“Yes,” he explains. “I’ve found that with the Variants, most—?not all, but a good portion of them—?have roots in literary clues.”
So another piece of the puzzle slides into place. That’s what Mother’s markings mean: she was looking for literary clues to help solve the Disappearances. It’s exactly the sort of thing she loved. A real-life riddle. She probably saw it all as a big game.
“‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,’” Will says, holding the mortar and pestle in front of him like a skull. “‘Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.’”
“If becoming Sterling’s first athletic champion woodworker doesn’t pan out, you could always find work as Hamlet,” I say, nudging him gently with my elbow. Then I drop my arms rigidly back to my side.
Am I flirting with him?
“Or Ophelia, rather,” Will corrects. He grins and nudges me back when he sets the pestle down.
Is he flirting with me?
“It seems so obvious to me, now,” Dr. Cliffton says absently. “I guess that’s the way it is with most things when we are looking at them with new eyes.”
He bends to his desk drawers again, and I tense. But he opens the second drawer and, reaching underneath a stack of papers, retrieves a small vial. It is round and squat, with a glass stopper.
“The very first batch of Mind’s Eye I ever made,” he says. He pulls the stopper and lets me peer inside at the swirling mist that is the same lacquered, shell-like color as the one I saw in the Market. “This Variant is most potent when used as a paste on the eyelids,” he says. “When I discovered it, I found that I could recall the very first conversation I ever had with Matilda. I could see the blue cotton dress she had on, down to the detail that it was embroidered with white flowers on our first day at Sterling Elementary. I was able to relive the exact details of an event that had disintegrated in my memory almost thirty years ago.”
My throat tightens. “On the days you find something you thought was lost forever,” I say, “it must feel like bringing it back to life again.”
Dr. Cliffton nods. “I think there are a lot of things in Sterling we appreciate now, more so than we ever could have before they disappeared.”
I think about this, rolling it around in my mind like a marble throughout the rest of the evening. I think of it when I replace Dr. Cliffton’s book in his desk drawer in the moments after everyone is called for dinner. When I slip off Mother’s necklace, lay it on the nightstand, climb into bed, and pull the quilt up to my chin.
I sleep soundly until the light of the next morning nudges me awake. When I open my eyes, it takes a moment for my vision to focus.
Then I jolt up. Panic explodes in a spray of fireworks within my chest.
I reach out to my nightstand. Its surface is smooth and empty.
My mother’s necklace is gone.
Chapter Sixteen
Date: 3/14/1941
Bird: Killdeer
To protect their nests from an approaching predator, killdeer will attract attention to themselves by flapping in fake distress and dragging one of their wings on the ground as if it is injured.
Once the predator has moved away from the nest, the killdeer ends the act and flies away.
Phineas doesn’t start by teaching me how to rob graves. Those are messy and exposed. Instead, we start with bleach and locks.
“If cleanliness is next to godliness,” he says, pouring amber glass bottles into the washtub, “then sloppiness is the fastest way to a jail cell.”
He throws a soiled handkerchief into the bleach water, and we watch it turn as white as snow. Like magic. “Ten years of my life,” he says. “Just disappeared because I got careless one day. So learn this first and learn it well: dirty work always requires the cleanest hands.”
We spend the next week on locks. Door locks. Safe locks. Skeleton keys, hairpins, hex wrenches. Some locks take movements as small and fine as threading a needle. Others are heavy and blunt. He teaches me to turn my wrist, to apply just the right amount of torque until I hear the faint click of the pin. How to gauge entry points of houses and wrench open coffins. Which shovels to use for hard clay and which to use for loam.
“You’re quick,” he grunts after a particularly grueling day. His affirmation awakens an insatiable sort of hunger in me. I hadn’t lied. I’ve always been good with my hands, and I take to Phineas’s skills as naturally as claiming my birthright.
What’s funny is that after a lifetime spent trying to strengthen my legs, I slip back into my old limp. People would rather avert their eyes than look at a cripple. So I shuffle on and off to my advantage, so that no one ever gets a good look at my face.
And to think that before this I’d always thought that not being seen was a bad thing.
The first woman I rob owns underwear that is silky and cold in the drawer. Behind it, predictably, is her jewelry case. Holding gold rings, a garnet brooch, an antique watch.
For once, my courage doesn’t desert me. It flows through me in a rush of beating heart and nerves. But I bang my shin against the coffee table on the way out and find myself wishing for a smear of Night Vision. It is the first time I’ve thought of Sterling in ages.
The Variants. The Variants. My bag of loot hits against my leg in a rhythm as I walk home in the shadows. The memory of the Variants remains a nettle in my side. It had been my thistle, after all. Juliet had asked me for the birdseed, and I had given it to her without question, right out of my own stash. But no one seemed to remember that when the three of them were together, handing out the bread and warming in Sterling’s adoration. I should have been up there with them.
Without me and my thistle, it’s possible the Variants never would have existed.
The sun is rising by the time I reach home. Phineas calls me to the porch. I dump the contents of my bag onto the table for him to sift through. He grins at me with teeth that are growing ever more gray.
“Good,” he proclaims, pawing over the loot.
A surge of pure euphoria hits me then. That I’ve done it. Pulled off my first job.
Phineas observes me with the hint of amusement. “Proud of yourself?”
“I’m good at it.”
Phineas lights a cigar. “You come by that honestly. It’s in our marrow.”
His next words come out in smoke. “I miss that feeling. It’s practically coming out of your skin. Wish I could bottle it.” He knocks the ash from the cigar tip.
I have the flicker of an idea then. But it is still dim.
The Variants. Bottled. Euphoria.
Then Phineas erupts into a coughing fit so violent he has to stub out his cigar. When he hacks into his hand, the sound is unmistakably wet. He looks down. Tries to hide it.
But he isn’t quick enough. At the sight of the unmistakable rust that is left on his palm, the flicker of my idea falters and fades away.
Chapter Seventeen