“No—not that one. The other, other one,” Nan said. “Emily. Real bitch, she was.”
“Nan.” Grayson gave his great-grandmother a look.
“God rest her soul,” Nan added.
Grayson moved to Nan’s bench, took her hand, and tried again. “March fifth, nineteen sixty-s—”
Nan whacked Grayson’s foot with her cane. “I heard you the first time.”
“What happened that day?” Lyra asked, taking her chances. “To your Alice?” That was a guess, but it proved to be a good one.
“That was the day,” Nan said, her eyes closing, “that my Alice disappeared.”
Disappeared?Lyra’s eyes darted toward Grayson’s. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“There one day, gone the next.Poof.Not so much as a good-bye. We were poor as dirt back then, so the police weren’t inclined to look too hard for Alice. Tobias didn’t look too hard, either, which made me thinkhethought she’d run away. They’d been courting just a few months at that point, but still—he was the type whowouldhave looked.”
“How long was Alice gone?” Lyra asked.
“Almost a year.”
A year.Lyra wondered if Grayson was thinking about Avery. Abouttests.
“Nan,” Grayson said. “What happened when Alice came back?”
“Stubborn.” Nan’s eyes were still closed. “My Alice was alwaysso stubborn.She wouldn’t tell us where she’d been—not a damn word. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that Tobias would take her back, but he was young, and she wasAlice. He took a few days to think about it, and on the seventh day, he showed up with a box he’d carved himself in one hand and a ring of keys in the other. He told Alice he didn’t need to know where she’d been or what she’d been doing. He gave her the box and told her that as far as he was concerned, she could lock her secrets away inside for as long as she liked.”
A box. Alice’s secrets.Lyra could hardly breathe, but somehow, she managed a question. “And the keys—were they to the box?”
“No.” Nan’s eyes opened. “They didn’t know I was listening. I was a nosy old woman even when I was young.” Nan’s expression glazed over slightly. “I was thirty-eight when Alice disappeared. She was nineteen.”
“Nan.” Grayson shifted to sit beside her. “The keys?”
“Tobias said he’d made them himself while she was gone. He told Alice the story ofhisyear was in those keys—twelve of them on the ring, one for each month he’d spent without her. He let Alice look through them, and once she’d had her fill, Tobias said they’d never speak of that year again.”
Nan stood, leaning more heavily on her cane than she had before.
“What happened to Alice’s box?” Lyra asked.
“Don’t know.” Nan was clearlydone—with them, with this topic, with this night. The old woman made her way slowly to the door and out it.
Once she was gone, Grayson turned to Lyra. “I’ve never seen the box,” he said. “But I do know where we can find the keys.”
Chapter 37
JAMESON
Miracle of miracles, Jamesonhadslept—and dreamed of Avery. Of Tahiti. It had still been dark outside when he’d awoken with an ache where his heart should have been. He’d funneled that ache, that agony, into twin obsessions: the Devil’s Mercy andthe crucible.
The old man’s game for Alice and the one that Hannah had left for Toby.
If Hannah reallywasthe one who wrote that card.Having slept, Jameson had to question that, but he had enough foresight and self-control not to push that issue with his uncle—yet. Sleep had done nothing to dull the intensity pouring off the elder Hawthorne in waves.
Like uncle, like nephew.
For ninety-seven minutes and counting, Jameson and Toby had worked—in tandem and mostly in silence. Acruciblewas a container capable of withstanding the temperatures necessary to melt metals.The Cruciblewas a famous play by Arthur Miller focused on the Salem witch trials. Jameson had speed-read the play from start to finish, researched its theatrical history on the West End and elsewhere in London, and compiled a list of every physical crucible in every museum within thecity limits. There were hundreds, dating back to as early as 80 AD, but a majority of the museum pieces were medieval—some Roman, some Saxon, some fragmented, some whole. Made of stoneware or clay, not a single one of them was anything to look at based on the pictures Jameson had been able to pull up.
“The museums will be opening at ten,” Jameson said, throwing open the twin doors to the terrace and staring straight at the rising sun. He crossed to the balcony railing, resisting the urge to climb upontoit, to balance over a fifty-foot drop.