The Book of Lost Things [16]
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said. “A little tired, what with Georgie and all, but that will pass. It’s been a little strange this last while. I’m sure you feel the same way, the four of us all thrown together suddenly like this. I’m glad that you’re here, though. This house is too big for one person, but my parents wanted to keep it in the family. It was…important to them.”
“Why?” asked David. He tried to keep himself from sounding too interested. He didn’t want Rose to realize that the only reason he was talking with her was to find out more about the house, and particularly his room and the books that it contained.
“Well,” she said, “this house has been in our family for a very long time. My grandparents built it, and lived in it with their children. They hoped that it would stay in the family, and that there would always be children living in it.”
“Did they own the books in my room?” asked David.
“Some of them,” said Rose. “Others belonged to their children: my father, his sister, and—”
She paused for a moment.
“Jonathan?” suggested David, and Rose nodded. She looked sad.
“Yes. Jonathan. Where did you learn his name?”
“It was written in some of the books. I was wondering who he was.”
“He was my uncle, my father’s older brother, although I never met him. Your room was once his bedroom, and a lot of those books were his. I’m sorry if you don’t like them. I thought it would be such a nice room for you. I know it’s a little dark, but it had all those shelves and, of course, the books. I should have been more thoughtful.”
David looked puzzled. “But why? I do like it, and I like the books too.”
Rose turned away. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” said David. “Please tell me.”
Rose relented.
“Jonathan disappeared. He was only fourteen. It was a long time ago, and my grandparents kept his room exactly as it had always been, because they hoped that he would come back to them. He never did. Another child disappeared with him, a little girl. Her name was Anna, and she was the daughter of one of my grandfather’s friends. He and his wife died in a fire, and my grandfather took Anna to live with his family instead. Anna was seven. My grandfather thought it would be good for Jonathan to have a little sister and for Anna to have a big brother to take care of her. Anyway, they must have wandered off and, oh, I don’t know, something happened to them and they were never seen again. It was just very, very sad. They searched for them for so long. They looked in the woods and the river, and they asked after them in all of the nearby towns. They even went to London and placed drawings and descriptions of them anywhere that they could, but nobody ever came forward to say that they had seen them.
“In time, they had two more children, my father and his sister, Katherine, but my grandparents never forgot Jonathan, and never stopped hoping that he and Anna might someday come home. My grandfather in particular never recovered from their loss. He seemed to blame himself for what had happened. I suppose he thought he should have protected them. I think he died young because of it. When my grandmother was dying, she asked my father not to disturb the room, but to leave the books in their place just in case Jonathan should ever return. She never lost hope. She cared about Anna too, but Jonathan was her eldest son, and I don’t think a day went by when she didn’t stare out the window of her bedroom in the hope of