Free The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand

Cavendish’s kitchen so that Victoria would see it. Someone wanted her to help. And maybe helping whoever “us” was would lead her closer to Lawrence.
    As quietly as possible, Victoria found the key in her MISCELLANEOUS box and hid the paper in the drawer with the keyhole.Then she put the key at the very bottom of not the MISCELLANEOUS box but the PENS box. Ignoring the boxes’ labels went against all her principles, but she couldn’t risk her parents finding that paper, although she couldn’t have said why, exactly.
    She climbed back into bed, lay down, and folded her hands over her stomach. As the storm rumbled outside, never quite beginning, Victoria thought about everything that had happened till she fell asleep with a frown on her face.
    In the morning, as she did every morning, Victoria awoke with a plan.
    This time, however, it was a different sort of plan from her usual ones.
    It was a plan of investigation.
    It was also a plan of deception.
    Victoria swallowed down her fear as she wrote the note to her parents:
    Dear Mother and Father,
    I’m sorry for the short notice, but I have to miss ballet class today, and I also won’t make lunch. I’ve got to work on a paperfor my History of the World class. Professor Alban expects ten pages, but I want to turn in twenty and really impress everyone. I need to go to the library. So that’s where I’m going. I’ll be home for supper.
    Sincerely,
    Victoria
    The house was quiet when Victoria crept downstairs at eight o’clock, which was unusual because Mrs. Wright got up early on Saturdays to drink her diet drinks and do her stretches before brunch. Victoria was used to coming downstairs on Saturdays and seeing her mother all twisted up in knots in the exercise room.
    But this Saturday, Victoria could hear her toes curl in her shoes, the silence was so complete. Her parents’ bedroom door stood closed. The air thrilled between night and day, between bad things and good things. Victoria hated that feeling, and any between feelings, for that matter. Things should be one or the other, not somewhere in the middle, and lately, everything was very in the middle . For example, Victoria feltlike she could hear the walls holding their breath, watching her. It was a ridiculous, very in the middle sensation.
    Her skin broke out in goose bumps. Victoria glared at them. “Stop that,” she told her arms, and marched outside.
    Outside, the streets glistened. Storm clouds sat fat, black, and heavy all along the sickly yellow sky. Victoria wondered if they would ever break or if they would just keep spitting bits of rain forever when no one was looking. She tightened her grip on the umbrella beneath her raincoat and tried not to think about how it felt like the trees were watching her.
    Town Square on a Saturday morning was a glorious place. Everywhere whirled shining silver cars, gliding doors, trickling fountains, and stylishly dressed Bellevillians clicking their heels and flashing their smiles at everyone in crisscrosses between shops, salons, and banks. Everything smelled of clean, crisp money.
    Victoria breathed easier once the crowds pulled her into their clockwork. In the midst of these gleaming, happy people, there were no strange men with rakes, missing Lawrences, or bowls of bugs. She heard whispers about how “well, you know, rather large ,” so-and-so had gotten, about losing this-many pounds, surgeries for wrinkles and unfortunate spots, and catalogs of pretty things to help get one’s life in order.
    In order .
    It was a beautiful word.
    Victoria smiled and walked with renewed purpose, her shoes clicking up the marble steps of the library. This is how things are supposed to be , she thought.
    “Well, then. Hello, Victoria,” said Mr. Waxman, the librarian. He stepped in front of her and blocked her way with a wide, white smile. “What can we do for you today?”
    Victoria paused to think because for some reason she couldn’t quite remember why she was here.