The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  “You’ll have it now, or you’ll not go a step further. MacAlister Dupree,” she greets me with absolutely zero warmth. Edna the Troll has this thing where she only addresses people by their full names.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” I say, on guard. I’m trying to remember if I owe the library anything. I sure hope not.

  Fun sidebar about how Destin got his name. Usually when people ask him about it, he tells them he’s named after a city in Florida where his family used to take vacations. The truth is a little more...pink. See, Destin’s parents were positive they were having twin girls. Like, 100% positive. They had everything all decorated, a closet full of frilly matching dresses, and names already picked out. Angela and Destiny. Their names were embroidered and stamped on everything. Serious. So you can imagine their distress when Destin turned out to be uh, not a girl. Basically they scratched the ‘y’ off most of the stuff and just decided not to waste all the baby presents – they got him some legitimate boy clothes for going out and stuff, but most of Destin’s baby clothes were still pink.

  The pictures are hilarious.

  Destin turns out his pockets. He has all of three dollars. “Uh...” he stalls, looking at me. I shrug. I’d left all my money at home.

  “Um...uh...just a second,” he says, “be right back.” Swiftly, he exits the library and swiftly he returns. He hands the Troll a rumpled twenty dollar bill.

  “You didn’t,” I mutter under my breath.

  He colors, but says nothing.

  “Turn in your books on time, and this won’t happen,” she says to Destin, like she’s teaching him a lesson. The old lady takes book fines a little too seriously if you ask me. All I want to do is get into the reference section and dig out some answers. It’s a shame Ms. Bea isn’t working the front desk – she’d have never even mentioned the fine. Well, she’d maybe mention it, as a reminder, but the old lady wouldn’t treat Destin like a felon, that’s for sure.

  Once we’re finally given freedom to pass the front desk, we make our way to the elevator. The place is dead silent. That’s the only thing I dislike about libraries – the oppressive quiet. Well, that, and how musty the books smell. And the mean librarians. And how hard it is to find what you want most of the time.

  Alright, so I’m not the world’s biggest fan of libraries. But they have their use. You can find the craziest stuff on the shelves sometimes. That’s the one big difference between going to the library and doing an internet search. Yes, the library is a lot slower, but you have a much greater chance of stumbling across stuff you’d never have thought of otherwise. Plus it’s kind of cool how seriously old some of the books are – I like thinking about who else has read them before me, and why.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, dude,” I say. “That tattoo lady is bad voodoo.”

  “Voodoo?” Destin frowns. “Did you want to get into the library today or not? It’s not a big deal, it’s just checking out a book.”

  “What book, exactly? And you know that if she steals it, you’re going to be the one owing the library. Again. So, vicious cycle.”

  “She asked for the Grimm on the third floor,” he replies, confused. “So Grimm’s Fairy Tales, I guess. Do they even keep kids’ books on the third floor?”

  “Kids’ stuff is all on first,” I confirm, frowning. “Third is all the stuff nobody touches, and librarian offices.”

  “Stuff nobody touches?”

  “Rare books and public records,” I say, punching the button for the elevator. “Which is where we were going anyway. So how’s that for more coincidences?”

  “Take a look at this,” I say, showing him an old register of land deeds and titles. “Most of the property in the area before 1920 belonged to the Etheridges.”

  “Never heard of them,” Destin says, not looking up.

  “Yeah, it’s weird, right? But there’s this whole list at the turn of the century, and it’s Etheridge, Etheridge, Etheridge, oh hey Graham, that must be Jul’s house, Etheridge, Etheridge...but then...” I reach over and open a second ledger and lay it on top of his. He looks up, annoyed at being interrupted.

  “Twenty years later, no more Etheridges,” I point out, running a finger down the list. “All gone. Oh hey, MacAlister,” I say, spotting my name. “And...another MacAlister. And...”

  Destin’s annoyance fades as he read the list.

  “Mac,” he says, in that voice that means I’ve found something enormous.

  I can’t believe it. The 1920 list is peppered with my name. It looked like all the Etheridge properties had been replaced with MacAlister.

  “Mac,” Destin says. “Who were you named after?”

  “My...my mom’s maiden name is MacAlister,” I say carefully.

  Suddenly he snatches a book out of the stack he’d been looking over. “I didn’t think...it didn’t seem like anything, but...” He flips through pages ‘til he makes a sound of recognition and stabs his finger onto the page.

  “MacAlister,” he says. “Five years ago, a property off of Stonewall Road was turned over to the city in someone’s will. The original owner was an...” his eyes meet mine. “Etheridge MacAlister.”

  “Seriously?” I exclaim, then clap my hand over my mouth when I receive several dirty looks from the other people around us.

  “Seriously?” I repeat in a shocked whisper.

  “Dude, I’d bet my comic money that’s the exact same property the school was built on.”

  I grin. “Let’s see what else this guy’s got.”

  “Here it is,” Destin says, turning his computer screen towards mine.

  We’ve relocated to the library’s computer lab, since our research has taken a different turn. One thing the internet really excels at - you know, besides cats - is genealogies.

  “The Etheridge family tree officially dies out in 1918,” Destin says. “No more Etheridges. Or so it seems. Really what happened is that 1918 is when the last male heir died, leaving everything to a daughter, Marianne, who had married a dude named Thomas MacAlister.” He sits back, looking pleased with himself. “All the property fell to her, and then her son, Etheridge MacAlister. That’s when the names on the deeds changed. And since then, it’s been divvied up amongst their numerous progeny.”

  “Then how come I don’t know about any of this? I ought to know if I’m the heir to some huge fortune, dude.”

  “I didn’t say you were,” Destin points out. “There are a lot of MacAlisters. Look.” He gestures at the large branching swath of MacAlisters leading into current times. “And people don’t adhere to the ‘everything to the firstborn son’ mentality anymore, it’s not like you’re in line for a crown. This is just a bunch of land. Or it used to be. A lot of it’s been sold by now. It’s been divided and re-divided among families. And if you think about it, you probably do have some sort of inheritance from all of this.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He looks uncomfortable. “How much do you think your dad really makes?”

  I shrug. “A lot.”

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way...but my dad is higher in the company than yours. I’m pretty sure he’s making more money. So how come your mom goes shopping every weekend?”

  “Magic,” I say. “And by magic, I mean credit cards.”

  “I’d bet my original Venture Bros. line art that your mom is a trust fund baby,” Destin says.

  “You’re really in a betting mood today,” I say.

  He grins sheepishly.

  But when I think about what he said, it sounds logical. If Mr. Heron isn’t making a whole lot, and my dad is lower in the company, he can’t be making much more. But Destin is right, my mom still takes Hayley to fancy salons, gets her top-of-the-line SUV detailed weekly, and comes home with a bag of shoes more nights than not.

  “You could ask her about it,” Destin says.

  “Ask my mom about money?” I recoil. “If you won’t talk to your dad about...you know...there’s no way in hell I’m talking to my
mom about money. Last time I asked for a pair of movie tickets she told me how she fought off a mountain lion with a can opener.”

  “That sounds like an exaggeration,” Destin says.

  “For twenty bucks there never is happiness.”

  “That reminds me...I need to find that book before the tattoo lady comes in and yells at me or something,” Destin says.

  I notice Ms. Bea coming out of her office and stand up. “She’ll know where it is for sure,” I say, crossing over to her.

  “Mac!” he hisses after me. “I don’t think this is - ”

  But I’m already standing in front of her, saying “Hey Ms. Bea!”

  “Mac,” she smiles at me. “What can I do for you?”

  I know she’s our best bet for finding this thing quickly. Grey hair or not, Ms. Bea’s memory is insane. “So, I know this is kind of a weird question, but bear with me because Destin stupidly made a deal with someone...do you guys have a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales up here?”

  Confusion bends her eyebrows. “We have two or three downstairs.”

  “No, up here, on this floor.”

  “She was very specific,” Destin says.

  “She?”

  I want to smack him. “A woman outside told us there was a special copy of it on this floor. We were just wondering if it was true,” I say quickly. No sense in getting Dez in trouble if the book doesn’t even exist.

  Suddenly, Ms. Bea’s gaze sharpens. “What woman? What did she look like?”

  I’m taken aback by her intensity. “Really messy, all in leather, tattoos – ”

  Then the old lady swears, and Destin and I rock back. I didn’t think little old ladies did that. “You didn’t take anything from her, did you?”

  “No, why would we steal from a random creepy lady?”

  Destin swallows. “She gave me a twenty.”

  Bea grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Did you bring it in the building?”

  “I – I – I paid my book fines with it,” he stammers.

  She speeds away and down the stairs with the pace of someone much younger. We blink at each other for a beat, and then rush after her. What the hell is going on?

  By the time we get to the front desk, Bea is breaking into the cash register with a manager’s key. As she opens it, one of the bills on top starts to sizzle. She swears again, snatching it out of the drawer and stomping it out on the ground. Cinders waft around her shoe and die.

  “Beatrix?” Edna the Troll gasps.

  Ms. Bea lifts her shoe with apprehension. Nothing remains but a small amount of ash on the tile. She lets out a big sigh, seeming to collapse back into herself. “It’s fine. For now, it’s fine. I got her mark before it spread. I don’t think she’s serious, yet.”

  Destin and I trade a look. Something is totally going on around here, and it’s starting to feel like all the adults are in on it.

  Ms. Bea picks up the telephone on the desk and dials. “Hello Abbey? Bea Graham. Did you leave the boys at the library? I’d like you to come back and pick them up. No, they haven’t done anything,” she says into the phone to my mother, but her expression facing us says the opposite. “There’s just been a small security incident here and I’d feel better if they were elsewhere for the time being. Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.” She hangs up the phone and glares at us directly. She points at the chairs behind the front desk. “Sit. There,” she says, “Until your mother comes to get you.”

  “What did we do wrong?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”

  “You listen to me boys,” she says gravely. “For God’s sake, don’t ever talk to that woman again. Don’t take anything from her, and don’t let her touch anything of yours. Mothers tell their children not to talk to strangers for a reason,” she states. With an order to the Troll to not let us move until claimed, she begins her slow, arthritic climb back up the stairs, an old lady once more.

  Maybe if they told us why, it would stick, I think.

  Chapter 9

  Jul

  earlier that day

  “I’m working at the library this afternoon, so dinner may be a bit late,” Bea said.

  It was Saturday, and I was curled up on the couch with my history book, earmarking passages for the paper due Monday. I didn’t like the Civil War era. Or any of the war eras, really. I wanted to get to the parts of history where people were inventing things and improving lives, not mowing them down.

  Bea shrugged into a light jacket. It was finally getting cool enough for that, and I was glad. November had no business being flip-flop weather, as it had been last week. “If you need anything, call the library,” she said.

  “I remember,” I said. She seemed reluctant when she had to leave me alone. I wasn’t sure if that meant she was worried about me, or if she was worried I’d break her house. “I’m just working on a paper,” I said.

  “Good.” She went to the front door, and hesitated. “...How are your grades?”

  This was the one thing I could be positive about, so I smiled. “Great. I should make the honor roll. Ms. Miller thinks I could take AP chemistry next year.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s good. Well...keep up the good work.”

  The instant she left the house I pulled my mother’s journal out from under my textbook. I’d treated all the pages with ammonia, and I’d been poring over it every night, trying to decipher it. There was very little in it that was actually written down - most of it was drawn out. I flipped through pages of sketches of castles, thrones, and elaborate jewelry. There were sketches of people, with bewildering notes. Young drawings of my father, carefully inked. He was smiling, which I had never seen him do much of. One of Charlotte, haphazardly penned in a corner, noted boring. Several tagged John, drawn in harsh, jagged lines, as if in anger. Problem or solution? was noted on the page.

  The one that particularly stood out - the one I kept coming back to - seemed to be a map of the orchard out back. There were very realistic sketches of apples in the margin, so I was assuming it wasn’t just a random piece of forest. On the facing page was an even more beautiful drawing of an apple tree, that mirrored one in miniature on the map. With Bea out of the house for several hours, I’d decided now was the time to try to find it. I had considered going out at night, but the forest in the dark was more than a little terrifying to me, so that impulse had quickly died.

  Nevertheless, it was a grey day, overcast and with a hint of a coming chill. I pulled the hood of my jacket up around my ears and held open the journal. There was a structure marked Graham House on the bottom edge of the map. Supposedly I just went forward in a straight line, and I would find the tree. I steeled myself and started the trek through the grove. The trees closest to the house were tame and orderly, if a little overgrown, and mostly bore pecans. As I progressed deeper into the treeline, though, it began to look as if the forest were trying to reclaim the land, grafting onto the orchard with resolution.

  A raindrop hit the side of my nose. I looked up. The sky had turned a deeper grey and I hadn’t even noticed. I zipped the journal into the interior of my jacket. The leaves above me took up a chorus I could almost hear words to.

  I hurried between the gnarled tree trunks, hoping to not get caught in a sudden downpour. You would think a New Yorker would always have an umbrella handy, but someone had told me the south wasn’t like that and so mine was buried at the bottom of a bag in my closet. I felt exposed without it. Dead leaves crunched under my feet and I heard what might have been a squirrel leaping across branches overhead. I caught my breath for a moment under what appeared to be another of my grandmother’s pecan trees, judging by the shell casings scattered around the base. I’d seen pecans before, but never in their shells. I was surprised by how pretty they were – smooth and pale with little stripes.

  Then came a whoosh that usually preceded a subway train – but this time it was followed by a downpour. I pushed away from the pecan tree, going further into the orchard. My new goal
was to find something with a large enough canopy to shelter me.

  In the early twilight that the clouds brought, I could no longer see very far into the distance. Not that I’d been able to see terribly far through the trees to begin with. The rain was beginning to disorient me, but I didn’t want to pull out the journal for fear of the rain blurring the drawings.

  Then I saw it, looming ahead of me – a huge tree with apples still clinging to its boughs. I hurried forward and huddled against the trunk and breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost completely dry here. I tried to peer in the direction of the house, but saw only a haze. The earth was still warm from the past few days, so it had evaporated most of the rain and spit it back up already, making it almost foggy.

  I leaned back against the trunk and stared up into the boughs of the tree. Was this it? I didn’t think apple trees grew this rotund - the others around certainly were more spindly. This one was almost like an oak tree that happened to have fruit attached to it - it had to be at least five feet in diameter.

  I brought the journal out from the dry interior of my jacket and checked the tree against the sketch. Yes, the one my mother had drawn was just like this. My heart beat faster, even as rain poured around me. Was she trying to tell me something? A tiny heart had been drawn onto the sketch. I closed it and stowed it back in my jacket. It had to be here on the real tree as well.

  I circled the tree, carefully inspecting the bark as I stepped over its knobbly roots.

  There. I spotted it. I laughed out loud. It was real. There, carved into the bark, as with a pen knife, was a heart. Inside were initials - SG and KH. I wanted to cry. This was proof, real, tangible proof, that my parents had been in love. It was like proof that I existed. I hadn’t known I’d wanted proof of that, but at this moment, it was indescribably comforting.

  Did I dare to hope that my mother had left the journal just for me, to lead me to her after all this time? I didn’t know why she’d left. I didn’t know if she’d wanted to take me with her or not. Maybe she had, maybe Dad hadn’t let her. What if my real home was with her, wherever she was?