“None of us are happy. I’m not happy. I don’t want to leave here. I never thought I’d have to.” Her mother put her hands on her hips, her gaze moving from the kitchen to the living room, to the dining room, to her husband sighing over a pile of books on the floor. “But we have to prepare.”
Tess was about to spill it all, beginning to end, from the strange letter written by Theresa Morningstarr and mailed to Grandpa Ben, to the clue underneath the Tredwells’ servants’ stove, Stoop and Pinscher already wrecking the place, and the need to stop them. But something in her mother’s face kept her from doing it—the way her brow crinkled, the way her lids looked ever so slightly red, as if she’d been crying. Her mother never cried, at least not in front of Tess. Tess’s mother wore dark suits and sensible shoes, a badge and cuffs on her belt. She didn’t break down. There was nothing she couldn’t handle.
Still.
Tess scratched for a topic that wasn’t terrible, that wasn’t loaded. “What are we having for dinner?”
“Peas.”
“Come on.”
“I already called for Chinese. That okay with you?”
“Sure,” said Tess.
Her mother tucked a loose curl behind Tess’s ear, her fingers gentle. “Things are going to fine. I promise.”
Tess couldn’t tell who she was trying to convince.
They ate on the coffee table. Fried rice, chicken with cashew nuts, vegetable lo mein, egg rolls. Nine loved egg rolls and spent the whole meal trying to lick Tess’s lips.
“Okay,” said Mrs. Biedermann after downing some food quickly but neatly, “I gotta go.”
“Are you sure someone else couldn’t take it?” said Mr. Biedermann.
“Some whiny important guy had a break-in. Has some connections, so . . .”
“So the brass wants the best on it,” said Mr. Biedermann. He and Tess’s mom stood up. They didn’t touch, but the look that passed between them was like a touch, so much so that Tess felt like she was watching something she wasn’t supposed to. She rammed half an egg roll into her mouth.
“You could take human bites,” said her mother.
“Or ladylike ones,” said Theo.
Tess chewed loudly. “I’m a lady and these are my lady bites.”
“Mouth closed, please. No one needs to witness your mastication process,” said Tess’s father, who was more of a stickler about things like manners.
“I only do it to gross Theo out.”
“Except it grosses your dad out instead,” said Tess’s mom.
“Not you?” said Tess.
“You have to work pretty hard to gross me out,” she said. “Okay, I’m off to console a very sad, very rich man who has lost his prized coin collection.”
Nobody mentioned anything about not-at-all-rich people losing the only home they’d ever known, nobody talked about their beloved elevator stripped to the gears and used to make a bit of lobby art.
Theo said, “Go get the bad guys, Mom.”
“Don’t I always?” she said.
Then she was out the door. Tess and Theo and their father threw out the cartons and washed the plates and silverware. After that was done, Theo disappeared to his room, and Tess asked her father if he wanted help packing the boxes. She didn’t want to help pack the boxes, but the sight of him packing them alone was too sad.
“I think I’m done packing for the night, sweetie,” said her dad. “How about we watch a movie instead?”
“Okay,” she said.
They flipped through the channels and found Storm II. Tess had already seen it, but it was better than any of the Wonder Womans; they’d rebooted that one three times and still hadn’t made a version in which Wonder Woman wore actual pants. So, they watched Ororo Munroe battle a water dinosaur with her mutant weather-manipulating powers.
“It’d be so cool to have mutant powers,” Tess said.
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
“That’s Spider-Man, Dad.”
“Oh, right. How about ‘With great power comes zappier lightning’?”
“I like it.”
They still weren’t tired when Storm II was over. They flipped through the channels till they found another, older movie they’d seen many times about a guy who finds out his life is not really a life, but some sort of computer-generated virtual reality, and he has to save the world from the tyranny of the machines. Tess and her father settled on the couch, Nine stretched across both their laps, purring loud enough to power the universe. When they got to the part where the main character has to make a choice—open the white box and he can live out his entirely manufactured life with all its petty joys and annoyances, or open the black box and learn the hard, cold truth about the world—Tess yawned and said, “Of course he opens the black box. Anyone would open the black box.”
She’d said this before. She’d probably said it every time they watched this movie. And every other time she’d said this, her father had agreed, yes, of course, who wouldn’t open the black box? Who wouldn’t want to know the truth?
This time, her father said, “That’s the problem. People think they’ve already opened the black box.”
“Huh? What you mean?”
“They think they’re the only ones who understand the real truth about the world, and that it’s everyone else who’s been tricked.”
“Yeah, but if you found out that you had been lied to, who wouldn’t want to know what’s really going on?”
“Most people aren’t so brave.”
“But—”
“The biggest problem we have is that people like to fool themselves into thinking that they could never be fooled.” He took her hand, squeezed it, let go. “There aren’t enough boxes in the world to fix that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Theo
It was the sort of dream you know is a dream as you’re dreaming, and yet, Theo couldn’t wake up.
He was creeping up the stairs of the Tredwell House, wincing every time the old boards creaked underfoot. He’d brought a flashlight but didn’t want to risk using it—someone outside might see the beam in the windows and call the police. So, he felt his way in the dark, sliding his hands along the walls. When he hit a velvet rope that blocked the servants’ quarters, the metal clasp clanged like a bell. He snatched at it, stilling it with his hand, waiting for the echo to dissipate. The air had the same smell as before—furniture oil and must and history—but there was a heaviness to it that hadn’t been there in the daytime, a weight, as if all the dead Tredwells were with him, solemn and silent, as he unclasped the rope and rounded the last flight of stairs to the attic. Which was silly, because he believed in ghosts as much as he believed in gnomes or fairies or true love between any people besides his parents and grandparents. (His dad believed in ghosts; his mom said he’d believe in love one day. They both said he’d grow out of the weird dreams.) He stood, eyes adjusting to the moonlight that poured through the windows. The narrow beds came into view, the little stove squatting sullenly against the wall like some animal that had been robbed of its prized possession, just waiting for the opportunity to steal it back.