Time Windows by Kathryn Reiss

Author:Kathryn Reiss [Reiss, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

12

Miranda actually dropped her fork. Everyone laughed at her dramatic response, Mrs. Wainwright loudest of all.

"My goodness!" She adjusted one of her colorful scarves. "How awful to be living in a house with a secret hiding place and not even know it."

"But where is it?" asked Miranda.

"I don't know—I've never seen it," said Mrs. Wainwright. "But I do know the story behind it."

Miranda sat back in her chair and stared across the table expectantly. She could see the branches of trees outside the window slashing back and forth in the wind and could hear the muted gush of rain pouring from the gutters. She waited for Mrs. Wainwright's story with a thrill of excitement. These new revelations about her house could only add to the magic it held for her already.

"Come on, Aunt El," Buddy urged. "It's story time!"

"She wants us to beg her," teased Dan. "Please tell? Pretty please?"

"You two just hush," replied the old woman. "Let me make sure I've got the facts straight."

Mr. Hooton poured her another cup of coffee. "Here, this will get the old story-telling juices flowing."

She sipped her coffee and patted her lips neatly with a napkin. Miranda felt ready to burst with waiting. Mrs. Wainwright finally cleared her throat.

"If I recall correctly," she began, "the hiding space in your house, Miranda dear, was built even before ours here. But there was a big problem with the Galworthys' secret room—one nobody found out about until the first family of slaves to hide there nearly suffocated after a few hours in the small space. The hiding place was airtight!"

"Were the people all right?" Miranda asked.

"They were unconscious, I believe. But the Galworthys were able to revive them. The fugitives stayed at the house a week to recuperate, and then the Galworthys helped them move on. I remember hearing that while they waited, the father of the escaping family, who was a carpenter, built a special dollhouse for the Galworthy children. He worked on it day and night—maybe to keep himself from worrying about the journey that lay ahead for him and his family. It was supposed to be a miniature of the big house—in every detail except for the hidden room."

She paused and sipped her coffee, looking around the table at her rapt audience. "Perhaps leaving out the secret room was his message to all the children who would play with the house—that houses shouldn't have to have secret rooms. That people shouldn't have to be on the run."

It was on the tip of Miranda's tongue to tell them she had found the dollhouse, but the same odd sense that she mustn't tell her parents about the magic kept her silent now.

"How did they fix the secret room?" she asked instead. "I mean so they could use it again. Did they just poke some airholes in it, or something?"

"No, they decided not to use the room again. They were afraid that any modifications that would make the room safe would also make it easier to detect.

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