Chapter 4 - Mike Knew Which Books Were Wrong
Mike loved my library for a reason adults rarely understood.
He didn’t care what the books were worth.
He cared that they were different.
Some had rough-cut pages.
Some smelled faintly of old cloth and dust.
Some had illustrations printed slightly off-center because a machine in 1932 had not lined up properly.
Mike remembered all of it.
Two weeks earlier, he had been sitting cross-legged on the carpet while I worked at my desk when he suddenly held up Moon Over Briar Hill.
“Grandpa, this one feels fake.”
I laughed.
At eight years old, Mike called anything unusually clean “fake.”
I told him the book had probably been dusted.
He insisted.
“The paper doesn’t scratch my finger anymore.”
I had promised to look later.
Then forgot.
Standing in my study with a reproduction in my hands, I wanted to go back two weeks and listen.
I moved shelf by shelf.
Hadley stayed nearby with her house manager, helping me match scraps of her drawing to the symbols we had taught her.
Blue heron.
Missing.
The book in its place was a copy.
Yellow moon.
Copy.
Green boat.
Copy.
White fox.
Copy.
By the time I reached the end of the second shelf, seven first editions had been replaced by remarkably convincing reproductions.
Then I reached the space where The Lantern Boy should have been.
Nothing.
No fake.
No original.
An empty space.
That book was the centerpiece of my wife’s collection—a first edition from 1927, inscribed to her grandmother by the author. It was valuable, yes.
But the money wasn’t why Mike loved it.
The cover showed a boy carrying a red lantern through a dark forest.
Mike used to say the boy looked brave even though he was clearly scared.
I stared at the empty shelf.
Then at Hadley’s drawing.
The red lantern symbol was larger than the others.
“Hadley.”
She looked up.
“Did Mike say anything about the lantern?”
She nodded.
“He said that one was hiding.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he tell Celeste?”
“No.”
Her answer came fast.
Then her expression changed.
“She asked him.”
My pulse sharpened.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“What did she ask?”
Hadley looked uncomfortable.
I softened my voice.
“You’re not in trouble.”
“She said, ‘Where did you put the red one?’”
“And what did Mike say?”
“He said, ‘Somewhere Grandpa will know.’”
That was the first moment I understood the shape of the danger.
Mike had not merely discovered the swapped books.
He had taken the one Celeste wanted most.
And instead of telling her where it was, he had prepared his little sister to leave me clues.
No wonder she had him removed.
The missing question was no longer simply:
Where is Mike?
It was:
May you like
What was Celeste willing to do to an eight-year-old to make him reveal where he hid that book?
---
Related Stories
