The Unadoptables

by Hana Tooke

  A thought was trying to push its way to the forefront of her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp at it.

  She was so very, very tired.

  And so very, very confused.

  Bram Poppenmaker was now looking at Liesel’s portrait of him. He seemed to have forgotten Milou was there entirely, lost to his memories.

  She untucked the pocket watch from under her collar and held it out to him. “Do you really not recognize this?”

  Bram shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t.”

  Milou hurried to the back door and got her coffin basket. “This?”

  Again, Bram shook his head.

  Again, Milou’s ears prodded her on.

  She set the coffin on the floor and began to unpack it, setting her clothes and then the cat puppet aside. She unwrapped the handkerchief and held the rings out to him. “These?”

  Bram jumped to his feet, his expression transforming ins-tantly.

  But it was not the rings he was looking at; it was her puppet.

  Carefully, he picked it up. “This is Liesel’s. How did you—”

  The door opened and the Kinderbureau agent marched in, looking pleased with herself.

  “Milou,” Speelman said. “It’s time to go.”

  Behind Speelman, her friends wandered back in, all looking resigned.

  “Wait,” Milou said.

  Bram was turning the cat puppet over in his hands, looking grief-stricken once more.

  “I’ve waited long enough, I really must get you back.” Speelman turned around, only to walk into Edda, who had just appeared from outside.

  The polder warden was staring at Milou’s coffin in wide-eyed horror, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “That coffin . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Lotta said. “It doesn’t have a body in it. It’s just—”

  “No,” Edda cried. “I made that coffin.”

  FORTY-ONE

  MILOU’S EARS PRICKLED SHARPLY at the tips, and her heart shuddered almost to a stop. She looked at the basket, then back to Edda. A sliver of hope began to beat in her chest.

  Edda shook her head. “I made it for my previous cat, Madame Meowkins. Those clasps . . . the weave . . . Look, it even has the claw marks from that pesky hound . . . I thought she’d chewed up the whole thing. How on earth did you—”

  “My parents abandoned me inside it,” Milou said, hardly able to breathe. “When I was about a week old, according to Gassbeek.”

  A heavy silence settled. Bram sat down heavily in the rocking chair again, frowning at Milou and Edda, clutching the cat puppet tightly. A chill crawled up the back of Milou’s neck, and her ears prickled wildly, but when she tried to speak, no sound came out.

  “It was December 1880,” Egg said. “On an orphanage rooftop, under the full moon.”

  “It must have been the same night that Liesel died,” Sem added. “Milou said you were seen leaving Poppenmill under the full moon that month.”

  Bram paled.

  Edda made a small croak, her eyes wide as she turned back to Milou. “But—”

  “There’s more,” Lotta said officially, reaching into Milou’s sleeve and pulling out the Book of Theories. “A velvet blanket that looks like it could have come straight out of the Poppenmakers’ workroom. The cat puppet, which certainly did come out of his workroom—it belonged to Liesel. A pocket watch with the coordinates of the oak tree just outside Poppenmill. Two wedding bands wrapped in a handkerchief embroidered with the name A. Poppenmaker—”

  Lotta kept talking, but Milou’s ears were now rushing so loudly her friend’s voice sounded muffled and distant. She rubbed at her ears as she watched Edda’s expression change from confusion to utter shock and Bram’s face get impossibly paler.

  “It can’t be,” Edda whispered, clutching that locket of hers with both hands.

  The clock maker took Milou’s pocket watch, her face paling too. “This is his.” She looked up at Milou, eyes glistening with tears. “Oh, sweet cheese, do you think—”

  She and the puppet maker shared a look.

  “No. It can’t be,” Bram rasped. “I would have known.”

  Milou looked up at Lotta, who was frowning thoughtfully. Fenna and Egg were casting nervous glances between Milou and Edda. Sem inched closer toward her, his eyes never leaving Edda.

  Neither Bram or Edda moved or spoke for several long moments.

  They were both too busy staring at Milou.

  Then, letting go of the pocket watch, Edda reached up and gently tilted Milou’s face this way and that, examining every detail. The tingling on Milou’s ears intensified, running down the sides of her neck and back up again.

  “How did I not notice?”

  Sem squeezed in closer. “Notice what?”

  Edda shook her head again, staring deeply into Milou’s eyes.

  Milou’s breath seemed to be stuck in her chest. Finally, Edda’s shaking fingers let go of her chin, and the clock maker took a step back.

  “You look just like him.”

  The world seemed to tilt around Milou. Sem’s hand clasped around her elbow and held her tight.

  “But you have her nose,” Edda continued.

  Milou felt rivulets of thick, hot tears sliding down both her cheeks. Yet still, her lips seemed unable to form words.

  “Whose nose?” Egg asked.

  “Liesel,” Lotta whispered. “She was named Annaliese, after her mother. That’s why her handkerchief had the initial A on it. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Bram said softly, getting slowly to his feet. He took Milou’s chin in one gloved hand and studied her. “Dear God, Finkelstein, you’re right. She’s Liesel’s—but . . . but, how could she have hidden this from me?”

  “The dresses,” Sem said. “The aprons around the middle. Perhaps Liesel made them to hide her growing stomach?”

  Bram seemed not to hear him, but Milou’s ears were ringing with his words.

  “But Bram would have noticed her having the baby!” Edda said, sending a questioning glare at the puppet maker. “You must have known.”

  Bram let go of Milou’s chin and closed his eyes. “I did not.”

  “Maybe Milou was born elsewhere,” Lotta said. “Somewhere close—”

  “The theater!” Egg said. “That might explain the blankets we found on the stage. It would explain why she left the mill that night, even though she was so ill.”

  Her friends’ voices were getting louder, but the tightness in her chest and throat was getting worse. Milou tried to answer but couldn’t. She couldn’t even nod. Edda and Bram seemed just as much at a loss for words.

  “And the wedding rings,” Lotta said. “Perhaps they were planning to marry, as soon as you were born. But Liesel was already too sick. Oh! He must have been heartbroken when he learned Liesel had—”

  “Who is he?”

  Milou’s voice was barely audible, but it silenced the room, nonetheless.

  Edda wiped a tear from her cheek and shook herself. When she spoke again, her voice cracked on almost every word. “Thirteen years ago, my cousin came to live with me. He and Liesel, they were . . . well, they were very close, although—oh, Milou, I never suspected they had—and then he left so suddenly, just after Liesel did, without any explanation. I simply assumed he . . . your father . . . had gone to find her, wherever she had gone.”

  Father.

  The word shot through Milou’s heart like an arrow. It broke her apart and then pieced her together again; slightly more whole than before, but still achingly hollow in places.

  “The people around here—” Edda wiped at a tear. “Let’s just say they didn’t think much of a scruffy boy with a wild look about him and a large dog that ate everything she could get her jaws around. They didn’t know the kind-hearted, slightly awkward boy I knew.
Only Liesel saw it because, as with me, she was the only one willing to look.”

  Milou’s throat clogged again. The tears seemed to thicken, curling over her chin and down her neck. The ear tingling became a gentle, soothing caress.

  “Here,” Edda said, clasping her locket again. “I have him here.”

  With shaking fingers, Edda reached up and pulled it up over her head. Milou took the locket from Edda and looked down at it, her hands shaking so much she thought she might drop it. A six-fingered hand appeared and helped her unclip the small clasp. But as her friends gathered more closely around her, Milou’s fingers closed around the locket. She looked up helplessly at them, then took a shaky breath and opened the locket.

  Inside was a photograph of a young man with a wolfish grin. His unruly hair was as dark as midnight, and his eyes were almost black. At his feet lay a large gray hound—its paws the size of breakfast plates. And on the corner of the photogram, etched in neat handwriting, was a name:

  Thibault.

  FORTY-TWO

  MILOU STARED AT THE picture of Thibault.

  The claw marks.

  The pocket watch.

  The wildness of her very own features.

  It had all come from him.

  Milou clasped a hand around the pocket watch.

  Beneath the stars I found you.

  Under the moon I lost you.

  Her parents had fallen in love, sitting in the oak tree, watching the stars.

  Then her mother had died, on the night of a full moon.

  The inscription hadn’t been for Milou at all.

  It had been for Liesel.

  “I don’t know why he left you the way he did,” Edda said. “How he could have borne it. But I do know he always did what he felt was right.”

  Milou snapped the locket closed and handed it back to Edda. She had wanted answers, and now she had them.

  Her mother was dead.

  Her father was gone.

  Her heart felt hollow.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Speelman said, without sounding sorry in the slightest. “But I need to get the orphans back to the Little Tulip tonight.” She gave Bram a big, toothy smile, then nodded her head at Milou. “I suppose you’d like to keep this one, yes?”

  Bram blinked.

  “Excellent.” Speelman dropped the record book on his lap and handed him a quill. “Please sign here, that’s it, thank you. Now, the rest of you, let’s go.”

  “No,” Milou said. “You can’t take them back there.”

  “Rules are rules, dear child,” Speelman said, hefting the record book up.

  Milou looked to Bram pleadingly. “Can you—”

  Her grandfather sighed. “Milou, until a few moments ago I was a childless widower. Now I have a surprise granddaughter to take care of. I can’t take on five . . .”

  “Well then,” Speelman said brightly. “That’s that. Kindjes, gather your things, say goodbye, do it quickly.”

  Milou blocked the doorway, her mind whirling. “Please don’t—”

  “Wait,” Edda said.

  They all turned to her expectantly. She was holding Lotta protectively.

  Speelman frowned at her.

  “These children are perfectly adept at caring for them-selves,” Edda said. “They’ve certainly proven that. Their tenacity is quite astonishing. Surely, there must be some way around all this?”

  The Kinderbureau agent sighed. “Firstly, I would require a legal guardian be named for any minor without a biological parent or relative. Secondly, tenacity does not impress the Kinderbureau nearly as much as accurate records do. And thirdly, the children have nowhere to live.”

  “They can live here, of course,” Bram said matter-of-factly. “Edda, would you still be interested in buying this place?”

  Edda looked stunned for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “Excellent,” Bram said. “I’ll take the fox-shaped clock as first payment, if you still have it?”

  The Eyebrow rose. “I do. But—”

  “Liesel loved that clock,” Bram said with a small smile. “And this place will only crumble into the canal if it’s left uninhabited. These children, no doubt, will make good use of it. Liesel would have liked that.”

  “The children need a guardian,” Speelman cried in exasperation. “The records—”

  “If it is merely a question of silly paperwork,” Edda said, “I will sign as their guardian.”

  Milou heard her friends each suck in a surprised breath.

  Lotta clung to Edda.

  The others stared at her.

  “It would be my honor to be their guardian,” Edda said. “If they’ll have me, that is.”

  Four sets of arms tangled themselves around the polder warden’s middle.

  Milou wrapped her own arms around herself.

  Speelman clucked her tongue.

  “Oh, very well,” Speelman said, lifting the record book. “That’s the matter settled then. I honestly can’t take any more surprises, so I think I shall just take the fees and leave you to it. I still have two criminals to deliver to the jailhouse before I can go to bed.”

  Lotta counted out fifty guilders, put them in a burlap onion bag, and handed it to the Kinderbureau agent while Edda signed her name. Rose Speelman took one last look at Puppet Papa, then at the children, and shook her head in disbelief, disappearing once more into the cold night.

  Bram stood, running a hand through his hair. “Come on then, Milou,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  “But . . . is this not home?” she asked, realization kicking in. “Why would we leave? Where would we go?”

  “I have a houseboat in Antwerp. That’s where I’ve been the past twelve years. I can’t live here. The memories are too painful. I’m sorry, but we’re leaving. Tonight.”

  The resulting silence was louder than a winter storm.

  She watched as several emotions played out on her friends’ faces. Fenna looked confused, Lotta seemed shocked, and Egg shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard Bram properly. It was Sem’s expression, however, that twisted her insides.

  He looked nothing short of heartbroken.

  “Say your goodbyes,” Bram said. “I’ll gather our stuff.”

  Milou shuffled, uncomfortable beneath their bewildered stares. She realized she had no idea how to say goodbye to them. Neither, it seemed, did they.

  A moment later, Bram appeared beside her again.

  “Ready?”

  He nodded courteously to Edda, then took Milou’s hand and guided her to the door, her coffin basket under his arm. Milou’s feet moved with him, but her gaze remained fixed on the four gawking faces behind her. Sem tried to muster an encouraging smile for her, but it wobbled too much to be even slightly convincing.

  This is what happened with orphans.

  They found a family, and then they left.

  There was no reason why it should be any different for her.

  And just like that, she was out of Poppenmill.

  The four faces she’d come to know better than even her own were gone.

  The door closed.

  FORTY-THREE

  MILOU WALKED MECHANICALLY TOWARD a carriage parked up beyond the front gate. Bram heaved her coffin basket onto its back and, hands shaking, Milou unfastened the clasps and opened the coffin lid to put her cat puppet inside.

  On top of her clothes, in the same spot as always, were her treasures: a lock of red curly hair, tied with an emerald-green ribbon; a charcoal portrait of her; the poster for Cirque du Lumière; and, of course, her Book of Theories. The journey to Antwerp would take several days. Plenty of time for her to begin filling the blank pages with new theories about where her father might be. Milou opened it. The book had been a comforting presence throughout her time at the L
ittle Tulip, but now, for some reason, that comforting feeling seemed gone.

  She opened to the first page, her eyes falling onto one particular line:

  My family would never leave me—

  Sem had refused to leave them, even if that meant giving up his dream.

  They’d all followed her from the Little Tulip to Poppenmill.

  They’d all stayed, despite the risks, to raise the adoption fees.

  They’d pulled her from that frozen canal and carried her home.

  And when Rotman had her by the hair on stage, all four of them had refused to leave her behind.

  And yet here she was, leaving them.

  “Hop up then,” Bram said, patting the front bench. “It’s a long journey—”

  “Wait,” she said.

  Milou rubbed at her ears, hoping for a tingle or a prickle to guide her.

  But her Sense was silent.

  Milou rubbed at them again.

  Bram looked down at her in befuddlement. “What’s wrong with your ears?”

  Milou gave up the rubbing and sighed.

  Emiliana’s words came back to her.

  A shadow follows you . . . the dead kind.

  Could it have been her mother all this time?

  If so, why wasn’t Liesel helping her now, when she needed guidance the most?

  Milou knew the answer already.

  This was a decision she, and she alone, could make.

  She looked up at Bram, who was waiting for her to speak.

  “We could stay here,” Milou said. “Together, we could make the theater everything Liesel dreamed it would be.”

  “Milou—”

  “You’ve been hiding from this place for twelve years. You’ve all but forgotten her.”

  Bram’s gaze flickered toward the oak tree and the flower garden graves below it. Then he closed his eyes for a moment. “Forgetting is easier than remembering. It’s far less painful.”

  “I belong here,” Milou said. “I never knew her, but I want to honor her memory, nonetheless. And I belong with them.” She turned and pointed to the four faces pressed nose-first against the kitchen window. “I always have.”