Nightbird (12 page)

Julia wanted to send a postcard with a photograph of Sidwell to her cousin in England. She opened a drawer to look for a pen. When she reached inside she felt a latch at the back. She slipped it up, to find a hidden space. Inside was a small leather-bound book. Agnes Early’s diary.

It seemed only fitting that if we wanted to undo the curse we should read the diary in the herb garden. Julia phoned me and I ran all the way. She waited to turn the first page until we were sitting in the shade of a tangle of roses that were now in full bloom. Bees were humming all around us. We were ready to step back in time, my mother’s wish and my wish now, too.

What begins one way must end the same way.

I read the first line aloud.

This is a place where I can write my heart.

And so she did. She wrote about my four-times-great-grandfather and his green eyes, and how she thought about him while she worked in her garden planting the same herbs that we now grew: tansy, lavender, mint. She
planned the life they would have together, forever after. She and Lowell Fowler had grown up together and everyone in Sidwell knew they were fated to marry someday.

But Agnes’s parents thought she was too young, and besides, war was breaking out, the American Revolution. The year was 1775. The Early family was from England, and they sided with the king. The Fowlers, on the other hand, were American through and through and had joined with George Washington’s rebels to fight the king and his army of Red Coats. Families who had been friends and neighbors became enemies overnight. Aggie and Lowell were no longer allowed to see each other.

And so a secret plan was made.

We will meet by the lake on the last day of July and run away to Boston, where our families cannot find us, so that we can be married.

When Julia read that line out loud Beau began to bark. I had goose bumps up and down my arms. Crickets were calling in the tall grass. It was almost August. I knew Julia and I were both thinking the same thing: Agnes Early was probably sitting in the exact same place where we were now when she wrote down these words.

He did not come.

Agnes had waited with her packed bag. The wedding dress she’d stitched by hand, always sewn in secret when
her parents were asleep, was carefully folded inside. The meeting place was the field beyond Last Lake, which was called Early Lake then, for the other lakes hadn’t yet dried up. Perhaps that was part of the curse as well.

She waited all night long. But Lowell Fowler had disappeared without a sign. Agnes went to his parents, who knew nothing and were beside themselves with worry. His neighbors searched the woods and found no clues. It was as if he had never existed. His horse waited in the barn; his dog paced the meadow.

Agnes Early waited a day, a week, a month, a year.

And then, she disappeared as well. Before she left Sidwell, she made one last entry in her diary. She wrote that she had combined the herbs in the garden with two petals from the rosebush Lowell had given her as a gift, a tiny specimen that had come all the way from England by ship and had bloomed on the day he disappeared. On the night of the first full moon in August, Agnes created the spell that forever after cursed the men of our family.

Let him fly even faster from me if that’s what he desires! Let him have wings!

She never wrote again.

I wandered through the woods to think things through, trying to figure out what could have made Lowell leave Agnes Early without a word. Could it be that he hadn’t meant to hurt her? People often hurt the ones they love most, don’t they? Without ever meaning to, they lash out, walk away, never see one another again. Or maybe it had all been beyond Lowell’s control, like lightning striking him when he least expected it.

That was when I saw someone skulking about in the woods. A boy with a black backpack.

He was tall, with fair hair. He clearly knew these woods, but so did I. I started following him. I managed to stay quiet until there was a crunching sound when I stepped on a pinecone. I quickly ducked behind some bramble bushes. When he turned to glance over his shoulder, I got a good look at his face. My heart hit against my chest. He seemed familiar somehow. I should have gone back, but I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. I followed him through the woods, but all of a sudden, he disappeared. I had the feeling I’d imagined him, and that I’d been tracking a shadow or some fog; then I realized he’d slipped through a black wrought-iron gate.

I’d found the back entrance to the Montgomery estate.

Unless I was very much mistaken, I’d also found the graffiti artist.

Colin Montgomery. The boy whose family owned these woods.

I noticed there was a pile of stones once used for an old road that had fallen apart. I picked out some white ones; then, as quickly as I could, I arranged them to spell out my message:

I’ll help you.

I walked home slowly, thinking about how complicated families were and how many secrets people kept. Now I had one, too. One I didn’t intend to mention to Julia, or even to James. I needed to figure some things out first.

I didn’t realize how long I’d been gone until I stepped through our front door. There was my mother, waiting for me.

“Where have you been?” A worried expression crossed her face. “Half the time I don’t even know if you’re home. Is there something I should know about?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said.

My mother laughed. “Well, there’s nothing wrong in that! What a relief!”

“I’ve been thinking about our family history.”

My mother didn’t seem so cheerful when she heard that. “I can’t help you. Sorry.”

She went into the kitchen, intending to end the conversation, but I followed her.

“I’ve been thinking about Lowell Fowler.”

My mother smiled faintly. “That’s ancient history.”

“Seriously.” I wasn’t giving up. “I don’t know anything about him.”

My mother shrugged and told me she didn’t know much either. Only that his parents had begun this orchard and our family had been here ever since. He’d lived and died in Sidwell.

“Did he disappear?” I wanted to know.

“Into the woods to think?” she teased.

“Mom. Seriously.”

“If he did disappear, he came back. He’s buried in the town cemetery.” My mother was distracted, turning the pages of the
Sidwell Herald.

I started for my room but found James in the hallway, headed toward the front door. “Don’t try to stop me,” he told me. “I can’t live this way anymore.”

“If Julia and I figure out the cure you won’t have to. If we can find out what happened to Lowell, maybe we can reverse it.”

“Don’t you think someone would have stopped it a long time ago if it could have been done?”

Instead of listening to me, James went outside to the front porch. It was a beautiful afternoon. I thought of all the days he’d been locked away. I felt a lump in my throat as I went to stand beside him. I didn’t blame him for not having faith in anything. But at least he had me to back him up. The boy at the Montgomery estate seemed to have no one.

“Some nights, I don’t fly,” my brother told me. “I put on my long coat and I walk out the door like I’m anybody else. I head down the road and go through town. I stand on Main Street. I sit on the steps of Town Hall. I look in through the library windows. Just so I’ll know what it’s like to be normal. No one’s caught me yet.”

A car had turned onto the dirt road that led to our house. I worried it might be the sheriff again, but James didn’t seem concerned.

“Maybe it’s time for everyone to see me. Maybe it’s fate. Let them put my picture on T-shirts so people can see the real Sidwell Monster. Here I am!” he shouted to the car.

It wasn’t the sheriff, but I tugged on James’s arm and dragged him inside. I had recognized Mr. Rose’s car, and
if James wasn’t quick his story might be plastered all across the front page of the
Herald.

“Just for now,” I said. “Stay inside.”

When Mr. Rose got out of his car I was back out on the porch, sitting on the railing. He handed me the quart of ice cream he’d brought along. I checked out the flavor. Apple cinnamon. My favorite. I looked at him carefully, wondering if he was a mind reader or if he just happened to have the same taste as me.

“Hello, Twig. I could have sworn someone was standing here with you.”

“Nope,” I said, my fingers crossed behind my back. “Just me and my shadow.”

“Funny,” he mused. “I have twenty-twenty vision. Is your shadow a tall boy, about four years older than you?”

I shook my head, feeling panic rising. Could it be that he really was a mind reader? “Maybe you should get your eyes checked. Vision changes as you age.”

“You’re right. I probably should.”

I hadn’t heard my mother come up behind me, but suddenly there she was. “Teresa,” she said, using my given name for emphasis. “Why don’t you put that ice cream in the freezer. I’m going to have a talk with Mr. Rose.”

I was stunned. I would have never expected her to go walking through the orchard with a newspaper editor when we had so much to hide and so much at stake if anyone found out about James. All the same, she looked so happy I felt happy, too, and when Mr. Rose waved to me from the orchard, I waved back.

Sometimes you think you know what’s going to happen next, and then the world surprises you, especially in Sidwell. I went walking to think things over. I found myself back at the old gates of the Montgomery estate. I suppose I wanted to see if my message was still there. It wasn’t. The stones were all scattered. At first I thought it was an accident—some deer had run by and wrecked my words. Then I realized the stones had been rearranged to form a message back to me.

Thank you Twig.

CHAPTER SIX

M
Y MOTHER HAD SAID LOWELL HAD BEEN buried in the Sidwell Cemetery, so that was where Julia and I went next. The old cemetery was on one of the steepest roads outside of Sidwell. It hadn’t been used since 1901, when a new cemetery was built a little closer to town. We hiked up and finally made it. It was a hot day and the sky was a fragile cloud-streaked blue. The grass was so tall it reached past our knees. There were blackbirds wheeling above us, screaming at us as if we didn’t belong, doing their best to chase us away.

I hadn’t yet told Julia about Colin Montgomery. I
just didn’t want to share him with anyone. Not yet. But whenever I kept a secret from someone it built a wall between us, and now it was happening with Julia. She chatted away, but I stayed quiet, deep in my own thoughts. It was easy enough to do. This was a place where silence felt right.

The cemetery was surrounded by a rusty iron fence. But the gate wasn’t locked and was easy to push open. We put our hands against the metal, and in seconds, we were inside.

Several members of the Fowler family had been buried here, along with the ancestors of many townspeople whose names I recognized: the great-grandparents of Mr. Stern from the General Store; the aunts and uncles of the drama teacher, Mrs. Meyers; several relatives of Mr. Hopper from the garden center; even a Larch or two.

We found Lowell’s grave on a hillside where there were banks of wild pink roses. It was off by itself and had the plainest of markers, a simple white stone. Julia and I crouched down so we could clear off the dust and pebbles and read the inscription.

Lowell Fowler, son of Sidwell

Now I can fly free

“He probably thought Agnes would still be here when he came back,” Julia said, a sad cast in her eyes.

I nodded in agreement. “Only this time she was the one who had disappeared.”

“Their true fate was interrupted.”

It was always windy on this hillside, even on a bright sunny day. I had the shivers. I noticed that something had been left on Lowell’s grave. A white stone. I looked around. There was nothing but grass and wild roses and the iron fence all around us.

I almost told Julia about Colin Montgomery then.

But I didn’t.

She was talking about what we needed to do next. “I’ll search the cottage to see if Agnes left any more clues on how to undo the spell. I’m going to find out where she went when she left Sidwell. We’re going back to Brooklyn this weekend so my father can finish his work there and we can pick up some boxes we left behind. I’ll go to the library and see if there’s anything in their files about Agnes.”