Tomorrow's Sun (9 page)

With a soft groan that reverberated off the stone walls, she stood and rubbed her back. When her legs were ready to move, she slipped through the opening, nodded toward the woman in the corner, and banged the door closed.

Stopping at the top of the cellar stairs, Emily surveyed the kitchen. Her watch said lunchtime. A loaf of bread and two apples sat on the counter. The fridge held a bottle of iced tea and a package of cheese. Her hand rested just above the waist of her jeans. She felt the rumble, but the pangs didn’t translate into a desire for food. Grabbing her cane from the door handle, she walked over to the sink and stared out the window as she washed an apple.

Cardinal Bob landed on the roof of the shed and called to his mate. Emily shook her head. “Give it a rest. Maybe if you act like you’re not interested, she’ll follow you.”

Like that works
. That was the tactic she’d been employing when she went to Colorado seventeen months ago. Show him you don’t care, you can do this alone. After a week of her silence, he’d called. To tell her she could do it alone.

Her cardinal’s song floated through the screen. She kicked off her sandals and joined him outside, leaning against the railing and listening to the river. Peeling paint bit into her forearms. The whole porch needed to be sanded and repainted. Had she bought a money pit? How much could she do herself? And would she know when to say when? She padded across the boards, willing them smooth and glistening white without the effort it would take.

The inside of her forearm prickled. A thick chunk of paint pressed into her flesh. Hunter green, her least favorite color in all the world. She pried it off. It left an imprint. A pink island—Cuba or Jamaica—in a sea of white. Scraping her fingernail across the green, she found burgundy and wondered if the porch was as old as the rest of the house.

It couldn’t be. The trapdoor would have been useless. Inaccessible. Unless… With an agility she didn’t usually possess, she scrambled down the steps. White-painted lattice covered the space between the ground and the floor of the porch. In rough condition, it would have to be removed eventually. Easing to her knees, she stuck her fingers through the holes and yanked on the crisscrossed wood strips. A yard-long panel gave way and she tossed it aside. Flattening onto the grass, she pulled Jake’s flashlight out of her pocket. Contorted leaves and hickory nuts littered the dirt. There was no sign of the trapdoor, and the space wasn’t deep enough for her to squeeze into.

Flicking off the light, she sat on the grass and stared at the square spindles just above her eye level. Functional, not decorative, they carried on the practical theme of the house. Unknowingly constructed over the entrance to a secret, forgotten room.
Or…

Grasping spindles with both hands, she pulled herself up and walked back up the steps. A large black mat, about six feet long, covered the middle of the porch in front of the back door. Emily kicked up the corner, rolled it back with the end of her cane, and sucked in a sudden breath. A paint-filled line ran across a dozen boards. Whirling around, she spotted an identical cut. Ignoring pain, she dropped to her knees. Slipping her fingers under the board at the end of the cut, she lifted. The outlined square wiggled. Years of paint wrinkled in the cracks. With every ounce of strength, she pulled again. A popping, tearing sound accompanied two small rips. She worked her way to a stand and nearly ran into the kitchen for the knife that had sliced lemons just hours ago.

The blade cut through the stretchy, dried paint like butter. Her palms grew damp against the handle. An irrational thought seemed to ascend from the space beneath the newly freed door.
Did you see the ghost yet?
She thought of the imaginary woman, cradling her child in the room below. With a shake of her head, Emily dropped the knife and slid her fingers through a crack. Gripping the end board and holding her breath, she pulled. Hidden hinges resisted, wailing against her effort. Inch by inch, the unwilling mouth opened until, at last, the hinge loosened and the door banged against the house.

But the moment was anticlimactic. Moldy leaves, a plastic straw, and a bottle cap were the archaeological treasures stirred up by the tip of her cane. No handle to a trapdoor, no footprints turned to stone. She needed the shovel from the shed.

Preparing to hoist unladylike to her feet, she drew one knee to her chest. The fingers of her right hand slid over a plank bordering the square hole. Instead of wrapping around the board, her fingers arched around something cylindrical. Lowering her knee, she leaned into the opening.

A short pipe, about a foot long, hung by two hooks. Both ends were sealed. Her hand closed around the pipe. It was rusted to the hooks. She tried dislodging it then stopped, considering for a moment that, whatever it was, she shouldn’t be disturbing it without gloves or without permission. As if she were trespassing. As if the house and its contents belonged to someone else. But the very fact that the pipe seemed to serve no purpose made taking a closer look seem vital.

Shaking off the eeriness, she twisted the pipe. Rust flakes crumbled onto her wrist and the hooks released their hold. She sat back and raised the pipe in both hands. Black and rust-pocked and heavier than it appeared. On one end, a tab of metal about half an inch long protruded from the end. She tried to turn it, tapped it against the porch floor, and then tried again. The disk sealing the pipe rotated then pulled free. She scrambled to her feet and took two long strides to the railing. Sunlight landed on yellowed paper.

Breath held, she withdrew the scrolled papers. Two words, barely legible in faded brown script, caught her eye.

Perhaps tomorrow
.

E
mily stood in her attic hideaway, the three letters she’d found in the pipe nesting together on her open hand like a brittle leaf. She read the top one.

Jake was right about the room.

As the knowledge took root and coursed along nerve pathways with tingling speed, a door opened below her. Muted voices traversed the stairs. Handling the letters as if they would dissolve at her touch, she wrapped them in tissue paper and laid them in a plastic box on top of her T-shirts, eased the cover on, and latched it.

“Emily?”

Her name, echoing through the house in a man’s voice, did nothing to steady her legs as she closed the door behind her like a woman with nothing to hide.

“I’ll be down in a minute!” He’d assume her breathlessness came from exertion. Not telling him felt deceptive. But she needed to read all three letters before deciding whether or not to divulge her secret.

By the time she reached the bottom step, she’d slowed the adrenaline from a zinging rush to a steady drip. “Hi.”

“Are you okay?” Jake’s eyebrows converged. “You look all flushed.”

“Just…the stairs.” Sometimes playing the handicap card came in handy. “Hi, Lexi. Nice to see you again.”

Jake nodded unconvincingly and introduced her to his nephew. “Adam’s the genius in the family.”

“Hey!” Lexi’s lip curled. “Our IQs are identical.”

“But your grades aren’t.” Jake’s smirk didn’t falter with the jab to his arm. He grinned at Emily. “They’ve been in a twins study since birth. Makes for interesting competition.”

Emily extended her hand to the boy with wavy hair that apparently had never made friends with a brush. A greenish shadow below one eye made her wonder if he was active in sports, or a troublemaker. She glanced down at feet that seemed out of proportion to the rest of him. The bruise could have come from the junior high curse of a gangly, uncooperative body. “Glad to meet you, Adam. I haven’t met too many geniuses.” She winked at Lexi. “But now I know two.”

“Can we see the room?” Large hazel eyes inspected the parlor, as if searching for the hidden door. Adam-the-genius clearly wasn’t much for small talk.

Jake shrugged an apology, and Emily answered with a nod. “Right this way.” She pointed toward the kitchen.

Adam scrambled down the steps with his sister at his heels. Emily followed. The twins stood in the middle of the cellar, vibrating like two idling engines. “Where’s the secret door?” Adam shuffled from one oversized foot to the other.

“Is that the way a trained archaeologist would enter a site?” Jake tortured his nephew with a patronizing smile then turned to Emily. “I didn’t give them a lot of details.”

“Okay. Survey the scene.” Adam turned in a slow circle. “Look for indications of something out of the ordinary.” Bending over, he retrieved a flashlight from a cargo pocket above his knee and outlined the ceiling with the beam.

“There!” Lexi pointed to one of the rock walls. “I bet those rocks aren’t real.”

Adam’s forehead wrinkled. “Noooo.” Emily had seen identical perplexity on his uncle’s face. “That’s…not…it.” With deliberate strides, he closed in on the opposite corner. “This paneling is strange.”

Leaning closer to Emily, Jake hid his mouth behind his hand. “Bingo,” he whispered.

“Smart kid.” Emily moved away from the scent of musk and fresh-cut wood. “What are you thinking, Adam?”

The boy laid his hand on the wood. It moved. Adam gasped. He looked over his shoulder, eyes wide with delight. “This is it!”

Emily nodded. “Open it.”

The wall slid to the side, and Adam stepped back and let Lexi walk in first. Emily observed the gesture with an almost physical reaction. “That’s sweet.”

“They compete, but they take care of each other.” Jake stood so close, his words ruffled her hair.

“Wow.” Lexi’s voice was tight with excitement.

“Wow,” Adam echoed. “This is like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Stroking an iron hook the way Jake had, Adam dropped his professor voice and gushed like an awestruck twelve-year-old.

Lexi sat on a bench and pressed both hands to her sternum. “We read about a sixteen-year-old girl that somebody hid around here.” Gaze still roaming the room, she pulled an asthma inhaler out of her back pocket.

Neither Adam nor Jake appeared to notice. Emily sat beside her. “Does the dampness in here bother you?”

“No. It’s nothing.” She took a second puff on the inhaler.

“Caroline Quarlls.” Adam’s gaze was fixed on the door in the ceiling. “She was the first passenger on the Underground Railroad in Wisconsin.”

Lexi nodded, holding her breath. “Yeah.” Her exhale rode on the word. “What if she was here, right where I’m sitting?”

“She wasn’t in Rochester.”

“We can’t jump to conclusions, guys.” Jake sat down opposite Lexi. “Miss Foster isn’t convinced we’re on the right track.”

If you only knew
. The words on the yellowed pages shouted from three stories above. Jake Braden would need to take an oath—on penalty of no contract—that he wasn’t a sideshow barker in disguise before she’d tell him anything. She pointed to the door that had captured Adam’s attention. “Want to see where that leads?”

“Yeah!”

“I found a trapdoor on the porch.” Like a first-grader at show-and-tell, she couldn’t disguise the pride in her voice.