With matching grins, Twig and I clamber up the stairs.
Of the two options, I know which one I want immediately. The floorboards creak as I set the box on my new daybed and tiptoe past the antique furniture, to the mullioned window on the far wall. I unlatch the brass fastener and push it open, letting in a soft breeze that stirs lace-trimmedcurtains. I imagine sitting here in the window seat, staring out at the misty grounds with a stunning view of the manor—my own private stakeout every single night.
With a happy sigh, Twig and I rejoin my dad.
In short order, the boxes are unloaded and we’re back in my room. I close the door behind me with a soft click. Twig catches my eye, and we start laughing. Actually laughing. Because how is this real life? A month ago, I would have given anything to stay in our trailer home. Today, I’m standing in the guest house on the Vandenberg estate.Insidemy new bedroom. Our fourth-grade selves would never believe it.
“Imagine if we could tour the manor,” Twig says, gazing out my window.
“You’re getting greedy,” I reply, opening the wardrobe. Warped mirrors line the inside of the doors, and a row of hangers dangle from a bar. It smells like cedar and dust.
Twig opens one of the boxes. “It’s not farfetched.”
He’s right. It isn’t.
The new Vandenberg family has a son our age. And instead of getting private tutors, like the Vandenberg teenagers before him, he’s officially enrolled at Foggy Hollow High, information Twig gleaned from his mother, the high school secretary. We searched for a picture of him online. It shouldn’t have been difficult. Surely he’d be on social media. But no. Jude Vandenberg remains acomplete enigma. We only know that he and his stepmother have spent the past several years overseas—she in France, and he in England at an elite all-boys boarding school. He’s also the great nephew of John Vandenberg, the patriarch of the Vandenberg four who vanished thirty years ago.
On Monday, we’ll get to meet him.
One more unbelievable fact in a long line of them.
I start unpacking my clothes.
Twig takes out a stack of books from the box. The one on top is my journal. I’ve been using it to record my dreams, which have been wild and vivid ever since I found out I was moving here.
“Did I tell you about the dream I had last night?” I ask, hanging up a jean jacket that once belonged to my mother. It’s one of the few items of clothing I own that doesn’t come from The Lucky Penny, a consignment shop downtown.
“Not yet,” Twig says, opening the top drawer of my new writing desk.
“There was fire everywhere. I was trapped inside The Silver Lantern. Some man outside kept screaming for a woman named Florence. And then I realized it was me.Iwas Florence.” I hang my cream-colored turtleneck and move on to my collection of grunge band tees. “It makes a person wonder. What if these dreams are me in past lives?”
“Or rehearsals are getting to your head.”
He’s referring to the reenactment.The Burningof Foggy Hollow, a Living History,performed every September in town square. An ode to our tragic past, when fire consumed the town in 1822. Dozens died. Those who survived lost nearly everything. But the town would not be broken. Led by Amos Vandenberg, Kit Bogaard, and Alexander Doorn, the people rallied, and three years later, Foggy Hollow rose again like a phoenix from the ashes.
“I’m not playing a woman named Florence, though. And what about the dream I had a few nights ago?” Bombs raining from the sky. Alarms blaring. “I was hunkered in a basement wearing a ruby necklace and a utility dress with a CC41 label, clutching a little boy to my chest. How do you explain that?”
“What’s Langley teaching in U.S. History?”
“Not World War II.”
Twig’s phone vibrates.
His mom is here.
Outside, Dad is conversing with an old man dressed in a black suit with a waistcoat. I take in his hollow cheeks and neatly combed snow-white hair—a jarring contrast to the unruly state of his eyebrows—and I have to intentionally avoid eye contact with Twig lest the two of us geek out.
Mr. Denis Tulane, in the flesh.
Dad calls us over.
“This is my daughter, Selah,” he says, “and her friend, Spencer. This is Mr. Tulane, the estate’s caretaker.”
Oh, we know.
We’ve only been pestering him for an interview the past two years, which is probably why he’s looking at me so strangely now, like I’m the paparazzi ready to bulrush him with a microphone and an onslaught of questions.
Mr. Tulane bows in our direction, then continues his conversation with Dad like Twig and I never interrupted. “As I was saying, everything should be in order. The cleaning crew attended to the carriage house earlier today. The beds have been made. There are fresh linens in the closet. The bathrooms have toiletries, and you will find your refrigerator stocked with the basics.”
