by Hillary Avis
Crazy that a little piece of wood could literally change the world.
Allison paused, her mind reeling. The pen was made of the Founders Tree, just like the paper and the gazebo. That’s why it was magical. But it wasn’t all wood. The nib and ink weren’t wood, only the barrel. And yet, it still had the same magic. It could create books, if what Michelle said was true. And it could even write new memories, according to Elaine. That meant that any piece of Founders Tree wood could be a pen, if she just added a nib and ink.
She didn’t have a piece of Founders wood down here in the basement, though. But she did have paper made from it. And paper was made from wood pulp. She yanked the box of books from the shelf and pulled it open. The book on top was titled Peeping Toms. It wouldn’t be terrible for some of those memories to disappear. She wrinkled her nose as she flipped to the table of contents. It was listed by perpetrator, judging by the list of men’s names. To her shock, she recognized one on the list—none other than Leroy Gauss, county sheriff and first-class jerk.
Well, she didn’t have a problem destroying that memory. The creep shouldn’t have the satisfaction of keeping it. She flipped to the chapter and, doing her best not to read any of the words, tore out the three pages of the memory. Part of her hoped it hurt a little.
“Now what to use for a nib?” Allison muttered, scanning the shelves. Maybe she could straighten a wire ornament hanger from the Christmas decorations. Or maybe she could find a small stick or piece of broom straw littering the floor.
Willow stopped her digging and ambled over to thoroughly inspect the open box. She sniffed every inch of the exterior and then plunged her head inside the box to smell the books, too, her tail swishing widely enough to smack Allison in the face. Allison pushed her aside and sputtered as she plucked a tuft of long fur out of her mouth.
“I could paint the house with this!” she scolded Willow, shaking the clump of fur at her. Then she laughed as the realization swept over her—Willow’s fur could be the perfect core to her makeshift pen.
Not a nib, but a brush.
Chapter 36
Allison made a bundle of Willow’s long tail fur and laid it in a neat row along the torn edge of one of the Peeping Tom pages. Then she pinched it and rolled it up as evenly and tightly as she could. It slipped apart at the last minute like an unruly Swiss roll, but on her second attempt, she succeeded. It was thin—too thin to hold up under a pencil grip—so she rolled the remaining two pages around it, too. The packet threatened to pop open again, but a few threads of tinsel from the Christmas garlands tied around it, and it held firm.
One perfect little pen.
She laughed out loud. A pen had been sitting right in front of Elaine the whole time, and she hadn’t thought of it. The sound startled Willow, who huffed and relocated to the depression she’d made in the dirt floor. The lantern dimmed even further and Allison shivered—it was too early to celebrate. She didn’t even know if the pen would work.
She held the lantern up to the row of paint cans so she could read the labels. The first was white ceiling paint. Unfortunately, white ink wasn’t the best choice for writing on white paper. She tried the next one—white trim paint—and then moved along the row until, with a cry of relief, she found the library’s dark green exterior paint. She shook up the can and used the garden trowel to lever open the lid.
Gingerly dipping the end of the brush in the paint that stuck to the inside of the lid, she made a tentative stroke on the shelf next to the paint can. The paint glided on perfectly—a bit thicker than a typical pen, more like a Magic Marker than a ballpoint, but, as she looped-the-loop and wrote her name in cursive, she grew more and more confident it would work.
She might not be able to rewrite Elaine’s memories—they weren’t in the books—but she could rewrite someone else’s. She dug through the box until she found a book titled Burglaries. In the table of contents, she saw “Robinson, Michelle” among several other names she recognized. Maybe she could add to Michelle’s memory of the burglary last week—plant some recollection that would lead Michelle over here to open the basement door and let Allison out. But that could put Michelle—or worse, Taylor—in as much danger as she was. And it wouldn’t stop Elaine, either. It might even lead her closer to what she wanted.
Allison needed someone with real power. Someone with a gun. Someone who could stop Elaine for good. Instead of adding to Michelle’s chapter, Allison dipped the pen into the green paint and painted a new chapter title at the bottom of the table of contents. Lee, Kara.
She blew on it to dry the letters and then flipped to the back. Kara’s name had already appeared as a printed chapter heading. Allison shivered and then got to work, printing as quickly and neatly as she could as she manufactured a new memory in Kara’s mind.
The work was excruciatingly slow. Not only did she have to dip the pen into the paint between almost every word, she also had to pause between pages to let the paint dry. Due to the thick brush marks, painfully few sentences fit on each page, so she tried to be as economical as she could with her words. She only hoped the memory would seem plausible in Kara’s mind.
She finished the final sentence and sat back, wafting her hand over the page to hasten the paint drying. “Please, let this work.”
When she was certain the paint was dry enough that it wouldn’t transfer, she flipped back to the beginning of the chapter, where her blocky green printing began. There was only one way to tell if the handwritten memory had worked, and that was to read it herself. If it bloomed up in front of her like memories usually did, she’d know that it had made it into Kara’s head. She took a deep breath and began to read, holding the page close and squinting in the last dregs of light from the lantern.
“She looked at the caller ID. A Portland number. The name was familiar—” Allison’s vision swam as she shifted into Kara’s new memory. She saw and then felt the phone buzzing in her hand, though her vision was foggy and shapeless around the edges.
Kirkpatrick, Elaine. The name blinked on the phone’s small screen. Was that Allison’s Elaine, her future in-law? Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember. Well, it didn’t matter. She clicked the button to answer. “Lee.”
“This is Elaine Kirkpatrick. I want to make a confession. On Memorial Day two years ago, I murdered Timothy and Dara Crisp in the Timber Falls wilderness area. I injected them with snake venom while they slept in their tent. You should come arrest me.”
Shock jolted through her. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Allison Rye’s house at 121 Rosemary Street. I broke into the house and then locked her in the basement.”
“Stay there. I’ll be there shortly.”
“If I leave, I’ll be driving my son Zack’s red Acura.” The words drifted across the line and the call ended along with the memory.
Allison looked up from the page just as the lantern winked out, leaving her in the pitch dark. She wished she was a better writer, but it didn’t matter now. The memory was there in Kara’s mind—terse, clunky, rudimentary, but vivid enough that Kara couldn’t ignore it.
Now all she could do was wait.
She leaned against Willow, overwhelmed by the scents of dirt, dog, and peanut butter as she took long, slow breaths to keep herself calm. There were worse smells in the world. Soon, she heard the wail of sirens in the distance. The sound grew closer until it was right outside and abruptly ended. Allison held her breath, listening to car doors slam and then muffled shouts.
A few minutes later, something screeched and gave in the door above the stairs and a square of light momentarily blinded her. Willow jumped up and let out a torrent of deafening barks at the crowbar-wielding figure silhouetted in the doorway, sending Allison’s adrenaline levels skyrocketing. She shaded her eyes and, when they adjusted, recognized Kara’s lanky form.
“It’s OK, she’s a friend,” Allison murmured, smoothing Willow’s coat. She gave the dog a reassuring pat as her barking diminished to growls and then mere grumb
les. “Sorry,” she added to Kara, who’d pulled out her flashlight and descended a few stairs, shaking her head.
Kara swept the beam of her flashlight into all the corners of the small basement, then clicked it off. “Don’t worry about it. I’d bark at me, too, after what you’ve been through. Are you OK? Can you walk?”
“Of course.” Allison tried to stand and realized that her legs were shakier than she’d realized. Kara was at her side in an instant and helped her to her feet. Together, they limped up the stairs.
Out in the bright afternoon, Kara stood back and looked her up and down. “I want a paramedic to check you out. Looks like you got another bump on the head.”
Allison nodded, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of what was going on in front of the library. She could just make out Leroy putting someone in handcuffs into the back of his car, the bright lights of an ambulance parked behind him glinting from the windows of the sheriff’s vehicle.
“We got her,” Kara said grimly. “She was trying to leave, but we got her. You won’t believe it, but she was wearing a bracelet that matched that stone I found on your patio. I don’t think this is the first time she tried to break in. You’re lucky she had a crisis of conscience and called me. I have a feeling she planned something much worse than a simple burglary.”
“Really?” Allison asked weakly, trying to put on a look of surprise. All the bumps and bruises of the afternoon were catching up to her now that she was safe. Waves of pain coursed across her scalp, and her back and shins throbbed.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Kara said, her eyes wide as she reached out to grip Allison’s hands. “Elaine confessed to a murder.”
Chapter 37
Thursday
After an overnight at the hospital in Salem with a worried Emily sleeping in a chair next to the bed, Allison wasn’t allowed to return to her scheduled shifts at Golden Gardens. Myra categorically forbade it in all-caps text messages. DON’T YOU DARE!
“I want you to come home with me, just for a week or so,” Emily said in the parking lot after Allison was discharged. “A concussion is a serious injury, Mom.”
“I can’t.” She rubbed the tender spot on her hand where an IV had been inserted. Just one more ache to add to the list. Apparently, Elaine had rolled her down the stairs into the basement, so new bruises were still appearing hourly.
Emily pursed her lips. “Why not? You don’t have to work and Julio has the dog. You need to rest. Trust me, I’m a doctor.” This last phrase put a smile on both their faces.
“Your internship starts next week, so you won’t have time to waste on me, anyway. And I’m sure Zack doesn’t want me cluttering up his living room sofa. He’s got enough to deal with right now.” Allison’s heart grew heavy as she thought of how Zack must feel, hearing his mother had confessed to murder.
Emily nodded, gnawing her lower lip. She looked so much like Paul when she was being serious. “OK. But I’m going to check in with you every day and the instant I say so, you’re coming up to stay with us.”
“I’ll make you a deal. You get that dress, the one you tried on at The Big Day, and I promise I’ll call you if I need you.” Allison smiled crookedly. “Your dad needs to see you in that gown when he walks you down the aisle.”
Emily sighed and pulled Allison into a gentle hug. “I don’t even know if the wedding is happening. It’s all derailed by Elaine’s legal situation.”
“Don’t think about the wedding money,” Allison said doggedly, ignoring the fatigue crawling up her legs from the asphalt. “We’ll figure it out somehow.”
Emily nodded as though she agreed, but there was something else behind her eyes. Some private doubt that she didn’t want to share. Allison smoothed a lock of Emily’s hair behind her ear.
“My beautiful girl. Everything’s going to be OK.” It was. Elaine was behind bars. The danger had passed. Now it was just about putting together the pieces of their broken lives. It might take months or years, but they’d do it, together.
THE NEXT DAY, MICHELLE and Taylor dropped by, loaded with a grocery bag of Tupperware containers full of soup, fruit cobbler, macaroni salad, and even cooked oatmeal.
“I didn’t know what you liked, so I brought everything,” Michelle said, shrugging as she set the bag on the counter in the kitchen.
“I’m not picky,” Allison choked out as she unpacked the bag into the fridge, a little overwhelmed with emotion at their generosity.
Taylor stared at the side of her face and grimaced. “You look like you got in a fight.”
“I did, kind of.” She grinned, wincing when the movement send a pang through her swollen temple. She shared a look with Michelle. “I’ll be fine, though. You don’t have to worry. The hospital took good care of me.”
“Where’s Willow?” he asked abruptly, looking around her as though Willow might be hiding in the kitchen. “Is she at the animal hospital?”
“No—she didn’t get hurt. Well, maybe a tummy ache from too much peanut butter.” She laughed at her own joke, but Taylor’s face was sober. “She went to live with her new owners. If you want, I can take you to visit her sometime. She lives in that old Victorian on Riverview, the blue and pink one.”
“I want to visit her every day,” he said staunchly, his cheeks reddening under his sun-bleached forelock.
“You know what, I bet she’d love that. You could even ride your bike there—if your grandma says it’s allowed.” Allison darted a look at Michelle. She might not be eager to have Taylor riding the river path alone after his disappearance. But judging by her expression, she seemed as comforted by Elaine’s arrest as Allison.
“That would be fine.” Michelle tapped her cane against the floor. “I saw some books on the floor in the dining room. Why don’t you go pick them up while Mrs. Rye and I have a chat?”
Taylor sighed and dragged his feet, but he went.
“Good kid,” Allison said.
Michelle leaned heavily against the counter, propping her cane against the drawer next to her. “He’s been a whole lot more interested in listening to me since his night up in a tree,” she said, her tone wry.
“What did you want to talk about?” Allison rinsed her hands in the sink and dried them on a towel. Michelle shifted her weight to her other foot and grimaced with discomfort. Allison, in pain herself, motioned her through the doorway to the living room. “Come on, let’s sit.”
Michelle followed her into the other room and waited for her to brush away the thin layer of Willow’s white fur that coated the green velvet sofa before settling heavily into the cushions.
Allison sank down in the chair opposite. “What did you want to talk about?”
“The library. Now that we have the pen”—Michelle paused and produced it from her pocketbook, then reached to hand it to Allison—“you can pass the Baker family responsibility on to Emily. Paul would have done it earlier, if he’d known what would happen to him.”
Allison fingered the smooth wooden barrel. She’d given it to Michelle to hide—one more layer of secrecy to keep the pen from Elaine. Elaine knew how to use the library, and it was too easy to see Allison’s memories in the Guardians book. Michelle’s recollections would be much more difficult to find in the forest of memories. The whole experience underlined why the books were organized in such a way that individual people couldn’t be browsed like an encyclopedia. The Bakers had done their authoring well.
And now it was Emily’s turn. There was just one problem with that.
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” she said, her eyes still on the pen. She wasn’t sure how to break the news to Michelle that giving the pen to Emily would be playing right into Elaine’s hands.
Michelle snorted. “Wise or not, it’s the way it works. She’s descended from a founder, so she has to take on the responsibility.”
“Zack’s father was Keith Claypool,” Allison blurted out.
Michelle’s mouth dropped open. “No, he can’t be—he didn’t have
any children when he passed away. I’ve been over the records a hundred times. I’m sure of it.”
“Keith died while Elaine was still pregnant—that’s probably why you didn’t know about Zack. She gave him her maiden name, so the library stored him as a Kirkpatrick, not a Claypool. She inherited the Claypool house, though, and a few years ago, when she went to sell it, she cleaned it out and found an attic full of file cabinets stuffed with pages from the books. The ones that the older generation had torn out and used to blackmail folks, along with lists of names and dollar amounts. She put it all together and realized that Keith’s family had been pushed out of Remembrance...and out of the library. This whole thing has been about claiming Zack’s birthright. That’s why she weaseled her way into being the guardian. It’s why she tore out Paul’s memories, to find where he’d hidden the pen. She even set up Zack and Emily to concentrate the power in her own family.”
“And that’s why she killed Tim and Dara,” Michelle said wonderingly, her face so pale it was almost gray. “Her plan was to join the Claypools and Bakers and eliminate the Crisps.”
Allison nodded gravely. “You can understand why I’m hesitant to put the pen so close to Zack, even if he has no idea what’s going on. It’s exactly what Elaine wanted. And any time, Elaine could tell him about his father, even from jail.”
“We have no choice. There’s no getting around the fact that the pen belongs to Emily.” Michelle gnawed her lower lip pensively.
Allison straightened up in her chair. “No, it doesn’t. It’s Paul’s pen. He’s not dead yet, and he doesn’t have to pass the responsibility to her until he’s ready.”
Michelle’s face rapidly transformed from thoughtful to steely. “He’ll never be ready. He doesn’t even know. Elaine made sure of that, just like she made sure my son would never have a say.”
