Aunt Twice stiffened. “You must not ask any questions about the food, Emily. I know how horrible the food is for them, and for you too, but you must never touch any of the other, even if you think no one is watching. Everything here is numbered. Everything is accounted for.”
The very thing Tilly had said! Emily thought. But her aunt had told her she was to ask no more questions about the food, so there was nothing more to say about it. At any rate, another pressing question had jumped into her mind. “Aunt Twice, you’re not an old person. Why are you here?”
“Because I am a prisoner,” replied Aunt Twice simply.
“A prisoner? But you came to meet me at the train station,” Emily said. “And you aren’t in chains.”
Aunt Twice smiled a grim smile. “There are other ways of being a prisoner, Emily. Someone’s very life depends on my serving the owner of Sugar Hill Hall!”
Someone’s very life! “Who?” Emily breathed.
Aunt Twice hesitated. “I—I cannot tell you. I cannot!”
“But Aunt Twice,” Emily blurted out, “can’t-can’t Uncle Twice come to help you? Where is he?”
Aunt Twice’s face turned ashen. “Hush, child, hush!” Her eyes darted around the small room as if pursued by some deadly horror. “The walls here have eyes and ears! You must never speak of him again. Never! You must think of him as—as dead! Will you promise that?”
Think of Uncle Twice as dead—did that mean he was really alive? Questions tumbled wildly in Emily’s head. But Aunt Twice had said that she must never speak of him again and had asked for her promise. Numbly, Emily nodded her head.
Aunt Twice looked as if she might be going to say something more. Her mouth opened suddenly, but then just as suddenly snapped shut. And Emily knew then that it was locked upon its secret terrors as tightly as the door of the Remembrance Room. If she was ever going to find any answers to her questions, it would have to be on her own.
After a moment, the frozen expression on Aunt Twice’s face softened into a sad, dim smile. She reached out to stroke Emily’s head gently. “Oh, those beautiful golden braids! Well, at least we can trim what is left so you won’t look like such a straggly little waif.” She dipped a hand into the pocket of her plain brown calico dress and pulled out a pair of scissors.
A short while later, after a snip here and a snip there, Emily looked at herself in the cracked mirror. Although far from beautiful, the haircut was certainly an improvement over the one provided earlier. Emily managed a smile at her reflection to please Aunt Twice.
“You poor, tired child, not even in your nightdress yet,” Aunt Twice said. “And you haven’t yet unpacked your travelling bag. I thought you might have done so when you came down with Tilly.”
“I—I wasn’t certain I should,” Emily stammered.
“But why not?” asked Aunt Twice.
“Because—” Emily hesitated. “Because there is something in it I’m not certain Tilly should see.” She pulled the gold chain from her dress and quickly un hooked the key, hoping that Aunt Twice would not notice the locket. If she did and saw the picture of herself and Uncle Twice, she would most certainly want the picture destroyed. But, with all interest on the key, she seemed not to notice the locket.
Emily unlocked her travelling bag and reached into a tiny secret compartment in the silk lining. From it she pulled out a small white paper packet. Then she opened the packet and poured its contents into Aunt Twice’s hand—twenty pure gold coins!
“Papa’s lawyer, Mr. Dowling, gave them to me before I left,” Emily explained. “I suspect he thought I might need the money before my allowance could start coming to you from Papa’s will.”
“Oh, dear child!” Aunt Twice cried. “Don’t you know? Your papa died a pauper! He lost everything in the sudden failure of his company. Mr. Dowling wrote me that there is no money coming.”
“N-n-no money coming?” said Emily, confused. “Then—then where did Mr. Dowling get the gold coins?”
“I would guess from his own pocket,” murmured Aunt Twice softly. “But with all expectations now ended, there is even greater reason for these gold coins to be protected. You were right not to show them to Tilly. But where can you keep them? My room is not safe.”
Her eyes searched the room swiftly. Then at last she gave a small cry of triumph. Lifting up a corner of the thin mattress on the cot, she made a tiny slit at the seam of ticking with her scissors. One by one, she slipped the coins through. Then, with a needle and thread found in her pocket, she stitched up the opening with trembling fingers.
She had no sooner finished this task, however, when a sound hardly more than that of a whisper of air outside the door made her jerk up her head and stiffen. For a moment she stood with staring eyes, motionless as a mouse accustomed to the soft, secret approach of a cat’s paws, or a snake’s belly. Then, with a finger to her lips as a signal for Emily to be silent, she crept slowly to the door and flung it open.
“Tilly! What are you doing?” For all its sternness, Aunt Twice’s voice was quivering.
“I just wondered what you was doing,” whined Tilly. “You never comes to talk to me at night.”
Aunt Twice sighed. “I didn’t know you wanted me to, Tilly, and we are ordinarily both too weary at night. But I have not seen my niece in years, and so I wished to talk to her about her dear departed mother and father.”
“You never talks to me ’bout my dear departed ma and pa,” said Tilly, pouting. “Leastways, my departed pa. My ma just upped and died.”
“Tilly,” said Aunt Twice patiently, “your mother
