Free The Vanishing by Wendy Webb

wouldn’t answer. I left a rather rambling and disjointed message after the beep.
    “Adrian? It’s Julia. Julia Bishop. Your mother is fine. It’s nothingabout her. I don’t want to worry you. I’m just calling to check in with you and talk over a couple of things.” I sighed. “I’m not sure when you’re coming back to Havenwood, so please call me if you can. I saw the news about the fire.”
    I hung up the phone and wished I could take it all back. If Adrian was involved with it somehow, would he want me to know? Or would he think I was so removed from the world here at Havenwood that this news might have eluded me?
    Either way, it didn’t matter. I had made the call. What was done was done.
    Slipping out of the study, I jumped back when I saw Marion standing just outside the door.
    “Marion!” I said, a little too quickly. “You gave me a fright.”
    “Miss Julia,” she said, a tight smile on her face. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
    The knot tightening in my stomach told me I probably shouldn’t be there. I got the distinct feeling she had followed me somehow—but why?
    “Oh!” I said. “I was just making a phone call. I noticed there was no phone in my room and—”
    Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head slightly. “I’ll be happy to take care of that for you, Miss Julia, should you ever have need of using the phone again. Mr. Sinclair doesn’t like unauthorized calls going out of Havenwood.”
    I furrowed my brow at her.
    “I’m sure you understand,” she said, reaching out and pulling the door shut with finality before she disappeared into the dark hallway.
    She’d take care of that for me?
I fumed to myself as I stomped back toward my room. I couldn’t make a phone call now? Where did she get off? What was this, a prison?
    And then it hit me: not a prison, but an isle of exile. He didn’t want unauthorized calls going out of Havenwood because they could be traced back here. For all he knew, I would try to callfriends or relatives or even a lawyer, who could then verify my whereabouts by tracing the call. It was for my own protection, and that of Mrs. Sinclair.
    Come, my dear,” Mrs. Sinclair said, pushing herself up from the table after we had finished our lunch. “Let us take a walk through this labyrinth of a house. Adrian suspected you might especially enjoy the library. Why don’t we spend a few hours there among the musty shelves?”
    My stomach flipped as I remembered the singsongy voice that had swirled through the air the day before when I tried to go into the library, but I pushed those memories out of my mind as best as I could. Hallucinations. That was all they were. I had always loved libraries. Why should this one be any exception?
    We chatted about the dogs and the horses while we made our way through rooms and hallways, from the west salon all the way to the opposite end of the house. Adrian was right—a person really could get a lot of exercise just walking the halls.
    When we arrived and Mrs. Sinclair opened the doors leading into the grand library, I gasped aloud. What had I been so apprehensive about? The moment I laid eyes on that room, any trepidation I had been feeling melted into sheer awe. Three stories tall, it was like nothing I had ever seen in a private home.
    I craned my neck to look all the way to the ceiling, three floors up. The walls on each floor were lined with bookshelves. In the center of the main floor, leather couches and armchairs were grouped here and there, flanked by tables with soft green lamps.
    It looked familiar somehow, as though it had been used in a movie that I had seen long ago. It very well could have been, I thought.
    “Unbelievable,” I mused, noticing the spiral staircases with their gleaming gold handrails, one on each end of the room, twirling from the main level to the second and on up to the third. “Thisis bigger than the public library in my neighborhood when I was growing up.”
    “Thousands upon