Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [24]
My head was spinning with questions I couldn’t answer.
And then I thought of a person who possibly could.
A person who had been around since the days when my grandparents lived here. And, now that I thought about it, a person who had acted very strangely the other day when we were talking about them. A person who had some answering to do — as usual.
The more I thought about it, the more determined I was to get to the bottom of this. Mom was far too upset to leave her now, but I’d decided what I was going to do. First thing in the morning, I knew exactly where I was heading!
Saturday morning I woke up with one thing on my mind. I threw on some clothes and went out, still fuming, and determined to get some answers. I banged on the lighthouse door.
“Open up!” I shouted. “Let me in — I want to talk to you!”
A second later, the door opened and Mr. Beeston appeared. “Whatever is the matter, child? Is it your mother? Is she all right?” He was halfway out the door, but I stopped him.
“Mom’s fine,” I said. “At least, nothing’s happened to her.” I paused. “Unless you call having your life utterly destroyed and your family in tatters anything to worry about.” I folded my arms.
Mr. Beeston stared at me. “What on earth are you talking about? What’s happened?”
“My grandparents,” I said simply. At the word, his face changed. It was as though an invisible straw had sucked the color out of it.
He opened the door and beckoned me in. “You’d better come inside,” he said.
The apartment inside the lighthouse was bare. Not that I expected it to be full of life and warmth. This was Mr. Beeston’s home we were talking about. A pile of boxes was stacked up in one corner. A pile of papers in another. At the sight of them, I couldn’t help wondering if he was still collecting files on us.
He noticed me looking around. “I haven’t properly settled in yet,” he said, waving a hand over the boxes.
“Tell me about my grandparents,” I said bluntly. Mr. Beeston looked at me for a second, mouth open, ready to start making up a pack of lies.
“The truth,” I said, and he closed his mouth and let his head drop.
“You have to understand one thing,” he began. I wanted to tell him I didn’t have to understand anything he said. And I didn’t have to do anything he said, either. But I bit my tongue and waited for him to continue.
“It was all a long time ago. Long before the current — what have you — arrangements, and recent friendships.” He looked nervously up at me. Friendships? Hah! As if he would ever understand the meaning of the word. Again, I held my tongue, and he went on.
“Your grandfather was a sailing man, and a decent fisherman, too. He spent many of his days out on the ocean. And then one day, he saw something he shouldn’t have seen.”
I kept quiet.
Mr. Beeston cleared his throat. “He saw a mermaid. He was so excited about it that he came straight to me and told me. You see, we were on good terms back then.”
“You mean you conned your way into his life, just like you did with my mom and me?” I said tightly.
He ignored me and continued. “I couldn’t allow it. Not in my role at that time. We already knew about your mother and father, and the plans were in place for dealing with it. Your grandparents knew nothing, of course, and your grandfather suddenly having this information — well, it complicated things. We had to put a stop to it.”
“How?”
“For one thing, we had to wipe his memory.” He stopped.
Of course. The memory drug. I should have guessed. “And for another?” I prompted.
At least he had the decency to be struggling. Maybe he did have a conscience after all. “We had to stop him from going out to sea again,” he said, shuffling even more awkwardly than usual.
“In case he saw something else,” I said.
He nodded. “Once I’d wiped his memory, I told him that he and his wife had to leave.