The Glass Castle (25 page)

“My guess is they were looking for a door, some secret access….”

“And it’s an east-facing wall,” she whispered.

Avery pushed and pulled the bare shelf with all her strength, but it would not budge.

She felt foolish, but she would be back. She would not give up until she learned what lay behind the door. She hoped she knew the answer.

Avery returned to the bunk room to finish her letter to Kendrick.

Soon, Kate came and sat on her own bed next to Avery’s.

“You did a good thing today,” Kate said quietly, stretching out.

Avery set down her pen, wondering if she would ever be able to finish. “I don’t understand why Angelina needed to destroy the books. If she was concerned about the mess, the old woman could have commissioned us to put the books back on the shelves. I would have done it myself.”

Kate smiled. “I love how much you love books. It’s one of your good qualities. Leaders are readers.”

Avery nodded. Her mother had always said the same thing.

“The books never posed a threat to the queen,” Avery said. “I doubt she even reads.”

“Maybe she wants the library for something else. Maybe she’s looking for the same thing you are trying to find.”

Avery sighed.

“Be careful,” Kate said. “When people around here get close to discovering something, strange things happen to them.”

Avery turned back to her letter and began to write.

The sooner she told Kendrick how she felt, the better.

Chapter 37

A Win

Nothing, Avery decided, made her hungrier than speaking her mind. After folding her letter to Kendrick neatly in thirds, she slid it under her pillow and went in search of leftovers in the kitchen. Finding little, she settled for apples and chocolate.

In her letter to Kendrick she had explained carefully that she had returned because of a growing friendship with someone in the castle.
I missed him,
she wrote,
and even though I cannot explain it, I had to return.

She then apologized to Kendrick—though she did not use his name, of course—that she could never think of him as more than a brother and that she was sorry if she had in any way led him to believe otherwise.

She added a simple invitation to meet and discuss it further.

She knew Kendrick would never take her up on a meeting.

He still refused to look her in the eye.

After going back for bread and cheese, Avery wandered into the storage room containing Elizabeth’s possessions, where stacks upon stacks of salvaged books now flooded the space as well. Had they not reminded her of so many more that had been destroyed, the very sight of these things of beauty would have thrilled her.

She paged through random selections on subjects ranging from royal history to science to literature and everything in between. She decided she would create a library in the kids’ quarters and encourage her peers to study.

She would ask Tuck to allow her to make a presentation at the next midnight court where she would tell them, “There’s no reason we can’t go to school! As long as we have books, we have teachers!”

Maybe she would even ask the chaplain to share the verse he had read the previous Sunday.
Let no man despise you because of your youth.

The next book Avery opened made her blood turn cold.

Inside the cover, inscribed on a wax bookplate, was the name
Godfrey.

She had a dozen such books in her play castle, so there was no mistaking it. Her father made the bookplates by hand.

Right beneath the bookplate—in her mother’s handwriting—came the admonishment:
This book must not be destroyed.

It was an otherwise nondescript book about travel, but it had belonged to her parents and obviously had been important to her mother. How it had found its way to the castle, Avery had no idea, but she was beginning to suspect her family had deep ties to the castle. She pressed it to her heart.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she kept this one for her own collection.

She needed to understand its significance.

Chapter 38

True Love

Avery sent a note to the old woman via a messenger asking for a meeting.

She could not ignore Edward’s instruction
—“If you can get the old woman to talk to you, you may discover some of the castle’s deepest secrets.”

While she waited for a reply, she spent hours slowly reading her mother’s book, carefully turning each page, wishing—hoping—for some message that might allow it all to make sense. She remembered nothing of this book or her mother saying anything about it, and nothing in the pictures and maps of faraway places brought her any closer to solving the mysteries of the castle.

She scanned the margins for handwritten notes or secret code but found nothing.

She stayed up reading the book until candle after candle burned itself out.

But she wasn’t about to give up. Thick and boring as it was, she would see it through to the end.

As she scanned the pages, she allowed her mind to wander to the days following her mother’s disappearance and the odd way her father never searched for her.

Avery had peppered the villagers with questions, passing out handwritten flyers and asking everyone she met whether or not they recognized a painting of her mother or had seen her.

The answer had always been the same. No.

Her father never prohibited her from searching, but he had never helped her either.

Her determination to find answers had resulted in endless arguments with her father that she could never win. She would harness that determination now.

On the second night of waiting for the old woman’s reply, Avery was surprised to discover a message under her pillow. Eagerly she opened it, hoping the old woman had agreed, and was even more surprised that it was from Kendrick, asking her to meet tomorrow after breakfast in the great room.

Of course she would meet him. The sooner this was finished, the better.

Things had grown only stranger between her and Kendrick. Each time she tried talking to him, he grew uncomfortable and walked away. He hadn’t even come to help rescue the books in the library, which made no sense seeing he loved them as much as she did. Maybe now they could talk openly and get their friendship back on track.

In the morning, Avery dressed in the newest gown Kate had given her—an emerald dress that shimmered when she walked. She brushed her hair into a smooth knot at the base of her neck—believing it made her look more intelligent and hopefully even a tad remorseful.

“There is usually something you can apologize for in any hurtful situation,
” her mother had always encouraged her. And especially where Kendrick was involved, this was true.

After breakfast she lingered, silently rehearsing what she would say.
I want us to be friends, to be able to talk about books and castle news like we once did. We need to stick together here in these walls to save our lives. We can do that, right?

She wished she’d told Kate about the meeting and had sought her advice.

The hundred feet or so between the dining room and the great room felt like miles.

I want us to befriends, to be able to talk about books and castle news.

She rehearsed the words until she was confident they would roll off her tongue.

When she arrived, there he stood, tall and broad shouldered, but
not
Kendrick.

“Tuck?”

Avery looked to see if Kendrick was close by. Maybe Kendrick had invited him. The two were usually inseparable. She didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Tuck.

“Yes,” Tuck said. But his normal look of confidence had been replaced by uncertainty, those green eyes full of something Avery had never seen.

As he approached, Avery realized Kendrick wasn’t coming.

“But it was Kendrick’s handwriting,” she blurted. “I compared it to another sample.”

Tuck laughed as red crept into his cheeks. He looked at the floor. “I can’t write.”

An orchestra of cymbals collided in Avery’s head. “You what?”

“Or read, actually. It’s embarrassing, but I never learned.”

Avery shook her head, speechless.

“I asked Kendrick to write for me. He thought the poetry was ridiculous and avoided you like the plague, but I made him write it anyway. You did receive the poetry, didn’t you? I hope he wrote what I said.”

Avery nodded. “But I had no idea it was from you.”

“What do you think I was trying to tell you on the watch turret when we had our picnic?”

Avery stared, words abandoning her. She had been preoccupied that day.

“I got your reply about being brother and sister,” Tuck continued. “That’s fine. I understand.”

“Being friends is good,” she managed.

“Just one question, then,” Tuck said, “since we’re friends—”

Avery nodded again.

“Who is it you care so much for, the one for whom you returned to the castle?”

Avery shrugged and looked away, feeling the heat in her own face now.

This conversation was not going as planned.

Tuck ducked his head, forcing her to look him in the eye.

“You believed you were writing Kendrick, so who were you talking about? Was it Edward? It would explain your conversation on the stairs and why you left.”