Five

Emma

“I’m sure your husband is innocent,” Emma told Mrs. Gustano. “Any fingerprints the police found, those had to belong to his double from—”

“Emma,” Mom said sternly, pulling her so close that Emma had to stop talking or else she would have ended up with a mouthful of Mom’s T-shirt. “Not here. Let’s wait to tell the Gustanos everything at the Cuckoo Clock.”

Emma pulled back and peered up at Mom. Would Mom tell the Gustanos the whole story? Or would she gloss over the truth and reveal only enough to stop the Gustanos’ questions?

Emma sneaked a glance at the other Emma. She was waggling her eyebrows up and down and muttering, “Doubles? How could Dad have a double? He isn’t a twin, and anyhow, a twin wouldn’t have the same fingerprints. And besides . . .”

Emma was pretty sure the ideas were exploding in the other girl’s head just as fast and frantically as in Emma’s. Emma knew a lot about the other world—and she’d seen doubles there of people she knew in this world—but she still had a million questions.

Why was the other-world version of Mr. Gustano in our basement? Could he have been one of the bad people from the other world creeping in and out through our house? Why were they doing that?

Emma’s heart started beating too rapidly again.

“So, the Cuckoo Clock,” Mrs. Gustano repeated, pulling out her cell phone and beginning to type. “I’ll put that in my GPS and—”

Mom reached out and shoved Mrs. Gustano’s phone back toward her purse. It was the rudest thing Emma had ever seen her mother do.

“Don’t use GPS,” Mom said. “I’ll give you directions. And turn off the location tracker—no, turn the whole phone off. That would be safest.”

Emma waited for Mrs. Gustano to refuse. After all, Mrs. Gustano had more reasons to suspect Mom than to trust her. Wouldn’t she think keeping her phone on could help prevent another kidnapping?

But Mrs. Gustano’s eyes met Mom’s, and she slowly nodded.

“I see,” she said.

The two women were almost smiling at each other.

Weird, Emma thought.

It was like how their friend Natalie and her double, Other-Natalie, had seemed so much in sync in the other world. They’d finished each other’s sentences; they’d acted like they’d known each other their whole lives even though they’d just met. Finn had claimed that they were even more alike than identical twins.

Do all duplicate people just . . . match . . . when they’re together? Emma wondered.

Maybe that would happen with all the exact duplicates of people from both worlds, if they encountered one another. But the two worlds existed because people had made different choices, creating different outcomes. Could a duplicate from one world control her double from the other?

Which world’s people were more powerful?

Emma remembered that people from the bad world had poisoned Natalie’s grandmother.

But we’re from the bad world, too, and we want to do good things, and . . .

Maybe Emma should just stick to figuring out similarities and differences between the Greystones and the Gustanos.

Emma tried to peer at Other-Emma as intently as Mom was staring at Mrs. Gustano. The other girl didn’t just have a slightly rounder face and softer features than Emma. It also looked like she’d combed her hair more carefully than Emma ever did hers; it looked like her eyes were wider and she was even more dazed than Emma was by the weird turns their lives had taken in the past month.

The other Emma also did not seem to feel Emma’s gaze on her. She didn’t immediately turn to stare back at Emma—it wasn’t anything like how Natalie and Other-Natalie behaved together, or how Mom and Mrs. Gustano acted.

That’s got to be evidence of . . . something, Emma thought. She and Other-Emma were only near-duplicates; they weren’t exact genetic matches. Apparently the mind-meld factor only worked for total duplicates like their mothers.

“Okay, we’ll meet there in fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Gustano said, turning to go. Emma realized she’d missed hearing the rest of the logistics the two mothers had worked out.

Mom shut the front door and Emma saw through the front window that the Gustanos went back to their car. Emma trailed Mom and her brothers back to the garage. Belatedly, Emma realized she was still carrying the little plastic safe and the paper holding her father’s handwriting. As she got into the car, she stuffed the paper back into the safe, spun the combination lock, and tucked the safe under the front seat of the car. It clunked into a hard, oblong object in a thick fabric case meant for carrying baseball bats. Emma clutched the case and could instantly tell: The object inside had nothing to do with baseball.

“Mom, you brought the lever?” she gasped. “You’ve been carrying it around with us all along?”

The lever was their key to traveling between the worlds. The Greystone kids had first found it on the wall of the secret room in their own basement. They’d ripped it off the wall to close the tunnel when police officers and guards from the other world were chasing them. They’d lost two weeks before figuring out that the lever could be used in other locations as well.

Mom bit her lip and sagged against the open car door.

“I shouldn’t . . . have left it in the car,” she murmured. “I should have strapped it to my back, kept it with me every minute. . . .”

“Because you think we might need to use it at any minute?” Chess asked. He sounded every bit as distraught as Mom.

“No,” Mom said. “Don’t worry about that. I just don’t want any of our . . . opponents . . . to find it. And I can’t think of anywhere safe to leave it. . . .”

Mom got into the car along with Emma, Chess, and Finn. Mom hit the release to open the garage door, which made Emma remember that Chess had been the one who’d thought to close it in the first place.

Mom is . . . rattled, Emma thought. We really do need to watch out for her.

Mom turned the car on and backed out of the driveway. The Gustanos’ car was idling on the street, waiting. Apparently they were just going to follow Mom.

None of the Greystones said anything as Mom drove them toward the center of town. Somehow the familiar scenery around them made Emma feel better, though. It was a lovely spring day, and flowers bloomed in their neighbors’ yards. When they got to the streets filled with shops and restaurants, all the friendly signs around them—“Welcome!” “Celebrating thirty-five years of being your neighborhood hardware store!” “Come sample our new ice cream flavors!”—made Emma think about how different everything had felt in the other world. There, all the houses were hidden behind fences or walls or forbidding thick hedges. Beyond the neighborhoods where people lived, all the buildings were cold steel and glass, with blue-and-orange banners everywhere. Emma had never even understood what the banners stood for; they just made her feel scared.

They reached the Cuckoo Clock parking lot, and all the Greystones got out. Mom picked up the baseball-bat carrier with the lever inside and slipped it onto her shoulder.

“Mom, I’ll carry that,” Chess said. “I can pretend I’ve got a game later today, or something like that.”

“Don’t you think I could be in an adult softball league?” Mom challenged, with an attempt at a grin.

Either way, it looks weird to carry that into the restaurant, Emma thought.

But she didn’t say it aloud.

They walked into the Cuckoo Clock, and the Gustanos joined them.

“Oooh,” Finn Gustano gasped, and Emma couldn’t help smiling. People always reacted that way, seeing this restaurant for the first time. The entire back wall—two stories’ worth—was a cuckoo clock, with clock hands that were taller than Chess.

“Just wait until that door opens and the cuckoo comes out,” Finn said, pointing to the top of the clock.

“Table for eight in a private room, please,” Mom said to the hostess. “Indoors.”

“That’ll get you to the front of the line,” the hostess said. “It’s so beautiful today, everybody else wants outdoors.”

She led the Greystones and Gustanos to an empty, glassed-in room by the back wall, so close that Emma could make out the cheerful expressions on the enormous carvings at the side of the giant clock. Puppies, kittens, goldfish, turtles, penguins . . . so many happy wooden creatures seemed to tumble joyously past the numbers marking the hours.

Everyone got a menu as they all sat down. As soon as the hostess left the room, Mom turned to Mrs. Gustano.

“You’re not wearing a wire to tape everything I say for the police or the FBI, are you?” she asked.

“Of course not!” Mrs. Gustano protested. “Believe me, the police did not think it was a good idea for us to come here and meet you in person.”

“But you came anyway,” Mom murmured. “And . . . you probably let them think that you were following their advice.”

It would have been smart for Mrs. Gustano to say, “No! Of course the police know we’re here! All sorts of authorities know we’re here!” But she just kept staring steadily back at Mom.

“Okay, I get it,” Mom said.

It was almost as if they could communicate without talking.

Thinking hard, Emma glanced back at the carved wooden creatures on the clock. She’d been to the Cuckoo Clock plenty of times, but she’d never sat in this particular spot in this particular room before.

So she’d never before noticed that not all of the carved wooden creatures on the giant clock were animals.

And yet, one of the figures on the clock looked so familiar. . . .

Suddenly Emma realized where she’d seen it before. She jumped up, practically knocking over her chair.

“I’ve . . . got to go to the bathroom!” she announced. “Chess, Finn—didn’t you say in the car that you needed to go to the bathroom, too?”

“Uh, no, I’m fi—” Finn began.

But Chess met Emma’s eyes.

“You’re right, Emma,” he said. “Whether Finn remembers or not, that is a great idea, to do that before we order. . . .”

He hauled Finn up out of his chair. Finn blinked twice, but stopped protesting.

And Emma had to quickly turn toward the door to hide her grin.

She, Chess, and Finn definitely weren’t duplicates of one another. But sometimes they could read each other’s minds, too.

Emma rushed out the door of the private dining room toward the mysterious carvings of the wooden clock. And her brothers were right behind her.

They knew she needed them.