The Secret Grave Read online

  Gracie puts her palm to the screen and says, “Hi, Shooter!”

  Mom and Dad poke their heads around Scooter’s.

  “Mama! Daddy!” Gracie screams.

  “Hi, Gracie.” Mom looks like she misses us terribly. Believe me, I know what that feels like.

  Dad chimes in, “Since a lot of people come out here for the dry air, there are good allergy specialists in Albuquerque.”

  I don’t want to hear that. It’s just another reason to make us move. What is it Granddaddy says? Jest another nail in the coffin.

  Dad’s still talking. “… So we figured we’re this far west, might as well keep going another 450 miles to Denver. That’s where National Jewish Health is. It’s a hospital that specializes in what Scooter’s going through.”

  Trick says, “You’re putting my only brother in a hospital way out there in the wilderness?”

  “Not putting him,” Dad says. “They’re going to evaluate him and see what the best way is for all of us to deal with his asthma.”

  I can’t wait to tell Cady how wrong she is. Scooter’s definitely not faking it if a national allergy hospital is checking him out.

  “Are you back there, Fiona? I can’t see you,” Mom asks.

  Nana leans forward and mugs for the camera.

  “Is it possible for you to stay with the kids for four more days? We’d be home by the weekend.”

  “I could move in permanently,” Nana teases.

  Dad quickly jumps in. “Don’t do that, Mother, please!”

  “Sure, kids, take what time you need to get Scott on the right track. I should have Gracie potty-trained by then.”

  Gracie runs to the downstairs bathroom and back with her potty seat, which she slaps against the computer screen.

  “Franny? Are you being helpful to Nana Fiona?” Dad asks.

  At the same time that Franny says, not really, Nana says, she sure is, which makes us all laugh.

  Scooter takes two puffs on his inhaler. “I wanna go home.”

  “Come home wite now, Shooter!” Gracie cries, and that’s how we all feel.

  It’ll only be four more days until he’s back with us, where he belongs. But in four more days, a lot can happen around here.

  “You’re home!” Sara and I have a big haven’t-seen-you-in-ages hug at my kitchen door. She looks around at the cleared countertops, the sparkling stainless steel oven, the row of matching tea towels in neat folds. “What happened here?”

  “Nana Fiona.” That’s all I need to say.

  She nods in understanding. “I have so much to tell you.” It’s all about London and the royals, as if she dropped by Buckingham Palace at four o’clock every afternoon for tea. She has a hint of a fake English accent and peppers her stories with words like telly and fortnight and cucumber and watercress sandwiches, which sound gross, even if that’s what they serve at tea time at the palace.

  After about ten minutes of pram for baby stroller and lift instead of elevator, I interrupt her. “I have a lot to tell you, too. Big news. There’s a new girl our age in town.”

  “Get outta here! Nobody new’s come since first grade, when that Swedish girl, Freja, was here for a month. Tell me everything, her name, her birthstone, her astrological sign, everything!”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you to meet Cady. In the forest.”

  “Her family’s moved into the forest behind your house?” Sara asks. “What are they, like, faeries?” Her eyes are dancing with the joke, but I don’t know how to answer. And there are more unanswerable questions.

  “Is she nice?” Sometimes not. “Last name?” Unknown, maybe unknowable. “Skinny? Chubby? Long hair, short? Perfect skin, like London girls? As upbeat as Luisa? Ooh, Luisa will be home tomorrow. Have you been getting her texts from camp?”

  Not a single one in the last two weeks.

  “She’s having a great time,” Sara continues. “So, about Cady. I can’t wait to meet her. Not today, though. I’ve got to return books to the library, which I forgot about before I left. I probably owe my whole summer allowance in overdue fines. Come with me. We can ride our bikes. Then you can tell me more about Cady on the way.”

  The library is a big, bustling, regional headquarters for the county, with lots of computers, lots of books, and lots of people. Who’s the first one we see? Cady herself. How does she show up wherever I go?

  She runs right over to us and asks, “Which one are you, Sara or Luisa?”

  “I’m Sara, and let me guess, you’re Cady, right?”

  “World-famous!” She grabs Sara’s arm and leads her away from me, as if the two of them have things to whisper about that I’m not supposed to hear. My face burns as I watch them across the room in excited conversation. Sara’s face is glowing and they’re both laughing as if they’ve been friends forever. A pang of jealousy zings through me. Cady said she’s the one who’s jealous? I’m worse.

  Next thing I know, Cady’s at the checkout desk talking to Mrs. Cornish, one of the library assistants, and Sara ambles back to me. Her old friend.

  “Cady is amazing! So cool. She’s hilarious, don’t you think? And she adores you. But that hair! Is it a wig?”

  “I don’t think so, just over-dyed.”

  Cady’s disappeared, so I drag Sara over to the checkout desk and ask Mrs. Cornish, “Cady, that girl you were talking to? Do you know her last name?”

  “I have no idea,” says Mrs. Cornish.

  “Could you please check the computer? You could find it if you sorted by first names.”

  Mrs. Cornish taps in a few keys, then remembers, “No, Miss Cady doesn’t have a library card. She’s not in our files.”

  “Because she’s so new in town?” Sara asks.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Cornish says. “She’s an avid reader. She just never checks out materials. But she’s been coming to the library for as long as I’ve been here.”

  “What?” Sara and I exchange looks, and I whisper, “This makes no sense. Nothing about Cady makes sense.”

  Mrs. Cornish smiles, flashing a gold molar. “I suppose that’s why she’s so charming.”

  Mr. Mosely’s crew is finally here to begin work on the balcony outside Dad’s studio. He thinks it’ll take five days. Nana Fiona will drive the carpenters and painters bonkers, so I predict they’ll be out in a day and a half. The hammering and broken glass and sickening sound of wood winching away from wood sends me running to the forest, though these days, everything seems to. This could be the day I meander over to the other side of the lake if Cady’s not around.

  But she’s watching for me on her side of the fallen log, and when she spots me, she motions for me to hurry over.

  Shielding her eyes from the sun, she points toward our house and the truck and equipment feeding into it. “What are they doing at Nightshade?” she demands.

  “Fixing the third-floor balcony.”

  “No! They must not!”

  “It’s one of the nicest parts of the house, and right now nobody can use it because it’s practically falling off the outside wall of my father’s studio.”

  Cady’s a total wreck, pacing, wringing her hands, tearing at leaves.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you so upset about the carpenters?”

  Her eyes bullet into me. “Don’t let them do it,” she pleads.

  “Why is it any business of yours? You’re not paying for it. And you’re not living in that house with the carpenter noise and sawdust or standing under a balcony that could snap right off and make mashed potatoes out of anyone walking by.”

  Cady backs up into the woods, gasping for breath like Scooter at his worst. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she stammers, then runs between tall pines until I can’t see her. The only thing left of her is the surprising scent of candlewax, and I can’t help thinking about Smokey Bear. Lighting candles in that small tinderbox cabin—how dangerous is that?

  A day’s gone by and I’m irresistibly drawn back to the forest. The cameo is
pressing against my hip in my jeans pocket as I follow in Cady’s path, but she doesn’t know I’m trailing her. She’s way ahead of me, almost to her little hut, when she suddenly turns around. Does she know I’m here? I squat behind a live oak to hide behind its generous trunk. She’s in the cabin now, and the door’s closed. I advance a few feet, then a few more, quiet as snow. I tiptoe up to the cabin, and sneak a peek in the window. A fat yellow candle melts onto the wooden slats of the floor, and its flame dances toward the ceiling with a small plume of smoke. Cady’s sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around her belly, and she’s rocking and moaning, like she ate too much pizza. Her eyes are closed and her face glows in the candle flame while Smokey Bear smiles down on her.

  A stab of guilt pierces my conscience. I’m the caregiving type. I’m the girl that curls up at the end of the couch with Scooter when he’s feeling sick. I’m the girl who gets Gracie up from her nap when she’s cranky, or just wrestling with a dream she can’t tell me about. I’m always there for my friends. But something I can’t understand says, Mind your own business, Hannah Flynn. Leave Cady to her grief, no matter what’s causing it. This is your chance …

  Yes! My chance to steal over to the other side of the lake while Cady’s in her own world in the cabin! I lay the cameo on the doorstep, hoping a forest critter doesn’t carry it away to his lair as a present for his family. The gold around the onyx profile glimmers in the fading afternoon sun.

  The cabin is halfway between this side and that side of Moonlight Lake. Still, it’s a long walk around the lake over bristly groundcover and jutting roots. Frogs in the lake call to one another. You’d think they’d get bored repeating the same syllables over and over. Cicadas fill the air with their singsong, like a zillion insects in concert, stopping and starting at exactly the same time. Who’s the conductor giving the signal?

  I dash from behind one big tree to another for cover. Nothing’s going to stop me now, even if Cady’s following me. I have to know what’s on the other side of the lake.

  The low growth is thick; you can barely get a foot between the bushes. I shove one aside with my rear, hearing the crunching of broken branches as I slide through the thorny hedgerow. Beyond it is a large open field with tall grass waving like wheat in the gentle wind. Parting the grass, I keep walking. There’s nothing and no one over here. Very curious. I expected to see a circle of houses where Cady’s friends live, in a small village with a grocery store and a computer repair shop and an outdoor café, all of it shaded by huge, leafy trees—cottonwoods and magnolias with ancient, knotty trunks.

  There’s none of that. What I see instead is flat, bare land. Beyond the tall grass is more grass cropped close to the ground, as if it’s been grazed by a hundred starving goats and cows, but there’s not an animal in sight.

  I keep walking, half of me quivering with the excitement of discovery, and the other half aware that I’m farther and farther from home, as though I’ve stepped through some portal into another world. It’s a huge relief to see a plane as small as a crop duster circling overhead. The pilot waves to me and put-putters away. Besides him, there’s no sign of life.

  Off in the distance, beyond a circle of low, leafy bushes are several short stone outcroppings, reminding me of something mystical like Stonehenge. They’re not lined up neatly—no, they’re stuck in the ground, facing every which way. Getting closer, my heart starts to pound. Why should these small monuments fill me with such dread? Something’s so wrong here. Those stones are menacing because … because … now I’m close enough to see what they are.

  Tombstones.

  Some are old markers, pitted, chipped, and crumbling, that look like they’ve been around since the beginning of time. Then there are some newish shiny, pink marble ones.

  This is a cemetery. Trembling, I reach for the nearest gravestone and run my hand over its notched, arc-shaped top. My fingers trace the etched words on the front:

  Here in Effigy

  Lies Olivia Bainbridge

  1996–2008

  A girl who only lived twelve years? How sad is that? The next stone is engraved with those same words, Here in Effigy, and the names are Clarinda and Cassandra Danbury, 1938–1950. Twins? Both twelve years old, and they died together! My heart bursts in sympathy, but my throat tightens around choked cries as I move on to the next stone. Here in Effigy Lies Bonnie Ava Amberson 1899–1911. The math is too familiar; Bonnie Ava was also twelve.

  Four girls, all living only twelve years, in different times ranging from 1899 to 2008, one hundred and nine years! Who were these girls? There are more gravestones, but I don’t want to know anything else about them. The horror sends me racing back across the stubbled lawn, through the tall grass and the thick bushes, over the bristly, gnarled groundcover, around the lake that’s swallowing the sun, past the cabin—and right now I don’t care if Cady sees me—past the belladonna, through the pine trees, across the log at the mouth of the forest, and home to Nightshade.

  Because now I know that these girls, Olivia and Clarinda and Cassandra and Bonnie Ava are the friends Cady wants me to meet.

  And they’re all dead.

  My brain’s in a flurry over what I saw in the forest cemetery, but there’s no time to stew anymore because, at home, Nana Fiona is in a snit. The carpenters have raised a blizzard of dust that’s snowing down from the third floor, and Gracie has made dust-mud soup on the kitchen floor with apple juice from her sippy cup.

  “Where were you, Hannah? It’s been bedlam here. Patrick just flounced out of the house, threatening to join the army or the circus, whichever one will take him first. If you ask me, the circus sounds like more fun. Where did you say you were?”

  I’m stomping a wad of paper towels around on the floor to soak up Gracie’s mess. “No place special.” Just visiting a bunch of dead girls my age. “Don’t worry about Trick. He makes these threats a lot, but always comes home when his stomach starts rumbling.”

  Gracie smears the floor with the muddy paper towels.

  “Mercy, child!” Tossing the soggy mess in the trash, Nana drops her ample rear onto a padded kitchen chair and sips from a half-gallon pitcher of iced tea. “Ay, I am too old to manage this zoo. I’m not a spring chicken, you know.” She rattles her clinking ice cubes. “I’ll make it until your folks get home after lunch tomorrow, and then my trusty Studebaker and I will hit the open road.”

  “I’ll miss you, Nana. Is Scooter coming home with Mom and Dad?”

  “Scott? Of course, he is. Did you think they were going to leave him out there in the wilds of Colorado?”

  It’s a big relief that Scooter’s coming home. I have an awful lot to tell him as soon as I can spirit him off alone.

  Rested, Nana gets up and starts pulling flour and baking powder out of the cupboard and spins toward the fridge for butter and milk.

  Franny bursts in like an explosion, her Rib Shack apron smeared with barbecue sauce. “I’m sticky all over, so I’m heading right to the shower. Guess who I picked up on the way up Thornbury.”

  Peeking out from behind her is Luisa. “I’ve missed you!” She rushes forward to hug me. She’s even browner than usual from her weeks at camp, and her dark hair is sun-bleached blond in streaks. “I stopped at Sara’s,” she says.

  Sure she did. She wouldn’t even think of seeing me first.

  “So Sara already told me about that new girl, Cady.” Luisa frowns and plucks three cherries out of the fruit bowl, then doesn’t know what to do with the pits, so she pushes them into the dirt around Mom’s potted petunia. “Mulch,” she explains. “This Cady person sounds kind of weird. Do we like her?”

  Sheesh, how do I answer that? “Sometimes yes, sometimes not so much. She’s unpredictable. She sure likes Sara, though, did she tell you?” I’m remembering how it stung, no, how it stunk, when Cady swooped Sara away in the library, cutting me out of their conversation like I was an invisible toadstool. Maybe that’s it—Cady’s sometimes invisible! Sweeping the thought aside, I force
a tinny laugh. “Cady and Sara are sudden best friends.”

  Luisa rolls her eyes. “Kind of overkill, you think?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What are you two nattering about?” Nana points a wooden spoon thick with biscuit batter.

  “That girl I told you about who lives in the forest, remember?”

  “I remember every word you ever uttered,” Nana says, beating the spoon against the side of a bowl. She’s started bacon sizzling in a cast iron pan, making my stomach growl. I am itching for Nana’s biscuits and redeye gravy. Hope there isn’t a lot of carpenter dust from the balcony job working its way into the dough.

  Gracie towers on a chair next to Nana and gobbles a handful of biscuit dough.

  “Grace Eileen! Leave some for the oven.”

  “Guess what,” I whisper to Luisa. “There’s something strange going on in our attic.”

  “Hint?” Luisa asks, and I motion with my eyes and a slight nod of my head that it’s not for Nana to hear. Nana knows all about it, of course, but still.

  “Gotcha,” Luisa says, then rattles on about camp and poison oak—better than poisonous belladonna—and sailing and trust walks.

  Which gives me an idea. Sara and Luisa need to know Cady better before I tell them about what I saw in the cemetery. Maybe they can help me figure out why Cady thinks she’s friends with a bunch of dead girls. “What’s up this afternoon?”

  “My mom’s taking me to the Laundromat with thirty loads of gross camp laundry that smells like pickled sweat. Why, what are we doing otherwise?”

  “I’m calling Sara to see if the three of us can take a little trust walk in the forest.”

  Nana raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Yay! I get to meet the mysterious Cady No-name.”

  “If we can find her. I don’t know where she hides out, and she only shows up when she wants to.”

  Luisa pulls out her cell phone and punches in Sara’s number. In two minutes, it’s all set. The pickled sweat will have to wait. We’re on our way to the forest, Sara and Luisa and me, just like old times. It’ll be three of us against one. They’re my friends, not Cady’s.