Ghosts of Rathburn Park (14 page)

Sighing, he got up and started back toward the church and his bicycle. He ran at first, the way Amelia had done, skimming along the narrow trail and leaping over stumps and logs, but not for long. After he’d tripped jumping over a log and landed on his hands and knees he went back to walking, but fast, hurrying to get home as quickly as possible.

Home to a bunch of people who didn’t seem to be speaking to each other or to Matt himself except to bawl him out for being late again and to tell him he was going to be grounded for the rest of the week. It was his mom who said, “That does it. You are grounded for one week. And don’t try to argue, young man. You certainly had fair warning.” So that was that. No arguing, no trying to explain and no more conversation.

The only exception to the general lack of conversation was Courtney, who was talking on the telephone. Talking excitedly, but not making much sense. Matt was on his way down the hall to his room when he passed Courtney going the other way, holding her cell phone to her ear. As they passed she was saying, “I know. Isn’t it totally awesome, I mean, after all these years? I mean it feels like some kind of miracle.” She listened again for a second and then gave an excited squeal. “Really, do you think I could? How old are they? Are you sure? I can’t believe it’s really going to happen.”

She reached out then, grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “Stop, wait a minute,” she said to Matt, and then, into the phone, “No, not you, Brittany. I was talking to my brother.” She listened again and then giggled, “No, not the hunk. The little one. I want to tell him…”

He knew then who she was talking to. Brittany was one of her new best friends, but he had no idea what the rest of the excited conversation had been about, and he didn’t much care. So when Courtney loosened her grip on the brother who wasn’t a “hunk,” he pulled away and went on down the hall.

It was only after he was in his own room that he began to realize just how bad everything was. At least for him. Grounded for a whole week. That meant he wouldn’t be seeing Amelia. Not on Friday or the next day either. By the time he was free to get back to Rathburn Park there was no telling if he’d be able to find her, or if she’d speak to him if he did.

Grounded. Grounded in a house where everyone else was rushing around from place to place. The rest of that week Dad was gone as usual to his City Hall office and to all sorts of meetings, and Mom to her lunches and teas and club meetings, and Courtney to her new friends’ houses. Justin was gone a lot too, but he never said where he was going. At least not where Matt could hear him.

Not that Matt was all alone in the house very often. Usually at least one member of the family was there temporarily on the way in or out. The only times everyone was there at once was at dinner, and even then no one did much talking, at least not the kind of talking that meant anything. And, in the case of Justin, not even that. Justin was still giving the whole family the silent treatment.

It was on Friday afternoon that Matt caught Dad just as he was going out the door for a meeting with the mayor, and managed to get in a request for a shortened sentence.

“You know, like paroled for good behavior? I haven’t set one foot out of our yard since I got grounded, and I mowed the lawn once and took out the garbage twice. I think that’s pretty good behavior, don’t you?”

Dad grinned in a fairly sympathetic way and said he thought it was a possibility but there would have to be a meeting of the parole board before he could say for sure. Which obviously meant the same as “Ask your mother,” which was usually bad news. Dad went on out to the car and Matt went out to sit on the front steps and stare down the road in the direction of Rathburn Park. He was still sitting there when a kid on a bicycle pedaled by and then came back and stopped.

“Hey,” the kid yelled. “I know who you are. You must be one of the Hamiltons.”

“Good guess,” Matt said. “I don’t know you, do I?”

It turned out the kid’s name was Brett Hardacre. He was kind of ordinary-looking, with freckles and a shaggy haircut, and he really liked to talk. Which made for an easy conversation, because most of the time Matt only had to listen. He found out right away that he and Brett were almost the same age, and that Brett would also be starting his first year at the Timber City middle school in September.

Brett talked some about the elementary school he’d been going to in Timber City and how he felt about starting middle school. “I’m not too stoked about it, I guess,” he said. “I mean, just when you get used to being one of the big kids, they make you start all over at the bottom of the heap.”

“I know what you mean,” Matt said. “Back to the bottom of the heap.” He shrugged. “Oh well, I’m pretty used to it. Being the youngest one in my family and everything, I’m kind of—”

“Hey! What do you know? Me too,” Brett interrupted. “It’s the pits, isn’t it? I got two of them. And both of them are boxers.”

“Boxers?” Matt was confused. “You mean dogs? Boxer dogs?”

Brett laughed so hard he almost fell over his bicycle. “No. I mean prizefighters. I have two big brothers and they both take boxing lessons.” Putting down his kickstand, he clenched his fists and started shadowboxing, jumping around and hitting the air with one fist and then the other. It looked to Matt like he knew what he was doing.

“So, how about you?” Matt asked. “Are you one too? A boxer, I mean?”

“Me?” Brett’s laugh had an unhappy edge. “Not me. All I get to be is the punching bag.”

Matt said he knew the feeling. They went on exchanging gripes for quite a while before Matt suddenly realized that Brett might know the answer to an important question.

“Hey, Brett,” he said. “Did a girl who lives in the Palace go to your school last year? Her name is Amelia Rathburn.”

“A girl named Amelia?” Brett shook his head, looking puzzled. “No. I don’t think there are any kids living in the Palace. My grandmother said there’s just this one old lady and a few other old people who work for her.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “Are you sure? Are you sure no kids live there?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. My grandmother has been there in person to talk to the old lady, and she never said anything about any kids. And I’m positive there wasn’t anybody named Amelia at Lincoln Elementary. Not since I’ve been going there.”

Matt was puzzled. “Well, if there were any kids living at the Palace where would they go to school? Are there other schools they might go to?”

Brett nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so. There’s some other schools out in the new part of town, and a couple of private schools. But the thing is, I don’t think there are any kids living at the Palace. If they were, my grandma would know about it. And talk about it.” He grinned. “My grandma talks a lot.”

Suddenly Matt made the connection. Hardacre. That was the name of the woman who had permission to take people on tours of the Rathburn ruins on special occasions. The one who knew everything about the Rathburn family and the history of the town. So it looked like the woman who was practically a world-class authority on the Rathburn family was sure that the only Amelia living at the Palace was the one who was nearly one hundred years old.

After Brett pedaled off, Matt went on sitting on the front steps, wondering about a lot of things. Like, if he would ever see Amelia again. And, if he did see her, what would she be wearing? And would he have the nerve to ask her where she went to school, and if she didn’t go, why not?

M
ATT GOT UP ON
Saturday morning hoping to have a chance to ask his mom—the parole board—if he could get his grounding sentence revoked, or at least get some time off for good behavior.

He’d stayed awake for at least an hour the night before, getting his arguments lined up so he could present a convincing case. He’d felt pretty confident, but at the breakfast table the next morning it didn’t go the way he had planned. To begin with, it was hard to get anybody’s attention, or even to get a word in edgeways. Harder than usual, in fact. It took a while for Matt to figure out why.

The trouble was, as he soon began to realize, there were a lot of other petitions being presented that morning besides the one he wanted to talk about. Some of them were pretty up-front and undisguised, like Courtney’s request to be allowed to go to Eureka for the weekend with Brittany and her family.

But there were some other things going on that were less up-front and a lot more complicated. Like what his parents were saying by chatting in a superrelaxed, not-a-worry-in-the-world way about how they were going to spend the day. Like the message was that they were sure that Justin hadn’t meant it when he said he was going to the coast tonight with Lance whether they liked it or not.

And Justin was sending a message too, by acting unusually sociable and agreeable, finding something fairly polite to say to everyone, even Matt. And even going so far as to put his own dishes in the dishwasher, which was practically unheard of. The message obviously was that his parents had nothing to worry about, and it looked to Matt like Mom and Dad were falling for it.

But Matt himself wasn’t so sure, having learned the hard way that his big brother was not above using his version of sweet talk to get a person right where he wanted him. So Matt listened to Justin chatting up the rest of the family, and went on wondering what Justin was really planning to do about Lance Layton and his purple pickup.

It wasn’t very long before Dad had to rush out to a groundbreaking for Timber City’s new police station and Mom left for an AAUW lunch, taking Courtney along to be dropped off at Brittany’s house. So the parole board was gone, and Matt still hadn’t gotten around to asking if he could be ungrounded. So there he was—home alone again except for Justin, who quickly disappeared into his room and slammed the door.

At first Matt really didn’t have any definite plans. But by the time he’d finished reading the comics and watering the lawn, he’d made up his mind that the grounding sentence would certainly have been lifted if there’d been time to talk about it. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that his parents would have agreed with him if they’d had time to listen to his argument. So after he’d eaten one of the tuna sandwiches Mom had left in the refrigerator, he got out his bike and headed toward Rathburn Park.

It was hot again, probably somewhere around ninety, which made bicycling as far as the park a pretty sweaty affair. The closer he got to the park’s narrow valley, the hotter it seemed to get. The wooded hillsides were shutting out every bit of the west wind that usually brought with it a hint of cool ocean air.

At last, sweating and panting, Matt pedaled into the Rathburn parking lot and found there were only a couple of cars in the whole place; a red SUV and a pale gold sedan. And no one at all out on the ball field. That puzzled him for a minute. Usually the park was pretty busy on Saturdays. But then he figured out that anyone who usually came to the park on Saturday afternoons probably had headed for the coast instead to get out of the heat.

Lucky for them, and lucky for him, too, Matt thought, as he checked carefully in every direction before he ducked under the No Trespassing sign and pulled his bike around the barricade. A few minutes later, under the rough stone arch of the narthex, he stopped to lock his bicycle and peer briefly into the church itself.

Nothing moved in the tangled underbrush. Turning away, Matt pushed aside the fern fronds that camouflaged the entrance to Amelia’s secret passageway, ducked into it and a moment later arrived at the side entrance.

Reminding himself sternly of his promise to Amelia, he only leaned in under the door frame, twisting his neck to look toward Old Tom’s cabin. Inside the huge roofless room everything, leaves and needles and twining ivy, hung limp and motionless in the heat—in the hot, still, listening silence. Matt stared, listened and, after a few moments, called.

“Amelia,” he called softly. He stopped to listen and then called again.

No answer. Of course there wouldn’t be. After all, it wasn’t as if she actually lived there in the cabin. He had to admit that the chances she would be there at any particular moment were pretty slim. Sitting down on a stone block that had once been a part of the church wall, he went over all the possibilities.

All the what-to-do-next possibilities. He could cross the ball field and risk his neck trying to get across the swamp. And then what? Go up and knock on the front door of the Palace and ask to see Amelia? As if!

Or he could just stay where he was, sitting there sweltering and sweating for an hour or two, just hoping that she might show up. Or…

It was then, while he was still sitting on the stone, that he happened to notice a glint of gold among the dead leaves that covered the floor of the path. Dropping to his knees, he brushed the leaves aside, and there it was—Amelia’s locket on its gold chain. The locket on a broken golden chain, and right next to it—a small silver-colored key. A key to what? And then suddenly he knew.

Putting the locket and chain in his pocket, but holding the key in his hand, he hurried back to the side entrance. Inside the doorway he paused for only a moment and then, without letting himself stop to think, he went on along the interior wall and on through the sagging door of Old Tom’s cabin.

Nothing had changed since he’d been there before. There were no changes in the rusted stove or in the rocking chair with its broken rocker, and the chewed-up bone was still lying right where, or very close to where, he himself had dropped it. And the trunk…

And then he was on his knees beside the old trunk. The dome-shaped lid encased in stamped metal was unchanged—and the shiny padlock still hung from the hasp. Telling himself it wouldn’t fit, wouldn’t be the right one, Matt reached out, tried the key—and the padlock fell open. The trunk was unlocked. Without his willing them to, in fact while he was trying to tell them not to, his hands reached out and raised the lid.

A kind of partition, a deep wooden tray, filled the top part of the trunk. A tray that was full of…hats? One on top of the other. Matt lifted them out one by one. Large floppy old-fashioned hats made of shiny materials, elaborately decorated with velvet ribbons and clusters of silky flowers. And each of them draped in clouds of heavy white veiling. Matt stared long and hard at the hats before he laid them aside and lifted out the wooden tray.