The cellar hole wasn’t deep—maybe four feet with crumbling stone walls and a dirt floor layered with years of rotting leaves. If Lisa squinted her eyes, she could just imagine the stone walls topped with a wood frame, clapboard siding. A little door and windows. There were old moss-covered bricks on the north side that must once have been a chimney and hearth.
“Do you think this could have been it?” she asked.
“What?” Evie asked.
“Eugene’s house,” she said. “Our great-grandfather.”
She remembered her mother this morning: Sometimes I see him in each of you.
Evie nodded. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Your mom would know, probably. We should ask her.”
Lisa looked around the bottom of the cellar hole. Baby trees grew there—poplar, white pine, and clumps of ferns.
“Maybe the lights we saw were like . . . his ghost or something,” Evie said.
“Could be,” Lisa said, but she didn’t think so. It was fairies. Definitely. She was surer than she’d ever been of anything.
“Hey, guys, this is weird,” Sammy called, appearing at the edge of the foundation. “I found this just over in those trees.” He pointed to the left, near the old well. Lisa folded her arms over the edge of the cellar hole, pushing her belly against the wall, and looked up. Sammy held a half-eaten sandwich.
“Probably from Gerald and Pinkie,” Evie said. “Damn litterbugs!”
Sam studied the sandwich, gave it a sniff. “I think it’s liverwurst,” he said, wrinkling his nose.
The only person Lisa knew who ate liverwurst was Da, and he certainly wasn’t in any shape to be picnicking in the woods.
“Weird,” Lisa said.
“Gross,” said Evie. “I say you chuck it. Some animal will come along and eat it. Maybe. If it’s hungry enough.”
Lisa let go of the wall and turned from Sam and Evie and the offensive sandwich to study the inside of the cellar hole.
There, in the southernmost corner of the old foundation, right where they might have found little Eugene all alone, squalling in his cradle, Lisa saw a plant growing. It was hung with flowers like a string of bells. The flowers were pale purple with white spots going down their throats. Magic flowers. “I knew it,” Lisa exclaimed, clapping her hands together. She leaned down and listened, sure she would hear the sound of tinkling bells.
“Foxglove,” Sammy said from up above. “Be careful, they’re poison.”
Lisa had never seen such a spectacular flower, poisonous or not. And she couldn’t believe that anything in those woods would hurt her.
She set the plate of gifts carefully at the base of the plant and then, heart pounding, Sammy hissing warnings, she reached out and touched one of the flowers. It was soft and smooth, like the cheek of a baby.
She could almost hear Eugene’s long-ago cry: an infant alone in the woods, left behind.
CHAPTER 9
Phoebe
JUNE 5, PRESENT DAY
When Sam and Phoebe pulled into their driveway at nearly three o’clock, Phoebe sighed—she’d never been happier to be home. She’d shower, put on a clean change of clothes, sit down with Sam at their wobbly kitchen table, and figure all this out. Being home and safe and away from the madness at the cabin would put things in perspective.
It was more of a cottage than a proper house, really, and over the last two years, it had become Phoebe’s favorite place on earth—the only place that had ever truly felt like home to her.
The house with its high, peaked roof, stained-glass windows, and gingerbread trim at the eaves had charmed Phoebe nearly as much as Sam had. It all seemed too good to be true. And when, after they’d been dating for six months, he asked her to move in, she had no hesitation, though he was the first man she’d ever agreed to live with. Until she met Sam and saw the house, she’d always been determined to have her own space, to keep a certain comfortable distance between herself and her boyfriends. But Sam was different. This house was different. Sam had lived there since college, renting it from an art history professor who had been renovating it. Then the professor’s wife got sick and they moved to Boston. He sold Sam the house for half what it was worth.
“Ooh,” Phoebe remembered cooing when she first saw it. “It’s straight out of a fairy tale!”
But now, as she got closer and saw that the front door was hanging open, it felt more like a scene from a horror novel.
“Stand back,” Sam warned, squaring his shoulders, holding the sad little spare car key out in front of him like it was supposed to be a samurai sword.
“Like hell,” Phoebe said, staying right by his side. She grabbed a softball-size rock from beside the front steps.
“Guess we didn’t just forget to lock up,” Sam said, eyeing the front door with trepidation. The dead bolt had been ripped from the wall and the lock in the knob mangled with a screwdriver that had been left hanging there. Phoebe held her breath, kicked the door open with her green boot, and led Sam over the threshold.
The house was trashed: furniture tipped over, drawers and cabinets opened, and everything pulled out. The framed topographical maps were all down, the glass smashed.
“Holy shit,” Phoebe mumbled. Still holding the rock, she ran straight for the aquariums at the back of the living room to check on everyone. The aquariums were about the only thing in the house left intact, and all of the residents appeared unharmed. She set down her rock and gently scooped up Horace. The little hedgehog nosed her palm and fingers, searching for treats.
“Hey there, Buddy,” she said in the singsongy voice reserved for small animals and babies, stroking his soft quills. “What happened in here, huh?” She held her little pale-bellied hedgie up to her face, wishing he could answer.
“They all okay?” Sam asked. With the exception of the snake, Sam loved the animals, and teasingly referred to them as Phoebe’s menagerie.
“Seem to be,” Phoebe said, setting Horace down in his cage. In the next aquarium, Orville and Wilbur, the two hooded rats, were contentedly snoozing, pink tails curled around their bodies. Jackson the one-eyed ball python was resting half in and half out of his water dish.
The animals had all come from the clinic, given up for various reasons. Horace had badly bitten a boy at a birthday party (why parents would let a group of rowdy seven-year-old boys pass around the hedgehog—who must have been terrified—was beyond Phoebe). Jackson had been rescued from a home with fourteen snakes, half a dozen ferrets, and countless rabbits, all malnourished and neglected. Orville and Wilbur were abandoned when their owner took off for college and his mother refused to take care of vermin.
“Great. It’s a comfort to know that the twisted psychos are animal lovers,” Sam said.
Phoebe’s legs felt like rubber. She wanted to sit, but the furniture was tipped over, slashed open.
Sam stood, dumbfounded, in the center of their living room, looking for the phone. “We shouldn’t touch anything. I’ll call the police.” He went to set down the mail he’d carried in, but the table had been turned over. He dropped the mail down on the floor and that’s when he saw it: a small envelope with only his name in neat script on the front. No address or postage. He tore it open.
I am back from the land of the fairies. Meet me in Reliance on the next full moon.
Lisa
They spent the afternoon putting the house back together and taking stock. It didn’t look as though anything had been taken. Sam decided it was best not to involve the police. Phoebe argued with him at first, but when he reminded her of their interaction with the cops just that morning, she acquiesced. Who knew what might happen if the police stepped in? And what if that girl had changed her story again? The police might well be on their way at this very minute to arrest Sam and Phoebe.
“I think part of the whole setup this morning was to make us look like really sketchy, crimina
l-type people. It was a smart move on their part,” Sam said. “They know we’ll think twice about going to the cops because the police are going to see us as nutty and unreliable, no matter what.”
“But we know what we saw,” she said. “That woman stabbed Evie! What happened to her? You can’t just take off and disappear with a stab wound like that.”
Sam shook his head worriedly. “I don’t know.”
“And who took all our stuff? Cleaned up the cabin like that? Why on earth would anyone go through all that?”
“Hard to say,” Sam answered. “The fact that this place was torn apart, too, tells me they’re looking for something. Maybe it was just the fairy book they were after, and now that they’ve got it, they’ll leave us alone.”
“But who even knew we had the book?” Phoebe said. “Your mom, Evie, and Elliot. The girl on the phone, maybe.”
She pulled the memo book from her pocket, wrote: PEOPLE WHO KNEW ABOUT BOOK in her tiny hieroglyphics at the top of a clean page, and made a list.
Sam nodded, rubbing the back of his neck.
“And why take the book?” Phoebe asked.
“Because it was evidence, I guess. It was made by whoever took Lisa. I should have just listened to my mom and brought it to the cops the day we found it.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Phoebe said.
“I’m not. I just wish I’d at least opened the damn thing.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because, when Evie called that same day, she asked me to promise not to open it without her. She wanted to be there.”
Evie. Where the hell was poor Evie? Did whoever did this catch up with Elliot and her?
“Okay, so what now?” asked Phoebe. She opened her little notebook to the next page and wrote THE PLAN.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “We just get on with our lives.”
Phoebe blew out an exasperated breath. “We can’t do nothing!” she said, sitting forward. “Your cousin could be bleeding to death somewhere, held hostage by a bunch of wackos. And whoever that girl in the woods was, she seemed to know things about Lisa. Things only Lisa would know. You said so yourself!”
Sam bit his lip, ran his hand through his hair.
“If all that isn’t enough, think about your mom. If there’s a chance Lisa might still be alive, don’t you think we owe it to her to find out? Christ, this is her child, Sam! Your sister.”
Sam walked over to the Humane Society calendar hanging on the wall. “Okay. The full moon is on the eleventh. Friday. Maybe we’ll take a ride out to Reliance and see what happens.”
“And in the meantime?” Phoebe asked.
Sam shook his head, looked helpless.
“And in the meantime?” Phoebe repeated. “The eleventh is six days away, Sam! Are we supposed to just sit around twiddling our thumbs until then?”
“In the meantime,” he said with hesitation, “I guess we try to find out what happened to Evie and Elliot.”
“Excellent plan!” Phoebe leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re very sexy when you get all detective-like.”
He rolled his eyes while she opened her notebook again.
THE PLAN
Find Evie and Elliot
Go to Reliance on full moon (Friday)
Make Sam tell me more about that summer
Phoebe knew she should add “Get pregnancy test” to the list, but somehow the idea of writing it down made the possibility of being pregnant all the more real. With all that was going on, she couldn’t let herself think about it right now. Later, she promised herself.
Sam went for the phone, punching in the number of the cell phone Evie had given him. He shook his head. “It’s no longer in service.”
“What about her number in Philadelphia?”
“She never gave it to me.”
“Try calling information.”
There was no Evie or Eve O’Toole listed in the Philadelphia area.
“Shit,” Sam said, “she probably changed her name when she got married. I don’t have a clue what Elliot’s last name is.”
Sam dialed the phone again.
“Hi, Mom,” he said into the receiver. “Hey, I was wondering if you could give me Aunt Hazel’s number. Yeah, I’ll wait. Uh huh. Uh huh. No, we haven’t forgotten. See you then.”
He hung up. “Got it. And she reminded me about dinner tomorrow night. We’re supposed to bring dessert.”
Phoebe groaned. She loved Sam’s mother, idolized her even, and definitely believed she had the right to know what happened to her daughter, but Phoebe felt intimidated by her clean and cozy house, her home-cooked meals. The slightly disappointed look they’d get when they showed up with a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s instead of a batch of freshly baked cookies. Phoebe always left Phyllis’s house feeling like she’d never measure up and wondering why on earth Sam had chosen her over someone who could bake. Worse still, Phoebe secretly vowed to change. To one day surprise Phyllis with a triple-layer cake with perfect buttercream icing. She could see it so clearly in her head, this Worthiness Cake that would be the most delicious thing any of them had ever tasted.
Phoebe watched as Sam punched in his aunt’s number.
“What are you gonna say?” Phoebe asked.
Sam shrugged as he put the phone to his ear, listened to it ring.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t tell her we just saw her daughter stabbed by some crazy loon in the woods!”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Of course not!” he hissed.
Hazel finally picked up and Sam spent an uncomfortable fifteen minutes on the phone playing catch-up. With the exception of Christmas cards, he hadn’t had any contact with her in years. Not since that summer.
“Hazel’s a crazy old bat,” he’d told Phoebe on numerous occasions. “Drinks like a fish. My mom and she had this big blowout right before Lisa disappeared. They talk now and then but aren’t all that close anymore.”
The more Phoebe heard about Aunt Hazel, the more she sounded just like her own mother, though she never mentioned this to Sam.
“You never talk about your mother,” Sam had remarked once.
“Not much to tell,” Phoebe had said, shrugging. “We weren’t very close.”
Understatement of the goddamn year. But still it was better than saying, My mom was a miserable lush who had more meaningful conversations with her television than she ever did with any actual living person.
“They aren’t real, Ma,” Phoebe said once when she caught her mother talking back to the detectives on TV.
Her mother glared at Phoebe, rattled the ice cubes in her glass, and said, “Who are you to say? You think that something’s only real if you can reach out and touch it?” She leaned forward and gave Phoebe a pinch, twisting the skin on her arm.
“Ow!” Phoebe had yelped.
“If that’s what you think, you don’t know shit, sweetheart.”
Phoebe had never flat-out lied to Sam about her mother, but she had definitely withheld crucial information. Like how she died.
She pushed the thought away and focused on watching Sam squirming his way through the conversation with his old alkie aunt. She waved her hand in a hurry-up-and-get-on-with-it gesture. He nodded.
“The thing is, Hazel,” he said into the phone, “I was hoping you could tell me how to get in touch with Evie and Elliot.”
He waited, bit his lip. “Her husband? Elliot?”
He listened again.
“I see,” he said, nodding into the phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Do you have a number for her there?”
Sam scribbled something on a pad, then thanked his aunt and promised to be better at staying in touch.
“So,” he said after hanging up. “The first weird thing is that Evie isn’t married. The second is that she doesn’t live in Philadelphia at all
. She’s right here in Vermont. Up in Burlington.”
“Yeah, I’ll say that’s weird. Are you going to call her?” Phoebe asked.
“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to drive up and pay her a little visit. See how she’s feeling after getting stabbed and all that. I’ve got her address.” Sam jumped up from the couch and grabbed the lone key and his worn leather bomber jacket. “Coming?”
“Damn right,” Phoebe said, practically beating him out the door.
CHAPTER 10
Lisa
JUNE 7, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Sometimes, when they rode together, Lisa imagined they were attached, two parts of a whole, a Siamese twin girl cemented together where her chest pressed into Evie’s back. Evie’s black Harley-Davidson T-shirt was damp with sweat while she puffed and grunted, wheezed along like some ancient steam train: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
You can, Lisa told her with her own breath. You can do anything you want, as long as you have me.
Evie didn’t have her own bike, but she was the stronger rider, so Lisa perched on the seat holding her feet up, her arms wrapped around Evie’s thick waist. Evie stood, legs pumping, feet cranking the pedals, her fingers tight on the handlebars, never touching the brakes no matter how fast they went.
They raced down Spruce to Main Street, Sammy beside them on his BMX bike, going up on curbs and sidewalks, popping wheelies.
When they got to where Main Street forked with Lark Ridge, they took a right, the dirt road following the stream out past the Tuckers’ farm, their wheels humming, crickets singing, the smell of fresh-mown hay in the air. Then it was right again, on the old fire road, which was little more than an overgrown dirt-bike trail. The air was cool and moist. Twigs lashed their faces. Lisa held on tight as they hopped and bumped over stones and roots, fishtailed through sand, dodged a fresh pile of horse dung. A quarter mile in, they stopped, parked their bikes against trees, and made their way down the bank to the whirlpool. It wasn’t really a whirlpool at all, but the kids called it that. It was a place where a curved boulder crossed the creek, stopping the water enough to form a deep pool. The bottom was covered in smooth polished pebbles and sand. Minnows swam there and, if you held still long enough, sometimes they’d nibble at your toes. Water striders skated across the surface; brook trout hid in the shadows. The mosquitoes and deerflies were god-awful, but as long as you stayed in the water, you were okay.
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