You were supposed to say they were your colleagues. So he was away, and that was good, but he might be back at any time between now and five, and that was bad. Still, they had some time, and Trent was determined they weren’t going to spend it squabbling about who swore what to who. ‘Listen to me, you guys,’ he said, and was gratified to see that they actually were listening, their differences and recriminations forgotten in the excitement of an investigation. They had also been caught by Trent’s inability to explain what Lissa had found. All three of them shared, at least to some extent, Brian’s simple faith in Trent – if Trent was puzzled by something, if Trent thought that something was strange and just possibly amazing, they all thought so. Laurie spoke for all of them when she said: ‘Just tell us what to do, Trent – we’ll do it.’ ‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘We’ll need some things.’ He took a deep breath and began explaining what they were.

Once they were convened around the crack at the end of the third-floor hallway, Trent held Lissa up so she could shine the beam of a small flashlight – it was the one their mother used to inspect their ears, eyes, and noses when they weren’t feeling well – into the crack. They could all see the metal; it wasn’t shiny enough to throw back a clear reflection of the beam, but it shone silkily just the same. Steel, was Trent’s opinion – steel, or some sort of alloy. ‘What’s an alloy, Trent?’ Brian asked.

Trent shook his head. He didn’t know exactly. He turned to Laurie and asked her to give him the drill.

Brian and Lissa exchanged an uneasy glance as Laurie passed it over. It had come from the basement workshop, and the basement was the one remaining place in the house, which was their real father’s. Daddy Lew hadn’t been down there a dozen times since he had married Catherine Bradbury. The smaller children knew that as well as Trent and Laurie. They weren’t afraid Daddy Lew would notice someone had been using the drill; it was the holes in the wall outside his study they were worried about. Neither one of them said this out loud, but Trent read it on their troubled faces.