“That you’re clearing out the basement?”
Jet sighs and nods. “I’m sorry—I know it’s putting you in an awful position.” She really does look sorry. She looks downright miserable.
And, just like that, there’s no way I can confront her over the fact that she and Dad waited all those weeks to tell me their plans—not while she’s standing in the middle of all this stuff, trying to figure out what can be off-loaded for cash. In an attempt to set my feelings aside, at least for a little while, I ask, “What can I do to help?”
Relief flashes across her face. Aunt Jet turns back to the desk. “Maybe if we both lift and pull?”
I go to her side and curl my hands around the edge of the wood. The thing really is a monster. In addition to being bigger than any desk has a right to be, the clawed legs twist and turn until they rise and form four scowling faces—one face for each corner. I can’t imagine who on earth would want to buy it. It looks like the kind of desk you’d find in the home of the world’s wealthiest, antique-loving serial killer.
“Where did this thing come from?”
“It belonged to Sarah Montgomery. Your great-great-aunt. She had it commissioned in New York and shipped here. She used to sit at this desk and—” Jet abruptly cuts herself off.
“And?”
She shakes her head. “I promised your father.”
Right. No filling my head with nonsense. “I wouldn’t actually tell him if you said anything. It’s not like he would ever know.”
A slight blush darkens her cheeks. “I would know.”
“So?”
She ignores the question and tightens her grip on the desk. I’m not sure what else I was expecting: with very few exceptions, Jet does what other people want.
“Ready?” she asks.
Suppressing a frustrated sigh, I lift my corner, managing to get it at least a few inches off the ground.
“Pull!”
The two farthest legs screech against the floor and then make a sharp, cracking sound.
“Stop!” Jet begins to lower her corner, but as she does, her hand slips and brushes mine—
A battered cardboard box. My name scrawled in black. My aunt’s voice. “I can’t do this . . .”
Jet quickly pulls away from my touch, and the world comes rushing back. We both lose our grip on the desk, and even though we had managed to lift it only a few inches, it lands with a loud thunk and the sound of breaking glass.
Aunt Jet closes her eyes and pulls in a deep breath through her nose. Her expression is one of saintlike patience, but the lines at the corners of her mouth deepen as she says, “Guess I should have checked the drawers before we tried to move it.” She shoots me a small, wan smile that is not at all convincing. “It’s not your fault.”
I wait for her to ask me what I saw, but she doesn’t. She would have, before, I think. I guess asking now would violate my father’s rules.
The phone upstairs rings.
“I’ll be right back.” Jet heads for the stairs but pauses to turn when she’s halfway there. “I haven’t told the boarders that I’m thinking of selling. I don’t want to upset them before we know if we can even find a buyer. I need the money they bring in.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you, Mary Catherine.”
A faint headache blossoms along the edge of my skull as Jet slips from sight. Thankfully, the contact between us had been so brief that the resulting pain isn’t that bad. The meaning of what I saw seems pretty straightforward. Jet may have agreed to take me for the summer, but she’s not happy about it. With that realization, the anger is back. Anger and frustration and, maybe, a little bit of hurt. If she had put her foot down—if she had just stood up to Dad—I’d be back in New York. I wouldn’t be her problem. A small voice in the back of my head asks if that’s what I really want. I ignore it.
Needing a distraction, I begin emptying out the desk. The top drawer is filled with old travel guides. Paris, London, Rome. I open a book with a picture of Tokyo Tower on the cover. There are notations on every page. Little exclamation marks and tiny plans in Aunt Jet’s small, elegant script. A picture falls out from between the pages and lands at my feet. I pick it up. It’s Aunt Jet, but younger. My age, even. Her hair is cut short and she’s smiling widely. A tall, thin boy stands next to her, close but not quite touching. I’ve never seen the boy, and I’ve never seen Aunt Jet smile like that.
The other travel books are all similarly full of plans.
As far as I know, though, my aunt has never left North America.
I set the stack of books on top of an old steamer trunk that’s been tagged for the keep pile and then turn back to the desk.
The second drawer is filled with leather-bound journals and ledgers, all resting under an old curved knife in a leather sheath. The knife looks like something a big-game hunter would have carried on his belt while on safari; I have a dim memory of it being on display somewhere—the study, probably—when I was a kid. I lay it on the corner of the desk and turn my attention to the journals. The first few are blank—like someone ordered a stack of journals in bulk a hundred years ago and then forgot about them. I set them aside, next to the knife, and then flip through a journal that’s filled with diagrams and sketches of the old textile mill. The mill my family had owned and operated for decades.
There are notations about equipment and floor plans and even maps of the tunnels that exist underneath the main structure and the surrounding outbuildings—the ones my great-grandfather built when he had delusions of setting up a smuggling empire and wanted to move things around the grounds without being seen. According to family lore, he spent more money on the tunnels than he ever made on crime. Thirteen men had died in those tunnels in 1944 after a fire broke out in the mill. Their lungs filled with smoke and their fingertips turned raw and bloody as they tried to claw through the tunnel walls.
People in town like to say that the fire was the beginning of everything that went wrong for the Montgomerys, but Dad says things started falling apart long before that, that the money had been running out for more than a generation—hence the attempt to turn to crime—and that the mill would have closed in another year or two anyway.
But blaming the fall of the town’s founding—and formerly richest—family on a tragic fire and thirteen dead men makes for a better story.
The Montgomerys hadn’t exactly been beloved before that, but the fire made us downright hated. And people in small towns tend to hold on to their hate for a long, long time. Dad was born more than three decades after the fire, but he said he could still feel that hate every day as he sat in classes with kids whose grandfathers and great-uncles had died in the tunnels.
The same is true of Aunt Jet, I guess, though she seems to have made peace with it better than Dad has. I guess that probably went along with staying in Montgomery Falls.
I start to slide the journal back where I found it, but as I do, I notice a smaller book wedged against the side of the drawer. I pull it free and then haul in a sharp breath as I recognize the torn Marvel sticker on the cover.
Riley’s book.
The Book of Lost Things.
A fragment of a memory fills my head.
Riley reaching out to touch me and then thinking better of it. Crouching down in front of me instead, that book in his hand. Waiting for me to look up at him. Making me look up at him. “You’re amazing, Cat. You’re like one of the X-Men. Like Professor X.”