by Hillary Avis
Elaine didn’t even startle. It was almost as though she had expected Allison to show up. “In the basement. Not much of a guard dog if you can bribe her with a jar of Skippy.” She pinched back at a smug smile.
Well, she wasn’t the only one feeling smug. Allison crossed her arms. “If you’re looking for the pen, it isn’t here.”
“Obviously, I’m not looking for the pen,” Elaine snapped, turning back to the shelves. “I know you moved it. I’m looking for the Guardians book so I can find out where. You might as well tell me where it is so I don’t need to rip this whole place apart.”
“You need to leave—right now.” The edge to Allison’s voice was razor-sharp.
Elaine just laughed. “Or else what?”
Allison didn’t have a rebuttal. She couldn’t call the cops. She didn’t even have Willow backing her up. She was on her own. “Or else I’ll tell Emily.”
Elaine rolled her eyes. “Tell her what?”
“Tell her that you killed innocent people. That you stole her father’s memories. That you tried to steal—”
“She won’t believe you,” Elaine interrupted. “You’ll just sound like a crazy person.”
“Then I’ll show her the books.” Allison felt bold as she stepped toward Elaine. “Now get out of my house.”
“It’s not your house. It belongs to the families. All these books belong to the families.” Elaine resumed her rough search of the books, dumping more volumes off the shelves as she rejected them. The binding of one split as it tumbled to the floor.
“Be gentle,” Allison pleaded. She dropped to her knees to examine the damaged book. The yellow cover read Easter Egg Hunts. She fingered the split in the leather. It was torn all the way through the binding. To her horror, the title lettering began to fade, and when she flipped it open, the dark printed text vanished from the pages before her eyes. “Look what you did!”
“What book was it?” Elaine asked, pausing her search to look down at her.
“Easter Egg Hunts.” To her horror, Allison realized that, though she could recall Easter egg hunts in movies and books, she couldn’t remember attending one herself. “You just wiped the memories of every Easter egg hunt from every person in Remembrance.”
“What a tragedy.”
Angry tears pricked Allison’s eyes. “What if you ruin something important?”
“Then it’ll be your fault for not telling where the book is.”
More books crashed to the floor, making Allison wince. She crawled on her hands and knees over to where Elaine was ruthlessly yanking them from the shelves, one after another, and tried to catch them before they hit the floor. Her hands stung where the corners of a cover bit into her palms, and she let out a yelp. “Please, stop!”
Elaine sighed. “Give me the Guardians book and you won’t have to worry about these. I’ll pull out your pages, and you’ll be able to live your merry little life in ignorance. Won’t that be nice? You and Emily can plan the wedding, you can buy her that disgusting dress, you can play with your future grandchildren without a care in the world. It’ll be a gift.”
Allison was sick to her stomach even considering it, but she had to admit that the way Elaine described it, losing her memories sounded pretty good. “What if I say yes? How can I trust that you aren’t going to ruin my life even more than you already have?”
Elaine snorted. “Your life? Since when was this about your life?”
“I don’t know, since you destroyed all my husband’s memories of our marriage?”
“I did no such thing.” Elaine yanked a dictionary-sized book from the shelf and threw it down on the floor as hard as she could, like she was daring Allison to try and catch it. “That was just collateral damage. I needed to find the pen, and I didn’t have time to read all his memories before my guardianship was up.”
“So you took them with you,” Allison said numbly.
Elaine nodded. “To read later. It took some time, but I finally got through them. I have to say, I’m sick of reading about you. I swear, if I have to read another page of him musing about how pretty your hair is, I’m going to vomit.”
The thought of Elaine reading all Paul’s private thoughts made Allison want to vomit, too. “So you knew the pen was hidden in the rolling pin. You read it in Paul’s memories.”
“Took me a year, but I finally found the squirrelly little thing.” Elaine gave her a bright smile as she slammed another book to the floor. The corner of the front cover crumpled under the impact, and Allison cried out. Elaine sighed. “I’m going to find the Guardians book sooner or later, so you might as well just tell me. Better yet, just tell me where the pen is.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Allison’s heart hammered as she scanned the room for some way to stop Elaine, though she had no idea what she was looking for. She needed time, more than anything, and maybe her question would delay the search. But Elaine just laughed and turned away from her again, tossing books over her shoulder without any care for where they landed.
“I’m serious! If you’re going to rip out my pages from the Guardians book, what does it matter? I won’t remember what you tell me, anyway. Who knows, I might even think your plan is a good one and just show you where the pen is hidden.”
Elaine paused, eyeing Allison suspiciously. “If I tell you what I’m going to do with the pen, you’ll tell me where the Guardians book is?”
Allison nodded slowly. “You’re going to find it anyway, right? So there’s no point trying to keep it from you. The least you can do is satisfy my curiosity.”
Elaine appeared to consider the idea for a minute, and then she pulled out one of the chairs from the table. “Sit,” she said firmly. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter 34
Allison dragged herself up from the floor and took a seat.
Elaine sat down in the chair beside her. “What do you know already?”
“I know your husband was a Claypool—the last Claypool,” Allison answered hesitantly.
“Zack is the last Claypool,” Elaine said sharply.
“Why does he go by Kirkpatrick, then? Were you trying to hide him?”
Elaine shook her head. “It’s my maiden name. I gave Zacky my last name because I knew my father would be the role model in his life. My husband’s plane went down while I was still pregnant. I didn’t know anything about the Claypools at that point—I just knew they were from Remembrance because when Keith died, I inherited his family home. Some big old Victorian in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t have time to deal with it before the baby came. Later, when I went to look at it, I realized it was so run down and full of junk. I couldn’t afford to move there.”
Allison nodded. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket and pulled it out. A text from Emily asking if she was OK. She started to respond, but Elaine snatched the phone from her hands.
“No.”
“It’s Emily,” Allison protested, reaching for it, but Elaine stood and put it on top of the book shelf before taking her seat again.
“Emily can wait,” she said firmly. “So I raised Zack as a single parent with a lot of help from my parents. It was hard, but we made it. When he got into law school—”
“You sold the house,” Allison interrupted. “Emily told me. But how did you find out about the library?”
Elaine gave her a steely look. “As I was saying, when Zack got into law school, I came down to Remembrance to get the house ready to sell. I took all the furniture and knick-knacks to a consignment store and everything else went to the dump. It took months to clear it all out. I left the attic for last because it was full of file cabinets. I figured I’d just burn most of it in the back yard. Old tax forms, receipts, the kind of stuff people save...” Elaine trailed off, her gaze distant, unfocused, as she remembered.
“But?” Allison prompted.
Elaine’s attention snapped back to Allison’s face. “But when I started going through it, I realized it was something
else. All the papers looked like they’d been torn out of a book. At first I thought it might be someone’s short stories, you know? But it didn’t make sense—why have the books printed and then tear out the stories? So then I thought it might be from some literary magazine or—”
“It was from the memory books,” Allison interrupted again. “So you put that together, and then—”
“It wasn’t that simple!” Elaine snapped. “It took time. A lot of time. I eventually found lists.”
“Lists of what?”
“Lists of names and numbers. Dollar figures. And notes—including file names.”
“Lists of victims,” Allison said, nodding. “People the Claypools blackmailed and extorted.”
“You can’t blackmail someone unless they do something wrong. I read their memories. They weren’t good people,” Elaine said, narrowing her eyes. “When I put it all together, I realized that Keith’s family was just trying to clean up the town. And for that, they were punished! Driven out by the Crisps and the Bakers. They lost everything—their reputation, their homes, their businesses—all because they were trying to restore Remembrance’s founding principles.”
Allison’s mouth dropped open. “They kidnapped little children!”
“Only from people who deserved it.”
“Paul’s parents didn’t deserve it,” Allison said stiffly, thinking of her in-laws and how, even though Zelda and Aaron had stiff upper lips, they’d been known around town for their honesty and hard work. They’d always made her feel like part of the family, too.
Elaine’s lip curled into a sneer. “You didn’t read their memories—I did.”
“I read Paul’s, though.” Anger simmered under Allison’s skin as she remembered his fear and confusion. “He didn’t deserve it, and I assume there were others. Those kids didn’t deserve it.”
“What about Keith, then?” Elaine lashed back, bright spots of anger reddening her cheeks as she crossed her arms defiantly. “He was the same age as Paul when it happened, just a little kid, and he didn’t deserve to be cast out just because of his father and uncle. He lost his inheritance and it was no fault of his. If the Crisps and Bakers thought the older generation deserved punishment, fine. But to steal away Keith’s birthright—and Zack’s?” She shook her head. “It wasn’t fair.”
For the first time, Allison could relate to where Elaine was coming from. “So it was fair to destroy Paul’s memory? Did that even things out?”
“Keith didn’t get the last thirty years—why should Paul?” Elaine’s eyes glittered dangerously as she pushed back her chair. “Now, where’s the book?”
Allison bit her lip. “You still haven’t told me what you’re going to do with the pen.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to write my own ending to this story.” Elaine swept her hand around the room, indicating the walls lined with books. “One where the Claypools and the Bakers join their family lines and the library remains in their hands, happily ever after.”
“So that’s why you set up Zack and Emily,” Allison said wonderingly. “And why you tried to kill off the Crisps. You want all the power in the hands of one family.”
“Exactly. My family.” Elaine’s words chilled Allison to the core. If Zack and Emily married, it wouldn’t just be Elaine’s family with all the power—it would be Allison’s too, unless Elaine intended to do more than tear out Allison’s memories of being the guardian. Maybe she planned to kill her. Erase her. With the pen at her disposal, Elaine could get away with anything. She could shape everyone’s memories—the whole town’s. She could make them forget Allison ever existed.
Elaine stood. “The book. Where is it?”
Allison shook her head as she gripped the edge of the table to strengthen her resolve. “I’m not telling you.”
In one swift motion, Elaine pulled a heavy book from the shelf and slammed it down on Allison’s fingers. She let out a cry of pain as Elaine loomed over her. “We had a deal.”
Allison pressed her stinging fingers to her mouth. The pain was nothing compared to the pain of the last two years, though. “I don’t like our deal anymore.”
She tried to stand up, but Elaine pushed her roughly back down. She picked up the book from the table with two hands and held it menacingly above Allison’s head. “You don’t have a choice now, do you? Tell me or don’t—either way, I’ll find it. One way will be a lot less painful, though.”
Allison sighed, keeping a wary eye on the book that Elaine was holding like a club. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Go upstairs. Then go to the front bedroom—you know, the one with the closet?”
“Yes, of course I know it,” Elaine said impatiently. “And?”
“Turn so you’re facing northwest,” Allison continued. Elaine’s eyes were so hungry, she looked ready to devour Allison whole. “Take three steps and look up.”
“And then?”
“Then go straight to hell,” Allison finished.
Elaine’s face turned red and she sputtered angrily, spit flying from the corners of her mouth. Allison only had a few seconds to enjoy her expression before the book swung down against the side of her head and everything went dark.
Chapter 35
Allison jolted awake in the pitch black, fear piercing her heart.
Where am I? Am I even alive? Her pounding head suggested yes.
Something scratched painfully against her arm as she struggled to sit up, moaning as her bruised fingers brushed against the rough dirt where she lay. A blast of warm, humid, peanut-butter-scented air hit her face as the scratch against her arm came again.
“Willow?!” A nose to her cheek answered her question, and Allison buried her hands in Willow’s soft, comforting fur. The dog gave a deep sigh and settled beside her as Allison cried in gasping sobs, relief, despair, and grief mingled in her tears. She’d lost everything, but she wasn’t alone—she was safe, if only for the moment, in the basement with Willow. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but Elaine hadn’t found the Guardians book yet—she could remember everything—so it couldn’t have been long.
Allison fumbled on her hands and knees over to the shelf where the camping gear was stored, doing her best to ignore the sticky spiderwebs that snapped apart when they met her face. She felt along the shelf until she found the lantern and switched it on. It threw out a dim circle of yellow light; the battery must be low. She used it to illuminate her way up the stairs and tried the door, but of course it was locked from the outside. Elaine wasn’t stupid. She probably found the key in Allison’s purse.
Instinctively, she reached for her phone to call for help before she remembered that it was still on the top shelf in the dining room. She cursed under her breath. Elaine had free run of the library—though it was well-hidden, it was only a matter of time before she made her way to the attic, found the Guardians book wedged behind the card catalog of errors, and read where Allison had hidden the pen.
Or rather, find out that Allison hadn’t hidden it. She had to find a way out of the basement before that happened.
She cupped her hand around her mouth. “Help!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, hoping Michelle would hear her. Willow added a sharp bark to her cry. She called again and again, waiting a few beats between each time, but all she got for it was a sore throat.
She sat back on the floor. Nobody was coming to rescue her, and the lantern’s light was already noticeably dimmer. She switched it off to save the battery and felt Willow press against her side in the dark.
“What are we going to do, girl?” She slung an arm around Willow’s neck. Willow let out a sigh, and Allison heard her scratch impatiently at the gritty floor. She patted the dog on the back, feeling defeated. “We can’t dig our way out of this one.”
Elaine was going to win. She held all the cards, and Allison held none. No library, no magic memory pen, no weapons, no allies. All she had were some half-empty paint cans, a pile of vintage Christmas decorations, and a few rusty gardening tools. Oh, and
plenty of spiders.
She had to try, though. The only asset she had was time—the time it would take for Elaine to discover the Guardians book—and who knew how much of that had already been wasted.
She flicked the lantern back on.
“What do I have that she doesn’t?” she mused aloud, scanning the basement for anything that might help her.
She had Willow, who was now using both paws to excavate a hole big enough to bury a sourdough boule in the center of the basement floor. It was a valiant attempt at a prison break, but unless Willow could dig through the core of the earth, one doomed to fail.
She noticed an old hand trowel and a galvanized watering can among the gardening supplies and made a fruitless attempt to pry open the door with the hand trowel, but her stinging fingers and stinging pride sent her back. The Christmas decorations were useless, too. Boxes of tinsel garland, a blown-plastic Santa, strings of lights, glass ornaments on wire hooks—none of it would help. And the old paint? She could write on the concrete-block walls to amuse herself, she supposed. She could paint accusations against Elaine so that whoever found her body down here would know who had done it to her.
She sighed, and Willow looked up from her digging project, which was now large enough to bury a whole bakery display case full of muffins. When she had determined Allison was in no danger, she went back to it, paddling furiously with her front paws and kicking huge clods of dirt out behind her onto the storage shelves.
“Stop that,” Allison protested, pushing against Willow’s hip until she rotated so her steady stream of dirt would be directed at the opposite wall instead. “You’re making a mess.”
She leaned to brush the inch-thick layer of dirt from the “Sinister Stories” box. The irony of being trapped in the basement with the creepiest books while an actual criminal was upstairs in the library was not lost on her. If only Elaine lived here in Remembrance, Allison could find her in the sinister books, tear out some pages, and stop her before she succeeded in her hunt for the pen and rewrote history.
