Josiah screamed, “No, you didn’t. Let me go; I’ve got to stop—”
“I had a whole conversation with you!” she bellowed. “You told me things about frogs!”
“You’re dreaming,” shouted Freddy. “We were walking home from school.”
Josiah gave an impatient squirm and tore himself from Mel’s grasp. The girls moved out onto the sidewalk and watched him sprinting for the house, shrieking, “Cuerva Lachance! Cuerva Lachance!” He wrenched open the door. The music got briefly louder, though not by much. The door slammed shut.
It took him nearly two minutes to get into the organ room and shut Cuerva Lachance up. There was a moment of discord, as if someone’s hands had been wrenched from the console, and blissful silence descended.
Mel turned to her sister. “I know what I saw, Freddy. I was talking to him five minutes ago.”
“You couldn’t have been,” said Freddy. “We were just starting across the park five minutes ago.”
“Then Josiah can be in two places at once,” said Mel.
The girls gazed at each other thoughtfully. Mel had a good imagination, and she didn’t always tell the truth, but she was a terrible liar, and she wasn’t lying now. She had been talking to Josiah, or she thought she had.
Mel was looking at the house. “Who’s that?”
“Where?” Freddy turned, following Mel’s gaze. She thought she caught a flicker of movement at one of the gable windows, but when she looked more closely, there was no one there.
“There was a girl,” said Mel. “Or a woman. With long hair, anyway. Not Cuerva Lachance. She was looking out one of the second-floor windows.”
“We know there’s someone else living there,” said Freddy. “We just don’t know who.”
“Maybe they’re keeping a madwoman in the attic,” said Mel. “We’ll only find out for sure when she sets the house on fire and jumps off the roof.”
This sounded like an allusion to something, a common hazard of talking to Mel. Freddy ignored it. “Roland warned me off Josiah again.”
“He’s been going at me, too,” said Mel. “I think something happened with him and Cuerva Lachance.”
Freddy said, “He says they’re dangerous.” As she thought about it, her usual fizzing anger was starting up again. Okay, maybe Roland had been serious, but why did he have to be so … so belligerent about it? What was wrong with, “Freddy, please stay away from the house on Grosvenor Street. I’m worried about you guys. Let me tell you what happened to me last week”? Instead, he tried to force her into doing what he wanted, and he didn’t even bother to explain why.
“They may be,” said Mel. “Remember the marble?”
Freddy narrowed her eyes. “What marble?”
“The marble. The one that rolled uphill.”
Freddy did remember the marble, uneasily. She had been trying not to. “Some trick.”
“I don’t think it was.” Mel ran a hand through her mousy hair. “Look. You know how I feel about Sherlock Holmes.”
“You will love him passionately forever,” said Freddy.
“Yes, and there’s this thing he says: ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“Okay,” said Freddy, “so?”
“So I don’t think we can eliminate the impossible this time. What happened with the marble wasn’t possible.”
“It was just a tiny little thing,” protested Freddy.
“So’s this.” Mel bent down and picked up a pinecone. As Freddy watched, Mel straightened, held the pinecone out in front of her, and dropped it.
“Yeah,” said Freddy, “it fell. So what?”
Mel said, “What if it had risen instead? That would have been a violation of a fundamental physical law.”
“Sure.”
“So basically the same thing happened with the marble.”
They stood there, staring at the pinecone. A crow cawed in the tree above them.
“We have to eliminate the impossible,” said Freddy finally.
“I would love to,” said Mel. “I feel disloyal to Mr. Holmes. But maybe deduction can’t solve everything.”
Freddy saw the front door open. “Josiah’s coming back out.”
“Bad timing.” Mel jerked her thumb towards Roland, who was just crossing from the park.
The boys reached them at almost exactly the same time. “Leave us alone,” said Roland to Josiah. “Or I’ll make you.”
“Oh, do go ahead and make me.” Josiah flung out his arms. “I’m running out of visible bruises.”
Roland glared at Freddy and Mel. “Go home.”
“We were just standing here,” said Freddy. “Is that a crime now?”
“Boys are so violent all the time,” said Mel.
“You’re supposed to be a genius,” snarled Roland. “Use your stupid head and go home.”
“My stupid genius head is happy here,” said Mel, signing industriously all the while.
Freddy crossed her arms. “Explain properly or leave us alone.”
“No,” said Roland, almost choking out the word.
“Are you going to continue this all day,” inquired someone from directly above them, “or do I have to come down there and egg you on?”
Everyone but Roland looked up. “Cuerva Lachance,” said Josiah in exasperation.
She was perched in the branches of the tree, none of which were low enough for any of them to reach. As Freddy watched, she peered down at them from under her hat and said, “Yes? May I help you?”
“How’d you get up there?” said Mel.
“I’m not sure.” Cuerva Lachance tilted her head thoughtfully. “There may have been physics involved.”
“You were just in the house,” said Freddy.
She beamed at them. “Was I?”
“Ignore everything she says and does,” said Josiah.
Roland had caught up with events by now. “What a good idea,” he said. “We’re going home.”
“You won’t be able to ignore me properly from there,” said Cuerva Lachance.
“Stay away from us,” Roland flung up into the tree. “Stay away from them. I don’t know what you want, but I know you’re here to watch us. If you don’t leave us alone, I’ll … something. I don’t know! Just don’t.”
He took Freddy and Mel by a shoulder each and shoved them away from the house on Grosvenor Street. Maybe because he would have needed at least one hand free to unlatch the gate, he pushed them all the way down the street and around the corner and into the front yard. Freddy was thinking almost too hard to notice. The marble. Pinecone … defying the law of gravity. Cuerva Lachance in the tree? Who else is living in the house? Something happened to Roland over there. Can Josiah be in two places at once? It was like watching Roland signing and not wanting to know what he meant. She kept trying to force her brain away from all the impossible things, but it always crept back.
Just before they rounded the corner, Freddy heard Cuerva Lachance call, “We’ll be seeing you soon!” She and Mel looked at each other, then away. Neither told Roland what she had heard.
6
“September twenty-seventh,” said Mel.
Freddy, poised to leave for school, looked at her. “What?”