A Tangle of Knots (18 page)

53

V

A
LL HER LIFE, V HAD COUNTED ON HAVING HER WORDS AVAILABLE
to her whenever she needed to use them. She’d been a master of words, that’s what the reviewers had always said about her. But, V thought as she spotted the red square of the fire alarm, she might have found something even more useful. If she could startle the chameleon just enough, he might show his real face, and V might be able to foil any chameleon-like schemes he’d been hatching.

Her thoughts turned again to the photograph she’d ripped from the book.

The mother.

The father.

A baby girl.

V had been wrong before, thinking she saw Caroline in places she knew she wasn’t. But the mother in that photograph—V would stake her life on it—was Caroline herself, clear as day. V had known her daughter in an instant, if only for the intricate twist of a braid she wore in her hair, the work of Talented fingers. And the baby . . .

Caroline had had a baby. She’d had a baby, and she hadn’t even told her own mother. Tiny, wide-eyed, with a surprising amount of hair for an infant.

Nearing the fire alarm, V tapped her pocket for the reassuring feel of the photo and—with a gasp—discovered that it wasn’t there. Nevertheless, she pressed on. She’d failed to communicate for years when she had the chance; she wasn’t going to give up now.

54

Cady

C
ADY DID NOT EVEN NEED TO TASTE THE CAKE TO KNOW THAT
it was not going to win her any trophies. She hadn’t been able to decide what to make, and so she’d made a disaster. She’d created the whole mess in a daze, hoping for some flicker of inspiration. She’d dumped in the ingredients in a daze, clacked the wooden spoon through the bowl in a daze, and poured the tragic-looking batter into the pan in a daze. And inspiration had not come.

Apple caramel mocha poppy seed, that’s what she’d ended up with. It certainly wasn’t Cady’s favorite. It wasn’t
anybody’s
favorite. She dropped the cake on the counter and yanked off her oven mitts. Cady had lost for sure, and now she’d let down Toby and Miss Mallory, too. She was as big a disaster as the mess in the pan, and all because she didn’t know what kind of cake she’d like. She’d spent so many years wondering what other people might want that she’d never bothered to figure it out for herself. Suddenly, Cady felt like she didn’t even know who she was.

Cady gazed down at the disastrous cake she’d just pulled from the oven. It didn’t merely look unappetizing. It looked . . . unnatural. She sloped her nose nearer to the counter.

At the top of the cake, barely visible underneath a thin layer of crumbs, was a fist-size piece of paper. A photograph.

A woman.

A man.

A baby girl.

Cady brought her nose so close to the cake that she nearly nudged it. The woman had a braid, a beautifully elaborate one, trailing down her shoulder. And the baby—Cady blinked once, then twice—the baby girl had a braid as well. Cady was looking at a picture of herself. The woman with the braid must be her mother, and the man—with the crooked nose and the cowlicked hair—was her father.

Cady was so busy staring at the photograph, her mind swirling with questions, that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until it was too late.

There was a sudden, icy spark at her forehead.

55

Toby

E
VERY TIME THE MEMORY WEASELED ITS WAY BACK INSIDE
Toby’s brain, it stung, just as fiercely as though not a single day had passed. It twisted his stomach and made his cheeks burn. Caused his heart to shrivel and shrink inside him. Watching Miss Mallory now, the way she was examining her hands so closely to avoid watching Cady at her baking station, he remembered it all. And it stung.

“Please don’t take her away from me,” Toby said softly. “Please. If that’s what you were going to say tonight. Please don’t take Cady away. I don’t . . . I don’t think I could stand it.”

Miss Mallory kept her gaze on her hands and said nothing.

Toby knew what it was to lose a child. That terrible day in Africa, just one week after his wife had died, he hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known how it would be, the guilt and the worry that he would suffer every day to follow. So he’d made the decision that he’d come to regret for the rest of his life. At the time, it had seemed wise. After all, what had he understood then about fatherhood? Absolutely nothing. Better his precious baby Cora grow up with new parents who could give her everything she wanted than with a half-wit like him. That’s what he’d thought at the time.

Afterward, he’d run. Changed his face, changed his name. Taken the job he’d never wanted at the Emporium. But Toby had never forgiven himself.

Beside him, Miss Mallory cleared her throat quietly. “I won’t take her away,” she said, still studying her hands. “Even if I wanted to, I . . . You’re the father she was meant to have. I can tell.” She clutched her fist to her chest, as though a severe pain stung her there. “And all I want is for Cady to be happy.”

Toby nodded at that, hope beginning to rise inside him once more. “I guess that’s all we can ask for, isn’t it?” he said slowly. “All we
should
ask for.” He did want Cady to be happy. Cora, too—the daughter he’d never see again. Sometimes he found himself wondering what had happened to her after Dolores Asher had taken her to the orphanage that day in Madagascar. Had she found happiness, that tiny pixie of a girl with her beautiful braided hair? He hoped so. He hoped that, somewhere, she was half as happy as—

Down on the main exhibition area, there was Cady, just as she had been a moment before. But someone else was there, too.

The old man. His palm was pressed to Cady’s forehead.

Toby leapt to his feet. “Stop!” he cried. It might be too late to help her, but he had to try anyway. That’s what fathers were meant to do. “Dad!
Stop!
”

56

Zane

T
HERE WAS A PIERCING SQUEAL, AN ALARM, AND FROM THE
ceiling the safety sprinklers sprung to life, showering water down the entire length of the floor. The crowd screeched and began bumping this way and that, all of them. It was chaos.

“Zane!” Marigold hollered at him. He turned his focus from the book to where his sister was pointing, across the room. He could just make them out through the screaming crowd and the gushing sprinklers. Cady was staring down at her cake, bewildered. And the Owner, with the icy stone of Talent poised to melt into his skin, was grinning. “We have to stop him!” Marigold cried. “We have to stop him, Zane! Oh, I wish I had the Talent to
do
something.”

Zane turned to her, eyes wide. What was it the man in the gray suit had said, about shooting in a healthy direction?

“You do,” he told her.

57

The Owner

T
HE OWNER DIDN’T NOTICE IT AS THE FIRST SPRAY OF THE
sprinklers hit his skin, but the arc of spit that flew from across the room was so perfectly aimed that there was no way it
couldn’t
have hit his hand.

Smack!

It knocked the icy stone of precious Talent to the floor.

The Owner dropped to his hands and knees, scrambling to retrieve it. But even as he grasped at the Talent, the spray from the sprinklers began to melt the stone, right before his eyes. A fine mist rose from the pale pebble, slowly at first, then faster and faster. And soon everything Mason Darlington Burgess had ever wanted slipped through his fingers and floated up into the air, where it spread like a fog throughout the entire wide room. The Owner screamed. He shouted. He wailed. But his cries were lost in the piercing screech of the fire alarm, and he knew it was useless.

He’d spent his whole life searching for one thing, and now it was gone.

58

Cady

A
S THE SPRINKLERS GUSHED DOWN, CADY’S GAZE FOLLOWED
the curious mist, traveling up from the Owner on the floor to the crowd around her.

And then her eyes settled on one face in particular. The face of someone who was rushing her way. It was Toby.

And then it wasn’t.

With every drop of water that landed on Toby’s face, Cady noticed something new about him.

His upturned eyebrows.

His crooked nose.

His cowlicked hair.

Cady turned to the terrible cake she’d baked and ripped out the photograph that had found its way inside.

“Dad?” she breathed.

There was no doubt about it. The man standing before her was one and the same as the man in the photo. Cady’s father.

Toby looked from Cady to the photograph, slowly seeming to understand, while from the slick floor the Owner let out a low moan. Toby wiped a soaking lock of hair from his forehead and blinked the droplets from his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cady. I should’ve . . . I never meant . . .” He blinked again. “I’m so sorry. For everything. What can I do to make it up to you? Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

Cady took in Toby’s new face, from his unruly hair to his pointy chin. “I . . .” Her brain whirled slowly. Her forehead ached with a slight chill. What
did
she want? Cady looked around the soaking mess of a room. The screeching alarm, the panicked bakers, the sopping cakes. And then, Cady couldn’t help it.

She laughed.

“I think I just want to go home,” she said.

And Toby—with his imperfect, crooked-nosed face—offered her a real smile. “Whatever makes you happy,” he told her.