Nightbird (13 page)

“I’ll try to find out why Lowell disappeared in the first place and where he was during those missing years.”

We didn’t want fate to get all confused again.

While Julia was gone I went to the newspaper office on the corner of Fifth and Main. I was ready to research
Lowell Fowler, but there was someone else’s life I wanted to check into as well. Mr. Rose was an editor, used to digging into stories, and for some reason I felt I could trust him. I thought he would likely understand issues of crime and destiny. Maybe he could help me figure out whether you should turn a person in when he might be doing something that could get him in trouble, something that might affect your family and maybe the whole town.

A bell rang over the door when I went inside the newspaper office. The sound was jingly, like the sleigh bells that used to hang on horse-drawn sleds. I felt as if I was stepping back in time again, and to tell the truth, it was a good feeling. The past seemed like the place where things could be settled and sorted out.

Mr. Rose was sitting behind an old-fashioned oak desk with lots of different cubbyholes filled with bills and letters. There was a computer, but he was writing longhand. He hurried to put his notepad away when he saw me. What he was writing looked a little like a love letter. I was fairly certain I saw a heart next to the rose where he’d signed his name.

“Twig!” he said cheerfully. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

I sat in a worn leather chair. For some reason the way
Mr. Rose said my name made me smile. I tried to remember to be standoffish, the way I was with everyone else in town, but it wasn’t easy. “I need some information. I’m on my way to the history room at Town Hall to see Miss Larch.”

“Aunt Florence.” Mr. Rose nodded. “Excellent historian. No one knows more about Sidwell.”

“But I also need some more current information.”

“At your service.” He moved his chair away from his desk and crossed his long legs, ready to listen.

There were only two other employees, Mr. Higgins and Miss Hayward, both busy on the phone. I couldn’t help but overhear bits of their conversations. Mr. Higgins was talking to his daughter Ruth about dinner—he preferred fried chicken to beef stew—and Miss Hayward was speaking with her dentist’s office about an appointment to have her teeth checked. Not exactly breaking news. Both reporters were about ninety years old and had worked for the paper forever. Miss Hayward wrote up the police log. Mr. Higgins covered the social scene, which included school plays, town meetings, and the apple festival. They called out to me after they finished with their phone calls.

“Fancy seeing you here, Twig,” Mr. Higgins said.

“Make yourself at home,” Miss Hayward said
warmly. “I’m in a forgetting state when I work, so in case I haven’t said so, hello and how are you?”

I said hello back and assured Miss Hayward I was fine; then I turned to Mr. Rose. I lowered my voice. “I wanted to find out something about the Montgomery family.”

“So do I. Seems like we’re on the same wavelength.”

Mr. Rose brought out some files.

“Mr. Montgomery bought acres of the woods bordering Sidwell twenty years ago. He lives in Boston and used to spend summers here, but in the past couple of years he’s only come up occasionally.”

I thought back to the summer when I was supposed to play the witch. I remembered my friend from that time. It was Colin Montgomery. That was why he’d looked so familiar at his gate. Even at five he’d been a tall, shy boy with blond hair who carried a black backpack. “Good-bye, Twig,” he’d said to me on the day I had to leave and give up my part. We always had lunch together out in the playground, and because he never liked his own lunch, I always gave him half of mine. “Good-bye, Collie,” I’d said. He’d grinned at me, because we’d both had nicknames.

“I’ve been researching Hugh Montgomery for an article,” Mr. Rose went on. “He plans to develop the
woods, put up a hundred houses, along with a shopping center, several restaurants, maybe even a new school. The town has to vote in September. The construction would mean jobs, so some people are for it, but it would also ruin many of the things most people in this town love most.”

“The woods,” I said.

Mr. Rose nodded. “The woods.”

“What about the owls?” I said.

Mr. Rose leaned forward. “What owls?”

“The black saw-whet owls. They only exist in Sidwell. Miss Larch’s friend Dr. Shelton knows all about them.”

“Does he?” Mr. Rose shrugged on his jacket. “Why don’t I walk you over to see Miss Larch?”

Because of his long legs, Mr. Rose walked fast. I had long legs, too, but I still had to hurry to keep up with him. I was a little nervous about going back to Town Hall after I’d stolen the feathers. Once we went inside, I looked over my shoulder, afraid someone would grab me and say,
“Aha, here’s the thief!”
Luckily, no one noticed me as I followed Mr. Rose.

We passed the auditorium, where the camp was rehearsing the play that was always performed on August 1, the day of Lowell’s disappearance.

One little girl was clearly the witch. She was dressed
all in black, standing on the papier-mâché cliff. “Do not pry into my business if you know what’s best for you and yours!” she said in a shaky voice.

“I hate this play,” I told Mr. Rose.

We watched as the little witch was pushed off the cliff by the other kindergartners. She fell too hard, skinned her knee, and started to cry.

“I can understand why,” Mr. Rose said. “It should be rewritten.”

“Someday,” I assured him, “it will be.”

“Someday, I plan to see your version.” That made me like him even more. “Shall we delve into Sidwell history?” He opened the door to Miss Larch’s domain. “Aunt Florence.” Mr. Rose greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. “I’ve brought Twig for some historical help.” His glance strayed to the table. He noticed it was set for two. “Were you expecting anyone else?”

“Well, it appears that I’m expecting Twig now, aren’t I?” Miss Larch said.

I could tell she wasn’t very practiced in keeping secrets.

Mr. Rose looked directly at his aunt. “I’ve got some research to do on owls. You couldn’t help me out with that, could you?”

“I would if I could, but I can’t. Owls are not my personal specialty, and what others know, I can’t divulge.”

I suspected Miss Larch was used to protecting Dr. Shelton and that she had her reasons, just as I had my reasons for protecting James, and now, it seemed, for protecting Colin Montgomery as well.

“I think you can trust me, Aunt Florence,” Mr. Rose said. “I want what’s best for Sidwell. And I think you know, I can keep a secret.”

“If you do find the person who can help you,” Miss Larch said, “give him this. He might be hungry. Tell him I sent you.”

She cut a large slice of the cinnamon coffee cake set out on a flowered platter and wrapped it in a napkin.

“Turn left at Last Lake,” she said. “Then look up.”

Mr. Rose nodded, then turned to me. “Good luck, Twig. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I hope you do, too.”

We shook hands and I had a sort of teary feeling for no reason. I guess I had the sense that we were trying to save Sidwell together, even if no one knew we were trying to save the people we cared about as well.

“My nephew is a fine fellow,” Miss Larch told me when we were alone. She had put up the kettle for tea.
We were having memory tea, which was especially fitting considering that my research had to do with the past. It was ginger peach with a hint of vanilla. “Heartbroken, though,” Miss Larch added.

“Really?” I might have been right to guess that Mr. Rose had been writing a love letter when I first walked into the
Herald
’s office.

“You can always see heartbreak in a person’s eyes. Plus he sings love songs to himself. That’s a sure sign.”

My mother sang love songs when she thought I couldn’t hear. Actually, I noticed Miss Larch was singing a love song as she fixed our tea.
The very thought of you and I forget to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.

She had also forgotten to put out teaspoons and sugar, not that I minded. I hadn’t known you could fall in love at Miss Larch’s age.

“What brings you here today?” she asked.

I told her about Lowell, my four-times-great-grandfather, and how he’d disappeared in 1775 and left heartbreak behind and no one seemed to know why.

“It was the beginning of the American Revolution,” Miss Larch said as she went to the files. “The shot heard round the world was fired in Concord, and that was the beginning of our country. Unfortunately, if you’re looking
for the news from that time, there may be a problem. There was a major fire in Sidwell soon after. Lightning struck and started the sparks. Half of Main Street was burned down.

“I have seen some papers on Lowell Fowler. He was a war hero. There was a grand parade for him on Main Street when he returned. Biggest one Sidwell’s ever had. And then Johnny Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, gave him the Pink apple tree and the orchard began.”

Miss Larch put on her reading glasses, then took out the records from the year Lowell went missing. Thankfully Town Hall hadn’t burned down in the fire and there was still an accounting of marriages, births, deaths, and military records, dating back to the 1700s.

On the evening of July 31, 1775, all able-bodied young men left Sidwell to fight the British. The information was common knowledge; it was all written up in the pamphlet tourists were given when they visited Sidwell. But there was more that no one knew. After all the men had gathered, one was missing: Lowell Fowler.

When the other men in town went to search for him, they found him walking in the woods on his way to meet Aggie Early. He told them he couldn’t go to Concord, even though he was a patriot. He explained the next day
was to be his wedding day and a man couldn’t miss that, even for a war against the king. But the men of Sidwell wouldn’t listen. They insisted that it was every patriot’s duty to go to fight, even the ones in love. The war wouldn’t wait and that was that.

They took him without a minute to say good-bye.

That was the minute that changed his fate and ours.

Lowell proved his courage, saving many of his friends during his year in service, including several citizens of Sidwell, one of them a relative of Miss Larch’s.

“Think of that! I wouldn’t exist without him and neither would Ian!” Miss Larch said. “You’d be sitting here talking to an empty chair. As a matter of fact, a lot of us wouldn’t be here if not for Lowell Fowler!”

“Could he have written any letter back home?”

“Likely not. The mail and everything else had been disrupted. War is war, and letters, even if written, are easily misplaced.”

After the war Lowell finally made his way home. By then six years had passed.

“What happened then?”

Miss Larch was scanning the marriage and birth records. “He married a local girl and they had a son, but it seems he never left the house once he came back home to Sidwell. His wife did all the business. No one ever really saw him again.” She turned a few of the old, crinkly pages. “There was obviously something or someone who mattered to him at Mourning Dove Cottage.”

In his will, he’d left a sum for upkeep that paid the taxes for the cottage through all the years it was abandoned.

“I suspect he wanted to keep it up in case the previous occupant ever returned,” Miss Larch said.

The memory tea we were drinking was definitely working, because I remembered something personal. Something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. At the end of the summer long ago when I had to give up the part of the witch, I’d found a note left on our porch.

Good-bye
had been written in blue ink.

Your friend, Collie

Maybe I’d mattered to somebody, too.

CHAPTER SEVEN

W
HEN AGATE AND JULIA CAME BACK FROM Brooklyn I was waiting on the front porch of Mourning Dove Cottage. Beau came running over, barking hello, and Dr. and Mrs. Hall both gave me a hug and said it was good to be home. Agate had her hands full with fabric that she’d bought in Manhattan. “Silk, satin, velvet, tweed!” she sang out, racing in to get to work at her sewing machine.

At the library in Brooklyn the sisters had discovered that Agnes Early had lived there, and had been a seamstress in a shop famous for its wedding dresses. Agate had
clearly inherited her sewing talents from her. A librarian had helped the girls find a copy of the 1790 census. By scanning through, they had discovered that Agnes had done well enough to buy her own property. Although she had never married, her younger sister Isabelle had. Aggie was devoted to her niece and nephews, one of whom was Julia and Agate’s three-times-great-grandfather.

Then it was time for my news. I announced that I knew who was pretending to be the monster.

“You do?” Julia applauded me on what she said was my fine investigative work. “Did you set a trap?”

“I didn’t have to. I saw him in the woods. He’s just a boy who used to spend summers here when he was little. I think he’s trying to protect the owls.”