Turns out, Sadie hadn’t given them the full tour the day before.
“I had to save something for day two!” she exclaimed as she led them up the third flight of stairs, higher and higher and farther and farther away from Smithers and his warm kitchen.
When they moved down a long hall at the back of the house, April could practically feel the wind as it blew off the sea, cutting through the old, wavy windows. With every step, her breath came harder and the key around her neck felt heavier. Searching every room of Winterborne House was going to take forever. And ever. And a day. April would be as old as Smithers by the time she found whatever her key fit. Unless she got lucky.
And April was never, ever lucky.
So she huffed along in Sadie’s wake, trying not to let her worry show.
“Sadie,” Tim asked, “just how much of Winterborne House did you save?”
“Not much,” Sadie replied. “Just the very . . .” She stopped at the end of the hall. “Best!” She reached for a pair of double doors. “Part!” She threw open the doors and held her arms out in the universal signal for ta-da!
At first, April wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
It wasn’t the library—though there were books. And it wasn’t a bedroom—though there were cushions and pillows and a pair of cozy chairs in front of frost-covered windows with a clear view of the sea.
But there were other things, too. A big square table and small desks. There were posters on the walls and an old-fashioned blackboard on wheels that someone could ride like a skateboard if they wanted to. Which, obviously, April did want to, but she knew better than to try.
“What is this place?” Tim asked, and April was glad she didn’t have to.
“It used to be the nursery and governess quarters, back in old-timey days. Now it’s the classroom,” Colin told them.
“And it’s where I do my experiments!” Sadie looked like her eyes were going to turn into little hearts but then she noticed a glass beaker in the corner was starting to smoke. “Ooh. It’s ready,” she said, reaching for a thick pair of gloves and some plastic safety goggles while Tim pulled Violet behind him. Just to be safe.
“You don’t have to worry about her,” Colin told them softly. “Smithers keeps the dangerous stuff locked up in an unknown location after . . .”
“The SadieMatic Four.” Sadie gave a deep sigh and hung her head. “It was so great in theory.”
Colin settled down with a laptop while Tim and Violet went to draw on the board. Sadie was utterly consumed with her experiment, which left April on her own in the big room full of other people.
She wandered to the wall between the windows. There were shelves with old textbooks and plastic body parts and a brightly colored model of something that looked very scientific.
Tucked in beside the model was a photograph. It had a thick white border and a grainy image, but there was no mistaking the little boy in the picture. He had dark hair and silver eyes and looked to be about April’s own age as he stood between a girl and a man who was holding up a smoking beaker in a way that was entirely too familiar.
“That’s my dad.” April jumped at the sound of Sadie’s voice.
She wasn’t sure what surprised her more—Sadie’s words or her tone. It was the first time April had seen her not bouncing. But she wasn’t sad either. She was just . . . normal. Or like a normal girl in April’s world.
“He worked at Winterborne Industries,” Sadie said. “He was an inventor. A really, really good one. Then, after the accident, when Gabriel needed a tutor . . .” Sadie trailed off, as if the rest of the story told itself. “He taught them for eight years. Until college.” Sadie turned and took in the room and the lab, the books and the posters that seemed so dated. “He taught here. And he set up a temporary lab and made inventions, and . . . My dad taught here,” Sadie said one final time, and April wondered what it would be like to be in a place her mother had been—to do the things her mother had done. She had no idea what that must feel like, but she couldn’t help but look at Sadie a little differently as she drifted back to her beakers and her clipboard and whatever SadieMatic she was trying to create.
April tried not to feel jealous as she looked down at the shelves again.
These were Gabriel Winterborne’s books. His models. His lessons and his childhood—right here, on these shelves and these walls. Like a magnet, her fingers were drawn to the words carved deep into the wood:
Gabriel was here.
Then she found the words below them.
So was Izzy.
“Hello, everyone!” For a second, April thought she must have conjured Ms. Nelson, because there she was, sweeping into the room. “Oh good. You’re settling in,” she said when she saw Violet drawing on the blackboard. “Colin, do you have—”
“A thousand words on the fall of the Roman Empire with an emphasis on the rise of Constantinople? Coming right up.”
“Good,” the woman said, then thought for a moment. “Oh, Colin? Write it in French.”
April expected Colin to protest, but he just shrugged and said, “Oui,” as if that was the most basic instruction in the world.
Then Smithers came in, a thick stack of papers in his hands. “Who’s ready to take some tests!” He sounded suspiciously like Sadie as he handed papers to Tim and Violet.
April was about to take her seat at the table when Ms. Nelson said, “April? Might I have a word?”
That day the Woman in White was the Woman in Blue, it seemed. Not like the sky outside but like the sea beyond the windows. From her head to her toes she wore the color, and April felt a sense of calm come over her just by looking at it as she followed Ms. Nelson into the hall.
“How are you, April?” Ms. Nelson asked. “Did you recover from the incident at breakfast? Are you burned?”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I recovered. No, I’m not burned,” she said, because she knew it was the answer Ms. Nelson wanted to hear.
“Good. I’m glad. But, April, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. It’s come to my attention that a vase was broken last night.”
Ms. Nelson looked at April like she wasn’t actually listening for April’s answer—she was watching for April’s response, and April was keenly aware of the difference.
“I didn’t do it!” she blurted a little too quickly. “Really. I didn’t.”
There was something about the way Ms. Nelson was studying her. Not like she was mad. More like she was worried. Not about the vase. But about April. And April didn’t like it one bit.
“If you break or spill or stain . . .” Ms. Nelson started. “If you do something like that, you know you can tell me, right? Children live here, April. Things get broken. And torn. And shattered into a million pieces in the middle of the night. Those things happen because life isn’t perfect. Kids aren’t perfect. I assure you, no adults are. You won’t get in trouble for having accidents here. This isn’t that kind of home.”
April thought about the long black car and the ragtag group of kids living like kings and queens, the tall gates meant to keep the world at bay. And April couldn’t help but think about the question that had been in the back of her mind for twenty-four hours: Then what kind of home is it?
But she couldn’t ask that, so she just said, “I didn’t break anything.” And Ms. Nelson shook her head, as if she couldn’t help but be disappointed.
“We don’t mind if you have accidents in this house, April. But we mind very much if you lie.”
“I didn’t do it! It was . . .” The Sentinel, April thought but didn’t dare say. “It was already broken. I heard someone, and—”
“So you were out of bed last night and wandering the halls?”
“Is being out of bed against the rules?” April shot back.
“No.” Ms. Nelson took a ragged breath, then gave April that look again, the one that was filled with pity. “I hope, in time, that you’ll realize you’re safe here, April. You don’t have to hide things. And you don’t have to lie. All I’m asking from you is that you try to believe me. Can you try?”
“Yes, ma’am,” April said, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except when she walked back into the classroom, the other kids were acting a little too busy and trying a little too hard to make it seem like they hadn’t heard every word Ms. Nelson said. Which meant they’d totally heard. Which meant April suddenly felt like turning around and running just as fast and as far as she could.
And she might have done it too—except she felt a tiny hand slipping into hers, holding her there as firmly as if she’d been held by a thousand chains.
Violet smiled, and April knew it was up to her to figure out who did.