Long Lost Read online

Fiona rubbed the edges of the page with her fingertips. Nothing felt quite as real as a typed, signed document.

  “It’s always more satisfying to see evidence firsthand, isn’t it?” said Ms. Miranda. She took the papers back, placing them gently into their box. “Even if it doesn’t tell you what you expected it to.”

  “What about the Searcher?” Fiona raced after a last loose thread. “You don’t think that could have been real, do you? I mean . . . if everybody in town believed in it—”

  “The Searcher is just another story.” Ms. Miranda slid the box onto its shelf. “There are no weird beings wandering around in the woods, grabbing people. There’s no Searcher.”

  “But if lots of people saw it, like the book says . . . ,” Fiona persisted, even though her voice was growing smaller. “I mean, I even thought I might have seen it in the woods the other day. . . .”

  “You know that old expression . . . ‘Seeing is believing’?” Ms. Miranda asked. She moved slowly back toward Fiona. “It’s backward. You’ve heard a story about something called the Searcher. Then you see something a little strange, maybe just a shadow in the woods, and your mind starts telling you that story. You tell it to other people, and they start seeing things that must be part of the story too. Soon so many people believe in the Searcher, they see it everywhere. That’s how stories work.”

  Ms. Miranda stopped in front of Fiona, giving her a wry but sympathetic little smile. She held out one hand. “Now. Would you like to kick this annoying book around the room for a while before I put it away again?”

  The words were joking, but Fiona felt a sudden tightness shoot through her body. She couldn’t let go of the book. Not again. Not already.

  “Can I . . . could I take it home with me?” she asked. “Just for a little while?”

  Ms. Miranda’s smile dimmed. “Sorry,” she said. “Archival materials aren’t supposed to leave the building.”

  “I just want to check it again.” Fiona pulled back. “There has to be something else to learn. Please.”

  Ms. Miranda’s face was kind but firm. “It’s just a sad old story, Fiona. It might not have any more to tell you.”

  “But it might. And I just . . . since we moved to Lost Lake, I’ve felt like there was no reason for me to be here.” Fiona’s words came faster. “Like I was just getting dragged along by my sister. But maybe I can figure out this mystery. Maybe it’s been waiting for the right person to come along. Maybe then I won’t feel . . .” Fiona swallowed the words that surged inside her. So lonely. So unwanted. So forgotten. “I don’t know,” she finished. “But maybe this is my reason.”

  Ms. Miranda gazed down at Fiona for a long moment. “You might be right,” she said. “About the story waiting for someone to understand it. Margaret Chisholm certainly deserves that.” She put one hand lightly on Fiona’s shoulder. “You’ll make a great historian someday, you know. Or a great librarian.” A fraction of her smile curled back. “Take the book,” she murmured. “Just don’t tell anyone. Take perfect care of it, and bring it back soon. Got it?”

  Fiona was already nodding eagerly.

  Ms. Miranda nodded too. “I’ve got to get back to work. Come and see me if you need anything else. Anything except more chocolate-covered raisins, because I just finished them. All right?”

  “I will,” Fiona promised.

  The click of Ms. Miranda’s steps trailed out of the storage room.

  Fiona stood by herself in the former kitchen, hugging The Lost One tight. She combed through the thoughts in her head, trying to separate the facts from the guesses, rereading them like the old documents that Ms. Miranda had handed over.

  An idea lanced through her.

  There was one more place to look for evidence. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  A moment later, with The Lost One zipped safely inside her backpack, Fiona rushed out of the library and onto her bike.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wayfarer’s Rest Cemetery was lovely in the June sunlight.

  Its hush enfolded Fiona as she pedaled through the open gates. Giant oaks lined the main path like living pillars. Moss blanketed the rolling ground. Fiona followed the path deeper into the cemetery, over a hill where colonial gravestones leaned together like whispering friends, and then over another hill, and another. Wayfarer’s Rest was huge. This made sense, Fiona supposed. Lost Lake was so old, it had a lot more dead residents than living ones. But how was she supposed to find the one grave she was looking for?

  Like the answer to her question, a cottage with a sign reading CARETAKER’S OFFICE appeared around the next bend. Fiona zoomed toward it.

  The outer door to the cottage stood open, a flimsy screen door letting in the grassy air. Fiona pushed the latch and stepped inside.

  A man with thick glasses and a steaming mug in his hands was just emerging from a nook in the back.

  “Morning,” he said, giving her a not-too-friendly nod. He obviously knew she didn’t belong here, Fiona thought. And not just because she was alive. He crossed the office toward a large metal desk. “Need something?”

  “Yes,” said Fiona. “I need to find a grave.”

  “That’s why most people come here,” said the man, sitting down at the desk. “Name?”

  “My name? Fiona Crane.”

  Now the man looked mildly surprised. “Is the grave for you?”

  “Oh. No,” said Fiona. “I thought—never mind. I’m looking for the Chisholm family plot.”

  “Ah. Chisholms.” The man leaned back in the chair. “Don’t need to check the files for that one. Built themselves the biggest house in town. Guess they needed the biggest monument to go with it.” He took a sip of coffee. “It’s right over on Silver Birch. By the pond.”

  “The pond?” Fiona repeated.

  With an almost silent sigh, the man pulled a laminated map out of a desk drawer. Fiona bent eagerly over it.

  “Here’s Oak Lane,” he said, tapping a black line. “That’s the road you came in on. Here’s Silver Birch, where you’ll make a left. If you get to the pond, you’ve missed it. But you probably won’t miss it. The Chisholms wanted to be noticed. At least for some things.”

  “You mean there were things they didn’t want noticed?” Fiona asked. “Did you know them?”

  “Naw,” said the man. “Just heard plenty.” He tapped the map again before sliding it back into the drawer. “Left on Silver Birch.”

  “Okay,” said Fiona, sidling back toward the screen door. “Thank you.”

  She pedaled along the path, turning at the sign for Silver Birch. The branching pavement was narrower here, but the gravestones along it became grander and grander, growing from skull-and-bones headstones to stone mausoleums and towering marble obelisks. And there, on the tallest pillar of all:

  CHISHOLM

  Fiona dropped her bike onto the moss. She scurried closer, her heart starting to thump.

  In front of the obelisk were two large matching headstones.

  FREDERICK R. CHISHOLM 1866–1931

  CLARA M. CHISHOLM 1867–1928

  Fiona looked to both sides, breathing harder.

  A few steps to the left, sheltered by two evergreen bushes, was a newer, smaller, grayer headstone.

  MARGARET A. CHISHOLM 1902–1971

  Fiona gazed past the gray headstone, into the shadows cast by a thicket of pine trees.

  There.

  The trees had grown thick enough that the stone between them was easy to miss. Its edges had sunk into the soft earth, and moss and lichen had crept close, covering its corners like green cobwebs.

  Fiona crouched beside it.

  EVELYN ROSE CHISHOLM

  DARLING DAUGHTER–

  BELOVED SISTER

  Fiona touched the face of the stone, very gently. It was cold and solid and real.

  Maybe Ms. Miranda wasn’t concealing anything after all. Maybe she was right about the story in The Lost One being a lie. Because Evelyn hadn’t disappeared at all. She was right h
ere. She’d been here all along.

  Fiona sagged down on the damp grass.

  She’d been fooling herself. She had wanted so badly to find something meaningful to do in Lost Lake that she had clung to this silly quest—just like she had when she was a bored little kid waiting at Arden’s skating rink, pretending that the bits of trash she found in the stands were relics of an ancient civilization.

  There was nothing here to discover. Nothing that needed Fiona to find it.

  Feeling suddenly fifty pounds heavier, she hauled herself back onto her bike.

  In the oily dimness of her family’s garage, with the book still zipped securely in her bag, Fiona stopped to think.

  Arden might have noticed she was missing by now. But she didn’t have proof that Fiona had left the house. If Fiona was careful, she might be able to get back up to her bedroom without Arden spotting her.

  She inched open the garage door.

  Arden was sitting at the kitchen table.

  A notepad and a set of neatly sharpened colored pencils lay beside her. She was wearing earbuds, but she tugged them out as Fiona stepped inside. She didn’t speak. A tiny lift of her eyebrows told Fiona that Arden had been waiting for her.

  Fiona felt the air whoosh out of her body.

  “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Right here?” Arden tapped the table with the end of a pale blue pencil. “Not that long. I’ve just been working on my planner, listening to my program music. But I noticed you were gone forever ago.” One corner of her mouth started to smile. “Making a fake body in the bed? Seriously? When has that ever worked, outside of the movies?”

  “I just had to get something from the library,” said Fiona tightly. “It was urgent.”

  “Um-hmm,” said Arden, in a way that might have meant she believed this or not, and that it didn’t matter either way.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell on me?” Fiona clenched both fists. “Ruin my life even more?”

  The smile on Arden’s lips disappeared. “I wasn’t going to. Even if I probably should.”

  Fiona tried to read her sister’s face, but over the past couple of years, Arden’s face had gotten very hard to read. Much harder than the fine print in an old book. “You weren’t going to tell?”

  “I didn’t tell that you trashed my room the other day,” said Arden coolly. “Even though I know it was you.”

  “I thought you had taken a book of mine without asking.”

  Arden flashed Fiona a baffled look. “I’d probably borrow your toothbrush before I borrowed one of your weird books.” She set the pencil down. “Listen. We’re old enough to handle some problems ourselves, right?”

  “Right,” said Fiona uncertainly.

  “So, we can do that now. If we agree on a few things.”

  “Like what?” Dread began to crystalize in Fiona’s stomach. “Are you going to force me to do your laundry and dust your trophies and come clap at all your practices or something?”

  “No,” said Arden. “I know you’d never come clap for me anyway.”

  The words were so bitter, Fiona took a teeny step backward.

  Arden rolled the pencil back and forth under her fingers. “I know something is going on with you,” she said. “You’ve got some new project or obsession that you’re working on, and it obviously has to do with the library, or research, or whatever. And by the way, sneaking out of the house when you’re grounded just to go to the library is the most Fiona-ish thing you could possibly do.”

  Fiona almost smiled. But she wouldn’t have wanted Arden to see it.

  “And maybe I feel kind of bad,” Arden went on. “About you having to leave your friends and missing that party and everything. So I’m going to be extra understanding. And in exchange, you can do something for me.”

  “Like what?” said Fiona.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll decide when the time comes. For now, we’ll just say that you owe me a big favor, and when I ask you for it, you won’t say no.”

  Fiona thought. Arden could demand something really unpleasant. Something that could cause serious trouble. But what options did she have? It was say yes and maybe hurt herself in the future, or say no and definitely hurt herself now.

  “Fine,” she answered.

  “Good.” Arden tapped the pencil on the tabletop again. Tap tap tap.

  Fiona squared her shoulders. If Arden was waiting for her to explain, or to apologize, or to even start making up, she was going to be disappointed.

  “I’m going to my room,” she said at last, grasping both backpack straps and heading toward the hall.

  But Arden was already fitting her earbuds back into place.

  Upstairs, Fiona flopped across her bed. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out The Lost One. She flipped through the pages to the point where the story broke off, as though somehow this time things would be different. It wasn’t.

  She was flipping through the blank pages so quickly that all she saw at first was one flash of paler white. Fiona stopped and turned slowly backward.

  Someone had wedged a scrap of notebook paper between the blank pages. And written on it, in blocky, tilted letters, was a message.

  Don’t stop now. You’re on the right track. KEEP DIGGING.

  Chapter Seventeen

  KEEP DIGGING. KEEP DIGGING.

  The words streaked and spun through Fiona’s head like figure skaters. Every time she closed her eyes to sleep, they rushed back, carving trails through her dreams.

  In one dream, she was excavating an ancient city, but every new chamber she uncovered was empty. In another, she knelt in Wayfarer’s Rest Cemetery in the middle of the night, digging into the soil with her bare hands. She dug until her fingernails scraped the wooden lid of a coffin.

  “KEEP DIGGING,” said a voice.

  Fiona woke up from that one with a thudding heart and queasy stomach.

  She rolled over to look at the alarm clock. It was almost six in the morning, but the sky outside her windows was still so dark, it might as well have been the middle of the night. Below the occasional booms of thunder, she could hear her family hurrying around, showering, making coffee, rushing off to another day. The house creaked and groaned like it had been awakened too early and wanted to get back to sleep.

  Fiona shoved a hand under her pillows and felt the worn leather cover of The Lost One. Then she flipped the pillows over, just to make sure. Yes, the book was right where she’d left it. And the note on the scrap of paper was there too.

  KEEP DIGGING.

  Who had left the note? And why? And what did it mean?

  Fiona tried to think logically, even though logic barely seemed to matter anymore.

  Who had access to the book? Well . . . Ms. Miranda, of course. Was she trying to send Fiona a secret message, something that she couldn’t say aloud? Or was it the weird blond boy, who clearly knew something about the story? Was it the woman who worked on the library’s third floor, and who obviously cared about protecting Evelyn’s memory? Could it be someone else? Could it be a trick?

  Fiona put the pillow back over the book. Then she flopped down and thumped her head against the pillows, which sometimes helped to shake thoughts loose.

  If the book didn’t have any more answers to give, where could she look? She’d checked the graveyard. She’d explored the woods around Parson’s Bridge and hadn’t found anything but a stray dog—a dog who’d led her straight back to the library. The library that was Evelyn and Margaret’s house.

  That had to be it. There had to be something there for Fiona to find. Something that would prove the story in The Lost One was true after all.

  Suddenly, Fiona sat straight up in bed. KEEP DIGGING.

  She knew just what she needed to look for.

  The stormy sky was darkening from pencil lead to charcoal when Fiona pedaled up to the old brick mansion.

  She had waited until her family left the house before tucking The Lost One into her bed, putting on a
raincoat, and sneaking into the garage. Then she’d zipped a garden trowel into her backpack and steered her bike out into the rain.

  It was just past seven now, nearly two hours before the library would open. The rest of downtown Lost Lake was dim and sleepy, doors shut and windows dark. Still, Fiona felt the quiet old buildings watching her, as if they knew she shouldn’t have been there at all.

  At the library, Fiona turned, riding around the big brick building and into the backyard. There she stopped and scanned the windows. There were no lights on yet. No one was inside to look out and see her creeping past.

  Fiona examined the wooded yard. The sagging building to her left had to be the old carriage house. Fiona imagined Charlie Hobbes peering out of its boarded-up second-floor windows, watching a girl in a white nightgown trail into the trees.

  But which tree had she chosen?

  Thunder rumbled, closer now. Fiona blinked the raindrops from her eyelashes. There were dozens of oaks to pick from. Which one was the biggest? Which was the oldest? How could she possibly know? She thought of archeologists surveying miles of blank, bare desert, deciding where to dig. How could they possibly know?

  At least archeologists had teams, she thought, pulling the trowel out of her backpack. They didn’t have to search all alone.

  But when she straightened up again, Fiona wasn’t alone either.

  Something hidden in the trees was watching her with yellow eyes.

  Fiona’s heart jolted.

  She took two quick steps back, skidding on the slippery grass.

  The yellow eyes stared on.

  They were too close to the ground to be human. Fiona was pretty sure that there weren’t any dangerous wild animals in this part of Massachusetts, but when the eyes suddenly charged closer, Fiona’s heart jolted again.

  Before she could run, a curly brown dog bounded out of the shadows.

  “Oh. It’s you.” The words came out of her in a relieved whoosh. “What are you doing out in the rain?”

  She stepped toward the dog, but just like before, it danced out of her reach.

  “Hey. Dog!” Fiona called. “Where do you live?”

  The dog circled a nearby tree, sniffing at something on the ground.