A Tangle of Knots

by Lisa Graff

  Cadence, that was her name.

  She was standing there now, Cady, deciding what to add to her bowl of batter. If you squinted through the window, you could just make her out from the chin up (Cady was barely a wisp of a thing). You’d see the shiny, crow-black hair that hung smooth as paper from the top of her head to the bottoms of her earlobes. And you’d see the petite—pixieish, Miss Mallory called them—features of her face. Tiny nose, tiny mouth, tiny ears. Cady’s eyes, however, those were large in comparison to the rest of her. Large and dark and round, and set just so on a face the color of a leaf that has clung too long to its tree.

  Flour, sugar, butter, eggs. Cady studied the bowl in front of her. She closed her eyes, digging into the furthest reaches of her brain to figure out what would be the perfect addition to her cake. At last her thick black lashes fluttered open. She had it.

  Cinnamon. She would make a cinnamon cake.

  No one knew exactly when Cady’s Talent for baking had first emerged—just as no one knew exactly where she had come from. But one thing was certain: Cady was a Talented baker. She could bake anything, really. Pies. Muffins. Bread. Casseroles. Even the perfect pizza if she put her mind to it. But what Cady loved above all else was baking cakes. All she needed to do was to close her eyes, and she could imagine the absolutely perfect cake for any person, anywhere. A pinch more salt, a touch less cream. It was one hundred percent certain that the person she was baking for would never have tasted anything quite so heavenly in all his life. In fact, what the orphanage lacked in orphans it made up for in cake-baking trophies. Five first-place trophies from the Sunshine Bakers of America Annual Cake Bakeoff lined the front hall, one for every year that Cady had entered from the age of five, when her oven mitts swallowed her up to the elbows. No matter who entered the competition—professional bakers, famous chefs with exclusive restaurants—none of their Talents were able to match Cady’s, not for five years running. Cady’s cakes were never the most beautiful, or the most stunning. Last year not one but two bakers had crafted fifty-layer-high masterpieces of sugary wonder, studded with frosted stars and flowers and figurines. One even included a working chocolate fountain. Cady’s single-layer pistachio sheet cake had looked pitiful in comparison. But nonetheless, it had been the judge’s favorite, because Cady had baked it specifically for him.

  This year’s bakeoff would be held in just one short week in New York City, a two-hour drive away. Miss Mallory had already cleared space in the hallway for a sixth trophy.

  The kitchen door squeaked open and in waltzed Miss Mallory, a polka-dot tablecloth folded in her arms. (Miss Mallory’s perfect cake, as far as Cady was concerned, was just as scrumptious as she was—a nutty peach cake with cream cheese frosting.)

  “What did you come up with?” Miss Mallory asked, crossing the room to peer into the cake bowl.

  Cady found the cinnamon in the cabinet above her and popped off the lid. “Cinnamon,” she replied, shaking the spice into the bowl. Cady had no need for measurements. “A cinnamon cake, three layers high.”

  Miss Mallory took a deep breath of pleasure. “And the frosting?”

  Cady did not even need a moment to think. She knew the answer, sensed it the way other people could sense which way to walk home after a stroll in the woods. “Chocolate buttercream with a hint of spice,” she replied.

  “Perfect,” Miss Mallory said. “Amy will love it.” She snuck a finger out from under her tablecloth to poke a tiny glob from the bowl. “I hope this fog finally gives up,” she said, sighing as the taste of the batter hit her tongue.

  Cady had been so intent on her baking that she hadn’t even noticed the haze. She peered out the window. Out on the lawn, the thick mist obscured all but the legs of the picnic table, and puddles speckled the steps to the porch.

  It had been foggy the morning Cady was brought to Miss Mallory’s, too. Cady had been much too young to remember it, but she’d heard the story so many times that the details were as real and comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes. The damp smell of the dew outside. The mystery novel Miss Mallory had been reading when she heard the knock at the door. And most especially, Miss Mallory’s surprise at the arrival.

  “I’d never seen a baby so small,” Miss Mallory always told her. “And with such a remarkable head of hair. There was a braid woven into it.” Here Miss Mallory would trace the plaits across Cady’s scalp, making Cady’s skin tingle delightfully. “It was the most intricate braid I’ve ever seen, twisted in and about and around itself like a crown. Whoever gave you that braid was Talented indeed.”

  Miss Mallory snuck one more fingerful of batter from the bowl. “Perhaps we should move the party inside today,” she suggested.

  “But Adoption Day parties are always outside,” Cady protested, slapping Miss Mallory’s hand away playfully. There wasn’t much consistency in the life of an orphan—new housemates coming and going like waves on a shore—but Adoption Day parties were always the same. Adoption Day parties took place outside, with presents and card games (it was difficult to play other sorts of games with so few people about) and a cake baked by Cady for the lucky little girl whose Adoption Day it was.

  People sometimes suspected, when they learned how few orphans lived at Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls, that it must be a sorry excuse for an orphanage. But the truth was quite the opposite. The truth was that most of the orphans at Miss Mallory’s found their perfect families astonishingly quickly. Miss Mallory had a Talent for matching orphans to families—she felt a tug, deep in her chest, she said, when she sensed that two people truly belonged together, and she just knew. Most of the little girls who came through the orphanage doors were matched within days of arriving, sometimes hours. Miss Mallory had famously matched one girl only seven minutes after she stepped off her train. They would send photos, those lucky little girls who had found their perfect families, and Miss Mallory would frame them and hang them in the front hallway, just above Cady’s row of trophies. Smiling kids, beaming parents.

  Cady had studied them carefully.

  Cady was the only orphan at Miss Mallory’s who had ever stayed for an extended period of time. Oh, Miss Mallory had tried to match her. Over the years Cady had been sent to live with no fewer than six families—loving, happy, wonderful families—but unlike with the other orphans, it had never quite worked out. Cady had always done her best to be the perfect daughter. She yes, ma’amed and no, sired and ate all her vegetables and went to bed on time. But no fewer than six times, Miss Mallory had come to return Cady to the orphanage long before her one-week trial period was over. “I made a mistake,” Miss Mallory always told her. “That wasn’t your perfect family.”

  But Cady knew that Miss Mallory didn’t make mistakes. Somehow, for some reason that Cady couldn’t explain, the fault lay with her. And Cady vowed that if she ever got another chance, with another family, she would do whatever it took to make it work. One day she would have an Adoption Day party of her own. One day she would bake the perfect cake for herself.

  “Maybe,” Cady said slowly, glancing outside at the beautifully foggy morning, “maybe today’s the day I’ll meet my family.” The very idea warmed her through just as much as the heat from the oven. She tugged an oven mitt onto each hand and opened the oven door, then set the cake pans on the center rack. “Maybe,” she said again, “my real and true family will step right out of the fog.”

  2

  The Owner

  IT WAS AN UNUSUALLY FOGGY MORNING, SO MURKY THAT THE Owner of the Lost Luggage Emporium at 1 Argyle Road in Poughkeepsie, New York, could scarcely see the ground in front of him. But the Owner had very little use for ground these days.

  He tapped his toes at the air, two inches above the soggy soil, as he finished affixing the sign to the Emporium’s door.

  ROOMS FOR RENT

  CHEAP RATES!

  The Owner (that’s what they call
ed him around town, ever since he’d opened up the Emporium, and it was how he’d come to think of himself, too) was not thrilled at the idea of renting out the building’s empty upstairs bedrooms. But a hard look at his finances had finally convinced him that he had no other choice. Although his mother had amassed quite a fortune—an especially impressive feat for a woman with no Talent—it hadn’t been enough to last him fifty-three years.

  The telltale sound of tires starting down the long wooded stretch of Argyle Road sent the Owner floating back inside the building. It couldn’t be Toby already—the dolt had only just left for the morning’s luggage pickup an hour ago. The door slammed shut behind him with a crooked wha-pop! One more thing the Owner couldn’t afford to fix.

  The building had once been an architectural beauty, as famous for its two tall, round turrets as for the goods that were produced inside. Now, its white paint was peeling, its shutters were cracked, its windows were grimy with dust. As old and bleak as its owner, that’s what Toby liked to say.

  The Owner reached the circular wooden counter at the center of the main storeroom and lifted the hinged section to float inside, settling himself behind the register. A hastily hand-lettered green sign hung above the countertop, displaying the store’s motto:

  LOST LUGGAGE EMPORIUM

  DISCOVER WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS MISSING

  “This is quite the setup you’ve got here,” the customer called as he entered the store. Tendrils of fog curled their way in behind him before the door had a chance to close. Wha-pop! The customer jerked his head on his spindly neck, indicating the various sections of the store—the racks of clothing, the shelves of books, the electronics, the appliances, and, of course, the suitcases. “All this stuff really come from lost luggage?”

  The Owner did not look up from his book. It was the latest Victoria Valence mystery, Face Value, and it really was quite good (although it wouldn’t have mattered if it weren’t). “Mmm,” he replied.

  “Nice Talent you got, too.” The customer flicked a hand toward the Owner’s legs, exposed beneath the hinged section of the countertop. “Floating, huh? Been a while since I saw a Talent like that.”

  The Owner stopped his toe-tapping just long enough to nudge a powder blue suitcase farther under the countertop. “It keeps the mud off my shoes,” he muttered, turning a page in his book.

  “Keeps the mud off your shoes!” The man hooted. “That’s a riot.” He shook his head, grinning like an imbecile. “Wish I had a Talent that good. All I got’s whistling.” And he puckered his lips and began to whistle a happy little ditty, right there in the store.

  Finally he wandered off to peruse the merchandise.

  He returned much too quickly for the Owner’s taste, however (still whistling, unfortunately). “Ring me up!” the customer cried cheerfully, placing two worn leather bags and a winter jacket on the counter.

  As the man dug for his wallet, the Owner, quietly and stealthily, slipped his right hand into his own pocket to find the small glass jar he always kept ready for a ripe opportunity. With practiced ease, he unscrewed the lid. Then he squeezed his hand into a fist. His palm grew icier and icier, until—plunk!—an almost imperceptible whisper of a noise escaped from the jar, and the Owner’s feet dropped—clonk!—to the ground. The customer was too busy stuffing his items into a plastic bag to notice.

  The Owner removed his hand from his pocket, just as he’d done so many times before, and stretched it across the counter. “I appreciate your business,” the Owner told him. The customer suspected nothing. None of them ever suspected.

  They shook.

  “Ooh!” the customer cried suddenly. He rubbed his fingers. “Cold hands.”

  “Really?” The Owner’s attention turned back to his novel. “Must be my poor circulation.” And he didn’t raise his eyes again until the customer reached the front door, where he (still not suspecting a thing) puckered his lips to whistle.

  But, of course, all that came out was a weak cough.

  When the sound of the man’s car had at last receded down the long stretch of Argyle Road, the Owner clasped and unclasped his icy fingers, the way a child might test out a toy he hadn’t played with in some time.

  Then, pursing together his lips, the Owner began to whistle.

  * * *

  There were eight bedrooms on the second floor of the Lost Luggage Emporium. On that foggy Friday morning, six of them were available for rent.

  The Owner didn’t know it then, but in just one short week, all eight rooms would be filled. Some would be occupied by people with great Talents, others would not. One would house a thief, a person in possession of an object worth millions of dollars. Several would be inhabited by liars. But every last person would have something in common.

  In just one short week, every last one of them would have lost the thing they treasured most in the world.

  3

  Marigold

  MARIGOLD ASHER TWISTED HER RED TALENT BRACELET around and around her wrist. It was the thing she treasured most in the world, because it was the thing that was finally going to help her discover her Talent. This was the day, she could feel it. Anything could happen on a foggy morning.

  Marigold studied the nearly finished goldfish piñata on the kitchen table before her. Just one more piece of tissue paper and it would be complete. She dabbed a thin leaf of black tissue with glue and . . .

  Tipped over the glue bottle. Marigold grabbed for it, but knocked over a teetering stack of tissue paper instead. She lunged for that, but whacked the piñata. The goldfish crashed to the floor. It broke in two. With a sinking stomach, Marigold watched its severed head roll, roll, roll across the kitchen.

  Your piñata skills need work, its gaping fish mouth seemed to tell her.

  “Where’s Mom?” asked Marigold’s younger brother, Will, appearing from nowhere (Will was always appearing from nowhere). He plowed across the tissue paper battlefield, his shoes collecting colorful scraps. His pet ferret, Sally, was right behind him, snatching up small bits of paper in her teeth and sniffing them before spitting them out again.

  Marigold snatched her sticky pencil from the table and crossed piñata making off her list of possible Talents. “Mom has the hospital this morning, remember?” Every few weeks their mother dropped off a load of scarves and blankets for patients at the Poughkeepsie Medical Center. She knitted most of the objects on her way, clasping her knitting needles around the steering wheel as she drove. Mrs. Asher’s Talent for knitting was so keen that she could finish an entire afghan in eight city blocks.

  Will scooped Sally off the floor and settled her on his shoulder. “You tried all these Talents this morning?” he asked Marigold, studying her list on the table.

  “Yep.” Marigold gathered her brown curls off her shoulders and counted off in her head. “Running backward, making applesauce, doing jumping jacks, gargling, blowing bubbles, slicing garlic, making a house out of playing cards, stringing popcorn, organizing furniture, drawing mazes, and making piñatas.”

  “Wow.”

  “Dad even convinced me my Talent might be vacuuming,” she told her brother, scraping a bit of orange tissue off the tabletop as she spoke. “He got me to do the whole living room before he left for the grocery store.” Mr. Asher was the head librarian at the local high school, so he had summers off. (He also had an unusual—if not particularly useful—Talent. While most people in the world could fold a sheet of paper in half no more than seven times, Mr. Asher could do it twelve. It was a trick he’d often perform for school groups, if someone brought him a bit of orange nougat. Mr. Asher had a soft spot for orange nougat.)

  “Don’t worry, Mari,” Will said, scratching Sally’s belly. She clicked a few satisfied click-click-clacks, then wrapped herself around his neck, settling into a quiet snore. A sleepy scarf. “You’ll find it.”

  Marigold g
rabbed a damp dish towel from the edge of the sink to better scrub at the tabletop. “Thanks, Will. Maybe next I should try something a little less mess—” Marigold looked up. “Will?”

  Her brother was gone.

  It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, Will going missing. He had a Talent for it, after all. Even in the cramped space of their twelfth-story apartment, Will managed to get lost at least once an hour. Sometimes he popped right out of the woodwork after only a second, and other times it might take all day to find him.

  “Zane!” Marigold called to her other brother, marching toward the living room with the dish towel clutched at her side. “Will’s missing agai—”

  She saw it coming just in time—the arc of spit heading down the hallway, straight toward her. Marigold shrieked, covering her face with the dish towel. The glob of spit zoomed—slurrrrrp!—over her head.

  “Zane!” she hollered. He was sitting, calm and smug as ever, in the armchair by the window, reading a book. Under his feet was his trusty skateboard, rolling a few inches this way, then that. Zane was the only Asher without a jumble of brown curls on top of his head. He wore his hair in short, pointy spikes. Marigold often wondered if it would be possible to smooth out her brother’s prickly personality just by chopping off that hair. “Mom said if you ever spit at me again, she’ll—”

  “I didn’t spit at you,” Zane replied, barely lifting his eyes from his book. “I spit over you. If I wanted to spit at you, I would’ve hit you.”

  Marigold huffed, but she knew he was right. That someone as annoying as Zane Asher had been given the Talent of perfect spitting was truly unconscionable. “Well . . .” She searched for something to blame him for. Her eyes landed on the red Talent bracelet around her wrist, now sticky with glue-water from its run-in with the dish towel. “You got my bracelet all gunky.”