Eight Keys (9 page)

Was that what Dad meant by unlock? I would literally
unlock
something?

But
what
? What was locked?

As I got sleepier, I pictured things that were locked with keys. Houses. Old trunks. Cars. Padlocks. Doors.

I sat up in bed, suddenly awake.

There were
eight
locked doors upstairs in the barn.
Eight
of them!

Could
those
be for
me
?

But the feeling of excitement disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.

Those doors were off-limits. They always had been.

I checked Dad’s letter again: “discover and unlock
when you are ready.
”

Maybe I just hadn’t been ready.

But now I was ready for
something
to be different. For
anything
to be different.

Tomorrow I’d take a chance and see what that key opened up.

It had my name on it, after all.

The First Little, Secret Room

After a night of not much sleeping, I woke up, raced through the world’s shortest shower, and found just what I wanted to find: Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie having morning coffee in the kitchen.

“You already have your backpack on, ready to go!” Aunt Bessie seemed very surprised to see me. She and Uncle Hugh were still in bathrobes. Even on days when neither of them is going to leave the house, they both insist on getting dressed before eight a.m.

“Yeah,” I said, swinging my wet ponytail over my shoulder as I grabbed a scone from a plateful on the table. “You know … I’m trying not to be late anymore.”

“Good for you, Cricket,” Uncle Hugh said.

“Well, bye!”

“Well, bye,” echoed Uncle Hugh. I headed out the front door.

I had time to visit the barn without worrying that Uncle Hugh would be working there or that Aunt Bessie would be out loading up the van or watering her flowers.

I ran across the driveway and into the barn. I didn’t think
I’d been spotted. I darted to the little room where I’d seen the key. Still there!

A shiver of excitement ran through me as I lifted the key.

I wasn’t going to use the key right away, I decided, slipping it into the pocket of my jeans. I was going to hold on to it, just for the day. For now, the key had infinite possibilities. It would be nice to have a day of infinite possibilities.

School was okay. There was the usual trouble with Amanda, but most of my homework was done, thanks to Uncle Hugh. Franklin had found some boys to hang out with—the one who shares his locker and his two friends—which hurt less, somehow, than if he’d had lunch with Diana. He and I sat together silently on the bus home. I kind of wanted to tell him about the key, and I even, just a little, wanted him to come with me on a treasure hunt to discover what it unlocked, but something kept me silent. He hadn’t been interested in the key when I’d found it, just in making that castle. Why would he be interested now?

At our stop, we headed in separate directions.

Uncle Hugh was out at a customer’s house, and Aunt Bessie was inside baking for an event. Perfect, perfect.

I snuck into the barn, left my backpack on the ground floor, fished the key out of my pocket, and held it in my hands.

I slowly walked up the steps. My shoes left prints in the
dust. Uncle Hugh really didn’t come up here much. Or maybe he used the elevator.

At the top of the stairs, I took a deep breath and looked at the row of doors. They stood in a tight line, like soldiers at their stations or trees planted to grow up together, seeming not like simple doors but like living things. The breeze that danced through the drafty hallway made it feel like they might even be breathing.

There was nothing to tell me what might be different about each of them. I decided to start with the closest one.

The key didn’t fit.

Next door.

It fit.

Already! On the second door. The room
was
for me!

I gave the key a twist, and the door unlocked.

I stood back and pushed it so that it opened wide.

I could see years of dust on the floor. A lot came up in the air, disturbed by the door opening, fuzzy in the yellow afternoon light passing through a single warpy-glass window. I coughed and covered my face with my arm.

I took a few steps inside. The walls on the long sides of the narrow room seemed to be shiny, like glass. I crept closer to look.

The walls were covered in framed pictures, many of the same woman. Some pictures were of a baby, or a girl, or a teenager.

I knew who the woman was. And the baby and the girl and the teenager.

We had pictures of her in the house, but not like this. The ones in the house were there all the time, faded into the background, like wallpaper or furniture. These were meant to be looked at, thought about. I walked up to one, pressed my finger to it. “Mom?”

There were at least a dozen portraits. I stopped and looked at each one carefully.

In one she perches at the top of a slide as a three-year-old. She wears a huge smile, her face framed with soft dark curls. I stayed at this picture for several minutes.

In another she looks almost exactly like me. I looked at my own reflection on the glass to compare it. Maybe she’s twelve, too, in the picture.

Then I found one with me in it. You couldn’t see me, exactly, but I’m there. She’s pregnant. The picture is from the side. She isn’t looking at the camera but down, at the bulge of stomach resting on her linked arms. She’s looking at me—a me she can’t even see—with the same expression that Annie uses to look at Ava.

She’d never even met me—how could she look at me that way?

I heard something crunch under my feet. I was stepping on paper. No, a message.

I picked up the slightly yellowed paper. It said, in typed block letters:

KNOW WHAT YOU COME FROM.

I turned to see if there was anything else in the little room, and there was: a big, comfy chair under the window.

The chair was occupied.

At first I thought the lump was a pillow, but it was a teddy bear. He was missing an eye, his sewn-on bow tie was crooked, and his fur was worn through to threads in several places. But he was a literate bear, because he was holding a note. Sure, the “Elise” on the outside of the folded paper matched the ones on my birthday letters, but the inside of the note said,

I remembered Bunny-Rabbit. My favorite soft toy, who had been on several trips through the washing machine and had almost fallen apart. She sat on the top shelf of my closet now, safe.

I picked up Miles, buried my nose in his fur, and breathed in deeply. Miles didn’t smell like a person, just an old stuffed
bear. I felt silly for expecting more than that. He made me cough because he was so dusty.

When a stuffed bear asks you for help, you can … ignore him, check your sanity, or give in.

“Welcome back, Miles,” I whispered.

I sat down and held him in my lap while I studied the portraits.

Eventually, I realized that the sun was starting to slip down below the trees. I had to go or Aunt Bessie would start wondering where I was. I brought the note, KNOW WHAT YOU COME FROM, and Miles with me and squeezed them into my backpack, zipped it up, and swung it over my shoulder. I was careful to shut the barn door just as it had been.

On the way out, I was spotted. Annie and Ava were on a walk. Or at least, Annie was walking, holding Ava.

“Hi,” I said. She didn’t seem to think it was weird for me to come out of the barn.

“Hi, Elise,” Annie said. “I just thought Ava would like to see the trees. They’re so pretty this time of year.”

Ava probably wasn’t old enough to understand that she was looking at trees. They would just be red and yellow and orange blobs.

But Annie really
wanted
her to see those things. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

And that must be how you learn
trees
, right? Someone points them out to you and calls them
trees
?

I thought about the note from Dad and the pictures and Miles. What exactly was he trying to point out to me?

“Elise?” Annie asked. I had been quiet for too long, I guess.

“Don’t you have a stroller?” I asked.

“It doesn’t work so well on gravel and grass. We keep it in the car for in town, where there are sidewalks.”

“Oh. That’s smart.”

“We’re going in now.”

“Me too.”

I walked up the porch steps with Annie.

I managed to keep my secret only until bedtime. I had taken Miles out of my backpack. I held him in bed, wondering, letting my thoughts whir. The unfolded note lay in my lap: KNOW WHAT YOU COME FROM.

But Uncle Hugh came in my room. “Just saying good night.”

“Oh. Good night, Uncle Hugh.”

He sat on my bed. “All your homework done tonight?”

“Some of it.”

“Some of it?”

“Okay,
most
of it. I have more reading.”

Uncle Hugh noticed my stuffed friend.

“Where did you get that?”

“Do you know who it is?”

“Of course I do,” he said. He lifted the bear from my arms
and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Where has he been all these years? Find him in the attic?”

I couldn’t decide whether to lie or not. “Not exactly.”

Uncle Hugh paused, then had a look of realization. He said, not really to me, “Is it time, already?”

“Time for what?”

“I’ve been waiting for years, even checking sometimes, waiting for that little key to disappear. Waiting and waiting, but never actually thinking you’d be ready.”

“It’s been there for years?”

“Oh yes.”

“How many?”

“Nine.”

“Ever since?”

“Ever since. And a little before, of course.”

I nodded.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to.”

We both sat quiet. Uncle Hugh handed back Miles.

Aunt Bessie passed in the hall.

“Bess!” Uncle Hugh called. “Come in here for a minute.”

She peeked around the door. “It’s late. What’s going on?”

Uncle Hugh said, “Our Elise found her key today.”

“Oh,” Aunt Bessie said, looking fairly shocked. She came in and sat in my desk chair. “Did you … use it?”

I held up Miles.

“You did. Was that all? Just Milo?”

“Miles,” I corrected.

“Right. Miles.”

“Pictures,” I said, “of Mom. And a pink chair. And this note.” I held the paper out to them. Uncle Hugh took it.

“Well?” I prompted. “Tell me about her.”

“Haven’t we before?” Aunt Bessie asked.

“Well, sure,” I said. “But this is different.”

Aunt Bessie nodded. “She was very sweet. She had that pretty long, dark hair she would never cut, and big light-brown eyes that sparkled. She was always smiling and laughing, unless someone was making fun of someone else. She never liked that. I remember when I met her, she talked to me like we had been friends for years: handed me a triple-scoop ice cream cone, sat me down on the porch, and asked me what I really thought of those Bertrand boys.”

“What did you say?” Uncle Hugh interrupted, with a sly smile.

“You’ll never know.” Aunt Bessie wore an equally sly smile.

“Were you kids?” I asked.

“No, grown-ups. She was already with your father, and I was with Hugh. She was a good friend. We grew to be very close.”

“What’s with the chair?” I asked.

“You said it was pink, right? I’d guess it was your mother’s favorite reading chair. She used to like to sit and read in it for hours, even more so when it was nearly time for you to get here. She kept it by the window in her bedroom, where the afternoon light was good for reading. She couldn’t go out much then. The doctor thought it would be better for her to stay in bed as much as possible. High-risk pregnancy, he said.”