold us back?” Emma asked indignantly.
That sounded more like the real Emma.
“Yeah!” Finn said. He reached up and patted Emma’s head, and that gave him confidence again. There was a brilliant brain underneath all Emma’s bushy hair. “Even I know something about codes. We talked about this at school. You always look for the e’s.”
“You mean, you look for the most common symbol or letter in the code, and you can assume that that symbol stands for e, because e is the most common letter in English,” Emma corrected. “And then you can work through the other common letters—s? t? r? We could always look it up, the use of all letters in order.”
Finn was pretty sure that Emma was a genius. Maybe Chess was, too.
For all Finn knew, Natalie also might have an IQ that was as huge as her house.
He felt better already.
“So what do you think that first word is?” he asked, pointing at the screen.
“Um, Finn, this might take a while,” Chess said faintly.
He stared at the screen. Emma stared at the screen. Finn looked back to see what Natalie was doing.
She was staring at her phone.
“I bet there are codebreaker apps,” Natalie said, her fingers flying across the surface of her phone. “We could plug in that whole letter to some special site, and then—”
“Do we really want Mom’s letter floating around out there on the internet?” Chess asked. Then he looked back at Natalie, too, and it was like the big kids were talking without even using words.
Usually Finn hated feeling left out and too young, but now he wanted to cheer, Hurray! The three of you are going to take care of everything! You’re even better than grown-ups!
Natalie stopped typing on her phone.
“Oh, maybe not,” she said. “I guess we would need to know what that letter says before we know if it’s safe to use the internet to solve it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Finn said, and he hoped the other three would laugh.
They didn’t.
Emma and Chess went back to staring at the computer screen. Natalie shoved in beside them, which knocked Finn away, putting him at the wrong angle even to see the screen.
“I want to help, too,” Finn said, pushing against Emma, which knocked her against Natalie.
“Hey!” Natalie said. “I’m trying to focus here!”
Chess looked down at Finn with a very Chess-like expression. Only Mom and Chess had ever looked at Finn that way: as though they really saw him, and understood that even though Finn could be loud and noisy and silly, he wasn’t just loud and noisy and silly. In fact, Finn was sure that he had a quiet, still, serious part inside himself somewhere. Maybe only Mom and Chess could see it.
And now, with Mom gone . . .
“Finn, maybe we should take turns working on this code,” Chess said. “Emma and I will start, and you and Natalie can look at Mom’s work computer. See if there’s anything strange on there.”
“But that’s just ’voices and stuff like that,” Finn complained.
“Voices?” Natalie asked.
“Invoices,” Chess corrected. “The bills she sends to her clients. Mom said she was going to Chicago. Maybe you can find out which clients she has in Chicago.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Natalie was using her fake voice again, the one that made Finn feel like she thought he was stupid.
“That’s not as important as the letter!” Finn protested. “You’re just trying to . . .”
Shove me away. Get rid of me.
That was what Finn wanted to say. But then Emma reached down and squeezed his hand twice, before giving him a nudge in the side as she looked up at Natalie with narrowed eyes.
And Finn understood.
Emma and Chess aren’t trying to get rid of me, Finn thought. They’re trying to get rid of Natalie.
Finn felt like a genius himself.
“Oh, all right,” he said resignedly, as if he were still a little angry.
Natalie squeezed her lips together, like she was angry, too. But she moved over beside Finn and clicked the touchpad a few times.
“Your mom has ten customers in Illinois,” she said as a grid appeared on the screen. “What do you bet all those cities on that list are suburbs of Chicago? I think I’ve heard of Evanston before. But . . . Buffalo Grove? Northbrook? Elmhurst? Wheaton?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Finn asked. “I’ve never been to Chicago!”
Natalie let the cursor hover over the list of cities. A moment passed. Natalie wasn’t even looking at the list now: She had her neck craned to look back at the code on the computer screen in front of Emma and Chess.
“Maybe we should look at the websites Mom made for all those clients,” Finn said. “You’ll have to help me. Mom never lets me use this computer by myself because she’s scared I’ll mess something up.”
Was that too obvious?
Natalie sighed and clicked on a link at the far right side of the grid. A website came up advertising a landscaping company. Finn scrolled through pictures of perfect yards, the kind grown-ups had when they didn’t have kids. None of them looked like very good places to play.
Natalie gazed back at Emma and Chess’s computer again.
“That’s the logo my mom uses on all her websites,” Finn said, pointing to a tiny purple butterfly at the bottom of the page. “She likes butterflies because . . . because . . . what’s the reason, Emma?”
“Rebirth,” Emma said absently. She didn’t take her eyes off her own computer screen. “Metamorphosis. Second chances.”
“Yeah,” Finn said. “She says it’s not just because they’re pretty.”
“Huh,” Natalie said.
What did Finn have to do to get Natalie’s attention?
He clicked out of that website and tried one for a bakery.
“Oh, look,” he said. “Don’t these pictures make you want a doughnut? What kind do you think they are, Natalie? Maple bacon? That’s my favorite.”
If someone wanted to distract Finn, food was always a good topic. Maybe Natalie was the same way.
But Natalie barely flicked her eyes toward the doughnut pictures before turning back toward Emma and Chess’s computer.
“And, see, here’s
my mom’s butterfly logo again,” Finn said, reaching the bottom of the bakery homepage. “She made this one a little more blue, and . . .”
And it wasn’t at all the same butterfly logo as on the landscaper’s page. But Mom had done both of these websites, hadn’t she? Had she changed her logo and not even told the kids?
It was hardly the same as going off on a business trip and then setting up an automatic text to arrive a week later saying she was never coming back. That was just . . . unbelievable, in connection with Mom. But usually she was so predictable that even changing her logo seemed strange.
Finn clicked back to the landscaper’s site. He zoomed in on both butterfly images.
It wasn’t just the color that was different—so were the number and pattern of the dots. And the shape of the wings.
Finn made copies of both of the butterfly logos and pasted them into a new document.
He began opening other websites, one after the other, whether they were for businesses in Illinois or not. He copied and pasted every new butterfly logo he found into his own document.
Finally, when the variations just started repeating again and again and again, he stopped. He went back to the screen holding every single version he’d found: seven different kinds of butterflies, each one a different color. He zoomed in as close as he could on each butterfly without making everything go blurry.
The dots on the butterflies’ wings weren’t just in different places on each logo. They also contained patterns of their own, intricately drawn lines and angles.
Why go to the bother of drawing lines and angles inside a dot, if those patterns weren’t going to show up unless you enlarged the dot again and again and again?
Suddenly Finn knew why. He tugged on Emma’s arm.
“Everyone, look!” he shouted. “I think this is a code, too!”
Twenty
Emma
Emma was stuck.
She was used to knowing answers instantly. She got in trouble for that sometimes in math class when the teacher would say, “Emma, honey, you have to show your work.” And Emma would say, “The work was, I looked at the problem, and I knew the answer. How am I supposed to show that?”
Sometimes teachers told her she shouldn’t say that in front of the other kids.
But the endless stream of letters and symbols and numbers in Mom’s letter made no sense to Emma at all.
Not being able to understand made her feel itchy and weird and not like herself.
Or maybe she was already feeling itchy and weird and not like herself, because of Mom being away and saying she wasn’t coming back.
Maybe Emma had felt itchy and weird and not like herself ever since . . . ever since she’d come home from school the day before and found out that kids with her and her brothers’ names and ages had been kidnapped.
What if Mom was actually kidnapped? Emma wondered. What if this is actually a ransom note, and we’re never going to be able to rescue Mom because we’re never going to be able to figure it out?
It was a relief when Emma realized Finn was tugging and tugging and tugging on her arm, and shouting, “Would you listen? You have to look at this! I think it’s a code, too! And there’s not as much to it, so maybe it’s easier to figure out!”
Of course Finn didn’t know anything about codes. Emma had gone through a phase last fall where she’d checked out a lot of books from the library about codes and codebreaking, and she hadn’t been able to get Finn or Chess to show any interest at all in writing secret messages back and forth in lemon juice, or substituting numbers for letters, or even using a mask decoder, which was the simplest thing of all. No one she knew at school was interested, either. So it had fallen to Mom to be the one Emma wrote notes to, saying things like, “H KNUD XNT.” And when Mom wrote back, “J MPWF ZPV, UPP,” Emma had been delighted, knowing they were both saying “I love you,” using the same kind of code, just going in a different direction through the alphabet.
Oh oh oh.
Something amazing occurred to Emma. It was nowhere near as wonderful as figuring out Mom’s letter would be, but now she felt all tingly, as well as itchy and weird.
Did I start checking out those code books on my own? Or was Mom the first one who picked up a code book and handed it to me and said, “I think you would like this”?
It was hard to remember exactly. Mom took Emma and Chess and Finn to the library a lot, and Emma always checked out a huge stack of books. Sometimes she chose her own books; sometimes Mom or Emma’s favorite librarian, Mrs. Quinn, slipped them into her hands saying, “What about this one?” Sometimes it was even Chess or Finn asking that question.
But it seemed like maybe Mom had given Emma the first code book; it seemed like Mom might have said something like, “Sometimes kids who like math also like codes.”
Had Mom been preparing Emma? Even way back last fall, had Mom been worried that some danger was coming, and she wanted Emma to be ready for it by learning about codes?
Emma didn’t just feel tingly now. She felt like her heart was about to pound its way out of her chest.
She looked at the array of butterflies Finn had lined up on his computer screen. He enlarged one set of wings after another, showing the pattern hidden inside each dot.
“How can butterfly drawings be a code?” Natalie asked.
Something jiggled in Emma’s brain. Something she’d read in one of the books about code.
“The guy who started Boy Scouts!” she shouted. “He did butterfly codes! When he was a spy!”
Natalie looked at her like she was crazy.
“Why would he do that?” Finn asked.
“Tell us about it,” Chess said quietly.
“I don’t actually remember his name,” Emma admitted.
Chess reached for Mom’s phone and typed in “Boy Scout founder spy butterflies.”
“Lord Baden-Powell?” Chess said.
“I guess,” Emma said with a shrug. “Anyhow, there was a war going on, or there was about to be a war starting, in, oh, somewhere—”
“Dalmatia?” Chess asked.
“Wherever that is,” Emma said. “Anyhow, this lord guy pretended he was just a butterfly collector roaming around drawing pictures of the butterflies he found. But he was actually hiding spy drawings inside the butterfly pictures. Drawings of all the military fortifications along the coast. So he could help his country’s military know what to expect.”
“You think Mom’s helping the military?” Finn asked, going back to alternately zooming in and out on Mom’s butterfly logos, growing and shrinking the dots and wings. “You think these are drawings of forts?”
“Only if the forts are built out of sticks.” Natalie snickered. “How do you know you even have them in the right order? It’s like there’s every color of the rainbow there.”
Emma felt tingly all over again.
“Natalie! You’re brilliant!” Emma said, actually throwing her arms around the older girl’s waist as though she were a friend, not a total stranger. “I bet it is a rainbow! Let’s see, ROY G. BIV, red, orange, yellow . . .”
Emma took control of the touchpad on the computer Finn had been using. She moved the butterflies around, starting with the red one and finishing with the purple one—the one that might just as easily be called violet.
Chess patted Emma on the back, which felt like he was complimenting her. Finn squealed, “Those are the right colors!”
“So does your mom like rainbows, too?” Natalie asked, making a mocking face.
“It’s like an inside joke for her and me,” Emma said.
She was glad that neither Chess nor Finn said, “What are you talking about?” Maybe they didn’t even remember how disgusted Emma had been by some of the girls in third grade last year, who went around talking about rainbows and unicorns and butterflies and magic. And one night, when Emma was complaining at the dinner table, Mom had said very quietly, “Emma, it’s possible to like rainbows and unicorns and butterflies and magic and
math. Personally, I’d love it if the world were full of all of those things.”
After that, “rainbows and butterflies” had become sort of code between Emma and Mom. It meant that Emma shouldn’t get mad at other kids who didn’t like math, and she shouldn’t let anyone act like there was something wrong with her because she did.
Huh, code again, Emma thought.
“I still don’t get it,” Natalie said. “So you put the butterflies in rainbow-color order. So what?”
“So maybe, if we put all the dots together now . . . ,” Emma began.
She enlarged all the dots from the butterfly wings one by one, until each dot joined with the one above, below, or beside it. Just as Emma hoped, the mysterious lines inside each dot joined, too.
“It makes a rectangle!” Finn shouted. “With . . . other shapes inside!”
“Is it . . . a map?” Natalie asked. “But what’s it a map of?”
Emma jerked to attention. Her brain was working quickly again.
“Mom’s office,” she said. “The Boring Room.” She pointed at one shape after the other. “See? There’s the desk. There’s the bookshelves along the walls.”
“But what’s that star over here?” Chess asked. “Is this a treasure map? Where X marks the spot? You were just down there—what’s against the back wall of the Boring Room?”
Emma couldn’t remember anything there but an empty bookshelf.
“I don’t know if it’s a treasure or not,” she said slowly. “But I’m pretty sure that’s where we’re supposed to look.”
Twenty-One
Chess
Chess reached for the doorknob of the Boring Room.
It was the next afternoon, and the three Greystone kids had convinced Ms. Morales that they had to stop by their house again to visit Rocket. Chess had been worthless all day at school—twice, his teachers had called on him and he’d had so little idea what they’d asked him that he wasn’t sure if they were talking about language arts or social studies, math or science. Ever since about ten thirty last night, he’d been longing for this moment.
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