Just Harriet by Elana K. Arnold

Author:Elana K. Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Nanu popped her head into the front room to see what I was doing. “Ah, spending some time with the Gingerbread House, are you?” she said. “Your father used to love that old thing.”

I almost jumped out of my skin, I felt so excited. Nanu had called the dollhouse the Gingerbread House—the same place Dad had said “the real treasure” was.

But what kind of treasure could fit into a dollhouse? Nothing very big, and nothing that would need a big old key to unlock.

I looked carefully in each room, starting with the attic and working my way down, searching for treasure. It was more interesting than I remembered it being, now that I was looking so carefully—there was lots of furniture with lots of details, like a little pillow and blanket on each bed, and tiny clothes inside the drawers of doll-sized dressers, and a framed painting of a tree full of birds hanging over the fireplace.

But as far as I could tell, there was no treasure hidden in the dollhouse.

I got another muffin and sat next to Moneypenny on the window seat. Nanu had called the dollhouse the Gingerbread House, but there wasn’t any treasure in it. But Dad had said there was treasure in the Gingerbread House. Either Dad was lying, or I had a real puzzle on my hands. I was beginning to think that spending the summer with Nanu was looking a little bit better, if every morning was going to start out like this, with muffins and hot chocolate and mysteries.

Then everyone got up and left except me and Nanu, and they all left their dirty dishes and cups right there on the tables.

“Well,” said Nanu, eyeing all the dishes, “good thing we have four hands between us.”

Running a B and B isn’t all muffins and hot chocolate, it turns out.

Nanu took pity on me, though. After we’d carried all the dishes into the kitchen she said, “Why don’t you go work on the shed for a little while? Later on, maybe you can help me refresh the guest rooms.”

I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. I was out the back door and across the backyard faster than you could say Moneypenny, who followed along at a much more leisurely pace.

I think our bubble adventure that morning must have given her some extra pep, because usually Moneypenny only went outside if someone was dragging her. She sniffed around for a little while by the bureau I’d pulled out of the shed, but then she flopped in the shade of a tree near the fig-leaf-covered back wall and fell asleep.

The first thing I did when I was inside the shed (after I turned on the light and checked for spiders) was pull the key out of my pocket to inspect it. Sure enough, when I turned the key upside down, the shapes I saw definitely looked like two Ws. It was my dad’s, I was sure of it. I decided to put the dollhouse out of my mind and concentrate on the key instead.

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