‘You sure you saw metal in there?’ Trent asked. ‘We checked this side, Bri.’ ‘Look for yourself,’ Brian said, and Trent did. There was no need of a flashlight; this crack was wider, and there was no question about the metal at the bottom of it. After a long look, Trent told them he had to go to the hardware store, right away.

‘Why?’ Lissa asked.

‘I want to get some plaster. I don’t want him to see that crack.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘And I especially don’t want him to see the metal inside it.’

Lissa frowned at him. ‘Why not, Trent?’

But Trent didn’t exactly know. At least, not yet. They started drilling again, and this time they found metal behind all the walls on the third floor, including Lew’s study. Trent snuck in there one afternoon with the drill while Lew was at the college and their mother was out shopping for the upcoming faculty party.

The former Mrs. Bradbury looked very pale and drawn these days – even Lissa had noticed – but when any of the children asked her if she was okay, she always flashed a troubling, over-bright smile and told them never better, in the pink, rolling in clover. Laurie, who could be blunt, told her she looked too thin. Oh no, her mother responded, Lew says I was turning into a blob over in England – all those rich teas. She was just trying to get back into fighting trim, that was all.

Laurie knew better, but not even Laurie was blunt enough to call her mother a liar to her face. If all four of them had come to her at once – ganged up on her, so to speak – they might have gotten a different story. But not even Trent thought of doing that. One of Lew’s advanced degrees was hanging on the wall over his desk in a frame. While the other children clustered outside the door, nearly vomiting with terror, Trent removed the framed degree from its hook, laid it on the desk, and drilled a pinhole in the center of the square where it had been. Two inches in, the drill hit metal.