MR. SANCHEZ—THEIR NEW caseworker—was due to arrive at ten, and Sam intended to spend every minute beforehand locked securely in her room. Aunt Vicky was bound to discover her missing computer mouse. What if she asked Sam about it? What if she somehow knew? What if Sam had left fingerprints, and Aunt Vicky or Hannah owned one of those personal crime kits and dusted the scene and ran her prints through the computer and—
“Caitlin! Sam!” Hannah called from the kitchen. “Breakfast!”
Well, there was no escaping her fate now.
Caitlin’s door opened. Sam waited a beat before opening her own and was surprised to run smack into her sister.
“You can go to breakfast without me, you know,” Caitlin said quietly.
“I know,” Sam answered, chagrined.
“I know you know.” Caitlin sighed, but not in a mean way. It was like she was trying to say something but didn’t know how.
“What are you going to say today?” Sam asked. “If Mr. Sanchez asks.”
Caitlin shrugged. “Same things I said last time, I guess.”
“I mean about this place,” Sam said. “About … how you like it here.”
Caitlin held Sam’s gaze. “I’m going to tell him the truth. It’s a pretty nice place, and it’s great having a treadmill in my room. Don’t you think it’s okay?”
Sam’s mind filled with all the things she missed. The movie nights. The afternoon donuts at the food cart on their block. Her after-school “study sessions” with BriAnn where they did nothing but look at animals on pet adoption websites and assign them superpowers and new names.
“But what about your softball team?” Sam asked. “All your friends are in another state.”
Caitlin leaned against the wall. “Yeah, well, they’re still my friends even if they’re not in front of my face every day. And I’ll make new ones here. So will you.”
Back home, Caitlin was a total grouch half the time when Sam asked her a question. It was weird that she actually answered things here, and without giving Sam a hard time.
“Just give Mr. Sanchez a chance, okay?” Caitlin asked.
Grudgingly, Sam said, “Fine.”
Caitlin punched Sam’s shoulder playfully, like she sometimes did to her softball friends. “There’s the team spirit! Now let’s go eat. I’m half dead from starving.”
Aunt Vicky and Hannah bustled around the kitchen, pouring cereal, wiping surfaces, and trying to find cabinet space for all the mugs and dishes that seemed permanently at home on the countertops. Sam ate breakfast and tried not to stare at the computers on the table. More specifically, at what was missing from the computers.
As if she could read Sam’s thoughts, Aunt Vicky said, “Should we move the computers? Does it look bad that they’re on the table where we eat?”
Sam spooned a huge heap of cereal flakes into her mouth and crunched furiously.
Hannah gave Aunt Vicky’s arm a squeeze. “This is how we live, and that’s what we want him to see. It’s fine.”
When someone said things were “fine,” they almost never were.
But Sam didn’t want to think about Mr. Sanchez’s impending visit, or about what was going to happen when Aunt Vicky realized her mouse was gone. Instead, she ate her cereal and thought about her new test.
The riddle said the “gift” was precious, and that it “brings joy to she who holds it dear.” Clearly it was something Aunt Vicky cherished. Sam would have to watch her closely to see what she loved. It might look suspicious to write everything down in a notebook, so she’d have to keep track in her head.
Today Aunt Vicky was wearing long shorts and a pink short-sleeved button-down shirt. No earrings or necklace that Sam could see. A watch with a thick green strap clung to her wrist, and a plain gold ring circled one of her fingers.
Nothing seemed particularly special. Sam’s mental notebook remained blank.
Mr. Sanchez arrived fifteen minutes before ten, while Aunt Vicky was still mopping the kitchen floor. She put the mop and bucket in the corner, wiped her hands on her shorts, and let him in.
Mr. Sanchez was taller than Sam’s dad, with arms and shoulders like tree trunks, and he wore the tiniest wire-rimmed glasses Sam had ever seen. They looked like doll glasses on his big, square face. How did they even stay on?
A woman who introduced herself as Sally Overton-Black had come with him. She was tall, too, but more like a sapling with thin arms and dangly earrings.
Mr. Sanchez and Sally Overton-Black smiled a lot. Not as much as Hannah did, but still more than people who were responsible for keeping Sam from her parents should. And they wanted to talk to Sam first. Alone. That was nothing to smile about.
Sam sat at Aunt Vicky’s kitchen table, her feet wrapped around the legs of the wooden chair, her hands toying with the silver ring she’d put on that morning for strength. She knew better than to scowl, but she was thinking it. Scowl, scowl, scowl.
Mr. Sanchez and Sally Overton-Black leaned back in their chairs on the other side of the table and smiled and sipped from mugs of tea, before Hannah and Aunt Vicky and Caitlin all went outside to see the chickens.
“This is an informal conversation, Samantha,” Mr. Sanchez said. “We know you’ve been through a lot of big changes lately, and we just want to see how you’re doing.” Sally nodded. And smiled. Mr. Sanchez adjusted his tiny glasses. “We’re counting on you to help us, Sam. All you have to do is tell us the truth. Can you do that?”
They always said it like that. Truth. As if it were both fragile and indestructible at the same time.
“Everything is fine,” Sam said. She wanted to cross her arms, but she knew how that would look, like she was being stubborn. Maybe even a little belligerent.
Which she definitely was.
Mr. Sanchez and Sally waited.
Sam unclenched her hands and snaked one into her pocket, where she’d hidden a playing card. The Page of Walnuts. The squirrel had been drawn with a determined expression that reminded her of Birch when she was wielding her twig sword.
The waiting continued. Sam hated the silence. She hated not knowing what they were thinking. Not knowing what they were going to do. After Caitlin’s accident—which was the word Sam’s mother used, but maybe not the right word—people asked Sam a lot of questions about what had happened. Sam had stayed quiet. Stayed loyal. Heroes never gave up their secrets under duress. Sam had sipped water out of a paper cup, then secretly ripped the cup to pieces under the table.
But in the end, she’d given in. She’d told them things. She’d talked. Mostly to ease the tension but also because, sometimes, it felt kind of good.
Sam didn’t want to tell Mr. Sanchez or Sally Overton-Black anything at all, but if she had to, she could tell them that she liked the chickens and didn’t mind eating eggs every day. That there were way too many bugs here. That she’d made several new friends, but they were the fuzzy, four-legged-animal kind, and they talked.
But maybe Mr. Sanchez would use something she said as an excuse to keep her parents away, like Mrs. Washington had done before.
Sam pressed her lips closed even tighter. She was not willing to take the risk.
Movement caught her eye outside the window, a splash of red-and-white fur in the trees. She bit her lip and stared into the shadows—even during bright sunlight, they were still there, places where the light didn’t reach. Sam didn’t know how, but she sensed Ashander was standing in one of them, hidden.
He was waiting to see what she would say. To see whether she’d stay loyal.
“Everything is fine,” Sam said again, determined to sound more convincing.
“It’s okay if you miss your parents, Sam,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Do you miss them?”
The question was so direct that it caught Sam off guard. She looked down so they wouldn’t see her surprise. Of course she missed her own parents! She missed her mom humming in the morning, when she was reading magazines at the kitchen table with her coffee but no one else had come out of their rooms yet. She missed her father pausing the nature documentaries on TV to explain something interesting about an animal, something that even the documentary people didn’t know. She missed going to Caitlin’s games as a family, on the days that Caitlin played well and won.
But also … there were things she didn’t miss.
Like Caitlin’s games where she made a mistake, or lost. Like being sick with worry when she got a bad grade at school, or got caught passing notes with BriAnn and had to take a letter home to be signed.
But she was absolutely not going to say any of those things.
“It’s also okay if you like it here,” Mr. Sanchez continued. Sally started to say something, but Mr. Sanchez put his hand on her wrist. Just a little, slight touch. Sally settled back into her chair. “Your aunt Vicky is very glad to have you here, Sam. She’s very glad that you’re safe. She might not have figured out how to tell you that yet. This is a lot of change for her, too. But everyone wants what’s best for you.”
We only want what’s best for you. Another line that all grown-ups liked to say. Did any of them actually mean it?
Sam stayed loyal. She stayed silent.
“Have you made any new friends?” Mr. Sanchez asked.
That question, at least, seemed safe to answer—and she was eager to change the subject. She nodded.
“Lucas,” she said. “His dad’s name is Armen.”
Sally scribbled in a notebook.
“Can you tell me anything about Lucas?” Mr. Sanchez asked. “What does he like to do?”
“He knits without knowing what he’s making,” Sam said, “which I still think is really strange.”
Mr. Sanchez and Sally both chuckled. Mr. Sanchez said, “That does sound strange.”
“But he’s also nice,” Sam added quickly. She thought about how he had run back to get a Band-Aid.
“That’s good. Have you been spending a lot of time with Lucas?”
“No, not since…” Sam trailed off. She hadn’t seen Lucas since she’d thrown his compass at him. The very compass he’d tried to give her as a present. “No, I’ve been busy.”
Mr. Sanchez and Sally asked her a few more questions about Lucas and his father. She answered blandly, trying not to give them too much information.
Back in Los Angeles, people always wanted to know about her father, about what he’d done. They’d asked her general questions at first and then very specific ones about that last night. She was on guard for those kinds of questions from Mr. Sanchez, but they never came. Before long, Mr. Sanchez nodded to Sally, and she closed her notebook.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose and peered closely at Sam. “Is there anything you’d like to tell us, or ask us?”
A million questions popped into her head: Where are my parents now? Are they okay? Do they miss me? Are they coming to visit? When can we go home? She knew she shouldn’t ask any of them, but—
“When can I see my parents?” Sam blurted.
Mr. Sanchez did not look surprised by her outburst, but he did take a moment to think before answering. “Your parents have a list of things they need to do before they have permission to see you, Sam. Whether they do those things or not is up to them. Our priority is to keep you and your sister safe. But no matter what, it will take some time. Okay?”
Sam nodded, even though she felt entirely numb. Even though her heart felt like it was filled with stones.
It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.
“Do you have any other questions?” Sally asked.
“No,” Sam said sharply.
Mr. Sanchez looked the tiniest bit sad. “Then thank you so much for your time, Samantha. Can you go outside and ask your sister to come in, please?”
Sam thought she’d misheard. Was she really done?
“It’s not always going to be so hard, Sam,” Mr. Sanchez said. “It’ll get easier. You’ll see.”
Sam had no intention of being here long enough for it to get easier. In fact, this was probably the last time she would ever see Mr. Sanchez or Sally Overton-Black, and she was perfectly okay with that.
She stood up, her chair scraping loudly across the floor, and started to head outside. As she reached for the doorknob, she glanced out the window and saw Aunt Vicky talking with Armen and Hannah by the chicken coop.
Everyone was out of the house except Sam. Everyone. This was her one chance to sneak into Aunt Vicky’s room unnoticed and figure out the answer to the second riddle.
If Sam could prove her loyalty to Ashander and get the Golden Acorn, then it wouldn’t matter if her parents followed any of Mr. Sanchez’s awful rules.
“Is it okay if I use the bathroom first?” Sam asked loudly.
Mr. Sanchez was busy scribbling notes on his pad. He hadn’t touched it once while they’d been talking, but now, apparently, he had a lot to say.
“Of course you can,” Sally said. She gave Sam a big smile, then started writing on her own pad in large, loopy script.
Good.
Sam headed down the hallway, but instead of going into the bathroom, she slipped inside her aunt’s room.
Aunt Vicky and Hannah had the biggest bedroom in the house, but it was still smaller than Sam’s room back home. One long dresser sat along the far wall, its surface covered in plants and stacks of folded clothes, with a big giraffe lamp standing guard from one end. The riddle had described the object she was supposed to steal as radiant gold. The giraffe was yellowish, so it went on Sam’s mental list.
Over the dresser hung a mosaic of mirrors in all shapes and sizes, mixed in with framed photos. Sam perused them for clues, but they were mostly of smiling people who Sam didn’t recognize.
A big queen bed sat in the middle of the room, under the window. Squat nightstands flanked it on both sides. One of the nightstands was covered in books, and if she’d had more time, Sam would have sat and read every last title. But none of them had gold covers or sparkled, and therefore none of them were the answer to the riddle.
Before she could assess the contents of the other nightstand, her eyes stopped on the pile of green and blue pillows at the head of the bed … and on the creature practically holding court from the middle of them.
A faded yellow rabbit sat atop the pillows, only this particular rabbit was holding a small stuffed scimitar and wearing an eyepatch … just like some of the animals in Aunt Vicky’s bins.
Except this rabbit wasn’t in a bin. It was clearly special. Maybe even precious, like in the riddle.
Sam tiptoed to the bed and stroked the bunny’s ear. It was still soft, despite looking like it had waged and won a hundred battles.
Did it fit the other qualities mentioned in the riddle? Was it the very stuff of dreams? It was stuffed, certainly, so that part fit. Not even Ashander could argue with her logic! But the dreams part was confusing.
Sam added the bunny to her list of things Aunt Vicky might love and checked her watch. The moon glared at her from the watch face. Only the tiniest silver lining was still missing. She had so little time! And she’d already been in the room several minutes. Mr. Sanchez or Sally might be getting suspicious.
But before she opened the door, she went back to the pictures on the wall and looked at them more carefully. There were a dozen at least, and lots of them seemed to be photos of Aunt Vicky and Hannah with Hannah’s family.
Nowhere, not in any picture, was Sam’s dad.
It was like he’d been completely erased from Aunt Vicky’s life.
Sam clenched her jaw. That’s what they wanted Sam to do, too. To erase her own father and mother. To forget them completely. To betray them.
Never, Sam vowed silently. She could prove her loyalty to Ashander and her parents at the same time. Once she had the Golden Acorn, it was Oregon that she’d forget.