The Well Part 16

Nothing.

Mike's dad let out a long, impatient breath. "Cooper. "

"I know, I know." Then I added, "Sir." I leaned against the mirror, my hand going to the high shelves of wine, the ones put up there just for show-the ones that dated back to the first Jumel years. My fingertips. .h.i.t against one of the bottles, and it started to topple. I cursed, thinking, Oh no, I've really done it now-Sam is going to kill me, when the bottle righted itself. Then, a click.

The wall slowly swung open.

Behind it, an oak door. "This is where he keeps every thing that no one is supposed to know about." I could have been wrong, but I doubted it.

Mike's dad stepped forward, tried the k.n.o.b. The door opened. We both looked back, saw no one else in the tasting room, then ducked inside.

"Don't move and don't touch anything," Sergeant Ring said, pointing to a spot on the floor. "I'll do the investigating, you got it?"

I nodded and stayed where I was. I didn't know if he'd find anything, but I figured his attention was off me and thinking I'd had anything to do with Megan's disappearance, and we were away from the well's evil vine army. All around, a better situation.

Sergeant Ring wandered off to do his thing. I leaned against the wall. From here, the place spelled office. Desk, chair, a few framed awards. Nothing much. Had I been wrong?

A single tower of wine bottles sat in the corner. Wine bottles I recognized, not because I'd seen them in the tasting room, but because I hadn't seen them in the tasting room.

I'd seen them in the StepScrooge mansion. This was his private stash. The bottles created just for Sam-and no one else.

Wait. That wasn't right.

I thought a second, staring at those bottles, trying to figure out what bothered me about them. But I couldn't put my finger on it, so instead, I just slipped one of the bottles off the pile when Mike's dad wasn't looking and tucked it into my backpack as easily as Winona Ryder grabbing herself a pair of D&G sungla.s.ses.

Mike's dad flipped through a few folders, then picked up two bottles of red and held them up to the light. He grinned.

He wasn't here for clues. If there was any detecting to do, I was going to have to do it. While Sergeant Ring debated between the 1989 and the 1 992,, I pushed off from the wall and sidled up to a small cabinet. It didn't look like much, just an old, beat-up wooden thing, the kind of cabinet sent to the office because it didn't match the house's Better Homes & Gardens perfecto decor. I could see my mother moving in and ordering that thing out.

Keeping my eyes on Sergeant Ring, I flicked open one of the cabinet doors. At first I didn't see anything. The lighting in the office s.p.a.ce was kind of dim, and the cabinet was in shadows. I shuffled a step back, then looked again.

A book. Not like the latest Stephen King bestseller, but one of those old leather kind. There were some letters carved on the top that I couldn't make out, not under the dust on the cover, but it looked old. Really old.

It could have been anything. A family tree. An old Bible. A diary.

"Cooper, you think your stepdad will miss one bottle out of a thousand?"

I jerked back, away from the cabinet. "Uh a no. Call it evidence. You know, for DNA or whatever."

Sergeant Ring smiled. He and I, best buds again. He went back to picking the best vintage.

Before I could think twice, I reached in, swiped the leather book, and stuffed it into my backpack in one smooth move. I thought I heard a whispered yes as I did it, as if the creature had seen me.

No. Impossible.

Just as I got back into position against the wall, Sergeant Ring turned around. "Yeah, well, nothing here. My shift's over anyway." He clutched the bottle to his chest.

Yeah. Happy hour again. For the thousandth time, I was glad I hadn't told Mike's dad anything. He was clearly no help with anything but a corkscrew.

I wondered why Sam had hid the room behind a mirror. A secret latch. There had to be something here, maybe in that book. I couldn't be sure until I looked inside, but I wasn't going to do that in front of Sergeant Ring.

I took one last look around the room as the cop was closing the door. On the wall hung a small painting, incredibly detailed given how tiny it was, of two men standing in front of the well, back in its glory days when it had been a real working well, used, I guessed, to water the vineyard. Behind them, the old vineyard lay in neat rows, marching down the tidy acres. "Wait."

Sergeant Ring paused.

I stepped back inside the room and stood in front of the oil portrait. The colors were still Crayola bright, as if it had been created yesterday. I couldn't decipher the artist's scrawled name in the corner, but I could read the date.

18o9. The year the vineyard had officially opened for business.

Beneath the painting, the names Auguste and Gerard Jumel were written in a cursive script.

Gerard Jumel. I knew that name.

It was Sam's great-great-great-times-a-gazillion-grandfather. The guy who'd taken the vineyard and made it an international sensation. He'd practically been canonized by the Jumel family for bringing them all these generations of not just money, but megawealth. He'd pa.s.sed on the family secrets for the grapes, something that Sam wouldn't tell anyone except a Jumel heir.

Whatever. I didn't want in on his will anyway.

But a Auguste? I hadn't heard that name mentioned. Ever. Who was he?

"Not bad if you like that landscape c.r.a.p," Mike's dad said over my shoulder, gesturing toward the painting. "Though why anyone would want a painting of two guys hanging on their wall is beyond me. Tell your stepdad to get a Hot Babes on Harleys calendar. That's a real wall hanging, if you ask me."

I wasn't listening. I was staring.

At myself.

In double.

The two guys-and now I realized they weren't men at all, but teens about my age-Auguste and Gerard, standing in front of the well, were twins. And they looked exactly like me.

The doorbell dented beneath my finger, chimes screaming for mercy, but I didn't let go. I fell against the door, panting. After I'd left the winery, grateful that Mike's dad had decided to go home and "test that wine sample," I'd booked it for my dad's house. I wanted to look for Megan, but I was too shaken up to go back in the woods right away, and besides, the vine guys were still waiting for me.

I opted for a temporary breather. A second to take all this in and figure out what it meant. What Mike's dad had told me about Sam. Those wine bottles. And now that freaky picture on the wall.

And maybe here, in the safety of the home where I'd grown up, the place where everything had once been okay, those vines wouldn't find me, wouldn't wrap around me, wouldn't drag me halfway across town and back- "Cooper! What are you doing?" My father opened the door and stared at me, as if the alien mother ship had just dumped me on his doorstep.

"Can I a" I heaved in a breath-at this rate, I was going to need to cart around an oxygen tank. "Can I come in?"

"Sure, sure." He opened the door wider and waved me in. "Does your mother know where you are?"

I sure hoped not. "Of course."

A few minutes later, I was sitting on my father's worn brown leather sofa, drinking a c.o.ke. He sat across from me, arms resting on his knees, waiting. My father did that well, sitting as quietly as a potted plant, his gla.s.ses resting on his nose, looking as though they might fall off at any second. He'd warmed up some leftover frozen pizza, the c.r.a.ppy diet kind, but hey, it was food, so I set it between us. We ate a bit, and then I put the c.o.ke can on the old coffee table, the same one we'd had when I was a kid. I thought about that for a moment. Had my mother said to him, You keep the coffee table; I'll take the kids? "Thanks, Dad."

"When are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. I was just thirsty and hungry. So I came by." I pointed at the empty can and started to rise. "I'm gonna grab another."

"Sit down."

He had that don't-argue-with-me tone, the one he didn't use very often. So I sat.

My father sighed. He stared at his hands for a long time, then back at me. "Talk to me, Cooper."

"About what?"

"About Megan, for one. I know you're worried. Has there been any news?"

I shook my head. Tears sprang into my eyes, but I brushed them away with the back of my fist.

"I can't imagine what that family is going through." He leaned forward. "Or you."

"I'm cool." I wasn't, but I also wasn't in any mood to talk about Megan. That would involve starting at the beginning, and I knew my dad didn't believe in fairy tales with big ugly monsters any more than Faulkner did.

"Anything I can do, you let me know."

I fiddled with my pizza. "Thanks."

"I'm here to help you. With anything." He gave me a smile. "Even your Hamlet paper."

"Dad, quit it. You're not supposed to help me. It's, like, a conflict of interest or something."

He chuckled. I hadn't seen him laugh in so long, I hadn't even realized he still could. The sound was a nice. I thought about how when all this was over, I should spend more time with my dad-outside of school. "You're right." He pretended to zip his lip and sat back. "When was the last time we did that?"

"What, talked about Hamlet? Try today. Second period."

"No, I meant laughed together, ate pizza, and just talked? I miss having you and your brother around all the time."

"Yeah, me too." Though my parents had joint custody, my dad had never really argued when my mother had asked for more time. He was the peacemaker, figuring if it made my mother happy, that was good enough for him.

I think he still loved her.

My father watched me for a long time, then let out another sigh. "There's more than just Megan's disappearance bugging you, Cooper. Lately, you haven't been acting like a yourself. You're jumpy. Forgetful. And you look like you haven't slept in a week."

I shrugged. "Things suck at home."

"How?"

The words pushed at my throat, crowding together like eleven-year-old girls outside the doors of a Hannah Montana concert. I wanted to tell him; I really did. I wanted to tell someone, someone who could help. Instead I swallowed hard and shoved the truth back to my gut. "The dog died."

My father jerked upright. "Whipple? Died? How? When?"

"I don't know. Mom said that Sam found him anda"

My voice trailed off. I had never asked my mother for any details about Whipple. Like where the dog was buried. Then I remembered something else that my mother had told me.

Sam a found him in the woods.

In the woods a where? By the well?

Had the creature gotten Whipple? Or had Sam?

Could Sam kill my dog? Or had he seen something kill him and just covered up the evidence? A lot of deaths circling around the name Sam lately. Two and two were beginning to add up, and I wasn't liking the total.

"And what?" my father pressed.

"And I don't know any more than that," I said, keeping my suspicions to myself. That's all they were-suspicions. I had no proof of anything.

My father's gaze narrowed. He studied me, then turned away and went to the fireplace, his back to me. "What do you think of Sam?"

The question caught me off-guard. "I don't know. I don't like him, but he's my stepfather. Kind of comes with the second marriage, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does."

"He's been super uptight lately, too. The vineyard has this big anniversary deal coming up and business is down. He blames everyone for that." I picked at my fingernails. "Especially me."

My father turned around and crossed his arms over his chest. "He's never really liked you, has he?"

"I dunno. I've never really liked him. We're even." I picked at my nails some more, waiting for my father to talk. But he didn't. He was like that a lot. The kind of guy who could go an hour without saying a word. I wished he'd turn on the television or the radio, anything to make noise. The clock in the hall ticked along. Still my father didn't say anything. I fidgeted on the couch. Fidgeted some more. "Why didn't you fight more to keep her?"

Oh man. Where had that come from? How had I let that one out?

It had to be the stress of the past few days. Or my blood sugar was spiking from the carbs or something.

My father didn't say anything. I studied my Vans, sure my dad was glaring at me, afraid to look. Finally, I lifted my head and checked.

Instead, I found a mixture of surprise and sadness in his eyes. He pushed off from the fireplace and came back to his chair, dropping into it with a long breath. "Your mother's known Sam a long time."

I perked up. "She has?"

He nodded. "From before you were born. He delivered you."

Disgust bubbled up inside me. It was too weird to think about that-StepScrooge Sam's being at the other end of the birth ca.n.a.l and seeing me pop out. "You're not serious."

"It might have started between them when she was pregnant, but I'm not sure."

I pulled childhood memories out of the corners of my mind, shuffled them, dealt them out, and revisited them. My parents on vacation, holding hands, kissing, laughing together. My mother waiting by the door for my father to get home from parent-teacher conferences, tucking her hair behind her ear or checking her lipstick in the hall mirror. My father grabbing her after dinner and giving her a hug just because she had made his favorite meatloaf.

And then one day, things changed, as fast as I could snap my fingers. She stopped waiting by the door and left TV dinners on the counter with a note. My father stopped smiling when he came home and just headed for the den, burying himself in essay corrections instead of his family. The next thing Faulkner and I knew, we were living in Sam's mansion and my father was alone.

"No, Dad, I don't think it started then. She was happy when we were kids. She loved you."

It was as if a flower had bloomed on my father's face. Hope exploded across his features, brightening his smile, his eyes. He came to life in a way I hadn't seen in a year and a half. "You a you really think so?"

"Yeah, Dad," I said quietly, the two of us connecting across the wooden floor, not with a touch but because we both missed the days of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. "I do."