Late in the afternoon, the clouds began to thin, finally vanishing altogether. In their place was a placid blue sky. Heavy with rainwater, the river was dark and thick, and it moved so slowly that the little canoe had a quiet trip back. But as they approached Cough Rock, Roo lifted her chin and stared at the island with a quizzical look on her face.
The great house seemed to stand out awkwardly against the sky, and when the canoe angled around the island toward the cove she noticed that the Whaler was missing.
Something’s happened, she thought.
Jack stopped paddling and tipped his head to the side, watching her carefully.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
At the sound of his voice, the dark feeling left. She smiled at him and nodded. But once she was inside the house, the apprehensive mood returned. She paused in the lobby, listening. The house was quiet, but that was not unusual. She sniffed the air, the way she used to when she found herself in uncertain situations. She smelled the scent of wood polish and damp air and beneath that something else too—a frenzied whipped-up residue.
She rushed across the lobby to the east wing and hurried up the stairs, then down the hall to Phillip’s room, where she burst through the open door. The room was in chaos. The floor was strewn with books and games that appeared to have been flung from all the shelves, and in the center of it all was Violet kneeling on the ground. Her back was to Roo, though she turned at the sound of Roo’s entrance. Roo thought that her eyes looked odd—pink and swollen. But Violet quickly looked away again and resumed picking up the pieces of a chess game. Roo watched in confusion as Violet carefully nestled each piece in the velvet-lined wooden box, twisting them so they faced outward.
“Where’s Phillip?” Roo asked, her voice rigid.
Violet said nothing at first. Then, “I swear that man washes in with the storms.”
“Who?” Roo asked. “Where’s Phillip?”
“He’s gone,” she said. She put the last chess piece in the box, then shut the lid and snapped the latch. “Dr. Oulette’s taken him.”
Violet turned now and looked at Roo. Her eyes were raw-lidded and bloodshot and she was clearly struggling to keep from crying again.
“Took him? Where?”
“To his clinic. In Rochester.”
“And Ms. Valentine let him?” Roo cried, appalled.
“She had no choice, Roo.”
“But Phillip was getting better,” Roo protested.
“That’s what Ms. Valentine told Mr. Fanshaw on the phone—even she saw it.”
“Then why would he have sent Phillip away?” Roo asked.
“It was Dr. Oulette’s doing. He’s been pressuring Mr. Fanshaw to send Phillip to his clinic for months now. The biting incident nearly sealed it, but your uncle kept putting off the decision. Then Dr. Oulette showed up this afternoon. He checks in on Phillip every few weeks. I don’t know what was said, but Phillip went into a rage. It was awful—as you can see.” She waved her arm around the room. “So the doctor called Mr. Fanshaw, and Mr. Fanshaw told us to pack Phillip’s bags, that he’d made his decision. He wouldn’t budge on it, no matter what Ms. Valentine said. I even took the phone myself, snatched it right out of Ms. Valentine’s hand, and I told him Phillip’s change was nothing short of a miracle. He said miracles were nothing short of hogwash. And that was that. Well, you know how willful Phillip is, and where do you think he gets it from?”
“But if my uncle just came back, if he just saw Phillip—”
Violet shook her head. “He told Ms. Valentine that he won’t be back in the States for another few months at least.”
“But Phillip will be a wreck by then! He’ll start wasting away just like before, worse than before because he’ll be away from the garden!” Roo felt her throat clench. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye to him.”
“It’s better that way, Roo. Really. It would have been worse for him if you were there, and it would have broken your heart. I nearly scooped him up and ran away with him myself, I felt so bad for him. My only consolation was that he scratched some lovely stripes into the doctor’s face.” Violet’s brown eyes narrowed. “I hope they leave a scar.”
The next morning the overcast sky turned the garden’s ceiling panes into dusky gray diamonds. Jack would not come for another hour. He would be crushed too when he heard the news.
Roo watched as the black squirrel climbed up the garden’s tallest tree, running along the ropy liana that coiled around it. He stopped, flipped himself around and stared down at her. It was just the same way he had looked on those stairs up to the trapdoor the first time she found the garden.
“I can’t follow you up there,” Roo said.
The squirrel turned and continued up the tree, higher and higher until he reached the very top. The uppermost tip of the liana hung off the highest limb. It was slender and tapered, bent like the tongue in the mask that hung in the east wing’s lobby. It was right then that Roo remembered what Phillip’s mother had told him about the liana. That they are the tongues of jungle spirits. And that if you want to summon someone, you hold the tip of a liana on a treetop and called the person’s name three times and they have to come.
Roo walked up to the tree and looked at it speculatively. She was not afraid of heights, but she had never scaled a tree before; she had spent so much time finding places that were small and hidden, it never occurred to her to try it. This was a straight-up climb with few branches along the way, but the liana was so thick it formed a sort of rough ladder.
She put her hand on one of the coils and tested it. It was dry and hard, rough against her skin. She pulled herself up and wedged her foot on the edge of the vine. It held her weight easily, so she took another step upward. Bit by bit she climbed as the black squirrel watched her from above. When she was up high enough she found that she was able to see the river through the glass-dome roof, stretching out in all directions. It made her dizzy so she looked up again and focused on the tip of the liana.
The tree’s trunk began to narrow, the branches growing precariously thin as she approached the top. The squirrel was perched on the branch just to her left, his eyes on her.
Almost there, almost there, she thought.
She grabbed the slender branch above her head. The liana coiled around it like a snake, narrowing. The tongue-like tip quivered as she pulled herself up. Leaning her body across the branch, barely breathing, she stretched farther and farther until her fingers touched the end of the liana. She closed her hand around it and shut her eyes.
“Emmett Fanshaw, Emmett Fanshaw, Emmett Fanshaw.”