Greenglass House (42 page)

“Nah.” She smiled happily. “Not this time. That's something I can give you, after all you did for me. Anyway, I'm sure I'll be back.” She grinned. “You know, since I have all the time in the world.”

Milo looked at his new friend. “If you're sure.”

“I'm sure.”

“Then . . . well, Merry Christmas, Meddy-Addie-Sirin.” Awkwardly Milo held out one hand, and the two of them shook solemnly.

“Merry Christmas, Milo-Negret.” And then, just as she had in the Emporium, Meddy flickered once and was gone.

For a moment Milo stood shivering in the swirling snow and looked at the place where she had been. Then he went inside.

Mrs. Pine was standing at the window. She held out an arm, and Milo went to stand beside her. The house felt empty, and it was so quiet the crackle of the fireplace seemed unnaturally loud.

“How you doing, kiddo?” Mrs. Pine asked.

“Fine. Tired, I guess.”

“And your friend?”

“Gone,” Milo said, looking out into the night. “Gone for now.”

“Think she'll turn up again soon?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“Is she the reason you had such a good time these past few days even though it wasn't what you were hoping vacation would be?” Mrs. Pine asked. Milo nodded, and his mother hugged him tight. “Then I hope so too.” They stood in silence for a moment more. “Milo, you know your dad and I know you still think about your birth family, right?”

Milo stiffened a little, but only for a minute. “I guess so.”

“And you know we understand that? We recognize that it doesn't mean you don't love us. And we would never want you to feel guilty about loving your birth parents too, and wanting to think about them.”

A knot began to form in Milo's throat. “I understand.”

“I guess I just thought,” she said carefully, her eyes on the window, “that with all this talk about . . . oh, everything, the past of the house, Doc Holystone and his daughter, that fellow Owen being adopted too, and learning something about his ancestry . . . and of course that wonderful gift he gave you . . . I guess I thought you might be feeling something. Sad, or glad, or just
something,
even if you didn't know what that something-feeling was. And maybe you might want to talk about it. With me, or with your dad when he gets back. Or not. That's fine, too.”

Stupid tears. Milo wiped his eyes with the collar of his pajama top. “Okay.” Across the lawn, Mr. Pine was stomping back through the snow toward the house. “Maybe not tonight, though. Maybe tonight we can just have Christmas Eve.”

“Of course. Anytime you want.” She gave him one more hug, then Milo's dad was back and kicking off his boots and Mrs. Pine put on one of her mother's old holiday records and little by little, Greenglass House changed from an empty inn back to Milo's home at Christmastime.

They stayed up late, because they were by themselves at last, and there was hot chocolate to drink and snickerdoodles and the puffy white cookies Milo's mother called
forgottens
to eat, and by the time his parents sent him stumbling up to his room, it was well past midnight.

Milo clambered into bed and pulled the patchwork blanket up to his chin. Normally it took forever to get to sleep on Christmas Eve, but tonight his eyes seemed to slide closed all on their own.

The wind shivered through the trees and sent pale clouds sailing across the dark winter sky. All around him the house murmured its familiar good nights, and Milo Pine drifted off to dream of blackjacks and smugglers and scholiasts and houses full of treasures and secrets still to be found. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was his Odd Trails figurine, the one his father had given him, standing where he'd put it on his bedside table along with Owen's ivory dragon. But now the painted tiercer and the dragon weren't alone. Between them stood the little Sirin owl-girl.

“Good night,” Milo whispered. “See you soon.”

In 2010, my husband and I decided to begin the process of international adoption. It wasn't a question of infertility (something we've found ourselves explaining since the birth of our first child, Griffin, in 2013). The truth is that there were a lot of factors involved in our decision to adopt, and although we did ultimately decide to pursue a pregnancy as well, having already begun the adoption process, there was no question of abandoning that unknown member of our family on the other side of the world.

We chose China because we both had an interest in the culture and history. We began studying, both on our own and with our adoption agency, and among the many topics we read about and discussed were questions of identity and family and culture and heritage. If you've read my book
The Broken Lands
you might be thinking now about Jin, and the speech Liao gives her atop the Brooklyn Bridge. It probably won't surprise you to know that Jin evolved from a secondary character into a co-protagonist at right about the time that Nathan and I decided to adopt.

I began writing
Greenglass House
in the summer of 2011, during a spell when my critique group decided to play a game in which we gave each other prompts meant to inspire new projects. Lindsay Eland was responsible for mine:
stained glass.
Back then, I was thinking all the time about adoptive families and what ours might be like. Out of these musings and the many hours of reading and study we spent preparing for our adoption came Milo and Nora and Ben Pine. I didn't want the story to be specifically and only about adoption, just as I don't imagine the experiences of every child who came to his or her family in this way are forever and always about adoption. However, when I chose the makeup of the family who ran the inn, it meant adoption would be part of the story. A lens—not the only one, but an important one—through which Milo views the world.

No two children are alike, so I have no way of knowing whether our Chinese son or daughter will have the same questions and secret concerns that Milo does. But every kid has a birth family, so I know that his or her birth family will always be part of my child's life in some way (even though, as in Milo's case, the chances of ever knowing anything about that first mother and father will be very slim). I would be very surprised if he or she didn't wonder about those parents frequently. I hope he or she will not feel in any way uncomfortable about those wonderings, and will feel secure talking to Nathan and Griffin and I about them. But kids are kids—you're secretive little critters. You suffer in silence when you shouldn't have to. So let this book also be a letter to my future child: We understand. We know. Wonder away. Include us in your wonderings when you want to. Know that we love you. Know that we know you love us, too.

The international adoption process can take a long time. Although there's no way to be sure exactly when this little brother or sister from overseas will join the family, it's likely Griffin will be four or five when that happens. We can't wait to go to China together, all three of us, to bring home the newest member of our family.

 

Endless gratitude goes, as always, to the beta-reading geniuses who are Edie and Luci Paczkowski, Julia Zeh, and Emma Humphrey; equally endless thanks go to my critique group: Lisa Amowitz, Heidi Ayarbe, Pippa Bayliss, Linda Budzinski, Dhonielle Clayton, Lindsay Eland, Cathy Giordano, Trish Heng, Cynthia Kennedy Henzel, and Christine Johnson. I am so much obliged to Kru Brandon Levi of Evolution Muay Thai for letting me write about his other, secret life in Nagspeake. To Ann Behar and Lynne Polvino, who believed in this book when it was just a bad synopsis, I am forever indebted. To Barry Goldblatt, thank you for taking a chance on me. I hope to make you proud.

To Nathan, who loves me even when I am in worse shape than a bad synopsis, and to Griffin, the unlikely infant who actually lets me work on something other than his diapers—you are my favorite people, and I love you.

 

 

ONE

Missouri, 1913

 

S
TRANGE THINGS
can happen at a crossroads.

It might look like nothing but a place where two dusty roads meet, but a crossroads can be something more. A crossroads can be something special, a compass with arms reaching to places you might never find the way to again; places that might exist, or might have existed once, or might exist someday, depending on whether or not you decide to look for them.

But whatever else it might be, a crossroads is a place where you choose.

The town of Arcane sat very near one such place, a shallow bowl of waving grass and scrubby trees where two highways met alongside the remnants of a dried-up river. On one of those highways you could go all the way from Los Angeles, California, to Washington, D.C. A fellow could leave his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and visit family all the way north in Canada by way of the other. They were well-traveled roads, but there were great stretches of America along them where nothing much had yet been built, so Arcane and the other little towns that had sprung up here and there had hotels and saloons, dry-goods general stores, and water pumps and stables for the travelers passing through.

A hundred years ago, there had been a town there where the roads met, but now it was only a deserted shell of bare foundations and uneasy walls that leaned at odd angles under collapsing roofs. The founders of Arcane had started from scratch a little ways down the east-west road, and the new town had grown up stronger and bigger than the husk they now called the Old Village. But (maybe because of the nearness to that eerie, half-crumbled ghost town) travelers didn't stop off in Arcane for long. Folks bought their cans of gasoline or shoes for their horses or had a wheel replaced, but if they thought they could make it to the
next
town, even if the wheel bumped or the horse limped a little, they would try. People didn't like to stop in Arcane if they could help it, even if they weren't sure why. Even the drifter with the carpetbag and the old tin lantern slung on a pole over his shoulder wasn't likely to linger for more than a meal and a night's rest before starting another long march. Although, with this particular drifter, it would be hard to say for certain.

“My kind of town,” he muttered to no one in particular as he paused where the two roads met to survey the tumble-down remains of a general store. Despite the glaring sun overhead, the lantern glowed dimly through a pattern of holes punched in the sides. It gave a quiet jangle as he turned to watch the progress of a little twist of swirling dust crossing his path.

With his free hand he yanked the felt hat off his head and wiped sweat from his forehead before shucking out of his long leather coat. He pulled a watch from his pocket—a rather nicer watch than one would expect a drifter to carry—and flipped it open. He glanced down the eastbound road, away from the town of Arcane, and made a noise of impatience before adjusting the carpetbag and the lantern and continuing on. He had a roustabout's lean muscle, and although life on the road usually put years on a man quicker than life in town, under the sweat and smudges of dirt his face looked young. Only his eyes, light green like old glass and lined with wrinkles from squinting against the sun, gave any impression of age.

The drifter smiled as he strode toward Arcane, but the smile was odd and awkward, and even he walked a little faster on his way out of the Old Village than he had on the way in.

The people who lived in Arcane were just like anyone else. They went to work, kept kitchen gardens and cats and dogs, and had jobs and children and houses with broken screen doors or squeaky porch steps. The children waited all year for summer holidays, then for winter holidays and presents, then for summer again. There were bullies and victims, rich kids and poor ones, like there are anywhere.

But strange things can happen at a crossroads, and even if you were a perfectly normal child in a crossroads town you'd grow up hearing stories, maybe even see one of those odd happenings yourself. For instance, by the time she was thirteen years old Natalie Minks knew all those strange stories by heart. She knew the one about how the Old Village became an abandoned shell, and all the tales of that ancient forest to the southwest of Arcane, in which strange things had walked long ago. She even knew why Mrs. Corusk, who kept a little farm at the north edge of town, insisted on living by candlelight when most everybody else had had electricity since before Natalie was born.

It was hard sometimes to tell which stories were true and which ones weren't, but if Natalie was sure of anything, it was that in Arcane, you couldn't be sure of anything at all.

Except maybe my family,
Natalie thought as her father slammed his finger in the big barn doors the way he always did when he came into his shop. Her family never seemed to change.

“Found it,” he announced, waving a wrench over his head with his uninjured hand.