Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she replied serenely. ”You may go and try if you wish. Still, I think we’re apt to be barking up the wrong tree.”

      “Ladder,” I said.

      “Ladder.”

      “’The thread that run, however far,’” Monique recited again, “’must join yet end to end.’ If we wish to open the box, if the box should be opened, we might start with an external mystery that the writing on the box might refer to. If we can solve that mystery, perhaps that will lead us back along the thread to the core of the box mystery.”

      I imagined loops growing outward and circling back before my eyes, and my head began spinning. ”What sort of mystery?”

      Monique obviously wasn’t finding this easy either. ”Well, has anything unusual occurred lately?” I thought about that, and yes, I supposed there’d been lots of unusual things since, well, last week, but not all of them did I feel like mentioning just then.

      “There’s you,” Monique said.

      “Me?”

      “Yes, your coming here last night and us seeing you in the picture.”

      “It isn’t me though,” I told her as if maybe she didn’t know that.

      “But it could have been,” she retorted. “Can you think of anything else unusual about your arrival yesterday?”

      I started to deny anything significant, but I’d grown up with a pretty strict prohibition against lying. Mom wasn’t the kind of person who gave you a line about clearing your conscience but punished you anyhow. Coming clean usually meant the end of things. ”I guess,” I said, “something weird happened today, well, yesterday. I just didn’t know about it till this morning.”

      “What weird thing?”

      “I got my suitcase switched, my clothes and everything, with another girl’s stuff because of the airline.”

      Now left to myself, I would not have touched that strange girl’s things, but with Monique’s enthusiastic urging, soon the bed was covered with blouses, skirts, pants, underwear, socks, scarves, sandals, and a little pink comb, brush, and nail-care set. The suitcase was empty almost. In the pocket of the suitcase lid, we found a card of hair barrettes of various colors and insect shapes, some of those fabric-clad rubber bands for pigtails and the like, and a tiny diary much faded with age and locked.

      Monique picked up the diary and shook it. Nothing fell out. She went through the suitcase pocket again, then studied the lining, pressing all around the inside of the case with her fingers. Closing the lid, she studied the exterior similarly and flexed the baggage tags between her fingers. ”Here it is,” she said with self-satisfaction, yanking hard on the tag, breaking the string that held it to the suitcase handle. I saw then that the tag was actually a little envelope. Monique tore it open and drew out a small silver key.

      She immediately inserted the key into the little book, twisting this way and that, turning the key over, trying again. ”Seems jammed,” she concluded. She went to the desk, rummaged the drawers, and found the brass letter opener and the solid-looking, little wooden mallet with a corkscrew set in it. She laid the diary on the table, placed the point of the letter opener in the lock, and began hammering.

      “Should we be doing that?” I asked. ”It doesn’t belong to us.”

      “It’s rusted shut or something,” she told me continuing to bang. ”We’ll buy her a new diary.”

      The diary lay open and revealed. Most of the pages were blank, but on the first leaf in a childish yet very legible hand was printed

       I can’t help but think that everything from now on will be very different. The summer is young, however, and there are many pages to fill.

      There was the signature monogram “C.” at the bottom of the page.

      Monique flipped page after page, and it seemed there’d be nothing else until she turned to the back cover of the diary. She scrutinized the page up close, then held it out, so I could get a good look. There was the same verse we’d been reciting to each other since we’d first read it this morning.

      “Could this have something to do with whoever made that box?” I wondered.

      Monique shook her head. ”I don’t know.”

      I reached out for the diary. ”C,” I said aloud, turning back to the first page. ”That’s my Mom’s initial, Cloudia. Could she have had this book when she was little?” I looked again at the writing. The hand could’ve been mine maybe a couple of years ago when I was first learning cursive.

      “But you said it wasn’t your suitcase,” Monique objected.

      “Well, the stuff in it isn’t mine,” I said. ”The suitcase looks the same, but who’d switch clothes in somebody’s suitcase?”

      Monique took the little diary again and scanned the four sentences under the back cover, moving her lips as she did so.

      “If it’s not my mom’s,” I wondered, “then how could these verses be the same?” I waved a hand overhead, then pointed to the diary.

      “Another mystery,” she agreed.

      Recalling again the sounds from last night, I said, “I wonder if we should be messing around with these things.”

      “A key was mentioned,” Monique reminded me. ”Now here’s a key. Besides we can’t spend all our time humoring some old specter!”

      I’d always thought specter sounded a lot scarier than ghost did. ”I’ve got to sleep in here tonight,” I muttered.

      “Oh, maybe your aunt will let you stay over at my place,” Monique said offhand. Thoughtfully she closed the diary.

      As she did so, I recalled the lock on the chest and looked again at the tiny silver key laying there on the desk next to the burglary implements Monique had employed. I saw she was getting the same idea, but I picked it up first. The verse had appeared on the box and within the suitcase that had, mine or not, arrived with me in Oregon. Perhaps this key was never intended for the little diary at all. Maybe it was for opening something else.

      “Help me get this stuff back in the suitcase,” I asked. We tumbled it all in except the diary, closing the lid. Feeling now as if I’d done this many times, I entered the closet and climbed up the ladder, the key clutched in my left hand, careful not to trip on my dress. Monique followed handing up the flashlight.

      I studied the little brass plate set near the edge of the curving box lid, the edge opposite to the hinges. A keyhole-like opening looked a likely fit, but the key wouldn’t go in more than a quarter inch or so. I peered more closely at the lock and it seemed to me that there was no true keyhole, no hole for the key, just a kind of slot. Well, so much for the idea of a key opening this thing. Why would somebody build a box that couldn’t be opened? In frustration, I shook the box. It felt pretty heavy. I shoved at it. It gave maybe a fraction of an inch but wouldn’t slide. I braced myself and pulled at one end of the box back toward the opening in the attic floor. Something happened. The box turned slightly. I braced harder and pulled again. It turned a bit further. Then there was a little click or clunk, like something had dropped or sprung. I examined the lid, СКАЧАТЬ