Vespers Rising (The 39 Clues #11)(28)

As Vesper prepared to jump, he saw a movement beneath him. He tried to look down, but his feet lifted off the surface. He was flying.

His vision filled with the trunk of a thick oak tree, racing closer. He drew his arms in for protection. And he screamed.

The last thing he saw before impact was a great black shadow.

“Help!” Master Winthrop cried out. It had begun to rain. He felt scared. Why had Father run ahead of him? It was dark and cold.

There. Just ahead. He could see Father in his cloak, crouching on the ground.

At that moment he was glad for the rain. Maybe it would disguise his crying. Father never liked it when he cried.

As he drew closer, he slowed. The carriage — the one that had nearly killed them — was scattered across the forest in pieces. It looked as if Father had taken the whole thing apart himself.

“Father?” he said.

Master Winthrop crept closer, his heart beating like a bunny rabbit’s. His father remained silent, his back to Winthrop. In the distance, two men had been tied to an old oak tree. He recognized old Hargrove, and the second man was dressed in a livery suit. There appeared to have been a third captive, but he had managed to escape, the ropes in a heap beside the tree.

“Are they … alive?” Winthrop said, placing his hand on his father’s shoulder.

But Luke Cahill’s eyes remained fixed on the ground in front of them. It had been smoothed. Etched deeply into the soil, in precise letters, was a message that made Winthrop’s blood run cold:

GRACE CAHILL 1942

Gordon Korman


1942. Most of the world was at war. In every corner of the globe, people were fighting and dying for one cause or another.

And what was Grace Cahill doing at this critical moment in her planet’s history?

Changing diapers.

Not diapers — nappies, she corrected herself, deftly fastening a large safety pin at each of the child’s small hips. Here in Europe they used the British term.

Baby Fiske burped loudly and tried to wiggle out of her grasp. Grace held on with a firm hand. Parts of the lawn at their family’s villa in Monte Carlo were so steeply sloped that a wayward toddler might roll all the way down the bluff and drop into the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean.

She called him Kamikaze sometimes, after those crazy pilots from the other war — the one in the Pacific. Fiske always seemed to be looking for some great peril to hurl himself into. The little stinker was walking, so it had become nearly impossible to keep him out of trouble. He was a year old now. Grace could scarcely believe it had been that long since …

She had gotten good at fighting back tears. Her stomach, though, was harder to control. She recognized the feeling from her flying lessons — the sensation of hitting an air pocket and dropping five hundred feet in a matter of seconds. She experienced it on solid ground every time she thought of her mother.

“You have a healthy baby son,” the doctor had informed James Cahill, “but your wife …” He said more, but their father’s raw, tortured breathing filled in the blanks for Grace and her older sister, Beatrice. Father shed not a single tear over the death of his wife, but he was never the same. His reaction seemed more appropriate to a record-setting marathon run than an expression of grief — hyperventilation and drenching sweats.

Not that the Cahill daughters had much opportunity to develop an instinct for their father’s emotions. The time he had spent in Monte Carlo since the funeral could be measured in days, possibly hours. James Cahill was so devastated by the loss of his wife that he wouldn’t even look at his newborn son. He had turned to travel, as if trying to outrun his grief. The family had not heard from him in months, save for the occasional postcard from exotic locales — Rio de Janeiro, Baffin Island, Ulaanbaatar.

Baby Fiske yanked a croquet hoop out of the ground, and Grace barely managed to wrest it from his hands before he could plunge the ends into his eyes. How was it possible to love a child so deeply when he was the author of all the suffering in your life? His birth had cost Grace her mother. And it was costing Grace her father, too. The picture of James Cahill walking out the door was permanently imprinted on her retinas. He’d claimed to be leaving on business “for a few days.” But his vast pile of luggage — enough to require a second taxi to follow him to the airfield — revealed the lie. She could still feel Father’s arms around her as he said goodbye. He’d seemed like a drowning man holding on to a life preserver. Beatrice had noticed the same thing.

Then he was gone — without so much as a sideways glance at the bassinet that held his infant son.

Fiske reached for the croquet hoop, howling in frustration as Grace held it just beyond his grasp. She scooped him up in her arms and carried him, kicking and screaming, to the main house. Someday, she told herself, her brother would be a contributing member of society. Just as someday this war would be over, and someday Father would come home. That was what her life had become: too many somedays; not enough nows.

“How can you take care of that little beast?” came a sharp voice behind her.

Grace wheeled. She hadn’t seen Beatrice standing by the doorway.

“Someone has to,” Grace replied. “Giselle won’t. Leave it to Father to abandon us with a useless governess.”

“How dare you speak that way of Father?” Beatrice snapped. “Did you expect him to go on as if nothing happened? He lost his wife.”