A Tangle of Knots

Also by Lisa Graff:

Double Dog Dare

Sophie Simon Solves Them All

Umbrella Summer

The Life and Crimes of Bernetta Wallflower

The Thing About Georgie

PHILOMEL BOOKS

A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

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Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Graff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat & Tm. Off. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Graff, Lisa (Lisa Colleen), 1981– A tangle of knots / Lisa Graff. p. cm. Summary: “Destiny leads 11-year-old Cady to a peanut butter factory, a family of children searching for their own Talents, and a Talent Thief who will alter her life forever”—Provided by publisher. Includes cake recipes. [1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Baking—Fiction. 3. Ability—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. Family life—New York—Fiction. 6. Poughkeepsie (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.G751577Tan 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012009573

ISBN 978-1-101-60778-7

To Marty,

a classic chocolate cake

(plain, no frosting)

Prologue

T
HE LINE FOR THE NUMBER 36 BUS OUT OF HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI,
was the longest at the station. All sorts of folks were making the long trip north. There were slouchers and starers. A few snoozers. Puckered here and there along the row were men stretching their limbs, hoping to catch a hint of a breeze. A woman fanned her daughter with a newspaper whose headline read S
CIENTISTS
B
ELIEVE
E
XTINCT
J
UPITER
B
IRD
M
AY
H
AVE
B
EEN
L
ARGEST
F
LYING ANIMAL
. A toddler munched a cracker, sprinkling sticky crumbs across his mother’s chest. No one seemed to have the energy to speak above a grumble.

The air was thick.

Amidst them all sat a young man, exactly one day past his eighteenth birthday, perched carefully atop his powder blue suitcase. His new brown suit was stiff with creases, not yet shaped to fit his angles. He tapped his foot on the ground, breathing in the last few moments before he claimed his inheritance. His Fate. As soon as he climbed aboard that bus, the young man would be on his way.

Next to him, a small girl who had been losing at a game of jacks for some several minutes suddenly snatched up all seven pieces before the ball bounced down, her hand whipping through the air too quickly to follow.

“Hey!” cried the girl’s competitor, a boy at least three years her senior. “No fair! You said you weren’t any good at jacks!”

The girl grinned a sly little grin. “I’m not good,” she replied, tossing the pieces in the air in a whir of jacks-and-ball-and-jacks. She caught them expertly. “I’m Talented.” She pocketed the jacks and held out her hand, where the boy begrudgingly deposited a nickel.

The young man watched as the girl scurried across the line to her mother, who was leafing through a magazine. When the girl proudly produced her nickel, her mother scolded, “Not
again,
Susan.” But she only
tsk
ed as her daughter flipped the coin in the air. The young man couldn’t help but grin at the scene.
A Talent is only rewarding if you wield it well.
That’s what his mother had always told him. It seemed to him that this little girl was a master wielder.

“That’s a nice suitcase you’ve got there.”

The young man looked up. Standing before him was a man in a gray suit. He might have been forty, he might have been older, and he was, quite easily, the largest man in the bus station, his enormous frame threatening even the brick support posts for sturdiest structure.

“Sorry?” the young man replied.

“Your suitcase. It’s a choice model. Top of the line.”

Instinctively, the young man grasped the sides of the suitcase just a little tighter. It was a very old suitcase, but sturdy and well-loved, boxy and large as a small child, with worn corners and three small dimples near the left clasp. Across the top a cursive scrawl of silver thread spelled out the brand:
St. Anthony’s.

Hidden inside the lining was a single slip of paper that constituted the bulk of the young man’s inheritance.

The young man cleared his throat.
He’s just a friendly traveler,
he told himself,
making conversation.
“Thanks,” he replied. “It was my mother’s.”

The words had slipped out without his meaning them to—
it was
—and he hoped that the older fellow hadn’t noticed his use of the past tense. The last thing the young man wanted to talk about was his mother. But the large man in the gray suit merely grinned a sideways sort of grin. It was a grin that suggested he knew more about the world than he was letting on.

As though to thank him for his silence, the young man offered his hand. “Mason Burgess,” he introduced himself.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mason,” the older fellow replied, leaning down to reach Mason’s outstretched hand. The man had a surprisingly firm shake. “Mind if I wait with you?” And with the ease of a man a third his size, he plopped down his worn leather duffel and folded his legs underneath him.

He did not mention his name.

“So,” the fellow said to Mason, lifting his hat from his head to wipe his brow. “Going north, are you?”

“Poughkeepsie,” Mason confirmed.

“New York,” the fellow said, nodding. He seemed not surprised by the information. “Good for you.”

“And you?” Mason asked, making conversation.

“I’m a traveling salesman,” he replied, although it was most certainly not the answer to Mason’s question. “Odds and ends, mostly. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a knot?” He opened the right side of his jacket. Inside, where most salesmen might hang watches or whatnots, the old man had pinned dozens and dozens of knots. There were slipknots and topknots and figure eights, and tens more Mason had no name for.

Mason squinted. “You certainly are Talented,” he told the man graciously. “Do you . . .” He searched for his manners. “. . . sell many knots, then?”

The older fellow dropped shut the side of his jacket. “Heavens, no,” he said, the last of a guffaw trickling over his words. “These are mostly for entertainment. It’s a horribly useless Talent, tying knots. Could have been blessed with a Talent for finance or medicine. Even a log-splitting Talent might have done me some good. But no, I find myself with knot-tying.”

“Well, the only knot I’ve mastered is the one to tie my shoelaces,” Mason admitted. He couldn’t help it; he liked the odd fellow. “Every other knot just looks like a tangled mess to me.”

The man in the gray suit thought about that. “Well, that’s the thing about knots, isn’t it?” he replied after a moment. “If you don’t know the trick, it’s a muddled predicament. But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected. I find them rather beautiful, really.”

“Mmm.” Mason had nothing more to say on the subject, so he changed course. “It must be an interesting job, traveling salesman,” he said. “Seeing the world.”

“It isn’t bad, at that,” the man told him. “I’m saving up for a hot air balloon. Faster travel, and the views are amazing.”

Without warning, the bus’s engine roared to life.
“Number 36 to Philadelphia!”
the bus driver bellowed.
“Transfer to points north!”
Mason rose to his feet.

“Now, just you remember,” the man in the gray suit told Mason, as though they were continuing a previous conversation, “keep an eye on that suitcase of yours.”

“Of course I will,” Mason snapped, picking the suitcase up by the handle. It weighed less than a loaf of bread. “I don’t . . .” Mason shook his head.
I don’t need another father
—that’s what he’d begun to say. “I’ll be careful,” he told the man. “Are you traveling all the way to Philadelphia? Perhaps we might sit next to each other.”

The man’s gaze was still fixed on Mason’s suitcase. “I had one once,” he said. “A St. Anthony’s suitcase. Did you know there were only three dozen ever crafted? Shut down production after that.” He returned his hat to his head and bent to scoop up his duffel. “I let it out of my sight, if you can believe such a thing. Let go of the suitcase for one minute and . . .” He suddenly seemed to notice the line was pressing them forward, and shook his head as he and Mason inched closer to the bus. “Just be sure to keep an eye on it, young man. The St. Anthony’s brand, they seem to have a tendency to . . . redistribute themselves.”

Mason looked down to discover he was clutching his suitcase close to his chest, like a baby with a rag doll.
Ridiculous.
He lowered his arms, turning from the man in the gray suit just long enough to close the gap in the line.

“I’d be happy to offer you the window seat, if you’d like,” Mason said over his shoulder as they continued toward the bus. “Or the aisle, if you’d rather stretch your le—”

Mason stopped talking. Because he had turned around again.

And the man in the gray suit was no longer there.

“Suitcase and ticket, please, son.”

Mason whirled back around. “Huh?” he muttered to the driver, momentarily confused by his outstretched hand. Where had the large man gone off to? There was no sign of him anywhere.

“Suitcase and ticket, please.”

Mason shook himself back to his senses and handed the bus driver his ticket.

“That’ll have to go under the bus,” the driver told him, pointing to the suitcase in Mason’s hand. “No room for it up above.”

Mason felt his eyes go wide. “But I . . .” He bit his lip.
You are a grown man now,
he told himself.
Speak with confidence.
“No, thank you, sir. I’d rather keep it with me.”

The driver crossed his arms with the impatience of a man too long at his job. “Son, the bus is full, and there’s no room for that boxy bag in the overhead. Either you get on board with your suitcase underneath, or both of you stay here. It’s up to you.” And he reached around Mason’s head to grab the ticket of the next passenger in line.

* * * 

When the bus pulled into the Philadelphia station, Mason Burgess was the first to disembark. He tapped his foot impatiently as the driver unlocked the baggage compartment, then fumbled through the other passengers’ bags to find his own.

It was not there.

Mason checked everywhere. He searched the other passengers as they trotted off with their own suitcases. He crawled inside the baggage compartment to check for hidden nooks and corners. He even threatened the driver. But it was no use.

The suitcase, and the one slim, irreplaceable slip of paper inside it, was gone.