All of a sudden I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mackenzie, I’m so sorry for how I’ve been acting,” I blurted. “It was stupid! I don’t have an excuse and I’m really, really sorry.”
“Don’t—” she began, but I plunged on before she could continue.
“I had no right to be snarky about Cameron McAllister or call you boy crazy. I’m an idiot and a total jerk and cretinous, just like Felicia Grunewald said! If you like Calhoun, that’s fine. You can have him.”
She looked at me, confused. “Calhoun?”
I lifted a shoulder.
“Romeo Calhoun?”
“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, frowning.
“What are you talking about? ‘You can have him’? Why would I want Calhoun?”
“Um,” I replied, “you said you thought he was cute.”
My cousin pulled herself up to her full five feet one inch and placed her hands on her hips. “Is that what this snit was all about, Truly Lovejoy?”
Now I was the one who was confused. “Isn’t it?”
“You’re absolutely right—you are cretinous!” Mackenzie snapped. “I don’t like Calhoun!”
“You don’t?” I stared at her, astounded.
“Well, I like him, but I don’t like him. You know what I mean. Besides, you’re the only one he talks about.”
I blinked. “I am?”
“He thought you liked Scooter.”
My heart sank. Of course. The kiss behind the Freemans’ barn.
“But I set him straight,” said Mackenzie.
I gaped at her. “You did? When?”
“Last night. I knew you liked him, and I wanted to help.”
So that’s what she’d been doing when I saw them talking! “How did you know?”
She made a rude noise. “I’ve known you forever, you moron. I can read you like one of Lauren’s books.”
We regarded each other for a long moment.
“You’re welcome,” my cousin said finally.
I started to laugh, and a second later, she did too.
“I hated being mad at you!” I told her.
“I hated you being mad at me!” she replied. “You’re my best friend in the whole world!”
“And you’re mine!” I crossed the room and gave her a Bigfoot-size hug, lifting her off her feet and into the air. Then I set her down again and smiled. “Now, let’s go figure out what happened to my sister.”
CHAPTER 29
Lauren’s room looked like a mini library. She went through books the way I went through sudoku puzzles. There were books piled on her dresser, books piled on her desk, books piled on her chair and on her bedside table and on her pets’ cages and on the floor.
I didn’t even know where to start.
So I called Annie Freeman.
Her mother answered the phone. “Any word yet about Lauren?”
“Not yet,” I said. “May I please speak to Annie?”
Mrs. Freeman hesitated. “She’s awfully upset.”
“I just want to ask if she remembers what Lauren was reading last night. It might be important, Mrs. Freeman.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause, and then Annie got on the line. I repeated my question.
“Um,” she said. “I think it was something about a house, maybe?”
I relayed this information to Mackenzie, who took a quick look around the room and then shook her head.
“Okay, Annie. If you remember anything else, call me.”
Something about a house, I thought as I hung up. That rang a faint bell, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I tried Aunt True next, but that proved to be another dead end.
“Sorry, Truly—I honestly have no idea,” she said. “Your sister devours books the way Rusty devours my Bookshop Blondies. How about Mr. Henry? Could you try calling him? Lauren’s always at the library. He might be able to help.”
“Good idea!”
Mr. Henry answered on the first ring. “Truly Lovejoy!” he replied eagerly when I told him who was calling. “Any news about Lauren?”
“Nothing yet,” I replied. “Hey, I was wondering, do you remember if she checked something out recently about a house?”
“A house? Hmmm.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking.
“It might have had something to do with the Underground Railroad,” I added.
“Lauren didn’t check anything out about the Underground Railroad, but there may have been something in that stack I brought to sock class for your mother. Tell you what, let me check the computer. I should have a list here.”
It was quiet for a minute. I could hear him typing.
“Let me see . . . yes, here we are.” He read off the names one by one.
“Nope,” I said to each of the titles. “Nope. Not that one either.”
He listed several more, then said, “Wait, was it The House of Dies Drear?”
I gave a little yelp. “I think that’s it! That’s the one I saw her reading the other night at dinner!”
“It has a black cover, as I recall.”
“Thanks, Mr. Henry.”
Mackenzie and I took the room apart. We finally found the book in the unlikeliest spot—stuffed down at the foot of Lauren’s unmade bed.
Her bookmark was still in it. I opened to where she’d left off reading and scanned the page. Snick! The pieces slid into place as neatly as one of my sudoku puzzles.
I looked up. “I think I know where Lauren is,” I told my cousin. “Sort of.”
CHAPTER 30
I ran down the hall toward the stairs. Mackenzie was right on my heels.
“Obadiah, Abigail, Jeremiah, Ruth,” I chanted as we flew down the stairs. My cousin joined in, and we singsonged the rest in unison: “Matthew, Truly, Charity, and Booth!”
I pulled up the stair tread that marked the entrance to the hidden room and shined my cell phone light into it. As I’d suspected, it wasn’t exactly as we’d left it yesterday.
“Remember Professor Rusty told us not to touch anything until the history department had a chance to look everything over?” I said, and Mackenzie nodded. “Check it out.”
She peered inside.
The tattered rag rug had been shoved over to one of the far corners of the cramped space.
“No one thought to look in here when Lauren went missing,” I said, sitting down on the step above the gaping hole and reaching out a hand toward my cousin. “Steady me, would you?”
She did, and I climbed inside. A cloud of dust flew up. “I could use a little more light,” I told her, coughing.
“Hang on, I’ll grab the big flashlight. Danny left it on the hall bench.”
She returned momentarily and aimed a strong beam downward.
“Much better.” Kneeling down, I peered closely at the floor.
“What are you looking for?” Mackenzie asked.
“A trapdoor,” I said, and explained about The House of Dies Drear, and how it involved this family who moved to a creepy old house riddled with secret passages and tunnels that runaway slaves had once used to hide in and escape.
“Wow, that must have been catnip to Lauren,” said my cousin, and I nodded.
“Ha! Gotcha!” I crowed, slipping my fingers into a small groove in the wood floor. The trapdoor squawked as I lifted it, its hinges stiff from a century and a half of disuse.
“Wow,” breathed Mackenzie. “No way! I can’t believe we missed that yesterday.”
“Professor Rusty would hardly let us touch anything, remember?”
My cousin squeezed into the hiding space beside me. We peered down into the darkness. “Where does that ladder go?”
“I guess we’re going to find out,” I told her, and taking the flashlight, I swung my legs over the edge.
The air grew colder as I climbed down. I waited at the foot of the ladder for Mackenzie, playing the flashlight beam around what appeared to be another small room.
“They must have walled this section of the baseme
nt off,” I told my cousin, my voice echoing against the stone. Straight ahead, a tunnel curved past the fieldstone foundation. It was narrow and dark and brick lined, and the walls and ceiling were thick with cobwebs.
I froze.
Cobwebs meant spiders.
I couldn’t believe that Lauren had had the courage to come down here by herself.
She’d come this way for sure, though. I could plainly see her footprints in the dust.
I had to go after her, even though every fiber of my body was screaming Stop! Stay back!
“Shouldn’t we call your parents?” Mackenzie whispered, clutching the back of my sweatshirt as I stepped slowly forward.
“As soon as I find my sister,” I told her, then called, “Lauren?”
There was no answer.
I called again, louder this time. My voice bounced off the brick walls, echoing weirdly back to me. I took a few more steps forward.
Mackenzie peered into the darkness. “Do you think this leads to the barn?”
“No idea.”
We inched our way forward through the cobwebs and dust, following my sister’s footprints.
“Which direction do you think we’re going?” my cousin asked, coughing as she accidentally kicked up a cloud of dust.
I made a face, swatting at the strands of cobweb that clung to my hair. “Toward the Mitchells’ house, maybe?” I guessed. It was disorienting down here in the dark.
“Didn’t your mother say something about houses connecting in some communities? Maybe the people who used to live at the Mitchells’ were involved with the Underground Railroad too.”
“That would totally make sense!” I quickened my pace, buoyed by the thought of my sister so close at hand.
A few minutes later, I stopped. “Does the tunnel feel like it’s getting narrower?”
Mackenzie grunted. “Maybe.”
We pushed on. Now I definitely could feel the tunnel growing narrower. Panic welled up in me—Mackenzie was right, we should have told my parents.
And then we turned a corner, and I stopped short.
“Whoa!” said my cousin as she slammed into my back. “What is it?”
“The footprints,” I replied. “They disappeared.”
“Huh?”
I shined the flashlight on the floor. “They’re gone. See?” My sister’s trail ended at a pile of rubble.
Mackenzie stared at it, and then understanding dawned. “The tunnel caved in!”
We fairly flew back to the ladder. I called my parents the minute I clambered out of the hiding place. They arrived at the same time that Pumpkin Falls’ lone police car pulled up. The rest of the town soon followed, and in the space of ten minutes our house looked like Grand Central Station.
My mother cleared off the dining room table, and my father got to work organizing the search and rescue teams. Before long, one crew was hard at work in the basement of the Mitchells’ house, looking for a possible tunnel exit. Another crew was assigned to the tunnel beneath my grandparents’ house, where they cautiously began trying to clear away the rubble.
Professor Rusty threw caution to the wind. “Nothing matters but rescuing Lauren,” he said to the work crew as he followed them down the ladder in the hiding place that led to the basement. “Don’t worry about damaging anything. Life always trumps history.”
“What is taking them so long?” my mother asked a short while later, pacing up and down the front hall. “Shouldn’t they have found her by now?”
“It’s slow going,” Professor Rusty reported when he emerged a few minutes later. “They’re trying to avoid another cave-in.”
By midafternoon neither the crew over at our neighbors’ house nor the crew in our basement had found anything. I was heading to the kitchen to get myself some water when I saw my parents talking quietly in the dining room.
“Oh, J. T.!” I overheard my mother say. “What if she’s—”
“We’re not going to think that way, Dinah,” my father told her firmly. “We can’t. There’s no reason to give up hope. Lauren is a Lovejoy, after all. And Lovejoys are made of strong stuff.”
“She’s a little girl, and she’s down there somewhere in the dark,” my mother whispered.
“I’m sure she took a flashlight with her.”
“But how long can a pair of batteries last?” My mother leaned her forehead on the windowpane, watching the shadows lengthen in the yard. My father put his good hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
Tears pricked my eyelids. I backed away. I hated to think of my sister trapped in the dark too. But there wasn’t anything I could do. It was up to the search and rescue crews now.
Friends stopped by, bringing food and offering comfort. Lucas Winthrop’s mother and Mr. Jefferson arrived together with a fruit basket, and peeking out the window I was pretty sure I saw them holding hands as they came up the front path. Bud Jefferson’s were back in his coat pockets when I opened the door to greet them, though.
The Abramowitzes brought a casserole, Scooter and Jasmine’s parents brought a ham, and Mr. Henry came with what looked like a lifetime supply of his award-winning Maple Walnut Cupcakes.
I was in the dining room with my mother when Mrs. Freeman came in. “Dinah!” she said.
“Grace!” my mother replied, and the two of them embraced.
“I brought homemade bread,” Mrs. Freeman told her. “I’ll just leave it in the kitchen. And I have something I want to show you. I don’t know why, but I think it may be important.” She turned to me. “Something you said last night, Truly, made me think of it.”
She drew a small box out of her jacket pocket. “It’s a family heirloom.”
She lifted the lid, and I stared at the contents, confused. Nestled on a piece of white velvet was a bracelet made of intricately braided hair.
A bracelet identical to the one that belonged to Lola.
There are two bracelets, Truly had written in her diary. The mysterious F had kept one, she had said.
“It was my husband’s great-great-grandfather’s,” she said. “His mother gave it to him.”
His mother! I thought. Snick! The last puzzle piece clicked into place.
Our hearts are forever entwined.
And all of a sudden I knew where my sister was. For real this time.
CHAPTER 31
“This way!” I cried, squelching across the backyard. My family and half of Pumpkin Falls were right on my heels. My flashlight bounced wildly off the birdbath and the evergreens that lined my grandparents’ property. In the distance, an owl hooted: Who cooks for you! Who cooks for you-all!
Barred owl, I thought automatically, wondering if it was the same one Mackenzie and I had seen that first night she was here.
Which seemed like a million years ago now.
The original Truly had listened for owls too, a hundred and fifty years ago. She had listened, and responded, and saved lives. Could I save one now?
Lauren! I thought desperately. Hang on! We’re coming!
This must have been what happened back in the winter of 1862. A cave-in. That must have been the disaster that Truly mentioned in her diary. Her two “packages,” trapped beneath the earth. And no one able to dig them out for days, thanks to the slave hunters lurking everywhere. There’d been a happy ending to that tale—the runaways were miraculously unharmed, Reverend Bartlett had told Truly. Would there be another miracle now?
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” said my father, smacking at the underbrush with the Terminator.
“Pretty sure,” I told him as my flashlight picked out the overgrown path that led from Gramps and Lola’s property to the old Oak Street Cemetery.
The hill behind my grandparents’ house was steep. We bushwhacked our way up, panting from the effort, and finally emerged by a line of tombstones at the back of the graveyard.
I grabbed Mrs. Freeman’s arm. “Where’s your ancestor’s grave?”
“Which one?” she asked.
“The first Frank Freeman’s.”
She pointed her flashlight to the left. “Over there.”
I ran over toward where her beam was shining. There it was! The sculpture on the lid of the tomb was unmistakable. I pointed my flashlight at the headstone:
FRANK FREEMAN
Two hearts forever entwined, one forever yearning to be free
Frank Freeman was the original Truly’s mysterious F! I was sure of it. Our hearts are forever entwined by our ordeal, F had written to her. It had to be Frank.
I looked over at Professor Rusty. “Remember William Still?”
He ran a hand through his hair as he pondered my question, then his eyes lit up. “Of course!”
I looked at the most-photographed grave in the cemetery, considering. I pushed on the epitaph. Nothing. I ran my fingers around the edge of the headstone. Nothing seemed out of place; nothing had any give.
It had to be the statue, then, the beautiful carving of the African American mother cradling her infant, which stood in the middle of the slab covering the crypt.
As my family and friends looked on in bewilderment, I nodded at Professor Rusty. He reached out and grabbed the statue by its base and gave a mighty heave. At first, nothing happened. He heaved again, and this time there was a loud scraping sound as the slab moved slightly.
“Some help, gentlemen?” Professor Rusty looked over at my father and my brothers. They leaped into action, crowding around.
All four of them heaved, and stone ground against stone with a mighty screech. With one final piercing squawk, the slab shifted, revealing the open crypt.
I flung myself onto the edge, hardly daring to look down inside.
My sister was huddled in the darkness beneath us, her pale face streaked with dirt and tears.
“Truly!” my sister sobbed as I lifted her out. “I knew you’d find me!”
“Lauren!” my mother cried out. “Oh, Lauren!”
We wrapped our arms around her, both of us sobbing in relief too.
“Can I be one of the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes?” Lauren asked, gulping back tears. “Please?”
I nodded, hugging her fiercely. “Cross my heart and hope to fly.”