Greystone Secrets #1: The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Published: 2019-04-01T23:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Three

Chess

Emma sounds like Mom, too, Chess thought. She sounds exactly like Mom when she’s telling all of us what to do.

A memory tugged at Chess’s brain, one that was so painful and from so long ago that he could only reassemble bits and pieces of it. Maybe it wasn’t even real. Or maybe he just wanted to convince himself it hadn’t happened. He could remember lying on the floor—playing with his red toy car again, maybe. Only, was it after they’d gotten the news that Dad had died? This wasn’t part of his usual memories about Dad’s death. Maybe it was a few days later. Maybe he’d stopped playing. Maybe he’d been screaming and pounding his fists on the floor. Or just lying still, too sad to move. And then Mom was there, picking him up. And he’d cried to her, “I want Daddy back! Make him not dead!”

And Mom had murmured, “Oh, Chessie, I want that, too. But we don’t have that choice. It’s not possible.” She’d smoothed back his hair and hugged him close and whispered, “Other choices, though . . .”

The next thing that had happened was that Mom laughed. It had startled Chess, and somehow, even though he was only four, he’d understood that the laugh wasn’t a happy one. But he’d been too young to understand what a laugh like that could mean instead, and that had frightened him.

He hadn’t understood Mom’s next words, either: “What am I talking about? I have to do this. There isn’t any other choice.”

There isn’t any other choice. He heard the words the way Mom had said them eight years ago, and the way Emma said them now, and the tone was exactly the same. Both of their voices were full of determination—determination fighting with fear. With the determination winning.

It was that similarity that had jarred loose Chess’s memory.

“We’re all like Mom,” Chess said dazedly. “All three of us. We’re all . . . well, not Mom-twins, but . . . mini-Moms, anyway.”

Emma, Finn, and Natalie all snapped their heads toward Chess. All three of them looked puzzled, and Chess realized their conversation had moved on while he’d been stuck in the past, stuck hearing echoes of Mom’s voice in his head. He flushed, realizing how dumb he sounded. He expected Finn to protest, What are you talking about? I’m not like Mom! I’m not a girl!

But Finn, for once in his life, wasn’t rushing to talk. He just looked up at Chess, so trustingly, as if he thought Chess had figured out something big, and he was waiting for Chess to explain.

Ohhhh . . . Maybe I did just figure out something big, Chess thought.

“Mom says we’re the only ones who will be able to read her letter,” he said, pointing to the computer screen Emma had been poring over before they’d heard the voice like Mom’s. He stretched out his arm so his fingers brushed five words in particular in the few lines that were understandable: Only the three of you .

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