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By Root 3071 0

were a furnace, which stood behind a load-bearing brick dividing wall; some cabinets containing what looked like old cans of paint; a few garden tools (rusty ones, which came as no big surprise); some chairs and a table what were in even worse shape than the ones upstairs; a small collection of picture frames, all empty; and a big wooden rack full of jars of preserves. The only thing he’d gotten wrong was the floor, and his mistake was easy to understand: though the thing was concrete, it was covered in a layer of soot and dirt so thick that it could easily have been mistaken for bare earth.

But there was no sign of any baby, and no indication that one’d ever been there.

Mike was by now pitching a positive fit in the satchel, and I looked down to see his snout pushing out from between two buckled fasteners. “Okay, Mike, okay, this is your time, son,” I said, moving to undo the buckles on the satchel. I’d only managed to get one open before he shot out of the thing and onto the floor, moving as he’d done the first time I’d seen him: like he was made out of liquid. He got down my leg and onto the floor, held his nose up above his spread-out forepaws, then raced once around the big furnace. Pausing for just a second, he got up on his hind legs, the little dark eyes taking in the whole room in just a second or two. Then he shot behind and around the pieces of furniture, through the picture frames, and up the side of one old cabinet.

I wrinkled my brow at him. “What’s going on, Mike?” I asked, but he only did another lap around the room, looking like the proverbial blind dog in a butcher shop: he could smell it, but he couldn’t find it. Then he reached the rack of preserves that stood against the brick dividing wall next to the furnace, and I thought he was going to turn apoplectic on me. He leapt up and into one of the shelves, then ducked behind a few jars, reappeared, and moved up to the next shelf in a clawing, lightning-fast streak. But just like that he was on his way back down to the floor again, and around to the side of the thing.

And all the while he was sniffing and clawing, sniffing and clawing, trying to find, it seemed, some way to move the rack.

How long it took me to understand what I was looking at I’m not sure; but however long, it was too long, because I should’ve gotten the point as soon as I saw that rack. After all, I’d had enough clues: the flower boxes on Sunday; the dismal backyard; the unhealthy kitchen; the spare front room, as hospitable as the barracks in the Boys’ House of Refuge; not to mention all the conversations about Nurse Hunter’s character what I’d been privy to. They were all part of a pattern, and so was that rack of preserves—but it took a half-crazed ferret to drive the idea home in my head:

“Wait a minute,” I mumbled, as I walked over to the rack. “Preserves? Who’s she trying to kid?”

I grabbed one of the jars off the rack and unscrewed the rubber-lined tin lid: looking down, I saw a thick layer of mold across the top of the contents. Making a sour face, I quickly screwed the top back on and tried another jar, only to find the same thing inside. I tried two more jars from different parts of the rack, and when I found them to be in similar shape, I just stood back for a second, pondering it. Then I looked down at Mike: he was still scratching away at the bottom of the rack, first in front, then around to one side, then to the other, never getting anywhere what with the concrete, but desperate to all the same.

“Unh-hunh,” I noised, stepping forward again. “Well, then …” I took a deep breath, laid hold of the corner of the rack, strained to move it away from the dividing wall, and—

And nothing. I tried again, putting my full weight into the attempt but gaining no greater result. I might as well have been trying to move the house. Looking around, I caught sight of the rusty garden tools and ran over to grab an old hoe. I tried to slide the lip of its blade into a narrow crevice between the back of the rack and the bricks. It wouldn’t go. I used the heel of my hand to jam it in and