THE OLD STONE house was empty and dim. Olive’s footsteps thumped through the silence, their echoes ringing off the walls. She slumped up the stairs to the second floor and was about to throw herself face down onto her bed with Hershel when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a familiar furry form.
Horatio sat on the carpet at the far end of the hallway, staring up at a painting on the wall. He gave a little jerk as Olive approached.
“Olive,” he said, getting up and moving toward her. “You’re home. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten.”
Olive sank down against the wall. She reached out to stroke Horatio’s head, but she’d barely felt the cool strands of fur against her fingers before Horatio ducked out of reach.
“You’re still angry with me about the paints, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Angry?” Horatio repeated. “No, Olive, I’m not angry with you.” But the cat continued to back away from her, edging slowly toward the stairs.
“It seems like you’ve been avoiding me,” Olive persisted. “I thought maybe we could go exploring together, or we—”
“I have more important things to do at present, Olive, than playing with children.” Horatio turned away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will be going outside.”
“Are you making sure no one gets into the tunnel again?” Olive asked, following Horatio to the head of the staircase. “You and Harvey filled in the hole, right?”
Horatio hesitated. He descended a few steps before looking back at Olive. “Yes, of course,” he said at last. “No one has tried to reach the tunnel again, as far as we can tell. But it is wise to be cautious.”
“‘The price of safety is eternal vigilance,’” Olive quoted with a little smile. Horatio looked blank. “That’s what Leopold always says,” she added.
“Ah. Leopold. Yes.” Horatio gave her a long look before bounding down the rest of the stairs into the hall below. The last Olive saw of him was a glint of daylight from the front windows glancing off of his sleek orange fur.
She gazed along the hall, back to the spot where Horatio had sat. He’d been staring up at the painting of the craggy hill. Olive wandered toward the painting. She stood in front of it for quite a while, wondering what Horatio had seen that had held his interest so tightly, but today, there was no hint of smoke, no twirling leaves. Looking at that little stone church, no one would ever guess that it held Olive’s secret. No one would know why this painting suddenly made Olive shiver from head to toe. Olive herself wasn’t quite sure.
That night, after dinner in the old stone house, Mr. Dunwoody suggested that they all play a round of Forty-two, the more complicated version of Twenty-one that Alec and Alice had invented back in their college days.
“It is Friday night, after all,” he said, smiling around the dinner table. “I think it calls for something special.”
“Not Forty-two,” moaned Olive.
Mrs. Dunwoody’s face lit up. “Why don’t we go to the grocery store?” she suggested.
Olive sank down into her chair. The Dunwoodys had invented another math game for the grocery store, informally known as Total Plus Tax, in which each family member took part of the shopping list, estimated the exact total cost of the items (including tax, if any), and split up, trying to shop so that their purchases added up to that estimate. Whoever came closest was the winner. Olive didn’t know what reward the winner got, exactly, because she’d never won, but she guessed that it was something she could live without.
“Not grocery shopping,” she moaned.
After some more suggesting and discussing and moaning, Mr. Dunwoody proposed that they all go for a walk. Olive was out of objections at this point. Besides, the sun was just going down, and the sky that could be glimpsed through the windows was a streaked canvas of pale gold and fiery red and dark, encroaching purple. It might be nice to walk under it.
The few scattered streetlights had just flickered on as the Dunwoodys climbed down from their front porch. The very last rays of the sun lingered on Linden Street’s tallest houses, making their rooftops shine like bronze until the darkness snuffed them, one by one.
Leaves stirred by an evening breeze clicked softly to the pavement as they walked. Olive kicked a crackling pile beneath Mr. Fergus’s big maple tree and listened to them whisper back to the ground before being crunched under her parents’ feet. Mrs. Dunwoody counted them before they landed. “Forty-seven,” she murmured to Mr. Dunwoody.
They wound their way slowly up and down the block, passing the Butlers’ glowing windows and catching a trail of piano music that trickled out of Mr. Hanniman’s living room. Mrs. Dewey’s cozy house was lit up inside. Olive wondered whether she and Rutherford were having another botany lesson, or if they were washing the dinner dishes and talking about medieval battle tactics, or if Rutherford was in his room, putting stacks of dragon T-shirts and an army of carefully wrapped figurines into a suitcase. A twinge of pain shot through her heart.
The last hint of sunset had vanished by the time they passed Mrs. Nivens’s empty house. Olive shuddered, gazing at those black, empty windows, and slowed her steps until her parents caught up with her.
“Strange about Mrs. Nivens, isn’t it?” said Mr. Dunwoody, nodding at the tall gray house.
“Strange and sad,” said Mrs. Dunwoody.
“Yes,” whispered Olive.
Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody had been holding hands, but now they let go of each other to wrap their arms around Olive’s shoulders. Wedged right between them, Olive felt safer and warmer. The heap of worry even began to lighten a little. But as they passed the shriveling lilac hedge, the full height of the old stone house loomed over them. Olive looked up at those dark, empty windows and felt the house looking down at her in return, beckoning her, daring her to come back inside. And she had nowhere else to go. Perhaps she was only imagining it, but it seemed as though one last beam of sunset—a beam that should already have slipped behind the horizon—fell across the front steps, leading like a glowing carpet to the front door.
With a nervous, bumpy feeling in her stomach, Olive followed her parents up the creaking porch steps and back inside the old stone house.