SAM SHOOK HER head and clutched the letter to her chest, not caring that she creased it. “It’s addressed to me and Caitlin,” Sam said. “It’s our letter.”
“They aren’t allowed to send it to you,” Aunt Vicky said. “We have to give the letter to your caseworkers. They’ll read it first and decide if they can give it to you.”
“But it’s my letter,” Sam said.
Where was Caitlin? Caitlin needed to step in and be Sam’s voice. She needed to fight for them. She always fought for them.
Caitlin sat on the sofa, her earbuds in her hand. She wasn’t smiling. “Give Aunt Vicky the letter, Sam.”
Sam shook her head again, stunned. Betrayed. “Don’t you want to read it? Don’t you want to know?”
“I don’t,” Caitlin said. She cradled her cast. “I don’t ever want to know.”
“We can fix it. He’s sorry. He’ll never do it again.” Sam held out the letter, so sure of the words it would contain. Words she had heard so many times.
Caitlin’s eyes grew small and hot, like the embers in the fireplace. She stood up and lifted her broken arm. “This isn’t like the other stuff.”
The other stuff. Sam knew what Caitlin meant. The punches. The squeezes. The pinches.
All the things that hurt but never left a mark.
“It was a mistake,” Sam said, her gaze bouncing between Hannah and Aunt Vicky and Caitlin, desperate for at least one of them to agree with her. “An accident.”
Her mother had said that in the hospital. To the nurses, the doctors, the police. It was only an accident.
“Stop it, Sam,” Caitlin said. “You don’t know what I had to do to get us out of there.”
Caitlin’s body in her father’s arms. Her mother’s voice. What did you do, Grant?
“It’s okay, baby,” Aunt Vicky said, and this time she was talking to Caitlin, not to Sam, and she was using a soft voice. A velvet voice. No one ever talked to Caitlin like that. Caitlin was the strong child. The perfect child. The brave child. No one was supposed to feel sorry for her, not ever. Caitlin didn’t let them.
Sam looked to Hannah. Hannah, who usually did most of the talking, but who had somehow fallen silent, her fingers on her lips as if to keep her words inside.
Caitlin stood stiffly by the sofa, and now she was talking to all of them, not just to Sam. “I didn’t want them to make excuses this time. I thought…” She paused, frustrated, as she tried to find her words. “I thought, if he did something really bad … they’d know. They’d finally know.”
They. All the people who came to the hospital and asked questions. All the people who weren’t in their family, who weren’t supposed to know.
Aunt Vicky crossed the room and pulled Caitlin close, wrapped her tightly in her arms, and held her. Caitlin wasn’t crying, but tears slid down Aunt Vicky’s face. Tears out of nowhere. “I know,” Aunt Vicky said. “I understand.”
Sam waited for Caitlin to push Aunt Vicky away.
Push her away! Break the spell!
“It’s going to be okay,” Aunt Vicky said into Caitlin’s hair. “You’re safe now.”
And in that moment, Sam realized that Caitlin had broken their family, and she’d done it on purpose. She’d pushed their father too far. She’d wanted to go to the hospital. She’d wanted the police to come. She’d wanted the caseworkers to ask all those horrible questions, over and over, until Sam and Caitlin had ended up on a plane to another state.
Hannah touched Sam’s arm, but Sam jerked away.
“I’m sorry I startled you,” Hannah said quickly. She held out her hand. “I need you to give me the letter, sweetie. Your caseworkers want to read everything first, and we need to do as they ask. We all just want to protect you and your sister.”
Sam shook her head. No. No, no, no.
“Give it to her, Sam,” Caitlin said angrily. Aunt Vicky put her hand on Caitlin’s shoulder.
Sam backed away from the kitchen table. Backed away from Hannah standing with her hand out, and from Caitlin and Aunt Vicky pretending to be a family by the sofa.
How long had Sam’s parents been trying to contact her?
How many letters had Hannah and Aunt Vicky stolen?
A prickly ball lodged itself in Sam’s throat. Words couldn’t get out, not without a lot of other stuff getting out, too. What could she do?
She could run.
She could rip open the letter and try to read it.
She could rip it up so no one could read it.
But such open defiance was so risky. So dangerous. It was not a thing Sam knew how to do. Hannah and Aunt Vicky had asked for the letter, and Sam had no real choice but to give it to them.
It felt like she was handing over her entire self.
“Thank you,” Hannah said. She folded the letter in half and put it into her pocket. Sam watched her carefully with a storm in her eyes. Hannah patted her pocket and pulled her shirt over the top. She might as well have used a lock and key. “Hopefully I’ll be able to get that back to you in a few days.”
Sam clenched her fists but kept them hidden behind her back.
When she got the Golden Acorn, none of this would matter. She would fix Caitlin, and then there’d be no hospital, no Oregon, no Aunt Vicky and Hannah and Armen and Lucas. There would be no letter, because Sam would be back home with her parents the whole time.
She’d been foolish to think she could stay here, even for another night.
Outside, the storm whined and raged. The windows rattled. The trees danced with wild abandon.
The storm was not warning her. The storm was calling to her.
You’re the hero now, not Caitlin.
She needs you. Your parents need you.
Find the Golden Acorn and make everything right.
“I want to go to my room,” Sam said.
“Sam, I’m sorry,” Caitlin said. Aunt Vicky’s hand was still on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk to you. Stay out here with us, Sam. We’ll play a game or something. Whatever you want.”
Caitlin was trying to pull Sam off course. In Greek mythology, creatures called sirens would sit on the rocks and sing to sailors, enticing them to dive off their ships and drown in the ocean. There was a time when Sam would have followed Caitlin anywhere, done whatever she asked. But not anymore.
The Golden Acorn was waiting.
A squirrel ran past the window, her blue scarf trailing after her.
“I want to go to my room,” Sam said again, her voice steely.
“Go for a few minutes,” Hannah said. “We’ll check on you soon, and maybe then you’ll want to come back out with us. Okay?”
Sam would have said anything to leave that room. “Okay” was easy. She stomped down the hallway as Aunt Vicky pulled Caitlin into another hug.
Sam knew better than to trust cottages in the forest. They were full of magic. You ate the food, you drank the hot chocolate, and then you were stuck there forever. Sam had to fight—to keep fighting—or else she might fall under the same spell that had so clearly taken Caitlin.
Before she even got to her room, Sam noticed the leaves. Piles of them, bright green and glistening with rain, and inexplicably scattered across the hallway floor, as if blown in by the wind.
She got to her room and found the window wide open, her curtains drenched. Her bedding looked soaked, too, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was the acorns on her bedspread. Some perfect and some smashed. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Acorns absolutely everywhere.
Sam’s hand shook as she closed her bedroom door and locked it, quick, before anyone could see.
Thunder rolled through the sky, distant and approving.
Sam emptied the pens and notebooks from her backpack onto the floor to make room for the items she might need for her quest.
A flashlight.
BriAnn’s last letter, the one with all the pictures drawn on the envelope.
Her rumpled copy of The Hobbit.
Extra socks.
A granola bar.
The library book that would soon be overdue.
The compass Lucas had given her.
Sam’s fingers lingered a moment over the compass, then she shoved it into the pack.
She pulled on Caitlin’s hoodie and wished she had a raincoat to put over it. She’d almost never needed a raincoat back home, and it wasn’t one of the things her mother or the caseworkers had packed for her.
Sam pulled on her boots and tugged her backpack closed.
It was time.
She tossed her backpack out the window and clambered after it.