But it will be worth it, if this helps us find Mom, Chess told himself.
As everyone walked back into Mr. Mayhew’s house, Mr. Mayhew asked Natalie, “Sweetie, do you need me to write a note to your teacher, to explain why your leaf project is going to be a little late?”
“No, Dad,” Natalie said in a cutting voice, as if Mr. Mayhew was being stupid. “I’ll explain, and they’ll believe me. Turns out, having a missing mom excuses everything.”
“Um,” Mr. Mayhew said, standing helplessly in his own foyer. Chess felt a little sorry for the man.
“Thank you for dinner,” Chess said politely. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. I’m sure it won’t be much longer before, uh . . .”
Mr. Mayhew held his hands up in the air, beseechingly. Chess pretended not to see that Mr. Mayhew’s eyes had flooded with tears.
Natalie grabbed Chess’s elbow.
“Come on,” she said. “Help me get the little kids ready for bed.”
They were halfway up the stairs before Chess realized that Natalie was practically shaking with rage.
“He’s so ridiculous,” she muttered. “Mom would have been so mad at us. She would have yelled at me for hours for letting you and Emma go back to that house by yourselves. She would have figured out I was lying about needing those leaves. She would have grounded me so fast. . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Chess said, stopping on the stairs. “Are you mad at your dad for not yelling at you? For not punishing you?”
Natalie glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes.
“I didn’t say it made sense,” she mumbled. Then she stopped on the stairs, too. “Except, it really does. When Mom yelled at me, I always knew she cared. And Dad . . . Dad just does what’s easiest. He never wants anyone upset with him. Not even me. Like, does he think I won’t love him anymore if he yelled at me?”
Chess didn’t know what to say. Maybe he could have figured something out if he wasn’t so busy noticing that Natalie’s eyelashes were really, really long and pretty. And when she lifted her head and looked him full in the face . . .
“What is wrong with you two?” Emma called from the top of the stairs. “Hurry up!”
Chess and Natalie darted the rest of the way up the stairs.
All four kids convened in Natalie’s room. Chess made himself leave Natalie’s side to crouch beside Finn.
“Are you doing okay, buddy?” Chess asked, putting his arm around his little brother. “Now can you tell me how you, Natalie, and Mr. Mayhew knew to come find Emma and me? I mean, I think you saved us from being pulverized. Did you see the muscles on that guy?”
Chess was torn. Normally he would have played up how much Finn had helped, to make Finn feel better. But was Natalie listening, too?
Chess didn’t want to make himself sound too pitiful and weak around Natalie.
Even though he had been pitiful and weak.
“Natalie and me, we just told Mr. Mayhew I did a freak-out when I saw you and Emma weren’t in the car,” Finn said matter-of-factly. “But really . . . I saw a guy running after you, wearing navy blue and orange. And he looked like the guy up on the stage with Mom. You know, in the other world. But he wasn’t the guy who tackled you. And Natalie said it was probably just this world’s version of the guy on the stage that I saw. So everything’s fine. Me being wrong just helped you.” Finn leaned close to whisper, “I don’t really think that muscle guy would have beaten you up. I think he was just acting tough.”
Sometimes Chess wished he saw the world the way Finn did. Everything always worked out for Finn. And it wasn’t just because Finn was eight and Chess was twelve that Finn was so much more happy-go-lucky, so much more carefree. Even when Chess was eight, he’d been a sad, quiet, too-grown-up child, still missing his dead father, still feeling like he needed to take care of his mom and Emma and Finn. Even if Chess went all the way back to when he was four and his dad was still alive . . . It was hard to remember, but even then, it seemed like Chess had known there were problems around him, things his parents whispered about when they thought Chess wasn’t paying attention.
That’s because there were problems around us, Chess thought. I was just being . . . smart. Aware.
When Chess was four and his father was still alive, the Greystones had still lived in the other world, and Chess’s parents were risking their lives to try to make it a better place.
And that was why Chess’s dad had died. And then Mom had brought the rest of the family to this world to keep them safe.
Emma clapped her hand against the wrapped-up lever to get everyone’s attention.
“Okay, I’m not exactly sure how to do this, but if my theory is correct and we can get into the other world from anywhere, I should be able to fit this lever against the wall, and it’ll just . . . nestle in somehow, and then we can turn it and see if a tunnel opens into the other world,” she announced. “Is everybody ready?”
Chess gulped. Finn said, “Sure!” Natalie said, “Absolutely.” When Chess added, “Go ahead,” he hoped nobody else noticed how much his voice shook.
Emma kept the lever held high. She stepped over to a blank section of Natalie’s wall, between the desk and the doorway to her huge walk-in closet. Emma unwrapped one end of the lever—the end that had once attached to the wall in the secret room back at the Greystones’ house. She pressed that end of the lever against Natalie’s wall.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you should try an exterior wall?” Natalie suggested. “Maybe a tunnel can’t form with the closet behind it?”
“That shouldn’t matter, but . . . okay,” Emma said.
She walked over to a space between Natalie’s windows and slid the lever against the wall. Nothing happened this time either, except that some of the purple paint scraped off Natalie’s wall.
“Maybe . . . maybe it’s just not working because we’re on the second floor?” Chess asked. “Maybe if we go down to the basement . . .”
Emma threw the lever to the floor.
“I told you—it’s not about basements! I’m just wrong! This theory is wrong, too! We’re never going to find Mom!”
And then Emma collapsed to the floor and began crying.
Ten
Finn
Finn, Chess, and Natalie all ran over to comfort Emma.
“We will figure it out!” Natalie said, smoothing Emma’s hair. “We have to!”
“Don’t worry. Eventually we’ll think of something that works,” Chess said, patting Emma’s arm.
Finn settled for patting her back. He tried to think what else he could say to make her feel better. He finally came up with: “You’re the smartest person I know! You’ve got this!”
Emma whirled on him. She had tears rolling down her cheeks, a little line of snot wiped to the side of her nose. Her eyes were just shadows. Emma always had such happy, busy eyes—Finn often felt like he could look into her eyes and see how fast the gears of her brain were moving.
But now her eyes looked empty and sad and still. And stuck. She looked like her brain gears were all jammed.