by Lisa Roecker
Within thirty-three seconds, Google spat out directions. God bless the interwebs.
Chapter 29
I scooped the last two soggy Cheerios onto my spoon and slurped. I’d made the mistake of sitting to the left of my dad, so every time he turned a page of the Sunday paper, he sent a puff of nasty newspaper smell in my direction. Nothing ruined breakfast like nasty newspaper smell.
Dad was in his “lounge” clothes. Translation: he wore khaki pants and a button-down shirt instead of his usual suit and tie. He must have been planning to take the day off.
“You’re up early,” he said. I watched the pupils of his eyes change size.
“I have a project to do today.”
He lowered the paper and smiled. “Need some help? I’m free today.” He nodded to his “lounge” clothes as if I couldn’t see them for myself. My dad loved helping with school projects—well, at least he used to. I think he secretly missed tinkering around with science fair experiments and helping me spray-paint Styrofoam balls to create atom mobiles.
“Nah, it’s a group project for World History. But I’m kind of excited. We get to go to a nursing home and interview some of the residents.”
He stared at me a second, and I fidgeted, sliding my tongue over my teeth and wondering if a Cheerio was stuck in the front or something.
“What?” I asked, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Nothing. It’s just, well…” He put the newspaper down. “I haven’t seen you excited about anything in a long time.”
I had to give him credit. He was right.
My phone buzzed, and my dad sighed as he watched me touch the screen.
Liam’s text read, On my way.
“Let me drive you,” my dad said. “It’ll be like old times.”
I lifted the bowl to my mouth and sipped the sugary milk.
“My ride’s on the way.”
Today was all about killing two birds with one stone. I wanted to spend time with Liam, and I wanted to get information about what had really happened to the girl in the clock tower and how that connected to Sinclair’s brother and Grace. Oh, and, of course, I needed a ride. So I guess I killed three birds. (Thank God I’m not a vegan.)
Unfortunately I had to tell a few lies to get there. Like Seth, Liam thought we were visiting my dad’s distant cousin for an extra-credit family-tree project in World History. And now my dad thought I was doing a group project for the same class. I was weaving quite the tangled web.
I shot Liam a quick text back telling him to honk when he got to my house. No reason for my dad and Liam to meet. Especially when they’d both been fed slightly different lies.
As I placed the empty bowl in the sink, I glanced at my dad, who sat holding the newspaper but looking straight past it. He was probably trying to remember the last time I’d agreed to let him help me.
“Thanks for the offer, though, Dad.” I briefly considered walking over and kissing his cheek but opted for an awkward pat on the back instead. He gave me a vague smile as Liam’s honk rang out through the kitchen.
I grabbed my coat and shot through the door before my dad could demand an introduction.
“So when are you going to start driving me around?” Liam joked as I ducked into the car.
“My birthday’s not till June, so it’ll be awhile. Unless you want to hit up the backseat of my dad’s Saab and listen to him yell at me about hand-over-hand turns.” I rolled my eyes and Liam laughed, shifting the car into reverse.
“So how are you related to…”—he squinted his eyes trying to remember her name—“Elisa?”
“She’s one of my dad’s second cousins or something,” I lied again. “I’m supposed to interview her about…um…growing up during World War II.” I’d kind of pulled that one out of my ass, thanks to Seth’s lame-o documentary. I tried to do the math to figure out if Elisa could have grown up during the war, but it was a little too early in the day, and I couldn’t exactly whip out my phone for a quick calculation.
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want. I don’t have that many questions, so it won’t take long.”
“Nah, I’ll come along. All of my grandparents are dead, so I’ve never really had the chance to talk to anyone that old.”
As sweet as it was that he wanted to talk to Elisa, I panicked a little about not being able to ask her the right questions with Liam in the room. Even though I really didn’t have a clue as to what the right questions were. I couldn’t exactly show up in an old woman’s room and ask her for the details surrounding her sister’s death.
Liam made the turn into Palm Manor Extended Care, and my stomach clenched just looking at the front door. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever make it to Elisa’s room. I twisted the pearls around my neck, attempting to channel a little bit of Grace’s courage. I was going to need it.
“How can I help you?” the woman behind the desk asked, barely looking up from her computer screen.
“We’re here to visit with Elisa Moore.” My voice shook. I hoped it wasn’t obvious.
The woman typed something into the computer and asked us to sign the guest book.
“Ms. Moore’s room is 306. Just follow the signs,” she said, pointing. “You’ll wrap around a bit, and her room will be on the right.”
We thanked the woman and followed her directions. Elisa’s door was cracked open, so I knocked lightly.
“Come on in,” said a young-sounding voice.
Great. Did Elisa have a family member visiting? What would Grace do now? Well, if she’d just knocked on someone’s door and gotten the okay, chances are she’d enter the room. I pushed open the door and came face-to-face with a friendly looking nurse who was washing her hands at the bathroom sink.
“Hi, there,” she said. “Have you come to visit with Ms. Moore?”
I nodded my head while Liam hung back.
“Well, she’ll be so happy, even if she doesn’t show it. She hasn’t had a visitor in some time, and I think she could really use a little cheering up. Come in, come in.”
A twin bed was neatly made, and an older woman sat in a wheelchair positioned in front of the window. Her light brown hair was pulled into a low chignon. As she kneaded her hands, I clenched and unclenched my own.
“How are you related to Ms. Moore?” the nurse asked.
I glanced at Elisa and sent a silent apology in her direction regarding the lie I was about to tell.
“Elisa is my dad’s…cousin,” I whispered, hoping that Ms. Moore was hard of hearing, which really was kind of a terrible thing to hope.
The nurse walked ahead of us and placed her hand lightly on Elisa’s shoulder, but the woman didn’t move a muscle.
“Ms. Moore, you have visitors! Isn’t that nice?”
Elisa continued to stare out the window, and just when I thought she’d never answer—or that maybe she didn’t even talk—she turned to the nurse and nodded her head. Her face was smooth, aside from a few wrinkles near her eyes and around her mouth. The nurse smiled as she came back toward Liam and me.
“Ms. Moore has good days and bad days, but I think you caught her on a good one.” Her smile broadened. “Her memory goes in and out, so be patient.” She squeezed my shoulder and left the room.
I sat on the bed near Elisa’s wheelchair and figured I should introduce myself.
“Hi, Eli…er…Ms. Moore. My name is Kate Lowry,” I said and extended my hand. She didn’t move or even turn to look at me, so I awkwardly dropped my hand, barely resisting the urge to start chewing on my fingernails. “And this is Liam,” I finished lamely.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Moore,” Liam said in his polite talking-to-elderly-people voice, even though she really didn’t look all that old.
Elisa did nothing but stare out the window.
“It’s such a beautiful day today. Look at all that…foliage.” Okay, I’m a complete sucker for trying to fill silence, but “foliage” was a stretch, even for me. Liam shot me a look that said, Did you real
ly just say that?
“Um, we’re students from Pemberly Brown. My dad tells me you went to school there.” I watched her carefully, praying that the name of our school would trigger some kind of memory for her, but her eyes remained stubbornly blank. It was like she didn’t even know we were there.
I wanted to ask her about her sister, but I couldn’t go there with Liam in the room. I had to get rid of him somehow.
“Hey, Liam, why don’t you see if you can snag us all some pudding or something?” I suggested.
Liam gave me a weird look, but he agreed and left the room to find a nurse.
As soon as he was out of earshot, I began firing questions at her. “Ms. Moore, do you remember a Robert Sinclair? He went to Pemberly Brown? I think you might have gone there too.”
She didn’t move a muscle. I was starting to wonder if she was even breathing.
I heard Liam’s voice drift in through the open door. Something about chocolate or butterscotch. I didn’t have much time.
“Elisa!” I touched her shoulder and spun her around to look at me. “What happened to your sister? What did they do to her? Why did she hurt herself?”
Her eyes widened when she looked at me. They were a muted, glassy blue, and they reflected fear and something else. Maybe recognition.
“She was your age.” Her voice was stronger than I would have guessed, and her creepy eyes were focused on something behind me.
I took a step back, not knowing what to say, and followed Elisa’s line of vision, terrified that Liam was back and that he’d heard me badgering an unstable old woman. Instead I saw a framed picture of a girl. The picture was yellowed, but the image was a familiar one. She looked like the girl in the plaid skirt with her long dark hair. She reminded me of Grace. I felt queasy.
“We would talk for hours lying next to each other in the grass. She told me everything.” Elisa’s skin looked paper-thin, and she sounded miles away. As if she were reading a script.
“She had her whole life ahead of her. We talked about what we would do when we left. We talked about falling in love and moving away. Because that’s what sisters do.”
I glanced at the door, praying Liam hadn’t been able to decide between the pudding flavors or that maybe Elisa’s strange condition made him uncomfortable and he’d take his time.
“I told them what I thought happened. I told them she was acting differently. She never recovered after that night. And then when she went to the police, they started in on her. I knew they would kill her. No one believed me.”
She reached her frail arm toward the picture frame and tried to move her body forward. Afraid that she’d lose her balance, I grabbed the frame with shaking hands and placed it on her lap.
“She never came downstairs for breakfast, and I knew the worst had happened.” Elisa lifted the frame and cocked her head.
Liam walked into the room with the pudding and opened his mouth to say something, but I quickly shook my head and gestured for him to stay quiet.
“Will you go try to find the nurse?” I whispered to him. “She’s not right.”
Liam rushed back out of the room, and I knew I had to work fast. There wasn’t much time. I took Elisa’s hand in mine again.
“Did Robert Sinclair hurt your sister?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“Her bed was empty because she was in the tower.”
“What tower?” But as soon as the question left my lips, I understood. The clock tower. Abigail was the girl hanging from the beams. It wasn’t a legend after all. She was a real person with real problems and a real family who had been destroyed by the loss.
Spidery wrinkles formed along Elisa’s forehead as she remembered. “Station 2. She was at Station 2 all along. Her sisters couldn’t save her. The brothers got her. They did this. They took her from us. And they lied. All they tell are lies.” Her eyes bulged, and her hands clenched the arms of her wheelchair so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
I stood and ran to the door, looking wildly down the hallway, praying someone would come to help. The sound of broken glass made me rush back over to Elisa’s wheelchair. But when I got there, her face had rearranged itself back into a blank stare, as though her earlier outburst had never happened. I gathered the shattered glass from the frame and placed the fractured picture of the young girl back onto Elisa’s bedside table next to a vase of beautiful pink peonies.
I was almost fifty years too late, but I placed my arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort the fragile woman with the broken heart.
Chapter 30
After I got back from the nursing home that afternoon, yet another email was waiting for me in my inbox.
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sun 4:21 PM
From: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)
You’re looking in all the right places
And never finding the right things.
The answers lie within the heart of Brown
Where the Brothers live.
Find them.
I had to get back to the old Brown buildings. I was sure I was missing something that would tie the headmaster’s brother back to Grace, but I had no idea what it was. And who was I supposed to look for? Brown had closed more than sixty years earlier. There were no boys to be found.
I sat on my front porch, staring at the sheets of falling rain. Why’d it have to rain right now? I mean, how was I supposed to follow up on leads without a reliable mode of transportation? I’d already texted Liam twice, and a third time would venture into Stage 5 clinger levels of desperation.
My only remaining option was riding my bike to the clock tower in the pouring rain, and that was obviously out of the question. It was getting dark, and to avoid getting flattened by a car, I’d have to wear a helmet, reflective clothing, and probably a poncho. Enough said.
And then, as if the gods had sent him down from above to answer my prayers, Seth appeared in midair. Well, technically he jumped down from his lame-ass tree house, but at that moment he looked like a pocket-sized, redheaded superhero to me. He had his windbreaker thrown over his head and was running toward his front door.
“Hey, Seth!”
He spun around, his face all scrunched up.
“Come over here. Get out of the rain!” My chipper voice sounded a little false. Better tone it down a notch before he got suspicious. Seth ran over and under the porch roof. “Hanging out in your tree house again? You’re so lame.”
“I was just checking out the neighbors. They installed a new satellite dish, and I think they’re using it to communicate with their FBI handlers.”
“Sounds cool. So what are you up to tonight?”
Seth was visibly taken aback by my question. I made a mental note to be nicer to him in the future. He was acting like an abused animal, shocked at the tiniest bit of affection. It made me feel like the worst person in the world.
“I was just, you know, hanging out. Gonna do some homework, eat dinner…watch some more Conspiracy Theory Week, if you’re…”
“No, no, no,” I said, cutting him off before the invitation left his lips. “I just wanted to see if you’re interested in taking a road trip to…” I began but was interrupted.
“Of course!” Seth said, not letting me finish. “Just let me ask my mom if I can borrow the van. It’s raining, but I’ll convince her to say yes!”
“Seth, you have no idea what you just agreed to. What if I said, ‘to see if we can score some crack’?”
“Then I would have reminded you of the drug-free pledge we all had to sign last year. Where do you wanna go anyway?”
“I actually have to run back up to PB. I…um…forgot something…at one of the…uh…old Brown buildings.”
My response didn’t even make Seth think twice.
“I’ll go get my keys!” Seth threw his jacket over his head again and ran toward his front door to get permission. “Mom!” I heard him yell before the door shut beh
ind him.
Seth probably would have agreed to drive me to the end of the earth in his mom’s white minivan, and for that I was eternally grateful. I mean, come on, every girl should have a Seth Allen in her life.
While Seth begged for permission, I went back inside and loaded my oversize purse with a flashlight, a notebook and pen, my camera, and the Mace my dad had forced on me when I started at the upper school. Considering my history with the building, I had to be prepared for the worst. If it was creepy during the daytime, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in the dark. A girl could never be too careful, even if she had a skinny, ginger-haired superhero by her side.
By the time I ran through the garage door, Seth had pulled the minivan into my driveway. Even through the rain-streaked windows, I could see the huge smile on his face.
Crap. He was probably misinterpreting our little errand as a date. Oh, well, beggars can’t be choosers, and this beggar needed a ride. I was just lucky he hadn’t changed into his fancy clothes or something.
I climbed into the car and got to work thinking about the task that lay ahead.
“You okay?” Seth asked. “You’re so quiet.”
He was right. I was quiet and more than a little scared. I hadn’t forgotten about the rock that had come sailing through the window on my last visit to the old building. Someone seemed to know my every move before I knew it myself, and they didn’t appear to be thrilled about my investigation. I’d have to be careful.
“Yeah, yeah. Just a little nervous. Everyone says the Brown buildings are haunted.”
“Come on, you don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?”
“I…well, I never did. But lately I’ve changed my mind,” I said, thinking about Grace’s emails and the girl in the plaid skirt.