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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 ofus… 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.
“Ithink 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.
“WhereisNancy?” I ask, but nobody replies. I think we’re tooscared 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 Halloweenoriginated 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 termtrick-or-treatingwasn’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.
