Tad’s disappearance was a draw for the rest of America, but for Addamsville the mystery was the disappearance of Bach and Forester. Scraps of Bach’s ruined clothes had been found trailing from the football field to the edge of Black Creek Woods. Come early this morning, Sam Forester was unreachable, the Forester House abandoned, and Forester’s car still in the driveway. They had gone, like Mom five years before, and there was no knowing where they were now or if they’d ever be back. The disappearance of the Firestarter Murder ghosts meant, I hoped, that Bach had taken Sam back through his entrance.
“Death or hunting?” I said to myself.
Sadie frowned at me. “What?”
“Hypothetical situation: you can know there are answers to your questions but ignore them in order to be happy, or you can spend your life hunting them down. What do you choose?”
She thought for a minute. “I choose both.”
“You can’t have both.”
Sadie smiled, and something about it—her amusement, her resignation—made me realize I hadn’t been the only one thinking of this. “Sure you can. I would hunt, but only for so long. There are too many questions, and too many answers; if you don’t draw the line, you’ll lose yourself to it. I think it’s important to find the answers you need, but at some point you have to stop and ask yourself if you really need them.”
I followed her gaze to the hazy gray sky over Black Creek Woods. Sadie bumped me with her shoulder, then put her arm around me, shrouding me under her afghan. “We deserve to be happy,” she said.
A long moment passed while all of Addamsville moved around us. Living and dead, locals and tourists, the known and the mysterious.
Sadie gave me an obnoxious squeeze and added, “But if you want help looking for Mom first, I won’t say no.”
33
The old Victorian loomed over Grim as he waited for us on the curb. Grimshaw House’s windows reflected the gray sky and the bare trees as the wind tugged at the last of their leaves. As always, the ghosts kept their distance.
“About time!” Dad said, smacking Grim square between the shoulder blades. Grim fumbled to keep hold of his manila envelope. “How does it feel?”
Grim smiled. “Cold.”
“You have the key?” Sadie said, gathering him up in a big hug and kissing him on the cheek. “What are we waiting for?”
We followed Grim up the front walk and ascended the porch steps. Grimshaw House groaned like someone woken too early.
“There’s a lot of work that has to be done on it,” Grim said. “Mrs. Wake said she’d help out, but I told her she didn’t have to.”
“Do you think there’s really treasure buried in there?” I asked.
“That railroad fortune had to go somewhere,” Sadie said.
Grim shook his head. “I think the real treasure is that we all have a place to sleep tonight.”
“He’s a smart one, Sadie,” Dad said. “You made a good choice.”
While Grim dug around in the manila envelope, I stepped back and looked up at the face of the house, the cracked paint, the weathered siding. Even with Bach and Forester gone, it looked as empty as the day it had been built. Ghosts should have been in every window, patrolling every hallway, relaying a message through the house that there was someone new here, a new owner, a Grimshaw come back to the nest.
Maybe, like Artemis’s shoe ghost, they were just very good at hiding. It didn’t make me want to go inside any more, but that was a comfort. Maybe they would get used to me and show themselves. I could tell them this was my first time ever living in anything other than a trailer, and though I would have given almost anything to have the trailer back, I was excited about this, too.
They’d understand. They were used to it. Life inAddamsville was, after all, just a prolonged cohabitation between the living and the dead.
Grim found the key, a surprisingly shiny thing for a house so old, and slid it into the keyhole. The lock made an audiblechunksound. Legally entering the house felt a lot better than picking the back door.
The entrance opened into a dusty foyer. Thick cobwebs hung from a metal chandelier. A staircase ran up one side to a darkened second floor, and luckily there were too many footprints disturbing the dust for ours to be recognized from the night we snuck in. To the right was a parlor. To the left, a dining room. Oil paintings still hung in their frames, warped from the weather. The chill seeped through the walls, and the musty air hung stagnant. The size of the house could be felt in every inch of it.
“It’sbeautiful,” Sadie breathed.
“Why would anyone need to bury treasure beneath this place?” I said. “Look at it. Itistreasure.”
Dad and Sadie went into the dining room to look at the china cabinet and the long dining table. Grim held me back and dug around in the envelope again. “I found this in the mailbox when I got here. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but... well.” He pulled out a smaller envelope withZoraprinted on the front in sharp handwriting. The flap was sealed, but the whole envelope was browned and crisp, like it had been tossed in an oven for a few seconds. Inside was a letter signed with a jaggedB.
“I’ll leave you to it.” Grim stepped into the house.
