One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  We listen then sit there blinking at one another.

  “Why?” Monday finally asks.

  “Because it’s just for show.” My words feel dark and thick as sludge. “They could run the plant remotely like they did before, but if they bring their nice family and their growing boy, it demonstrates to anyone paying attention how safe it is now. It’s just like pretending to drink the water.” We’ve known this from the beginning, but it’s more appalling, more shocking now that the family has faces, that growing boy a name and a voice. They risked our lives and well-being, but now they’re risking their own kid’s too, and why would they do that? They’re risking River when they’re the ones who are supposed to keep him safe. His very own mother knows this is happening, and even if she’s not happy about it, she’s still letting it go on, and for the first time, including when he was getting beat up every day after school, I feel truly sorry for River. At least our mother values us above all things. If the ship has sailed on our lives and well-being, at least our mother stands on deck with us shouting at the crew to make the voyage as pleasant as possible.

  “Why is it not safe?” Monday asks.

  Mirabel’s hand flips up and out. She doesn’t know.

  “You don’t know yet,” I say, “but maybe you can find out.” My eyes lock with Mirabel’s.

  “How can she?” Monday asks.

  “Next appointment.” I lick my too-dry lips. I’m anxious to get to my folder, but this is important too. “When Apple comes back, we have to make sure you’re there.”

  “Maybe,” says Mirabel’s Voice, and we wait while she types. “Nora said conflict of interest.”

  “Why?” Monday asks.

  “Why do you think?” I can’t believe even Monday doesn’t see this immediately. “She’s been suing the woman’s family for the last two decades.”

  “That is not what I meant, One. Not why is it a conflict of interest. Why did she say it was a conflict of interest instead of learning what she could from Apple Templeton and then helping the lawsuit by telling Russell?”

  A much better question.

  “Because Nora is,” Mirabel’s Voice begins, and we wait while she types the rest, “better than they are.”

  We sit and contemplate the incontrovertibility of that until Monday can stand it no longer.

  “River gave Mab a folder with an email thread between River’s father and River’s grandfather,” she tells Mirabel. “She said we had to wait for you to read it so we do not know what it says so do not ask. There is only one email thread, and River tried to get more but could not so do not ask that either.”

  Mirabel smiles at me, a complicated smile, and I smile complicatedly back.

  “If you are not going to read it”—Monday does not understand non-straightforward facial expressions but would not have any patience for them even if she did—“please allow me to read it.”

  So I hand her the folder. I can’t bear to look anyway.

  “There are three pieces of paper in this folder”—she counts them four times to make sure—“which are three emails. I will read the first email first. It is from Duke Templeton to his son Nathan Templeton. ‘WHERE ARE YOU???? WHY AREN’T YOU PICKING UP????’”

  I clap my hands over my ears. Mirabel has to settle for one hand over one ear. “Oh my God, Monday”—she’s so loud I’m wincing like she’s broken some kind of sense barrier—“why are you yelling?”

  “The email is in all capital letters,” she explains.

  “We get it,” I assure her. “Read it regular.”

  “I have to be true to the text.”

  “You do not,” says Mirabel’s Voice.

  Monday turns back to the folder. “The next email is a reply to the first email, and it is in a normal font, and it is from Nathan Templeton to his father Duke Templeton.”

  “We know who’s who,” I say. “We don’t need the cast of characters or the voice acting. Just read.”

  “Fine,” she says. “It is your loss. ‘I’m running between meetings, Dad. I’ll call you back in an hour. But please, try to relax. I know you’re anxious to get started on this, but I promise there’s no rush. I’m taking care of it, making sure everyone sees it’s safe now, reestablishing trust, spreading goodwill, offering jobs. We don’t need the workarounds. It’ll be better in the long run if we do this aboveboard this time. Besides we can’t risk a worker saying something and tipping someone off. Remember, all they have to do is look and they’ll realize. So please let me do this from the other direction.’” Monday finishes and looks up. “Tipping someone off what?”

  “Tipping someone off to what,” I amend. “But yeah, that’s the question.”

  Mirabel taps at her tablet. “And look where? And realize what?”

  “Read the last one,” I tell Monday.

  “The last one is from Duke Templeton replying to his son Nathan Templeton.”

  “WE KNOW!”

  “Please stop yelling,” Monday says, “unless you are quoting someone yelling.”

  I lower my voice and beg her through my teeth. “Just. Read. It.”

  “Okay, but prepare yourselves because there is a swear,” she warns. “‘Bullshit. We don’t need their trust or goodwill or cooperation. What we need is to get started before anyone down there finds the damn paperwork. Deeds, deals, contracts, who the hell knows what kind of paper trail, but whatever it is, we need to be well underway before anyone thinks to look for it. We don’t want that headache. Money and power buy a lot of things, but I’m telling you, they won’t buy this. They have to start by Thanksgiving, otherwise we have to wait until March. And since you can’t seem to get this done, I had to. Soonest available was 11/22, so I took it. In the old days, they did it when you goddamn told them to, but now there’s a lawyer for fucking everything. Maybe this whole thing was badly set up in the first place, but we’re not going to let it destory us.’ Now plug your ears,” Monday advises. She props the paper up on her lap so she can plug her own and screams, “‘CALL ME THE MINUTE YOUR MEETING ENDS.’”

  Then she flips the paper around and holds it out so we can see. “What is ‘destory’?”

  That’s her most pressing question? I look. “I think it’s just a typo,” I say. “He must mean ‘destroy.’”

  Which you’d think would raise more pressing questions. But Monday says, “I do not like typos.”

  “We know,” I assure her.

  “How do you know?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “I do not like typos,” she says anyway, “because typos are lies, inaccuracies, and an abbreviation all at once, and they mean that your brain can be thinking one thing, but your fingers can rebel all on their own which should not be possible but is.”

  “So you’ve mentioned.”

  While Monday figures out how to move on, Mirabel and I try to figure out the rest of it. There is so little there. There is so much there. There is so little that’s clear. But one thing that is clear is this: there is something somewhere that somehow could destroy them. And this: we could find it if only we knew where to look.

  “So Duke Templeton does not want us to find paperwork?” Monday says finally.

  “Yes.”

  “‘Damn paperwork’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he is mad at the paperwork?”

  “Probably mad we might find it,” I offer.

  “Why does he want us not to find it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know what it is.”

  “Oh.” Monday thinks about that for a bit. “Then how do we know we want to find it?”

  “Because he doesn’t want us to. And because if we do, they can be destroyed.”

  “It is October twenty-third.”

  “So?”

  “There are only thirty days until November twenty-second.” Monday stops l
ooking confused and starts looking panicked. “Thirty days is not enough to find paperwork we do not know what or where it is.”

  But Mirabel is shaking her head.

  “No what?” I say.

  “Muh,” she says.

  “More what?”

  She taps at her screen. Monday fidgets. Mirabel’s Voice says, “Christmas?”

  “What about it?” Sometimes I can guess Mirabel’s point from just a word. Sometimes she has to type the whole thing.

  She taps for a while. “Happens between Thanksgiving and March,” her Voice explains.

  I see what she means.

  “To be more accurate, there are many holidays besides Christmas which occur between Thanksgiving and March,” Monday informs us. “Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Junior Day, Groundhog—”

  “Stop listing holidays,” I snap at Monday. To Mirabel I say, “Shopping? They’re trying to manufacture something in time for the holiday rush?”

  Mirabel shakes her head.

  She’s right. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. “Even if they were up and running tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to make it, whatever it is, package it, ship it, and get it into stores in time. And definitely not if they didn’t open until Thanksgiving.”

  “Valentine’s Day,” Monday shrieks. “Presidents’ Day. Chinese New Year!”

  Mirabel is tapping at her screen. “Winter?” her Voice says.

  “They can’t reopen the plant once it gets too cold.” It dawns late, like winter mornings themselves. “But why? Chemical plants aren’t seasonal. They’re open in the winter. They’re not birds. They don’t—”

  “Who cares?” Monday interrupts. “It does not matter if they are birds.” What she means is that this logic isn’t logical enough. What she means is that suddenly the calendar pages are spinning away, the clock’s ticking down, and we don’t have time to waste anymore speculating, guessing, getting things wrong. And she’s right, at least in one way. It doesn’t matter what they’ve scheduled to begin on November 22. It doesn’t matter why they can’t do it December through February. It will be hard to find what we’re looking for because we don’t know where or even what it is. But it won’t be as hard as not knowing whether it exists at all. It won’t be as hard as when it exists but turns out not to matter. Now we know. It could destory them. Whatever it is, it matters. So it’s quickly becoming the only thing that does.

  Two

  A saying when something is hard to find is that it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  This is a stupid saying.

  It would be easy to find a needle in a haystack because it would be the thing that is not a piece of hay. It would be the thing that is short, shiny, and stiff instead of long, tan, and bendy. Even in the dark, a needle would be easy to find in a haystack because the needle would be the thing that stuck you in the finger.

  A better saying for something that is hard to find would be that it is like looking for an important piece of paper in many stacks of unimportant pieces of paper. This is because all pieces of paper are pieces of paper, and none of them are needles, and all of them look the same until you read them, but there are too many to read them all, and none of them will announce themselves by sticking you in the finger. And even if I did read them all, it would not help because I do not know what I am looking for so even if I found it I would not know that I had because I do not know what it is.

  Mirabel thinks River getting us the emails was heroic. Mab thinks River getting us the emails was kind. But I think River getting us the emails was pointless because the emails do not say anything useful or, to be more accurate, the emails do not say anything useful we can understand.

  What they say that we can understand is something is scheduled for November 22, which is thirty days from today. They also say River’s father and grandfather do not want us to find some paperwork. We do not know if the paperwork is related to November 22, but since River’s father and grandfather do not want us to find it, Mab and Mirabel do. Fortunately there is a lot of paperwork in our house. Unfortunately Duke Templeton did not specify what paperwork so finding it is like looking for an important piece of paper in many stacks of unimportant pieces of paper. Exactly like that, in fact.

  The auction house that came to sell our books went into the library and made two piles: what they wanted to buy and what no one did. I got what no one did, but it was a big pile, and some of it was stuff no one did including me (because boxes of documents and papers and forms are boring) so those boxes could stay in the library attic “till kingdom come” said the man from the auction house which Pastor Jeff said meant until Bourne became heaven on earth which Mama said meant forever. The boxes-no-one-wanted could stay in the library attic forever.

  All of which means I might not have the paperwork Duke Templeton does not want us to find because it might be at Omar’s or it might be in the library attic or it might be lost, but it also means I might have it because I did choose many boxes from the kingdom-come pile, and I could look for it if I knew what it was or who wrote it or why or when or on what grounds, literal or metaphorical. But when a random email warns that it is very important no one finds the damn paperwork, it could be cursing about anything.

  The documents in the boxes are all in folders, and the folders all have labels that were labeled long ago, but those labels do not always tell me what is in the folders. Not labeling folders is very bad, but it is not as bad as labeling folders incorrectly or ambiguously.

  One box has folders about fauna:

  Brown Bear Sightings 1947–1967

  4-H Fair Entry Forms: Livestock

  Fishing License Applications

  Dog Poo Removal Reminder Signs

  One box has folders about flora:

  Daffodil Bulb Order Forms

  Mulching Sign-ups

  Elm/Hickory Grove

  Tree Doctor Contact Info (Greenborough)

  One box has folders about the opposite of fauna or flora which is high school:

  BMHS Field Trip Permission Slips

  BMHS Parking Permits, Blank

  Sheet Music: BMHS Graduation Ceremony

  Reorder Form: Lord of the Flies (I consider throwing this entire folder away—even though it is more accurate to say it is already thrown away by being here with me, even though its being here with me has not prevented them reordering and us having to read this book in class—which, I would argue if pressed by a library disciplinary tribunal, demonstrates that I understood the book which is about anarchy, but I would never destroy library property, even ex–library property, because my duties as a librarian are sacred.)

  Some of the folders contain nothing but paperwork related to ramps. Ramp designs, ramp repair, ramp refurbishment, ramp specs, site guidelines, handrail requisition forms, ramp signage. There is an entire box on nothing but ramps.

  Then I find a box of folders, each of which has a single piece of paper in it. The folders are all labeled “Request for Aid,” and there are 117 of them. The first one is dated right after what happened happened. The last one is dated right before the library closed. The others are all in between. Inside each folder is a letter from Omar telling how hard things are in Bourne, how much we need help and also money and also compensation, addressed to “Representative” or “Congressperson” or “Senator” or “Your Honor.” Each one is stamped with the word “DENIED.”

  None of it is anything I can imagine Duke Templeton or Nathan Templeton caring about never mind hiding from us never mind destroyed by. I do not know what we are looking for, but I can make an assumption it is not any of this.

  Aside from the paperwork, the email gives two other hints. One is Duke Templeton has to do something you cannot do in winter. One is you used to be able to in the old days.

  There are no files I can find specifically about seasonal activities in Bourne so I turn instead to my books and make a pile of all the ones in my library about things you cannot do after a
freeze:

  Surfing

  Building a deck

  Swimming laps for fun and exercise

  Planting tomato starts

  Planting really anything (so I put all the gardening books on the pile)

  Spending a day at the beach (Technically, you could spend a day at the beach even if it was freezing, but the two books I have on the subject are both mystery romance novels marketed to teenage girls, and what their protagonists do at the beach is lie topless on towels to achieve a tan, run in the sand in bathing suits with boys, bounce in the waves with a beachball, build a bonfire after dark, canoodle in bikinis, and solve crimes. While you could solve crimes or build a bonfire—to be more accurate, you would have to—if it were extremely cold, you could not do those other things without freezing to death or losing all of your extremities to frostbite which these protagonists could not because that would not make them very attractive to the boys which is their principal goal. So I put these books in the maybe pile.)

  In his email, Duke Templeton says you could do whatever he wants to do anytime “in the old days,” but he does not say how old the days in question are. I consider my pile of books to see if any of the activities you cannot do in winter now you could do in winter years ago, but the only one that seems possible to me is the one about swimming laps. You cannot swim laps for fun and exercise now between Thanksgiving and March, but maybe there used to be an indoor pool and then you could. So that is what I must find out. Did Bourne use to have an indoor pool?

  Bourne does not have a newspaper anymore because Bourne is too small a town to need one because nothing ever happens here, and when something does happen here everyone knows about it right away because we are such a small town. But there used to be the Herald Bourne, back when even small towns had newspapers, back before we were even alive. In the old days. Back then, there was no internet, so the Herald Bourne is not saved online, and it is also not archived on microform or microfiche like a real newspaper in a real library, but Mrs. Atholton, who was the librarian before Mrs. Watson, who was the librarian before me, saved some of the Herald Bourne’s articles by pasting them into scrapbooks and saved some of the scrapbooks by shelving them in the library as if they were actual books. Where they are now is in the pantry underneath the cereal.