Turns out, supposedly dead billionaires who have been missing for ten years are slippery.
After that first night, Gabriel never fell for one of April’s traps again. He must have jumped over every threshold and slid through every crack, because he was like a mouse who, night after night, walked away with the cheese without ever getting caught.
It was extremely disappointing.
Because, as far as April could tell, the key to finding her mother was the actual, literal key. And the key had something to do with the Winterbornes. And Gabriel was the only Winterborne she knew besides Evert. And April didn’t like Evert, even though she didn’t really know why.
April needed Gabriel Winterborne to help her find her mother!
So eventually April gave up on the trap.
And started focusing on the cheese.
When April was six, she’d had a really nice foster mother who’d told her that she’d “catch more flies with honey,” so April started there. She took as many biscuits as she could from the breakfast table and a jar of peanut butter from the pantry and a plastic bear full of honey, which seemed appropriate considering how fond Gabriel Winterborne was of growling and all.
She left it all on the table where the vase had been before Gabriel broke it. And then she hid. That night, she tried as hard as she could to stay awake in the tiny alcove with the umbrellas, but when she woke up the next morning, the food was gone and in its place was a note that said Leave me alone.
Well, when the honey didn’t work, April moved on to cheese, since that was the preferred food for traps it seemed. She left a big wedge of cheddar on the back stairs with a bunch of bread and a bottle of lemonade, but that disappeared too, even though April swore she never even fell asleep that time.
Every night April tried, and every night April failed, but every time she missed him, she learned something. Sadie had been trying to teach Tim and April about the scientific method, and April told herself she hadn’t really messed up—she’d just found a half a dozen ways not to catch a billionaire. So she decided to focus on what she’d learned:
Gabriel Winterborne was somewhere in the mansion (which was a good thing).
The mansion was enormous (which was a bad thing).
It was easy to imagine him living in an attic or under the floorboards or in a closet even Smithers didn’t know about. If April could just find out where he was hiding . . . After all, she didn’t need to catch him. Not exactly. She just needed to find him.
Which was when April got her best idea ever.
She wasn’t sure what she was expecting when she threw open the door to the big storage closet where Smithers kept the supplies. What she found was shelf after shelf of clean white sheets and fluffy folded towels—so many that April knew one would never be missed. So she started with a pillowcase and a set of the softest sheets that April had ever felt. Next came a bar of soap and some shampoo that smelled like vanilla, a nail file, a comb, and a ponytail holder, because April always felt way better when she could keep her hair out of her eyes.
She also threw in four hard-boiled eggs, three chicken legs (though where Smithers had found a three-legged chicken April had no idea), two apples, and a bottle of water that had bubbles in it and made you burp but in the good way.
And salt. April never, ever ate hard-boiled eggs without salt.
Or so she told herself.
She left the pillowcase, stuffed completely full and smelling like barbecued cake, in a place she knew he would see it. And then she went upstairs and climbed into her real bed, safe and sound. When she woke a few hours later, she ran downstairs and found the pillowcase gone. But, this time, April smiled.
Because even though Smithers probably wouldn’t have approved of April punching a hole in the bottom of that pillowcase and no one likes the idea of wasting perfectly good salt, when April dropped to the floor, she could see the thin white trail running across the dark floor of the mansion, streaming along, showing the way.
And April being April, she followed.
Through the foyer and past the library and down the twisty stairs that led to the narrow hall that, Sadie said, was the oldest part of the mansion.
The salt line was faint but very much there—right up until the point when it wasn’t.
It disappeared into thin air. Except. Not thin air. Into a fireplace that didn’t have a fire, and April had to wonder if Gabriel Winterborne might be a little bit like Santa.
All around April, Winterborne House was still sleeping. In just a few hours, Smithers would be up and cooking breakfast. Sadie, Colin, Violet, and Tim would be coming downstairs to eat. But right then the only things that moved were the hands of the big grandfather clock and the dust that danced in the light of the moon, hoping Smithers might miss it.
April looked back down at the salt line, and she thought about Gabriel Winterborne. Not the man. The boy. Winterborne House was lonely. Too dark and too formal, too close to the cliffs and the sea. On edge in almost every sense of the word, and April felt sad. Not just for herself. But for the little boy who must have lived here when Winterborne House was an orphanage for one. That boy would have explored. That boy would have run wild. That boy would have found every nook and cranny, crease and crevice, and that boy was still hiding from the outside world.
The difference was that, this time, someone was going to come looking.
She took a step closer to the fireplace and studied it again—not the whole, but the pieces. She pushed against the angel’s wing and pulled on the candlesticks that sat atop the mantel. She pressed every stone and touched every square, until, finally, April stepped back and sighed and admitted to herself that she’d been wrong.
Then she noticed the salt was moving, drifting across the floor like the house was trying to blow out its birthday candles. But houses don’t breathe. They do, however, have drafts.
As she eased back toward the fireplace, she noticed a book on the shelves beside it. the spine said, and April pulled on the book, thinking, Could it really be that easy?
(Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.)
The fireplace stayed closed, and April groaned in frustration, kicking the cast-iron poker that was there for a log that didn’t burn. A poker that didn’t fall but rather, tilted with a pop as the fireplace swung open, revealing a very dark, very windy, very dusty, very scary passageway.
It was the most beautiful thing that April had ever seen, and she stepped into the darkness, smiling all the way.