Then she flips the paper around and holds it out so we can see. “What is ‘destory’?”
That’s her most pressing question? I look. “I think it’s just a typo,” I say. “He must mean ‘destroy.’”
Which you’d think would raise more pressing questions. But Monday says, “I do not like typos.”
“We know,” I assure her.
“How do you know?”
“We’ve met.”
“I do not like typos,” she says anyway, “because typos are lies, inaccuracies, and an abbreviation all at once, and they mean that your brain can be thinking one thing, but your fingers can rebel all on their own which should not be possible but is.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
While Monday figures out how to move on, Mirabel and I try to figure out the rest of it. There is so little there. There is so much there. There is so little that’s clear. But one thing that is clear is this: there is something somewhere that somehow could destroy them. And this: we could find it if only we knew where to look.
“So Duke Templeton does not want us to find paperwork?” Monday says finally.
“Yes.”
“‘Damn paperwork’?”
“Yes.”
“Because he is mad at the paperwork?”
“Probably mad we might find it,” I offer.
“Why does he want us not to find it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what it is.”
“Oh.” Monday thinks about that for a bit. “Then how do we know we want to find it?”
“Because he doesn’t want us to. And because if we do, they can be destroyed.”
“It is October twenty-third.”
“So?”
“There are only thirty days until November twenty-second.” Monday stops looking confused and starts looking panicked. “Thirty days is not enough to find paperwork we do not know what or where it is.”
But Mirabel is shaking her head.
“No what?” I say.
“Muh,” she says.
“More what?”
She taps at her screen. Monday fidgets. Mirabel’s Voice says, “Christmas?”
“What about it?” Sometimes I can guess Mirabel’s point from just a word. Sometimes she has to type the whole thing.
She taps for a while. “Happens between Thanksgiving and March,” her Voice explains.
I see what she means.
“To be more accurate, there are many holidays besides Christmas which occur between Thanksgiving and March,” Monday informs us. “Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Junior Day, Groundhog—”
“Stop listing holidays,” I snap at Monday. To Mirabel I say, “Shopping? They’re trying to manufacture something in time for the holiday rush?”
Mirabel shakes her head.
She’s right. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. “Even if they were up and running tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to make it, whatever it is, package it, ship it, and get it into stores in time. And definitely not if they didn’t open until Thanksgiving.”
“Valentine’s Day,” Monday shrieks. “Presidents’ Day. Chinese New Year!”
Mirabel is tapping at her screen. “Winter?” her Voice says.
“They can’t reopen the plant once it gets too cold.” It dawns late, like winter mornings themselves. “But why? Chemical plants aren’t seasonal. They’re open in the winter. They’re not birds. They don’t—”
“Who cares?” Monday interrupts. “It does not matter if they are birds.” What she means is that this logic isn’t logical enough. What she means is that suddenly the calendar pages are spinning away, the clock’s ticking down, and we don’t have time to waste anymore speculating, guessing, getting things wrong. And she’s right, at least in one way. It doesn’t matter what they’ve scheduled to begin on November 22. It doesn’t matter why they can’t do it December through February. It will be hard to find what we’re looking for because we don’t know where or even what it is. But it won’t be as hard as not knowing whether it exists at all. It won’t be as hard as when it exists but turns out not to matter. Now we know. It could destory them. Whatever it is, it matters. So it’s quickly becoming the only thing that does.
Two
A saying when something is hard to find is that it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
This is a stupid saying.
It would be easy to find a needle in a haystack because it would be the thing that is not a piece of hay. It would be the thing that is short, shiny, and stiff instead of long, tan, and bendy. Even in the dark, a needle would be easy to find in a haystack because the needle would be the thing that stuck you in the finger.
A better saying for something that is hard to find would be that it is like looking for an important piece of paper in many stacks of unimportant pieces of paper. This is because all pieces of paper are pieces of paper, and none of them are needles, and all of them look the same until you read them, but there are too many to read them all, and none of them will announce themselves by sticking you in the finger. And even if I did read them all, it would not help because I do not know what I am looking for so even if I found it I would not know that I had because I do not know what it is.
Mirabel thinks River getting us the emails was heroic. Mab thinks River getting us the emails was kind. But I think River getting us the emails was pointless because the emails do not say anything useful or, to be more accurate, the emails do not say anything useful we can understand.
What they say that we can understand is something is scheduled for November 22, which is thirty days from today. They also say River’s father and grandfather do not want us to find some paperwork. We do not know if the paperwork is related to November 22, but since River’s father and grandfather do not want us to find it, Mab and Mirabel do. Fortunately there is a lot of paperwork in our house. Unfortunately Duke Templeton did not specify what paperwork so finding it is like looking for an important piece of paper in many stacks of unimportant pieces of paper. Exactly like that, in fact.
The auction house that came to sell our books went into the library and made two piles: what they wanted to buy and what no one did. I got what no one did, but it was a big pile, and some of it was stuff no one did including me (because boxes of documents and papers and forms are boring) so those boxes could stay in the library attic “till kingdom come” said the man from the auction house which Pastor Jeff said meant until Bourne became heaven on earth which Mama said meant forever. The boxes-no-one-wanted could stay in the library attic forever.
All of which means I might not have the paperwork Duke Templeton does not want us to find because it might be at Omar’s or it might be in the library attic or it might be lost, but it also means I might have it because I did choose many boxes from the kingdom-come pile, and I could look for it if I knew what it was or who wrote it or why or when or on what grounds, literal or metaphorical. But when a random email warns that it is very important no one finds the damn paperwork, it could be cursing about anything.