Pretending is a better word than lying.
When he leaves, I dress, fighting against the strangest wave of jealousy. I haven’t dreamed for as long as we’ve been in Sterling. Does this mean that Miles, like Mother, is different somehow?
And, I think, tucking Mother’s necklace under my collar, does it mean that I’m not?
“Where’s Dr. Cliffton?” I ask over breakfast.
“Malcolm’s spending the day at a museum in Cheshire to research the stars Variant,” Mrs. Cliffton says, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “He wanted to get an early start, and I doubt we should expect him before dinnertime.” She glances at the clock. “The rest of us should get going.”
Miles and Will follow her out to the car, and I’m a step behind them. When I reach the foyer, I pause at the cracked door of Dr. Cliffton’s library.
What was it Chase said to Eliza in the gym? She’d accused Mother of being the Catalyst, and he’d said Bold words, from a Patton.
I’ve made the decision before I can second-guess myself—?I dash into the library, open the bottom drawer, and take out the history of Sterling. I slide off the cover of my biology textbook and put Dr. Cliffton’s book inside it. It’s a perfect decoy, and I head out to the car with the book, and my hope, secreted away in my bag.
Chapter Fifteen
“Morning, Beas,” I say when I arrive for Digby’s lab. She is still half asleep, examining a sheet of paper filled with lines of her own music. I can tell by the occasional tilt of her chin that the notes are playing in her head. George stands at the chalkboard. His neat, tight writing details our findings from yesterday’s experiment.
Thankfully, it seems my classmates are not watching my every move anymore. My intrigue as the new girl is beginning to wear off. I fish the book from my bag and find the index again, shielding the pages at an angle only I can see.
First I look up Mother. She warrants only a small paragraph midway through the book. Behind the safety of my hair I examine her picture. Her large gray eyes are the same as mine but with a glint of playful mischief that is more Miles. I take in her clear skin, glowing with youth, her pointed chin and high cheekbones. Her picture bursts from the page, but the accompanying text is spare.
Juliet Cummings, orphaned at birth and raised by Eleanor Cummings, is the only citizen of a Sister City who has been able to regain her senses upon leaving. On March 20, 1925, she arrived in Sterling declaring that her senses had returned outside the town’s borders. Trailing a hopeful crowd behind her like the Pied Piper, Juliet led them to a lake just beyond Sterling and pointed.
The only face the water reflected back was hers.
Juliet was unable to offer any explanation, and the town was divided over whether she was genuinely surprised or had plotted some form of cruel trick. Tempers flared. She fled the town shortly thereafter, never to be seen again . . .
Whispers remain in her wake, and the biggest mystery is still unsolved: how Miss Cummings managed to overcome the Disappearances—?only to then all but disappear herself.
I sink my teeth into the soft wood of my pencil and hurriedly turn to the index. I trace down the list of names again until I find “Patton, pages 3, 9, 54–56.”
On page 54, a black-and-white photograph of a woman looks back at me with the proud stare of an aristocrat. The caption identifies her as “Victoria Antoinette Patton.” With her pinched lips and high cheekbones, the woman resembles Eliza, except that her fierce gaze is softened by delicate webbed lines at the corners of her eyes. The taste of hot metal returns to coat the inside of my mouth. I suck on my cheek and begin to read:
The Patton Possibility
The Patton family boasts a long and illustrious history in Sterling. In addition to being one of the original founding families, the Pattons are known as dedicated patrons of the arts—?something truly exceptional for a town of Sterling’s size.
I roll my eyes. Did the Pattons write this book themselves?
Notably, Victoria Patton (pictured) spent her lifetime acquiring the most famous of the Patton family’s collections, including some of the first-known hieroglyphics, an Egyptian sarcophagus, and two golden goblets reportedly dating back to ancient Babylon. Clara Patton, her daughter, plans to orchestrate a tour for these pieces to be shown to the outside world on a rotating basis.
But one piece will be notably absent. The most infamous one of all—?the one some believe might have instigated the Disappearances. The Blooming Sapphire.
I straighten. My heartbeat flares.
The Blooming Sapphire, a tiara encrusted with diamonds and sapphires in the shape of a lotus flower, is a piece the Pattons sought for decades to complete their prized collection of Russian jewels.
However, in 1905 the piece wound up in the hands of a family from Corrander by the name of Rabe. After several months of negotiations, Victoria Patton brokered a deal to trade the Blooming Sapphire for something that had great sentimental significance to the Rabes: a garden of glass flowers, crafted centuries ago by their distant ancestors.
The deal went off without a hitch—?until three months later, when the Rabes discovered that while a select few of the flowers were genuine, many had been faked.
The fallout was immediate. The enraged Rabes demanded that the Blooming Sapphire tiara be returned.
The Pattons argued that they purchased the glass flower garden for a hefty sum specifically to facilitate the exchange. They put the Blooming Sapphire under lock and key. Several months of mounting frustration, accusations, and aggression followed, until the Rabes became so angry that they left Corrander forever. They have not been seen or heard from since.
The proximity of this event to the first Disappearance has led many to believe it is the Catalyst for the landslide of troubles that followed. The Rabes were always an unusual family, and there were whispers of their dabbling in dark arts. But perhaps the most incriminating element of this theory is a look at the Rabes’ fascination with the glass flower garden. A near-perfect imitation of nature, the flowers are said to be so realistic that the only way a human being can tell that they are not real is by their missing scent.
