A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,29

let’s get this place shipshape.”

We dove in and started working. Emma took charge, giving orders like a drill sergeant, which I think helped keep her mind from wandering into painful territory. “Books on shelves. Clothes in closets. Trash in cans!”

With one hand, Bronwyn lifted Abe’s easy chair over her head. “Where does this go?”

We dusted and swept. We threw open windows to let in fresh air. Bronwyn took room-sized carpets into the yard and beat the dust out of them—by herself. Even Enoch didn’t seem to mind the work once we settled into a rhythm. Everything was coated with dust and grime, and it got onto our hands and clothes and in our hair. But nobody minded.

As we worked, I saw ghostly images of my grandfather everywhere. In his plaid chair, reading one of his spy novels. At the living room window, silhouetted against a bright afternoon, just watching—for the postman, he would say, and chuckle. Stooped over a pot of Polish stew in the kitchen, tending it while telling me stories. At the big drawing table he kept in the garage, pushpins and yarn spread out everywhere, making maps with me on a summer afternoon. “Where should the river go?” he would say, handing me a blue marker. “What about the town?” White hair rising like tendrils of smoke from his scalp. “Here maybe is better?” he’d say, urging my hand a little this way or that.

When my friends and I were finished, we went out to the lanai, seeking refuge in the slight breeze and mopping our brows. Enoch had been right, of course—no one would care that the work had been done. It was a gesture, useless but meaningful. Abe’s friends had not been able to attend his funeral. Somehow, cleaning his house had become their goodbye.

“You guys didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“We know,” said Bronwyn. “But it felt good.”

She popped the top on a soda we’d found in the fridge, then took a long drink, burped, and passed it to Emma.

“I’m only sorry the others couldn’t be here,” said Emma, taking a small sip. “We should bring them later, so they can see it, too.”

“We’re not finished, are we?” said Enoch. He actually sounded let down.

“That’s the whole house,” I replied. “Unless you want to clean the yard, too.”

“What about the war room?” asked Millard.

“The what?”

“You know, where Abe planned attacks on hollowgast, received encoded communications from other hollow-hunters, et cetera . . . he must have had one.”

“He, uh—No, he didn’t.”

“Maybe he didn’t tell you about it,” said Enoch. “It was probably full of top secret stuff, and you were just too small and dumb to understand.”

“I’m sure if Abe had had a war room, Jacob would have known,” said Emma.

“Yeah,” I said. Though I wasn’t so sure. I was the same kid who, after my grandfather had told me the truth about the peculiars, had let bullies at school convince me it was a fairy tale. I’d basically called him a liar to his face, which I know had hurt his feelings. So maybe he wouldn’t have trusted me with a secret like that, because I hadn’t trusted him. And anyway, how could you hide something like a war room in a little house like this?

“What about a basement?” asked Bronwyn. “Abe must have had a fortified basement to protect against hollowgast attacks.”

“If he’d had a place like that,” I said, getting frustrated, “then he wouldn’t have gotten killed by a hollowgast, would he?”

Bronwyn looked hurt. There was a brief, awkward silence.

“Jacob?” ventured Olive. “Is this what I think it is?”

She was standing by the screen door that opened to the backyard, running her hand down a long, flapping gash in the netting.

I felt a new flare of anger toward my father. Why hadn’t he fixed it, or torn it out entirely? Why was it still hanging there, like evidence at a crime scene?

“Yeah. That’s where the hollow came in,” I said. “But it didn’t happen here. I found him . . .” I pointed at the woods. “Way out.”

Olive and Bronwyn exchanged a loaded glance. Emma looked at the floor, the color draining from her cheeks. Maybe this, finally, was too much for her.

“There’s nothing to see, really, it’s just bushes and stuff,” I said. “I’m not sure I could find the exact spot again, anyway.”

A lie. I could have found it blindfolded.

“If you could bring yourself to try,” Emma said, looking up at me. Her jaw was set, her brow