“So!” Petra says, eyes shining, an unmeasurably small amount of time after River gives me the folder with the emails and leaves the cafeteria. “Read them!”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean ‘Not yet’?!” Shrieking.
“You sound like Monday,” I inform her.
“I DO NOT SOUND LIKE MONDAY!” she disagrees.
“I have to wait for her.”
“Who?”
“Monday.”
“Why?”
“And Mirabel.”
“Who drove you all the way to and from Greenborough?”
“We studied on the way,” I say.
“Compendiously,” she says.
“They’re my sisters.”
“So am I.”
“Tomorrow,” I promise, because she’s right about that part. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything.”
Pooh also opens with “So! Read them!”
“I’m waiting for my sisters.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“What if I’m dead tomorrow?”
“Then you won’t care anymore.”
“Nothing exciting ever happens in Bourne.”
I nod. She’s not wrong.
“And when it does, it’s because everyone’s being poisoned,” she allows, “which is almost worse.”
I nod some more.
“Why did you even come by if you weren’t going to let me see?”
“To give you incentive not to die before tomorrow,” I tell her.
On the way up my own driveway, I run into Apple Templeton. She’s on her way out of my front door. She looks surprised to see me, but not half as surprised as I am to see her—I live here, after all—and I worry that if she looked at me closely she would see at once that her son picked me, picked us, that he betrayed her family to help mine, that I hold in my hands a thing he gave me which might break open the lawsuit, bring Belsum to its knees, and change everything forever. But as soon as her eyes meet mine, she looks away.
Inside, I find Monday reorganizing the periodical section, which lives under the bathroom sink. It’s mostly old magazines from the eighties, many missing covers, most missing pages, all water damaged and molding. Usually she arranges them by topic. Sometimes by color. Today, though, she seems to be going for alphabetical by the first name of the issue’s first contributor.
“So things didn’t go well with Apple?”
“We played Truth or Dare and a Lie.”
Well, one of them did probably. “Why was she here?”
“She wants River to leave Bourne.”
“Leave?” My chest feels strange.
“She does not want him settling in. She does not want him to forget his plan to go.”
“Was she here to see me?” I knew it from her face in the driveway.
“Why would she be here to see you?”
Because she knows he’s helping us, knows what he told me at the dam, knows what he delivered in the cafeteria. She knows we’ve spent time together and everything’s changing, and she wants it to stop.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“She came to borrow books about how to get your son into college when his grandfather is rich but evil and his parents steal other people’s libraries.”
Oh. Strange as this sounds, it actually makes more sense than what I was thinking (though even for Monday, this would be a hard title to find).
“He gave us something.” I show her my folder.
“What is it?”
“An email thread.”
“What does it say?”
“I haven’t looked yet.”
“Why not?”
“We should do it together. Mirabel went to work?”
“Yes, but you and I can—”
“Not without her,” I say. “We’ll just have to be patient.”
“But I am not patient,” Monday points out.
We just manage to wait until Mama and Mirabel get home, but then they have news. Over a dinner Mama makes but cannot eat, she tells us what happened at the bar, what happened with the lawsuit, what happened with Omar.
“Does that mean everything is dead?” It’s unlike Monday to speak so figuratively, but she’s right. It feels like everything is dead.
“No,” Mama says.
“What does it mean?” Monday asks.
“I don’t know,” Mama says.
When we finally get back to our room, I don’t even have time to open the folder before Mirabel’s Voice launches into a paragraph she’s been saving all afternoon. It doesn’t seem like there could be yet more news, but there is. “Apple came to therapy. She wants to leave Bourne as soon as possible. She knows River is hiding something. Nathan forced them to move here. She said it isn’t safe. She said risking their lives. He said the whole family had to come. He said there was no point otherwise.”
We listen then sit there blinking at one another.
“Why?” Monday finally asks.
“Because it’s just for show.” My words feel dark and thick as sludge. “They could run the plant remotely like they did before, but if they bring their nice family and their growing boy, it demonstrates to anyone paying attention how safe it is now. It’s just like pretending to drink the water.” We’ve known this from the beginning, but it’s more appalling, more shocking now that the family has faces, that growing boy a name and a voice. They risked our lives and well-being, but now they’re risking their own kid’s too, and why would they do that? They’re risking River when they’re the ones who are supposed to keep him safe. His very own mother knows this is happening, and even if she’s not happy about it, she’s still letting it go on, and for the first time, including when he was getting beat up every day after school, I feel truly sorry for River. At least our mother values us above all things. If the ship has sailed on our lives and well-being, at least our mother stands on deck with us shouting at the crew to make the voyage as pleasant as possible.
“Why is it not safe?” Monday asks.
Mirabel’s hand flips up and out. She doesn’t know.
“You don’t know yet,” I say, “but maybe you can find out.” My eyes lock with Mirabel’s.
“How can she?” Monday asks.
“Next appointment.” I lick my too-dry lips. I’m anxious to get to my folder, but this is important too. “When Apple comes back, we have to make sure you’re there.”
“Maybe,” says Mirabel’s Voice, and we wait while she types. “Nora said conflict of interest.”
“Why?” Monday asks.
“Why do you think?” I can’t believe even Monday doesn’t see this immediately. “She’s been suing the woman’s family for the last two decades.”
“That is not what I meant, One. Not why is it a conflict of interest. Why did she say it was a conflict of interest instead of learning what she could from Apple Templeton and then helping the lawsuit by telling Russell?”
A much better question.
“Because Nora is,” Mirabel’s Voice begins, and we wait while she types the rest, “better than they are.”
We sit and contemplate the incontrovertibility of that until Monday can stand it no longer.
“River gave Mab a folder with an email thread between River’s father and River’s grandfather,” she tells Mirabel. “She said we had to wait for you to read it so we do not know what it says so do not ask. There is only one email thread, and River tried to get more but could not so do not ask that either.”
Mirabel smiles at me, a complicated smile, and I smile complicatedly back.
“If you are not going to read it”—Monday does not understand non-straightforward facial expressions but would not have any patience for them even if she did—“please allow me to read it.”
So I hand her the folder. I can’t bear to look anyway.
“There are three pieces of paper in this folder”—she counts them four times to make sure—“which are three emails. I will read the first email first. It is from Duke Templeton to his son Nathan Templeton. ‘WHERE ARE YOU???? WHY AREN’T YOU PICKING UP????’”
I clap my hands over my ears. Mirabel has to settle for one hand over one ear. “Oh my God, Monday”—she’s so loud I’m wincing like she’s broken some kind of sense barrier—“why are you yelling?”
“The email is in all capital letters,” she explains.
“We get it,” I assure her. “Read it regular.”
“I have to be true to the text.”
“You do not,” says Mirabel’s Voice.
Monday turns back to the folder. “The next email is a reply to the first email, and it is in a normal font, and it is from Nathan Templeton to his father Duke Templeton.”
“We know who’s who,” I say. “We don’t need the cast of characters or the voice acting. Just read.”
“Fine,” she says. “It is your loss. ‘I’m running between meetings, Dad. I’ll call you back in an hour. But please, try to relax. I know you’re anxious to get started on this, but I promise there’s no rush. I’m taking care of it, making sure everyone sees it’s safe now, reestablishing trust, spreading goodwill, offering jobs. We don’t need the workarounds. It’ll be better in the long run if we do this aboveboard this time. Besides we can’t risk a worker saying something and tipping someone off. Remember, all they have to do is look and they’ll realize. So please let me do this from the other direction.’” Monday finishes and looks up. “Tipping someone off what?”
“Tipping someone off to what,” I amend. “But yeah, that’s the question.”
Mirabel taps at her tablet. “And look where? And realize what?”
“Read the last one,” I tell Monday.
“The last one is from Duke Templeton replying to his son Nathan Templeton.”
“WE KNOW!”
“Please stop yelling,” Monday says, “unless you are quoting someone yelling.”
I lower my voice and beg her through my teeth. “Just. Read. It.”
“Okay, but prepare yourselves because there is a swear,” she warns. “‘Bullshit. We don’t need their trust or goodwill or cooperation. What we need is to get started before anyone down there finds the damn paperwork. Deeds, deals, contracts, who the hell knows what kind of paper trail, but whatever it is, we need to be well underway before anyone thinks to look for it. We don’t want that headache. Money and power buy a lot of things, but I’m telling you, they won’t buy this. They have to start by Thanksgiving, otherwise we have to wait until March. And since you can’t seem to get this done, I had to. Soonest available was 11/22, so I took it. In the old days, they did it when you goddamn told them to, but now there’s a lawyer for fucking everything. Maybe this whole thing was badly set up in the first place, but we’re not going to let it destory us.’ Now plug your ears,” Monday advises. She props the paper up on her lap so she can plug her own and screams, “‘CALL ME THE MINUTE YOUR MEETING ENDS.’”
Then she flips the paper around and holds it out so we can see. “What is ‘destory’?”
That’s her most pressing question? I look. “I think it’s just a typo,” I say. “He must mean ‘destroy.’”
Which you’d think would raise more pressing questions. But Monday says, “I do not like typos.”
“We know,” I assure her.
“How do you know?”
“We’ve met.”
“I do not like typos,” she says anyway, “because typos are lies, inaccuracies, and an abbreviation all at once, and they mean that your brain can be thinking one thing, but your fingers can rebel all on their own which should not be possible but is.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
While Monday figures out how to move on, Mirabel and I try to figure out the rest of it. There is so little there. There is so much there. There is so little that’s clear. But one thing that is clear is this: there is something somewhere that somehow could destroy them. And this: we could find it if only we knew where to look.
“So Duke Templeton does not want us to find paperwork?” Monday says finally.
“Yes.”
“‘Damn paperwork’?”
“Yes.”
“Because he is mad at the paperwork?”
“Probably mad we might find it,” I offer.
“Why does he want us not to find it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what it is.”
“Oh.” Monday thinks about that for a bit. “Then how do we know we want to find it?”
“Because he doesn’t want us to. And because if we do, they can be destroyed.”
“It is October twenty-third.”
“So?”
“There are only thirty days until November twenty-second.” Monday stops looking confused and starts looking panicked. “Thirty days is not enough to find paperwork we do not know what or where it is.”
But Mirabel is shaking her head.
“No what?” I say.
“Muh,” she says.
“More what?”
She taps at her screen. Monday fidgets. Mirabel’s Voice says, “Christmas?”
“What about it?” Sometimes I can guess Mirabel’s point from just a word. Sometimes she has to type the whole thing.
She taps for a while. “Happens between Thanksgiving and March,” her Voice explains.
I see what she means.
“To be more accurate, there are many holidays besides Christmas which occur between Thanksgiving and March,” Monday informs us. “Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Junior Day, Groundhog—”
“Stop listing holidays,” I snap at Monday. To Mirabel I say, “Shopping? They’re trying to manufacture something in time for the holiday rush?”
Mirabel shakes her head.
She’s right. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. “Even if they were up and running tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to make it, whatever it is, package it, ship it, and get it into stores in time. And definitely not if they didn’t open until Thanksgiving.”
“Valentine’s Day,” Monday shrieks. “Presidents’ Day. Chinese New Year!”
Mirabel is tapping at her screen. “Winter?” her Voice says.
“They can’t reopen the plant once it gets too cold.” It dawns late, like winter mornings themselves. “But why? Chemical plants aren’t seasonal. They’re open in the winter. They’re not birds. They don’t—”
“Who cares?” Monday interrupts. “It does not matter if they are birds.” What she means is that this logic isn’t logical enough. What she means is that suddenly the calendar pages are spinning away, the clock’s ticking down, and we don’t have time to waste anymore speculating, guessing, getting things wrong. And she’s right, at least in one way. It doesn’t matter what they’ve scheduled to begin on November 22. It doesn’t matter why they can’t do it December through February. It will be hard to find what we’re looking for because we don’t know where or even what it is. But it won’t be as hard as not knowing whether it exists at all. It won’t be as hard as when it exists but turns out not to matter. Now we know. It could destory them. Whatever it is, it matters. So it’s quickly becoming the only thing that does.