A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(26)

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 furrowed. “I need to see the place where it happened.”



* * *



? ? ?

I led them through knee-high grass to the edge of the woods, then plunged into the gloomy pine forest. I showed them how to navigate the spiny underbrush so they didn’t get cut on saw-toothed palmettoes or tangled in thickets of vine, and how to identify and avoid the patches where snakes made their nests. As we made our way, I retold the story of what happened that fateful evening—the night that had split my life into Before and After. The panicked call I’d gotten from Abe while I was at work. My delay in getting here because I’d had to wait to catch a ride with a friend—a delay that may have either cost my grandfather his life, or saved mine. How I’d found the house a wreck, then noticed my grandfather’s still-lit flashlight in the grass, shining into the woods. Fording into the black trees, just like we were doing now, and then— A rustle in the brush sent everyone leaping into the air.

“It’s just a raccoon!” I said. “Don’t worry, if there were any hollows around right now, I’d feel it.”

We circled a patch of brush that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t be sure I’d found the exact spot where my grandfather died. The woods in Florida grew quickly, and since I’d been here last it had squirmed and shifted into an unfamiliar new configuration. I guess I couldn’t have found it blindfolded, after all. It had been too many months.

I stepped into a sunny clearing where the vines were low and the brush seemed to have been tamped down. “It was around here. I think.”

We gathered in a loose circle and observed a spontaneous moment of silence. Then, one by one, my friends took turns saying goodbye to him.

“You were a great man, Abraham Portman,” said Millard. “Peculiarkind could use more like you. We miss you dearly.”

“It isn’t fair, what happened to you,” said Bronwyn. “I wish we could have protected you like you used to protect us.”

“Thank you for sending Jacob,” said Olive. “We would all be dead without him.”