“Good,” I replied, and Mackenzie nodded.
“What are you two going to do now?”
“I want to finish my socks,” my cousin told her, without so much as a glance in my direction. She was almost done with them and would be heading home with a completed pair, just as Ella had promised. I, on the other hand, was far from done. Probably because I’d had to unravel mine twice and start over.
“I’m going upstairs to read,” I said. I didn’t care if I was forging ahead without everybody else—I had to know what happened to Truly and the fugitives.
Mackenzie followed me just long enough to grab her knitting, then disappeared back downstairs. I flopped onto my bed and opened the diary.
March 2, 1862
Disaster! The packages were mailed tonight, but something went terribly wrong. I had to leave Booth alone in his cradle and run for Reverend Bartlett. He told me to go home and keep the door closed and not let anyone in, no matter what.
Yours, Truly
March 3, 1862
Much activity on Maple Street today, and on into the night. I stay hidden behind the curtains with my son and pray.
Yours, Truly
March 4, 1862
A letter from Matthew! But it brought sad news: Booth Harrington, his friend for whom our son is named, was killed by a sniper on reconnaissance at Manassas. I must go to his family as soon as it is safe and comfort them. We all have to drink from the cup of sorrow in life, but this is a hard, hard loss.
My letter telling Matthew of his mother’s death must not yet have been received, for he did not mention it. I can only imagine how difficult this news will be.
No word yet on whether the delivery arrived safely. I am on pins and needles, as Mother Lovejoy used to say.
Is there more darkness ahead, or will we finally see some light?
Yours, Truly
March 5, 1862
Light! Reverend Bartlett reported that the packages were miraculously unharmed, though shaken from the ordeal. They have gone on their way undetected. Next stop, Maple Grove. And then, God willing, heaven.
Yours, Truly
Heaven. That meant Canada, right?
Only three more entries. My eyes fairly flew over the pages:
May 15, 1862
I have had a letter from F! Both packages arrived safely. F promises to return someday. A love token was enclosed—a beautiful bracelet of intricately braided hair, black and brown so close in hue I almost cannot tell them apart. There are two bracelets, I am told. F has kept one. Our hearts are forever entwined by our ordeal. I will write back and promise again that the secret will be kept for always.
Yours, Truly
Wait a minute, I thought. Special friendship bracelets? Had Truly fallen in love with someone else? Was it the fugitive slave she’d harbored? The mysterious F? Was that the secret she had vowed to keep? What about Matthew?
October 7, 1862
These past months have been an agony. No further word from F, and now this! Matthew has been captured by the enemy. I am closing up the house, which echoes with sadness and loss. Booth and I must travel to Washington, where I will try and arrange for his father’s release. We will be back, God willing, and together again as a family. I pray for my beloved husband, and for F, and for an end to all pain and suffering. I pray for peace.
Yours, Truly
October 10, 1862
We leave Pumpkin Falls today, Booth and I, but our hearts are here in this home, always.
Yours, Truly
And then, nothing. That was it. The rest of the pages were empty. I flipped through to the end twice to be sure.
I lay there on my bed, trying to make sense of what I’d read. A few minutes later, my cell phone buzzed.
Probably Mom letting me know the pizza’s arrived, I thought. But a split second later the buzz turned into a familiar tune: “The Magnificent Seven.”
A moment after that, I heard cell phones ringing all over the house.
I sat up. It wasn’t pizza—it was Dad’s special signal, the one he’d programmed into all of our phones in case of an emergency. The one that meant RED ALERT! DEFON 1! ALL HANDS ON DECK!
In a flash, Lovejoys came out of the woodwork. I dashed out of my room as Hatcher and Danny thundered down from the attic. Pippa and Lauren popped out from wherever they’d been playing, trailing a puzzled Annie Freeman. Downstairs, my mother emerged from the dining room. Mackenzie was right behind her, clutching her knitting.
“What’s going on?” my cousin asked, bewildered, as we all converged on the front staircase.
My father was standing just below the portrait of the original Truly. In his left hand he was holding a hammer, and in his right, firmly clamped in the titanium grip of the Terminator, was one of the wooden stair treads.
He smiled at us. “I found the Underground Railroad’s hiding place.”
CHAPTER 26
I couldn’t see a thing.
Opening my eyes as wide as possible, I stared into the darkness.
Nothing.
Not even a glimmer of light.
It was pitch-black inside, and airless. It smelled of moldy newspapers and dust and time that had slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether. It smelled of something else, too, something that I really, really hoped was the decaying rag rug beneath me and not spiders.
I tried to shift position, and smacked into the wall. It was unbelievably cramped, especially for someone my size. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t stretch out, I could only sit or lie down curled up on my side. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how anyone had spent more than a few minutes in here.
I was tempted to use the torch app on my cell phone, but I resisted the urge. Instead, I held my breath, trying to envision what it would have felt like to be hidden away, terrified that you’d be discovered and returned to a life you’d risked everything to leave.
A minute later, a crack of light appeared above my head. My father peered in. “Had enough?”
I nodded, and he lifted the stair tread away, then reached down and gave me his good hand as I clambered out.
“My turn! My turn!” shrieked Pippa.
“Only Truly and Mackenzie get to go in tonight,” my mother told her.
“No fair!” Lauren protested. “How come?”
“Because they were the ones who found the diary, and without it we wouldn’t have known what this space was, even if we’d ever managed to find it,” my mother told her calmly.
“Someone would have discovered it eventually,” Lauren muttered. She was resentful about the fact that she hadn’t been the one to find the hiding spot. So much for all that tapping, Nancy Drew, I thought spitefully.
“Chin up, Lauren,” said Aunt True. “Good things come to those who wait.”
My mother had called my aunt the minute Dad showed us his discovery, and she and Professor Rusty were here practically before my mother hung up the phone. Professor Rusty looked like he’d just won the lottery. He’d taken a zillion pictures already, and he kept shaking his head and saying things like “Amazing!” and “Incredible!” and “Extraordinary!”
Watching him, I suddenly realized something: This was his owl. This was the thing Professor Rusty had been waiting his whole life to see.
He’d been super anxious about us touching anything. “It’s vital to preserve the integrity of a historical find of this magnitude,” he’d said, shining a flashlight into the secret room and leaning in. “Look at the dates on these newspapers lining the walls!” he’d cried, his voice muffled. “1848! 1853! 1860! What a treasure trove! They prove this is the real deal.”
“Why are the walls lined with newspaper?” Mackenzie had asked.
“For warmth,” he’d explained, standing up again.
Hatcher and I snickered. Professor Rusty really looked like Albert Einstein now, what with all the dust in his hair. Aunt True reached over and swatted at it, sending up a small cloud.
Professor Rusty coughed. “It would have been
drafty in there in the wintertime, and the newspaper would have helped with that. It also probably helped absorb sound, making it safer. Same thing with that rug on the floor.” He grinned at us. “Isn’t it just marvelous, to think that this secret has been here all these years, completely undisturbed? It’s like finding Tutankhamen’s tomb!”
“You do have a tendency to exaggerate, dear,” said Aunt True drily.
I swiveled around and stared at her. This was the first time I’d heard her call him a pet name. Did this mean he was really her boyfriend?
We’d all taken turns peering inside, and then I’d managed to persuade Professor Rusty to let me climb in.
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I promise not to touch anything.”
He’d finally agreed, although reluctantly. “Once the team from the museum has examined and photographed everything, it won’t be such a big deal,” he’d explained. “You can spend all the time in the world in there if you want to.”
“Just for a minute,” I’d begged. “Seriously, I won’t touch anything.”
And I didn’t, but I sure looked, at least until my father replaced the stair tread, plunging me into darkness.
Did you leave me a clue, Truly? I wondered. But no artifacts had been left behind, from what I could see. No initials were written on the walls or on the floor. If I’d been hoping for a message, there wasn’t one. Or else it had been cleared away long ago.
“I can’t believe nobody noticed this spot before,” my father said after I climbed out and Mackenzie climbed in. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face once you know it’s there.”
“Not really,” said my mother. Opening the telephone closet, she turned on the light and pointed to where the sloping ceiling angled to the floor. “Whoever built it did a very clever job. This space doesn’t extend all the way to the foot of the stairs—they built a false wall to conceal the hiding place.”
Professor Rusty and my father got a tape measure to see if she was right.
“Extraordinary,” said Professor Rusty when it turned out that she was.
“I wonder who built it?” said my father, helping Mackenzie climb out. She was clutching her camera and looking smug, which I was pretty sure meant she’d been taking pictures and texting Cameron. Or maybe Calhoun? I scowled.
“Matthew, perhaps,” said Aunt True. “If he was the first one in his family to get involved with the Underground Railroad. Or maybe his father or grandfather.”
“We might be able to figure that out, based on the dates of the earliest newspapers, once we’ve made a thorough examination,” Professor Rusty told her.
“I’m still mystified why no one else in the family seemed to know about this,” said my father.
“Gramps might be able to answer that,” I pointed out. “We should call him.”
“Not in the middle of the night, we shouldn’t,” said Aunt True, glancing at her watch. “We’ll try him in the morning.”
The doorbell rang. It was the pizza delivery guy. We must have looked like complete nuts, what with three of us covered in dust and all of us buzzing with excitement. Pippa was hopping up and down the stairs nonstop, squealing. Danny had come straight from the shower and was still wrapped in his bath towel. Lauren had temporarily abandoned her bad mood and was playing ring-around-the-rosy in the living room with Annie, who was spelling words at the top of her lungs. The pizza delivery guy arrived just as she’d gotten to A-B-O-L-I-T-I-O-N! I noticed that he left as quickly as he could.
We ate on paper plates, right there in the front hall. None of us wanted to peel ourselves away from our discovery.
“I don’t suppose you girls feel much like going to knitting class tonight, what with all this excitement,” my mother said as we finished up.
“No way, mom,” I said. “Sorry.”
Mackenzie shook her head too.
“I know how you feel because I feel the same way,” my mother told us. “I’ll call Ella and let her know we’re not coming.”
In the end, everybody skipped sock class, as it turned out. The minute Ella heard why we weren’t coming, she invited herself—and our fellow students—over to view the secret room for themselves.
“I brought currant scones!” she announced breathlessly, barreling through our front door. Right behind her were Mrs. Winthrop, Bud Jefferson, Belinda, Augustus Wilde—who wasn’t in our sock class, but seeing a flash of purple at his ankles, I figured Belinda had probably brought him along to model the socks she’d made—Mrs. Maynard, Annie’s mother, and Mr. Henry.
“I ordered pizza,” said Mr. Jefferson.
“Uh, how kind,” my mother replied.
My brothers looked pleased to hear this. But then, they were bottomless pits.
The rest of the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes arrived just as the pizza truck pulled into the driveway again.
“How did they find out?” I wondered when I spotted my friends.
“I texted them.” Mackenzie avoided my gaze—which probably meant she’d texted Calhoun.
“I won’t even begin to try and explain,” my mother said to the bewildered pizza guy, taking the stack of boxes from him and handing him a huge tip. Turning to my brothers and sisters and me, she added in a low voice, “FHB,” which is Lovejoy family shorthand for “family hold back.”
Like I wanted any more pizza. My brothers, on the other hand, waited until she wasn’t looking and helped themselves to two more slices each.
We all crowded into the living room, and the sofas and chairs and window seats and even the big stone hearth in front of the fireplace quickly filled up. I started to take a seat on the floor next to Cha Cha, but my mother placed her hand on my arm.
“Truly, why don’t you tell everyone about what you found, and maybe read us a little from the diary,” she suggested. “That will provide a little background to tonight’s discovery.”
“Okay.” I went upstairs to get it. When I came back down, I couldn’t help noticing that Calhoun had taken a seat by my cousin. I tried not to look at them as I explained how Mackenzie and I had found the loose floorboard and the package that had been hidden underneath it.
“A secret compartment? How come you didn’t tell us?” Scooter looked hurt.
“We, uh, wanted to keep it a surprise,” I replied lamely. “But you can see it now, if you want to.”
Of course everyone wanted to. I led them all upstairs. My room wasn’t at its tidiest, but at least I’d made my bed.
I studiously avoided looking at Calhoun, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him gazing around curiously. At one point he leaned over to Mackenzie, then pointed at the framed woodcut of the snowy owl that hung on the wall above my bed. It was one of my prized possessions. She said something to him, and he laughed.
My stomach lurched. She probably called me a bird nerd, I thought bitterly.
Back downstairs, everyone took turns looking at the hiding place while I skimmed through the diary, picking out some of the better entries to read aloud.
There were audible oohs and aahs of excitement as I read about the bloodhounds on Lovejoy Mountain, and sighs when my audience learned of Mother Lovejoy’s death.
“It’s all so mysterious!” cried Mrs. Winthrop when I got to the part about the original Truly’s unnamed visitor. “Packages! A disastrous ordeal! Something that went terribly wrong!”
“And a bracelet made of hair, did you say?” Mrs. Freeman asked sharply.
I nodded.
“Interesting.”
“It all ends so abruptly,” sighed Aunt True. “What a cliff-hanger! Any insights for us, Rusty?”
He cleared his throat. “About the ending, and what happened afterward? Alas, no. We’ll have to wait for the call to Namibia.” He turned to me. “I did find an answer to your question about Maple Grove, however. It turns out there was quite an astonishing discovery made there several years ago at a small Quaker church. The town is just two miles from the Canadian border, and it had long been rumored to be one of
the final stops on the Underground Railroad. A married couple who founded the church were conductors. But there was little hard evidence to go on.”
Coach Maynard’s wife leaned forward in her chair. “Why is that?”
“Lack of documentation has proven difficult for historians,” Professor Rusty explained. “So much of what we know has been passed down through oral history—through stories,” he added, seeing Pippa’s puckered forehead. “It makes sense, really, when you think about it—the people who helped were otherwise law-abiding citizens, and they didn’t want to be discovered breaking the law. So their activities weren’t openly discussed, and in most cases never recorded. A diary like the original Truly Lovejoy’s is a rare thing indeed.”
“So what was this astonishing discovery you started to tell us about?” asked Bud Jefferson.
“Ah yes. Twenty years ago or so, some renovations were being made to the church in Maple Grove, and a layer of wood was stripped away from the raised platform in the main meeting area. Beneath it was a trapdoor leading to what was clearly a hiding place. And so it would seem that the rails from Pumpkin Falls indeed led to Maple Grove, Maine, and from there on to Canada.”
“To heaven,” I whispered.
Professor Rusty smiled at me. “Exactly.”
“Well,” said my mother, “I know this has been an incredibly exciting evening—”
“E-X-C-I-T-I-N-G!” shouted Annie, who was still wound up like a top.
“Shhh, honey,” said Mrs. Freeman. “Settle down or I’m taking you home.”
“—but I think it’s time we called it a day,” my mother finished.
As coats and jackets—and one purple cape—were rounded up and distributed, everyone took a last look at the hiding place. Everyone except Mackenzie and Calhoun, that was. They were deep in conversation. Another hot spike of jealousy surged through me as I watched the two of them. There was no way around it—despite tonight’s discovery, my Spring Break was not destined to end on a good note.
CHAPTER 27
For once, I wasn’t woken up by the sound of tapping.