It kind of bothered Chess that Natalie knew so much about lying.
“Dad, why didn’t you tell me you’d hired a security guard to watch the Greystones’ house?” Natalie was demanding.
“I didn’t . . . want to worry you,” Mr. Mayhew mumbled.
It almost sounded like he was the kid making excuses, and Natalie was the angry parent.
“Mr. Mayhew, sir, if these really are the Greystone children, and they have every right to be here, I should go and get back into stakeout position,” the tackling man said, as though he didn’t want to watch Natalie and her dad argue, either. “I would remind you, though, that the police still regard this as a potential crime scene, and anything that is removed should be catalogued.”
“Yes, I know that!” Mr. Mayhew snapped.
The tackling man—or, security guard, rather—slipped out the garage door and eased it gently shut behind him.
“Well,” Mr. Mayhew said weakly. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “What do you say we just forget this and go have dinner?”
“Chess and Emma haven’t had a chance to get the toys they came to pick up as a surprise for Finn,” Natalie said.
Okay, got it, Chess wanted to tell her. We can go with that cover story.
“The surprise part is kind of ruined, but . . . you all stay right here,” Emma said. “Chess and I will be right back.”
She grabbed Chess’s arm, pulling him past Mom’s car and toward the door that led on into the house.
They raced toward the basement stairs without turning on any lights. It was like neither of them wanted to look too closely at their own house.
“You find some toy of Finn’s we can show Mr. Mayhew,” Chess told Emma as they clattered down the stairs. “I’ll get the lever.”
He’d have to figure out some way to hide it under his T-shirt. He tried to picture it in his mind—was it about the same length as his arm? Would it even fit under his shirt?
He jumped past the last three stairs and hit the basement light switch. He took a shaky breath. The basement still smelled vaguely like kitty litter and their cat, Rocket, even though Rocket had been with them at Mr. Mayhew’s for the past two weeks.
The door to Mom’s basement office—which the Greystone kids called the Boring Room—hung completely open, not shut and locked the way she always left it.
That’s because we left that door open two weeks ago, Chess told himself. None of them had been thinking clearly after they’d escaped from the other world and shut off the tunnel that led out from the Boring Room. Plus, they’d had the Gustano kids with them, and the Gustanos had been desperate to get out. Being kidnapped had left them with a fear of basements.
I’m not feeling too great about basements myself right now, either, Chess thought.
He made himself take another breath, a deep one this time. He was both relieved and a little disappointed that he caught no hint of the foul odor from the other world. That had to mean the tunnel was still firmly shut, and Chess was in no danger if he walked through the Boring Room to pick up the broken lever.
But it also meant he still couldn’t get back through that tunnel to rescue Mom.
He sped past Mom’s desk in the Boring Room, then ducked around the bookcase at the back of the room that doubled as a secret door. It led into the hidden room that Chess, Emma, and Finn hadn’t discovered until after their mother vanished.
Just pick up the broken lever and leave, Chess told himself. That’s all you have to do.
But his hand shook as he reached for the light switch, and he had to grope around on the wall to find it. Even in the dark, he turned toward the place where he’d dropped the broken lever to the floor two weeks ago, after giving up on making it work again.
Finally his fingers found the light switch, and he flipped it on. The light flickered once, then came on in a solid glow. Chess kept staring at the floor. He knew he was looking at the right spot.
But there was nothing there. Nothing—but a faint outline in dust of the missing lever.
Seven
Finn
Natalie and her dad were still arguing. Finn didn’t think he could take one more second of standing in the garage with Mom’s car, but without Mom.
“Since it’s not a surprise anymore, I’ll go see what Chess and Emma are getting,” he announced.
Natalie turned as if she intended to follow him. But if she came, her dad would want to as well.
“Be right back!” Finn said, making shoving motions toward Natalie with his hand. He hoped Natalie could tell he meant, Sorry! It’s still your turn to keep distracting your dad!
As soon as he got into the house, he saw that the basement door was open and the lights were on downstairs.
And then he heard Chess scream, “Emma!”
Finn raced down the stairs.
“Chess? Emma? Are you okay?” he called.
At the bottom of the stairs, he saw Emma dropping handfuls of Hot Wheels cars and speeding toward the Boring Room door.
“Hot Wheels—really?” Finn called. “You were going to make me have to pretend to be thrilled about those? Or—are they really a clue to getting Mom back?”
“Decoys,” Emma gasped as she ran. “Sorry.”
“Emma, get in here!” Chess hollered again from the Boring Room. Or, more likely, from the secret room behind it.
Emma and Finn ran together. As soon as they ducked past the bookcase/secret door, they bumped into Chess. Finn threw his arms around his brother’s waist.
“You’re okay!” Finn exclaimed. “Nobody’s hurt!”
Absentmindedly, Chess patted Finn’s back.
“But the lever’s missing,” Chess said dejectedly, slumping down against Finn’s head.
Emma slammed back against the wall as if she was upset, too.
“So what?” Finn said, peering back and forth between his siblings. “That lever was broken, remember? It doesn’t work anymore!”
If Chess and Emma were going to get all panicked and sad about every little thing, it had to be Finn’s job to cheer them up. And to keep them focused on getting Mom back.
Chess kept his arm around Finn’s shoulders.
“Emma thinks the lever could still work somewhere else,” Chess said gently. “She thinks it’s only the tunnel leading out from this room that’s ruined. Not the lever itself. That’s what we were coming back for.”
“Oh,” Finn said.
Emma and Chess kept staring inconsolably at the floor. But Finn glanced around the whole space. The room still looked like a hoarder’s pantry, with canned food, jars of applesauce, boxes of granola bars, and other similar items on every shelf. Their whole family could probably live in this room for a year and never go hungry.
Finn knew that all the packages of food—and the cash hidden in some of the shoeboxes—were actually items Mom had stashed to take into the other world, to help people there.
He tried not to look at the back wall of the pantry, where the shelves were cracked and dirt shoved through the broken wall. It reminded him too much of the moment when the tunnel closed—leaving Mom, Ms. Morales, and Joe trapped in the other world.
But Finn couldn’t help seeing that somebody (probably the cops) had cleaned up the jars that had broken when they came crashing down from the collapsing shelves. All the toppled cans appeared to have been left in place, though.