Jewel of the East (2 page)

“I count my lucky stars every day that you two never get tired of spaghetti carbonara,” their mother said.

Felix did not love spaghetti carbonara, mostly because he didn’t like eggs. They were slimy. But beaten like this and mixed up with the cheese, he could almost forget there were eggs in it. Almost.

“Why so miserable?” their mother asked him.

“I… I wish you didn’t have to go back to work,” Felix said. He could practically feel his sister glaring at him.

“Oh, sweetie,” their mother said, and tousled his hair.

“We could play hearts tonight,” Felix said hopefully.

“Not tonight,” his mother said. She pulled a strand of spaghetti out of the pot of boiling water and offered it to him. “Done?” she asked.

Miserable, Felix took a bite. “Done.”

His mother studied his face. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah,” Maisie said evenly. “What’s going on?”

“Maybe I just want to stay home tonight.”

“You are staying home, aren’t you?” their mother said, confused. She looked from Felix to Maisie, who smiled and shrugged innocently.

“I won’t be too late,” their mother added as she drained the pasta and began mixing it with the bacon, eggs, and cheese. “We’ll play hearts tomorrow night. Okay?”

“Great!” Maisie said so enthusiastically that their mother actually looked at her suspiciously. “I love hearts.”

Felix tried to eat as slowly as possible as if that might make their mother stay home longer. He couldn’t help it. As the weeks and months had passed, Newport and their small apartment at Elm Medona felt more and more like home to him. Time traveling had scared him each time. But even more than ever, he wanted to just stay there and go to school and eat quahogs and play hearts. Besides, their father was arriving on Christmas Eve, and that was enough for Felix to look forward to.

But before he’d finished his last bites of spaghetti, their mother glanced at her watch and decided it was time to get back to the office.

“You two stay out of trouble,” she said as she put on her powder-blue puffy coat and a pair of blue-and-white mittens.

Maisie smiled at her sweetly.

At the door, their mother turned to Felix. “Tomorrow night, buster,” she said. “I’m shooting the moon.”

He nodded and watched her as she walked out. The sound of her boots on the stairs faded, then disappeared.

“What is wrong with you?” Maisie hissed at him. “We
promised
Great-Aunt Maisie.”

“I know,” Felix said. He twirled and untwirled the spaghetti on his fork.

“So?” Maisie demanded.

“So I don’t want to go, that’s all. I want to stay right here. I like it here, Maisie. I like Miss Landers and my whole class and… and everything.” When he saw the hurt look on her face, he said, “I’m sorry, Maisie. But I do.”

“Without Dad?” she asked. Her bottom lip trembled like she was about to start crying.

“Of course not. But he’ll be here soon and—”

Maisie blinked at him a few times, then took a deep breath. “Whatever,” she said. “We have to do it for Great-Aunt Maisie. Not for me.”

Her lie broke his heart, but he still wished he
could talk her out of it. “Maybe we could tell her we did it. We could pick somebody and say that’s who we met. Like… George Washington? Or Abraham Lincoln?”

Maisie stood up. “You can stay right here if you want. I’m going to The Treasure Chest.”

“Maisie,” he said, “come on.”

But she ignored him. She walked out the kitchen door without looking back.

“Maisie!” Felix called.

He ran after her, surprised that she’d already made it down the stairs. The first time they had gone to The Treasure Chest, they’d used the dumbwaiter in their kitchen that led to the Kitchen in the basement of Elm Medona. But now they knew where the key to the first-floor door was hidden, and they let themselves right into the dining room.

Maisie was already putting the key in the lock when Felix reached her.

She turned when she heard him. “I don’t care if you come or not,” she said, her green eyes blazing.

Felix suspected that for some reason the time travel only happened if there were two people. And those two people had to both hold an object from The Treasure Chest. He hadn’t figured out
all the rules exactly yet, but he felt pretty certain about these.

Maisie stepped into the dining room with Felix close behind. The smell of Christmas—pine trees and cinnamon—filled the air. The large dining room table that always remained set with the Pickworth china now had a dozen tall, red pillar candles wrapped with evergreen and pinecones in the center. Boughs of evergreen looped across the borders of practically everything: the side bar and serving table, the doorways and backs of chairs.

“Wow,” Felix said, “the Blond Woman works fast.”

A sense of yearning struck Maisie so hard that she let out a long, sad sigh. She thought it was possibly the longest, saddest sigh of her life so far.

“What is it?” Felix said.

Maisie looked at her brother. “I can’t do it,” she said.

When she saw the relief flicker across his face, she shook her head. “No, I mean I can’t do the holidays. It’s all wrong. Thanksgiving at the nursing home with Great-Aunt Maisie. And then Christmas with Dad staying at the Viking Hotel instead of with us.”

“Mom said we’d all have Christmas morning
together,” Felix reminded her softly. “Dad will make his eggnog French toast, I bet.”

But Maisie just shook her head again.

She was thinking of her father dragging the Christmas tree up Hudson Street, she and Felix guiding him along. She was thinking of how, when they walked in the door, their mother always complained they’d chosen a tree that was too big. And how their father made them hang the tinsel one silver strand at a time.

“Even if we do go to The Treasure Chest,” Felix told her as gently as he could, “we’ll still have Thanksgiving at the nursing home, and Dad will still be in a hotel at Christmas.” No matter how long they stayed in the past when they time traveled, it was as if no time at all had passed in the present when they returned.

“I know,” Maisie said. “But somehow going back in time and meeting Clara and Alexander and who knows who else makes it a little better.”

Felix’s heart ached. Not just for Maisie, but for their family and all they had lost. He took his sister’s hand and pulled her up.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to The Treasure Chest.”

The giant Christmas tree they’d seen arrive earlier that day now stood all decorated in the
Grand Ballroom. Wreaths, oversized pinecones, boughs of evergreens, and twinkling lights seemed to be everywhere Maisie and Felix looked. As they walked up the Grand Staircase, Felix paused as he always did at the black-and-white photograph of Great-Aunt Maisie as a little girl that hung on the wall. For the first time, he saw a glimpse of the Great-Aunt Maisie he knew in the eyes.
Funny
, Felix thought as he stared at the photo. When they’d arrived in Newport, Great-Aunt Maisie had barely been able to speak or walk. Now she was making her way down the corridors of the Island Retirement Center with the help of a walker and ordering around the staff as clear as anything. Every time she saw them, she asked about the details of their journeys with great interest. And she’d practically ordered them to go again.
Soon.
You must
, she’d said.

“Come on,” Maisie called from the top of the stairs.

A chill ran up Felix’s back. He turned from the picture and gazed upward at his sister.

“Maisie,” he said. “I think our time travel is… is…”

She tapped her foot impatiently. “Is what?” she said.

“Is making Great-Aunt Maisie get better,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Maisie said, even though he could tell she was considering the possibility.

“I don’t think it’s ridiculous,” Felix said thoughtfully. “I think when we go back in time, so does she. I mean, she gets younger.”

Maisie twirled a strand of her tangly hair around her finger, tugging on it as she thought about what Felix said.

“Is that why she wants us to do it again so badly?” she asked.

Felix nodded. “I think so.”

“Well,” Maisie said, breaking into a grin, “then we definitely have to do this. We’re practically saving Great-Aunt Maisie’s life!”

Unable to wait any longer, she walked down the hallway to the spot on the wall that opened to reveal the hidden stairway. But when she got there, she couldn’t believe what she saw.

“Oh no!” she shrieked.

Felix came up behind her.

Right on the place they had to press for the wall to slide open hung one of those giant wreaths, decorated with gold ribbons and pinecones.

Maisie stared at the wreath in disbelief.

“Well,” she said finally, reaching up for it, “we’ll just have to take this gauche thing down.”

Felix, knowing better than to argue with her, took hold of the bottom of the wreath as Maisie grabbed the side.

“Lift it on three,” Maisie said. “One… two…”

Felix leaned his shoulder into the wall beneath the wreath for extra heft, ready to lift.

A voice cut through the air.

“What in the world do you two think you’re doing?”

Without letting go, Maisie and Felix both turned their heads toward the voice.

The Blond Woman stood at the top of the stairs. She was dressed like a Christmas tree herself, in forest-green pants, a green turtleneck, and a red sweater tied loosely around her shoulders. Her hands were on her broad hips, and her beady eyes were narrowed menacingly.

“Don’t. Move,” the Blond Woman said.

Then she pulled a walkie-talkie from her pocket, lifted it to her mouth, and said, “Security! We have a break-in!”

“Do I even dare ask what you two were thinking when you
broke
in
to Elm Medona?” Maisie and Felix’s mother said.

Maisie just folded her arms over her chest and stared back at her defiantly.

But Felix said, “We just wanted to see the decorations.”

“We’re invited to the VIP Christmas party on the ninth,” their mother said. “You could have seen them then. Now look at the mess you’ve made.”

Maisie and Felix looked. A team of security guards crowded into what used to be Phinneas’s wife Ariane Pickworth’s room—the very room she died in shortly after giving birth to Great-
Aunt Maisie and her twin brother, Thorne. The creepiest room in the house, Felix thought, despite its powder-blue walls and the ceiling painted like a sky with puffy, white clouds seemingly floating across it. It was near the scene of the crime, so the Blond Woman had hustled them inside to wait. First the security guards arrived, then four Newport policemen, then a man from the local preservation society, and finally their mother. The man was tall and balding with a big gut pressing against his purple fleece jacket. He looked annoyed; their mother looked really angry.

“How did you even get in?” the man from the local preservation society asked them. “I mean, it’s impossible.” The tip of his bulbous nose was sunburned, which was odd for November.

“We…,” Felix began. “Uh…”

Maisie broke into a grin. “We used the dumbwaiter,” she said. No way was she going to reveal that they knew about the key on the first-floor landing. “First I put Felix in it and sent him down, then I followed.”

Felix nodded enthusiastically.

“What did I tell you about playing in elevators?” their mother screeched. “Especially ancient ones! Especially something that isn’t even meant for human transportation!”

Her face looked weary.
And why shouldn’t it?
Felix thought. She worked a million hours a week and took care of them all by herself. Plus, she ran errands for Great-Aunt Maisie, who got more demanding the better she felt.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Felix said softly. He
was
sorry, too.

Even Maisie felt bad now. Their mother had smudges of mascara under her eyes, the hem on her navy-blue wool skirt was coming down in the back, and a small run crept from her heel toward her calf as if even her clothes were weary.

The Blond Woman hovered above Maisie and Felix now, her face all contorted and her beady eyes wild.

“I want to press charges,” she said. She pointed at them. “I knew you two were troublemakers. I just knew it.”

“Surely we can come to some appropriate punishment that’s less extreme,” their mother said. “They are only twelve years old, after all—”

The Blond Woman reeled around to face their mother. “Do you know how many valuable items are in this mansion? Do you have any idea?”

“But they haven’t taken anything,” their mother said.

“If we let them off the hook for this, who knows
what they’ll do next! Set the place on fire? Paint the walls? Throw a party?”

“We didn’t touch anything,” Maisie said.

The Blond Woman’s thin eyebrows shot upward. “You were attempting to remove a wreath,” she said.

The man from the preservation society cleared his throat. “I think we can just deactivate the dumbwaiters and give the kids a stern warning that if they even place one toe in here, we’ll have to discuss terminating the agreement with the family about those living quarters upstairs.”