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Finding Esme Page 13


  “It’s just me,” I whispered. “Help me up!” He reached out, grabbed me, and pulled me up through the window. I tumbled unceremoniously into his room. By the time I’d sat up, he’d pulled the shades back down.

  “What are you doing here?” he whispered sleepily. He was wearing an old T-shirt with Daffy Duck saying “That’s all Folks!” across the front. It was at least five years too small with a hole above the k, and what must’ve been Granger’s plaid boxers because they went down to his knees. He looked embarrassed, then got back in bed and pulled the covers up to his chin.

  I crawled on top of the bed.

  “Isn’t it Porky Pig who says, “That’s all Folks?” I asked. “Where’d you get that old thing, anyway?” As soon as I said it, I felt bad, knowing that his mama had probably gotten it at the church thrift sale. But I was mad and hurt.

  He just blinked at me. Finally I said, “I can’t believe you betrayed me.”

  “I sent the drawing to the paleontologist,” he said hesitantly, like he knew what was coming.

  “He’s at our house right now. He came. Can you believe that? He came all the way from Dallas. And you did it. I can’t believe it. You did it. Was it because I didn’t tell you about Granger?” I asked, tears in my eyes.

  “No! Of course not!” he whispered. “You said you wanted to keep her a secret. You said you weren’t ready and I was beginning to think you were right. But everyone’s been saying that you all might lose the farm.”

  I stretched out on my back and looked at the ceiling. “I never thought in a million years when I gave you the drawing you’d betray me.”

  “The newspaper article was right inside the dinosaur book,” he said. “All I had to do was ask Miss Ferriday to look the address up. You knew he’d come, didn’t you? Somehow, some way.”

  “No,” I said, tears rolling down my face. “I didn’t. I never, ever thought you could do something like that to me.”

  “I did it for your family, Esme,” he said. “And if you lost the farm, I’d lose you.”

  He’d done it for my family and for me. I looked over at him and saw his eyes tearing up. I turned away from Finch and we were quiet a good long time. I could hear the soft coo of the doves right outside his window now.

  “Well, what did he say?” Finch said after a while. “Did you take him up the hill?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He went up. And he says he’s never seen anything like her. That she’s worth a lot of money.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Miss Lilah’s dying,” Finch said wearily as he reached over and wiped my face.

  I touched my cheek where his fingers had just wiped away my tears, feeling the warmth. “I know.”

  When I woke up sometime later, Finch was sound asleep. He looked just like he did when he was little, in that holey Daffy Duck shirt, but I knew his world wasn’t so simple anymore. I crept off the bed and went to the window. One of the dogs was sitting right outside, his eyes piercing, waiting.

  I’d have to go out the front door. I tiptoed through the house and let myself out. I was carefully creeping down the porch steps when I realized someone was there in the semidarkness.

  It was Pearl Mae, sitting on the swing, swaying back and forth and pushing off with her bare feet, her face like stone. I went on down the steps, but something made me turn back.

  “Tell me where my Granger is,” she said.

  My toes started to hum and I closed my eyes a moment. “I don’t know where. But he’s nearby, Mrs. Aberdeen. He was away . . . and now he’s come back.”

  She stopped swinging abruptly, and as I ran into the night, I felt a tiny, every so tiny, ray of hope radiating through me. Perhaps there was some good that came with the gift of finding things.

  When I reached our orchard, I thought I saw a figure swirling around in the peach trees. June Rain. I crept a little closer then stopped. Not June Rain, but a fine mist spinning around and around, round and round, gracefully like a dancer doing a pirouette. Then it disappeared, rising into the dark sky. Lilah. I stood there, staring at the darkness, not believing what I’d just seen.

  Old Jack barked when I came through the kitchen door. He sniffed at my hands, then went back to the door, wriggling and whining to be let out.

  “He thinks someone’s out there,” said Bee. She was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee.

  “There is,” I mumbled. “There was,” I corrected myself. “But not anymore. I think perhaps Miss Lilah might have passed away.”

  “She did. A few hours ago. Miss Opal called. She went peacefully. It was her time.”

  “Yes, I know that,” I said flatly. I sat across from Bee, slumping down with a sigh.

  “I was worried about you,” Bee said.

  I didn’t believe her. She’d never worried about me, not for a minute.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “You don’t know where?” I asked her sarcastically. “You can’t see everything?”

  She calmly took another sip of her coffee. I knew the answer to that now. That we couldn’t see or feel everything, only a little. And sometimes the things we wanted to know the most, God kept from us.

  “I think Granger might be back,” I said. Old Jack sniffed at my feet, then licked my fingers. I rubbed his head.

  “He had to come home someday.” She took another long sip of coffee.

  “Did you put the professor in Paps’s room?” I asked.

  “Nowhere else to put him. Flobelle locks her boardinghouse at eight o’clock sharp. He can stay there from now on.”

  “What is it you see when you find things?” I asked.

  She looked out the window. “It’s really not just seeing things, Esme, as you’re probably discovering. It’s everything. What I hear. How I taste. How I smell. All my senses working together, fine-tuned like a piano. You’re just at the beginning, that’s all. And you’ll be different than me. Much different.”

  “But why us?”

  “Everyone has intuition. We Hennessey girls just got a double dose of it. But there’s an art to finding lost things, Esme. Give it time, be patient. Fine-tune it.” She got up wearily and lingered in the kitchen doorway.

  “I don’t think I want it.”

  “Neither did I, Esme,” said Bee. “Neither did I. I’ve asked the good Lord to take it back on more than one occasion, believe me. Eventually you’ll have to come to peace with the fact that it is here to stay. Forever, Esme. Forever.”

  “What was it, Bee?” I asked her. “What happened to Harlan when he was a baby?”

  “Oh, Esme, leave it,” she said. “Let’s go to sleep before the sun comes up.”

  Chapter 16

  The house was eerily quiet when I woke up a few hours later. I looked out the window and saw that the professor’s car was still parked in the drive. I threw on my T-shirt, my muddied overalls, and moccasins, scrambled downstairs, banged through the screen door, and ran up the hill as fast as my feet would take me. Sure enough, he was there on his knees and holding the tiniest little tool, no bigger than a toothpick, scraping away at Louella Goodbones’s eye socket.

  “So, what were you using to uncover it?” he asked.

  I held my hands on my hips, trying not to breathe hard, not wanting him to know how mad I was. “One of my grandpa’s tools,” I finally told him, in between breaths. “A woodworking file, I think.”

  “Just as I thought,” he murmured. “We’re lucky you didn’t do any substantial damage.” Then he added, “But I can tell you were gentle with her.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said sarcastically. He continued to scrape away.

  “I understand,” he said. “You’re not happy I’m here. You liked having a secret. You feel like she’s all yours. And she always will be in a way, Esme McCauley. She’s yours. You found her. That will never, ever change.”

  He leaned back, took his hat off, peering up at me. “You love her, don’t you?”
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  I looked under the tractor to see if Bump was there, pretending I hadn’t heard him.

  “I’ll love her, too, Esme. I promise.”

  I watched him work, watched him scrape at the dirt. I realized how I could have damaged her with my lack of expertise, and a lump grew in my throat.

  “We don’t know much about their eyesight,” he started, knowing I was listening, “but we can tell something by the size and shape of the orbital cavity. The eye sockets are pointed forward for bifocal vision, making their visual acuity as sharp as a razor. She probably could see a fly on a boulder up to two miles away. Up here were the ears.” He pointed at her skull. “Dinosaurs could hear a bird call from a mile away, did you know that? And the teeth. This one could probably bite a car in half if it wanted to. She needed those teeth. It was a hard, hard world to survive in.”

  “What did she eat?” I found myself saying, and then felt like I’d betrayed her by asking a question.

  “Small rodents, other small dinosaurs—whatever it could catch. And if it had to, it ate plants, berries. We no longer think it was one or the other, but whatever it took to survive. Look here—” He pointed to one of her teeth. “There’s wear on these teeth, here. They did most of the chomping. The ones in the back were for grinding, bone crushers. And here,” he said. “Come feel.” I leaned down to where he pointed to the top of her orbital cavity. I ran my finger across a rim of gentle bumps. “That could be a blinder, hooding its eyes from the sun. Or it could have been a low ridge of horns.”

  My eyes grew big as I stood back and looked at her. I thought I knew a lot about what I’d uncovered. I didn’t, not really. Professor Abramanov already knew more, knew so much more than me. More than I ever would.

  “So tell me, Esme,” he said. “Why do you think it’s a female?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do,” I said. “Do you think it could be a her?”

  “Not sure yet. It’s a shot in the dark, Esme; unless we find her sitting on a nest of eggs we may never know. We have much to learn. There are many theories that females had extra ‘finery’ you might say—a ridgy back, or a crested brilled skull to attract the males. But some say it could be the other way around.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone walking up the hill.

  It was a man wearing ugly plaid pants and a hat. Around his neck was a fancy camera with a flash as big and shiny as a hubcap. I recognized him now. Gordy Haines. He’d been let go at his newspaper job in Paradise for making up quotes in news stories and had shown up at the Hollis Register.

  “Professor T.?” I whispered. “Did you make a phone call this morning from our house?”

  The professor glanced over at Gordy Haines, then kept on scraping. “Only to my department head. I wanted to get the ball rolling. He wouldn’t have told anyone about this, though, I promise.”

  “We have a party line, Professor. You didn’t know it, but you practically told the whole town.” The professor stood up, brushing off his khakis, just in time to shake hands with the reporter.

  “Lordy, Lordy. Well, what do we have here?” Gordy asked, although it was obvious he already knew. “I heard we had a T. rex, Professor Abramanov.” He’d done his homework. “I guess that’s just perfect for you since you’re nicknamed T. Rex, isn’t it?” Gordy didn’t have much of a chin, and it disappeared completely under his goofy smile.

  The professor grimaced. “No, not a T. rex, but something big nonetheless. Something really big. Esme McCauley here found it and has been excavating it. She sent me a drawing of it, and I was intrigued, and came to get a look at the bones myself.”

  Although Gordy was holding a pen and pad, he wasn’t writing any of this down. His eyes were glued on Louella Goodbones.

  “Well, if you don’t mind, Professor, I’d like to take a photo of you and Esme for the Register. This is big news in Hollis. Bigger than anything we’ve had in a long time. This is something the whole world will be interested in.” Gordy winked at me.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Professor T. turned, shielding me from Gordy. “We don’t have much choice now, Esme,” he said in a low voice. “He’d probably come up here on the sly anyway and take his photos. I don’t like it either, but the more publicity we get, the more she’s going to be worth. And if everyone was listening like you said, they’re all going to be here soon, snooping around, taking their own photos.” He looked sincere, but I think he liked this course of events; somehow he’d come out on top.

  Gordy had started snapping a few photos of Louella Goodbones while we talked. “Stop it! Stop it!” I yelled. “You don’t have permission! You have no right, neither of you, to be up here!” I turned away, breathing hard, tears springing to my eyes.

  Professor T. looked at Gordy and held up his hand. “She’s right. Please. Stop. Give her a moment.”

  Gordy nodded but fired off another half dozen shots. Professor T. tilted his head at me, and I knew I had no choice. I was trapped.

  I’m sorry, Louella Goodbones.

  Finch was right. I knew it the minute I’d started that drawing, the minute I found that article on the professor. This was all my doing and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.

  The flash went off again—everything blended together faster and faster, everything that had changed this summer, faster and faster, until the world went dark and the next thing I knew I was falling.

  I could see several pairs of shoes surrounding me when I came to. Then I heard Bee yelling at Gordy Haines to get off her property, then Old Jack was licking my ear, then Bo’s worried face loomed over me, inspecting me real close, nose to nose, then he disappeared from view. I peered around, my whole body tingling, taking a while to wake up. We weren’t on Solace Hill anymore. I was in the shade, looking up at ripe peaches, and in the distance I could hear Miss Lilah’s geese squawking. They’d made it through the fence again.

  I glanced around. The professor. Did he carry me to the orchard? I focused on the layers of grime and dust and mud on his boots.

  He held out his hand and helped me up. I looked down, embarrassed at the dirty clothes I’d thrown on that morning. I hadn’t even brushed my hair or teeth and now I was going to be in the Hollis Register for the whole world to see. Bee was walking Gordy to his car, talking to him animatedly, Bo following behind. Old Jack was chasing the geese through the trees now as Sugar Pie watched disinterestedly from her pasture.

  “I’m getting back to work,” Professor T. said to me. “You coming?”

  I shook my head, then ran off into the woods.

  Bee told me that when Harlan was ten, he’d come home one time with six bee stings on his face. He resembled a giant red balloon with two little beady eyes. He’d said that he’d been hungry and decided to stick his hand straight into the hive and help himself to the honey. Bee told him he was a first-rate fool to do such a thing, that sometimes something that you love the most can hurt you. I’d feared those bees my whole life, but that’s where I went now. I stayed a safe distance from the hives and watched the bees buzzing to and fro. Harlan had painted those hives years after he’d been stung, all those swirls, with not a care in the world that he’d be stung again.

  I walked over and stuck my hand right in, deep down into the warm honey. I kept it there as the bees droned like tiny, busy, lawn mowers and waited for them to sting me. But nothing happened, nothing at all. I pulled my hand out a minute later, stepping back, looking at the hives in awe. I didn’t want the honey anymore. I let the big, gooey glob drip slowly from my hand, watching the bees go on with their day as though I’d never even been there. Then my toes started to vibrate, and I knew something was up somewhere.

  I headed toward Harlan’s cabin, but then I heard squealing and Jewell’s little bell tinkling. I came upon her, sitting in the woods. She must have gotten out of her enclosure. Maybe that’s what my toes had been feeling. I picked her up, but she squealed so I put her down. I ran on through the woods, Jewell trotting behind
me until I reached Harlan’s cabin. I left Jewell snuffling around in the bushes outside. I opened the door and walked straight into Granger Aberdeen. We both let out a scream and Granger fell back on his rear, knocking over one of Harlan’s paintings.

  “What are you doing here?” he yelled. He looked awful, like a rat straight from the sewer. He even had a little beard and he stunk to high heaven.

  “This is my Daddy Harlan’s place,” I blurted out. “What are you doing here?” I looked around for any sign of Luther Stump or Johnny Wallet.

  He laughed as he got up. “You don’t think I know that, Weasie?”

  I cringed. It suddenly struck me as really strange being here with him, and him calling me by that silly name from long ago, when he was wanted by the police.

  “Did you do it, Granger?” I asked.

  “Is that what everyone thinks?” He looked at me, his eyes wide. “Is that what my family thinks?”

  I shrugged. “Your daddy searched for you high and low for a long time.”

  He seemed surprised by that, then sat down wearily on the one chair in the cabin as though he were a hundred years old. “It was Luther who shot that man. It was an accident. It was dark; we couldn’t see. We’d been drinking. And then he was right there next to us, scaring the jeepers out of us. Looked like Rumpelstiltskin with that raggedy beard—talking funny, real strange. Said he was a traveling prophet. Said he was looking for someone.”

  The hairs on my arm rose. I leaned back on the door, wondering why he was telling it all to me.

  “And then he asked for some of our whiskey, said a little sin wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Granger continued. “Luther was reaching over to pour him a cup when the gun went off. He died instantly. I would’ve helped him if I could, but there was nothing we could do. I’ve never been more scared in my life. We scattered, found each other, then traveled together for a while—”

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I left them in New Mexico. Hitched my way back here.”