Chapter 20

20

October 31, 2:15 a.m.

less than four hours until low tide

It all happens so fast: the lightning, the eyes behind the wardrobe door, the darkness, and then the sound of Rose’s voice right behind me in the room.

“What are you doing in here?” she asks, and at first I think she means me.

She has a flashlight as though she knew the lights were going to go out—which she aims at the wardrobe before flinging the doors open.

Poppins the dog jumps out, rushing toward us. She barks and wags her tail before licking Rose’s hand.

“Who put you in there?” Rose asks, and when the dog doesn’t answer, they both turn to stare in my direction.

“It wasn’t me,” I say.

“There’s no sign of Trixie in the other bedrooms,” Conor says, appearing in the gloomy doorway. He holds up his hand to shield his eyes when Rose points her flashlight at his face. “Where did you get that?” he asks.

“When I checked Nancy’s room, it was under the bed,” says Rose. “I thought it might come in handy if the lights went out—they often do when there is a storm—and that wasn’t all I found there.”

“Trixie?”

Rose lowers her voice to a whisper. “No. This.”

Conor steps farther into the room, and Rose produces a small floral bag.

Conor shakes his head. “What is it?”

“It’s Lily’s missing diabetic kit.”

“I thought she couldn’t find it. What’s it doing under your mother’s bed?”

“I don’t know.”

The bedroom door squeaks, telling tales on the person behind it. We all turn and take a step back—I’m not the only one who is afraid now—and Rose’s flashlight reveals Lily standing on the landing. She has used her lighter to find her way in the dark, and is still holding it up, like someone at a pop concert. Her face looks strange, as though she can’t quite see us.

“There’s no sign of Trixie in Nana’s bedroom. Did you find anything?”

“No,” answers Rose before anyone else can. “Let’s head back downstairs, maybe Nancy might have had more luck. Try not to worry, we will find Trixie.”

“Okay,” Lily says, nodding, as though desperate for someone else to take charge. The habitual fight has gone out of her, and she seems broken. It’s as though Lily’s lights switched off when Seaglass’s did.

Rose leads the way with her flashlight as we creep downstairs in the darkness. Our silent fear seems as loud as the storm outside. It’s even colder down here now that the fire has almost burned itself out, but that isn’t why we are huddled together. Conor takes a candle from the mantelpiece and lights it, and we return to the window seat in the lounge—the last place we all saw Trixie.

“I don’t understand, she was right here,” Lily says, picking up the blanket and holding it to her nose, like a dog checking for scent.

“We’ll find her,” says Rose, but from the tone of her voice I’m not convinced she believes it. “You look pale. I found this upstairs. When did you last inject?”

Lily takes the diabetic kit from her and unzips it straightaway. “Hours ago. Where did you find it?”

Rose stares at the floor. “Nancy’s room.” For some reason, her answer sounds like a lie.

“My insulin pen is missing,” Lily says.

Time seems to stop again while we all catch up with life’s latest plot twist.

“Nancy?” Lily calls, but there is no answer. Our mother is now also nowhere to be found.

We search the rest of the rooms downstairs together, with Poppins following us. I think she thought it was a game before, but now she walks with her tail between her legs and her ears back. I can’t help wondering whether she might be able to hear something we can’t. The thunder and lightning continue as we move through the house with just a flashlight and a candle, though the storm does at least seem to be moving farther away.

“Trixie!” Lily calls her daughter’s name repeatedly—we all do—but there is no answer.

We look inside the library. It is filled with Nana’s books, crammed in no particular order into every available space on the shelves that line the room. The sofa shows no sign of where Rose slept on it earlier, but her overnight bag is in the corner. The room is cold, and dark, and empty.

Rose leads the way to the kitchen next. It’s obvious that the huge room at the back of the house is uninhabited too, but we take it in turns to look under the table, inside cupboards, and behind curtains. Conor is taller than the rest of us, and accidently walks into the black and orange paper chains Nana had decorated the ceiling with for Halloween. I feel as though we are going through the motions, scared of running out of places to search. And we are all trying not to look at the chalk poem written on the wall.

“We should check Nana’s studio,” Rose says. She and Lily exchange uncomfortable glances, I think because it is somewhere they were not allowed to go as children.

“It’s probably locked, always used to be,” says Lily, walking toward the door. But when she tries the handle, it swings open with an eerie creak. Even in the dim light, we can all see that the studio has been ransacked.

Conor steps inside first. “What the—?”

“Maybe someone was looking for the book Nana said she was working on?” Rose suggests, offering an answer before anyone had time to ask a question.

“Or looking for Beatrice Darker author memorabilia they can flog on eBay,” Conor says.

Rose ignores him. “Nana said she was going to write one last book about all of us … Maybe that was something someone didn’t want people to read.”

The studio, which always had an air of organized chaos, has been trashed. There are papers and drawings strewn all over the floor, drawers pulled out, pencils snapped in two, and paints knocked over. We walk through the mess, from one end of the room to the other, and I notice some of the newer illustrations and poems on the wall. They are all very different, but all very Nana.

This is where the story ends,

Of fractured families and forgotten friends,

And people too blind to make amends.

One of my favorite Nana sayings is painted in silver writing, over a blue-and-black background of the sea. It always makes me think of Seaglass, and of coming back here year after year.

If you can’t find your way back to Happy,

Navigate to the place you know as Less Sad.

“I think Rose might be right. What if someone in the family wanted to find Nana’s last book, to stop anyone from publishing it?” says Conor.

“I think someone should stop playing detective,” Lily says, but he carries on regardless.

“Nana was always hiding secret meanings in the poems she wrote … They were never really just for children…”

“What if someone had secrets they didn’t want shared?” I say, agreeing with him.

“Secrets worth killing to keep,” Conor adds. “And that’s why they killed her—”

One of the windows is open, and a gust of wind blows out the candle Conor is carrying. “Can we please concentrate on trying to find my daughter?” Lily says.

“Where is Nancy?” I ask, but nobody replies. I think we’re too scared of the answers silently auditioning inside our heads. My mother was always a proud and private person. We all know how much she would have hated the idea of someone writing the truth about her or her children. Even disguised as fiction.

The last little poem on the wall is accompanied by an illustration in Nana’s familiar style. The watercolor silhouette is of three little girls holding hands. It was destined for her final book, the one about us, I’m sure of it. The room feels colder than before when I read the words. The same ones that were on the kitchen table earlier, but this time in Nana’s swirly handwriting. Which makes me think that someone else found the illustration in here, copied the words, and left them on a scrap of paper in the other room for us to find.

Trick-or-treat the children hear,

Before they scream and disappear.

I was never allowed to go trick-or-treating with my sisters when we were children. My mother said it was too risky. As a family we always dressed up for Halloween—it was Nana’s birthday, and she insisted—but then Rose and Lily would be allowed to go trick-or-treating with the rest of the local kids, and I would stay behind, jealous of all the fun they had and sweets they brought home the next day. The tides meant that they always stayed with friends, unable to get back to Seaglass until the sea retreated again. That was something else my sisters had that I didn’t when we were children: friends. I was never allowed to make any.

Nana always tried to cheer me up with some secret sweets just for me hidden around Seaglass. While Rose and Lily were out having fun, I’d spend the evening with her sitting by the fire, listening to her stories. She did not approve of trick-or-treating, and would remind me why every year. What we see as innocent fun on Halloween originated as part of a pagan ritual, where people dressed up in scary costumes on October 31 to frighten away the dead. They offered food or drink to try to appease them, which is where all the free candy and sweets originated from. In the Middle Ages, the ritual was known as mumming. By the time Christianity arrived in Europe, a new practice called souling was on the Halloween scene. Poor people would visit the houses of the rich and receive pastries called soul cakes, in exchange for promises to pray for the homeowners’ dead relatives. Scotland took the tradition and bent it a little more out of shape, encouraging young people to visit their neighbors’ houses and sing a song, recite a poem, or perform another sort of “trick” before receiving a treat of nuts, fruit, or coins. The term trick-or-treating wasn’t used until the 1920s in America, and Nana said it made a mockery of what started out as an important ritual. It bothered her a great deal that people were encouraged to fear the dead instead of honor them, and she’d always end her story with the same line:

“There’s no need to be afraid of the dead. It’s the living you have to watch out for.”

We leave Nana’s studio together, none the wiser, and no closer to finding Trixie.

The music room is the last place left to look. I think it turned out that way because none of us want to see my dead father again. Lightning strikes just before we open the door, and I automatically start counting.

One Mississippi …

The lightning lights up the room, and the shadow of the piano casts a dancing pattern over the walls.

Two Mississippi …

There is no sign of Trixie in here either. Nothing is out of place at all, apart from the missing piano key I spotted earlier. I remember middle C and see that it’s a B key that has gone.

Three Mississippi …

Then I realize that’s not the only thing missing. My father’s dead body has disappeared, just like Nana’s did before.

Conor steps forward. “What. The. F—”

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and we all stare at one another in the darkness. Our faces are mostly in shadow but look equally scared. Lily steps closer to Rose and holds her hand, the way she did when they were children. The rain that has been lashing the windows seems to pause for thought, and there are a few brief seconds of total silence.

Until we all hear the sound of scratching—like nails on a chalkboard—out in the hall.