The Secret Keepers

  Reuben read over the letter one last time. It informed the watchmaker of his destination and purpose and asked that she contact his mother should he not return to New Umbra. He had every expectation, he wrote, of a short, safe trip and a timely return. But accidents do happen, and seeing as how his mom believed him to be staying with a friend in the city, when in fact he was in a town fifty miles to the north, he thought it important that someone he trusted know the truth of his whereabouts. If Mrs. Genevieve hadn’t heard from him by the time she received this letter, would she please call his mom at the following number? He thanked her in advance, thanked her again for all she’d done to help him, and promised to visit her as soon as it was safe to do so.

  Satisfied, Reuben sealed the letter inside the stamped and addressed envelope he’d brought with him. If he mailed it today, it should arrive in New Umbra on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. He hoped it would prove unnecessary. He hoped he would be back at home Sunday evening, armed with answers. It was possible, wasn’t it? He stood and pulled on his backpack. Clutching the letter in one hand, he quickly returned the other to his sweatshirt pocket, to the reassuring touch of the hidden watch. Yes, anything was possible.

  At the Point William station Reuben disembarked into the sunshine of a beautiful morning. He took in a deep breath of pleasant seaside air, glanced around, and walked across the platform to study a display map of the town. There wasn’t much to study. He was minutes from the town square, minutes from the shore, minutes from everywhere, really. Rounding the station house, he shielded his eyes against the sun and looked seaward. There it was, rising above the rooftops of the town—the dark green lantern dome of the lighthouse.

  Reuben deposited his letter in the station mailbox, checked his watch, and set out walking.

  Point William, he discovered, was a storybook town. Its residents enjoyed charming green parks; ample sidewalks lit by decorative lampposts and shaded by old trees; views of the bay from its boardwalks and high streets—and, from almost any spot in town, at least a glimpse of its picturesque lighthouse. A hundred feet tall, built of gleaming whitewashed stone, the lighthouse stood within shouting distance of the mainland, on an oblong grassy island just large enough to accommodate the keeper’s house, a small stone oil house, and the lighthouse tower itself.

  Moored to a pier on the island was a blue rowboat that at present hardly needed mooring, for the tide had almost entirely receded. The little boat floated in mere inches of water and soon would be resting on mud.

  Reuben gazed out at the island, wondering how to proceed. It hadn’t occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to approach the lighthouse on foot. He sat cross-legged at the edge of the nearest mainland dock, considering the problem. He’d been at it for some minutes when a figure emerged from the keeper’s two-story white clapboard house and walked—or, rather, skipped—across the grass toward the oil house, a squat stone building partly obscured by small, gnarled evergreens. The figure appeared to be a young girl in a bright red hat. She glanced briefly in Reuben’s direction but did not seem to notice him sitting motionless on the dock. She ducked into the oil house.

  Reuben waited to see if she would reappear. Seagulls dipped in and out of his view, uttering their forlorn cries. A few had begun to splash down into the rapidly diminishing water between his dock and the island, snatching up tidal snacks. On the island nothing moved. Reuben rose and hurried back to the bustling town square, which on his way down from the train station he had naturally avoided.

  He found what he wanted in the first place he tried, an old-fashioned general store doing a brisk business. Its friendly proprietor, a stout middle-aged man with curly red hair, greeted him with a look of curiosity—no doubt he knew all the children in town and wondered at the appearance of a stranger—but fortunately he asked no questions, and soon Reuben was back at the dock.

  There were several such docks dotting the coastline, and farther to the north was a long boardwalk fronted by snack stands, a T-shirt and sundry shop, a bait shop, and a seafood restaurant or two. Some children roamed the boardwalk, and there were pedestrians moving about the streets between his dock and the town square. But no one was close enough to see what Reuben was up to. He sat down on the weathered planks, yanked off his sneakers, and poked his feet into the knee-high muck boots he’d bought. The sneakers he stuffed into his backpack.

  Reuben climbed down a ladder into the smelly black mud uncovered by the outgoing tide. He sank up to the middle of his shins. Okay, he thought, he could do this. With effort he took a couple of backward steps through the sucking, clinging mud, into the shadows beneath the dock. He got out the watch, made sure it was fully wound, and stared across the mudflats toward the island. There was still no one in sight, but if he reappeared too soon, anyone watching from the windows of the keeper’s house or the lighthouse tower could easily spot him.

  He had fifteen minutes to make it across that expanse of mud. Reuben concentrated on the island’s little dock. He would shoot for that, try to reach the shadows beneath it before his time ran out.

  “You can do this,” he told himself again, this time whispering it aloud. And pulling the winding key into position, he vanished and set out blindly across the mud.

  He had taken two steps when one of his feet came halfway out of its boot and he almost fell face-first. Worse, in his flailing to keep himself upright, he almost let go of the watch, which would have been flung off into the mud and quite possibly lost. The thought upset him so much he had to take a minute to calm down. He slipped the watch back into his right sweatshirt pocket, keeping his hand firmly wrapped about it; and in that way, with only one hand free to help him maintain balance, Reuben pushed ahead.

  The crossing was much more difficult than he had expected it to be. The hardest part was keeping his feet inside the boots, which stubbornly resisted every step. He was tempted to abandon them—to go back to the dock, remove his socks and roll up his pants, and proceed with bare feet. But all that would take time, and there was no guarantee that someone wouldn’t happen along at any moment, ruining his chances. Besides, who knew what broken glass or jagged, rusty tin cans lay hidden in that mud? So Reuben pressed on with the boots.

  The boots weren’t the only problem, though. He was beset by gnats or some other kind of tiny insects that clearly were not fooled by his invisibility. There was nothing he could do about them, either. Waving them away with his hand was fruitless—they came right back—and so he was forced to endure them crawling on his face and neck. He exhaled violently every few seconds to keep them out of his nostrils.

  On he plodded, his boots making loud sucking, slopping sounds he had no way of hiding. But Reuben’s labored footsteps were only a minor part of the many noises out on the mudflats—there were also the constant cries of seagulls and other birds; the occasional flickering sounds of tiny, stranded fish; the minute skitter of crabs startled out of his path. The sound of all this wildlife about him was unnerving to the point of distraction, and when fifteen minutes were almost up and he had yet to reach solid ground, Reuben began to worry that he’d veered off course and would reappear in some unpredictable spot, out in the wide open for anyone to see.

  Then, with perhaps a minute of invisibility left, he felt the ground rise steeply before him and grow firm and rocky. He had reached the island. Using the edge of the mud as a guide, he moved quickly to the north and soon bumped up against the gunwale of the grounded rowboat. He worked his way around it just as his time ran out, reappearing suddenly but safely, hidden among the pilings under the dock.

  There was no one around. After a moment’s casting about, Reuben found a reasonably dry bit of rocky shoreline, not quite under the dock but still in its shadow. With both hands free now, he indulged his pent-up annoyance by furiously swatting at gnats for several seconds before falling back onto the shore, exhausted. The gnats returned, but in fewer numbers, and meanwhile he had composed himself and pulled off his stinking, slimy boots. He took a water bottle f
rom his backpack and drank it dry.

  Now that he was out of all that mud, Reuben detected, intermingled with the salty sea air, the smell of something cooking. Something rich, savory, delicious—he picked up only scattered whiffs of it, but that was enough to make his stomach growl. He gulped down a cereal bar and was immediately thirsty again. At least he was restored enough to get back to the business at hand. He yanked on his sneakers, hid his boots under the dock, and then crouched in the shadows, winding his watch.

  Soon enough he would be making his presence known. To get any answers about the watch, he would have to ask questions—he couldn’t just sneak around, he knew. But Reuben wanted to observe for a while first. He wanted to be certain of what he was getting into.

  There still seemed to be no signs of life on the island. Now that the tide was fully out, he saw that the seaward part of the island was fringed with a great jumble of granite boulders and slabs that looked as if they’d be fun to climb around on. The higher ones were drying out in the sun, their dark gray lightening by the minute; the lower ones were crusted with barnacles and periwinkles. He looked at the keeper’s house, which stood at the base of the looming lighthouse tower. Its sun-dazzled windows were impenetrable.

  The little stone oil house, perhaps twenty paces from where Reuben crouched, had no windows at all. The stunted trees grown up around it would provide decent cover, he thought—some of their branches drooped all the way to the ground, forming a screen of evergreen needles. He vanished, moving quickly up the gentle grassy slope until his extended free hand caught hold of an evergreen branch. He ducked beneath it and reappeared. No sooner had he done so than he heard the girl leaving the oil house—she was talking to herself. Peering around the corner, he saw her go back inside the keeper’s house.

  Reuben didn’t even pause to listen. The oil house was empty; otherwise the girl wouldn’t have been talking to herself. Now was his chance to look around in there. He vanished, rounded the corner, and found his way in through an open doorway.

  As it turned out, there wasn’t much to see in the oil house, and Reuben felt a bit foolish—he’d hoped for something exciting, though he couldn’t have said what. The walls were covered with hanging tools and supply shelves, and in the far corner stood a rusted oil drum, atop which was perched a handmade doll. Another doll lay on a blanket on the floor. Clearly, the girl had been playing. The only furniture was a heavy wooden bench, on top of which, sitting in a ring of condensation, was an almost-full glass of iced lemonade.

  Reuben’s eyes lingered on the glass, first because he was so thirsty, and then because of a dawning realization. She must be coming right back! Even as he thought it, he heard a distant screen door bang closed.

  For an instant Reuben stood frozen—he hadn’t prepared for this possibility—but then his instinct to hide took over. He ran to the oil drum, which came almost to his shoulders, and heaved himself up. His knees and toes bumped against it with small, hollow booms. He grimaced, hoping the girl couldn’t hear. Grabbing the doll to keep it from falling, Reuben squeezed down into the narrow corner behind the drum, his backpack scraping stone.

  In the distance he heard the girl calling out an apology—something about the screen door slamming. He had a few seconds. He reached up to adjust the doll, making sure he’d left it in its original position. It was only a rag doll, yet someone had gone to a lot of trouble on it, carefully stitching its stern face with lifelike features and adorning it with hand-sewn clothes. It appeared to be a woman wearing a man’s hat, a knee-length traveler’s cloak, and tall boots. Also, the doll’s stitched leather belt supported a holster. Reuben knew it was a holster because embroidered onto the doll’s right hand, very distinctly, was a pistol.

  What in the world kind of doll was that? he wondered as he wriggled out of his backpack and sat on it. There was just enough room in the corner to huddle like that, with his back to the wall and his knees pressed against the drum. Quickly he checked the setting on his watch. He wouldn’t use it unless he had to. He needed to preserve his strength.

  The girl entered the oil house humming. Reuben heard the rattle of ice in her glass; the humming stopped as she took a sip. He was so thirsty the thought of that cold lemonade made him feel desperate. He almost gave himself up to beg for a drink. But popping out from behind the oil drum was not exactly the best way to introduce himself. He was going to have to wait.

  The girl had begun to talk in different voices. Apparently, she was diving right back into her doll play.

  “But how did you get up there, Penelope?” she said huskily. A male voice.

  “I climbed, silly! What do you think?” A woman’s voice. Lighthearted but strong.

  “But how? How did you even get across the water?”

  “I swam!”

  “You swam all the way over there?”

  “Of course!”

  And so on. The doll characters, who evidently were brother and sister, continued to speak to each other, and Reuben heard the girl rustling around the oil house, enacting some drama with the brother. After a minute she suddenly rushed toward the oil drum—he heard the rapid patter of her shoes—and she came so quickly that he flinched, thinking she’d spotted him, and pulled out on the winding key. Then she was standing at the oil drum, moving her doll around on top of it, saying things that Reuben couldn’t register for all the blood rushing in his ears.

  She was still talking in her made-up voices, though. That meant that she hadn’t seen him. Reuben allowed himself to breathe. Presently she moved away from the drum again, and he reappeared, listening.

  The scene the girl was acting out with her dolls sounded dramatic, but Reuben wasn’t concentrating on the story—he was concentrating on the girl. She seemed full of spirit, and the remarks that she had her dolls make to each other were rather witty, he thought. More than once, in fact, he almost chuckled. He liked this girl, and as a consequence he was feeling encouraged. If he was going to talk with someone in this family of lighthouse keepers, a likable child was infinitely preferable to some unknown adult. He just needed to think of how to introduce himself and what to say. Assuming he ever got out from behind this drum.

  Such were Reuben’s musings when, several minutes into the doll drama, the story’s tone shifted to one of even greater urgency, and the girl began to recite a sort of chant:

  “Scarcely seen at low tide,

  Never seen at high,

  Only from the watery side,

  Never from the dry.

  Always bring your tools, mate,

  And keep your lanterns low.

  The rights are all for fools, mate,

  The lefts for those who know.

  So go ye at the low tide,

  And never at the high.

  Above the X, below the Y,

  Get in and out—or die!”

  It was a curious sort of poem, to be sure. Reuben wondered if the girl had read it in a book. Listening intently to what the dolls had to say about it, he got the impression that the brother and sister were supposed to have made it up when they were children—apparently to help them remember something. The sister made the brother repeat it, and this time Reuben paid even closer attention. It sounded like a pirate riddle; that part about the X made him think of a treasure map.

  It sounded like a pirate riddle; that part about the X made him think of a treasure map.

  In the distance, a screen door banged closed. Reuben heard a woman’s muted voice calling out in disapproval, but there was no reply from the culprit who had let the door slam. The girl fell silent. Grass-muffled footsteps approached the oil house door.

  “What’s up, redbird,” said a young man’s voice. It was a lazy voice, drawling and half-mumbling. Though his greeting was a question, the tone fell at the end, like a statement—and a statement of weary resignation at that. The words were breathed out in a sort of sigh.

  “Mom hates it when you let the screen door slam,” said the girl.

  “So why’d you do it?
”

  “I didn’t mean to!” the girl protested.

  “Well, who says I did?”

  “You could have said you were sorry.” The young man made no reply to this, and the girl let the matter drop. “So…” She seemed to be searching for something to say. “Are you working at the marina tonight?”

  “I doubt it. They haven’t called.”

  “Well, what’s up? Do you want me to sit on your back while you do push-ups? You could try to beat your record.”

  “Maybe later,” said the young man, who was surely the girl’s brother. His voice had been coming from the doorway (Reuben had pictured him leaning against the jamb), but now he closed the door behind him and crossed the room, walking in the direction of the oil drum. Reuben vanished. There was a shuffling sound, then a hollow boom, and once again Reuben, heart in his throat, thought he’d been spotted. But no, the young man had merely heaved himself up onto the oil drum to sit.

  “There’s a bench, you know,” the girl said.

  “Is that what that is. I wondered.”

  “You never like to do what people expect you to do,” the girl said.

  “No, that’s your department. Ten years old and already the most Meyer-like of all the Meyers.” He shifted his position on the drum. “Besides, you expected me to come talk to you, didn’t you?”

  Now it was the girl’s turn to be silent. After a pause her brother said, “So are you going to tell me what happened at this sleepover thing? It was your first one, right?”

  There was another pause, and then: “Just the usual stuff.”