Weirdly, my dad never mentioned the letter Emma had left for him back on the island, nor the photo of her and Abe tucked inside it. Maybe it was more than he could deal with, or maybe he worried that talking about it with me might trigger a relapse. Whatever the reason, it was like it never happened. As for having actually met Emma and Millard and Olive, I’m sure he’d long ago dismissed that as a bizarre dream.
After a few weeks my parents began to relax. They’d bought my story and Dr. Spanger’s explanations for my behavior. They could’ve probed deeper, probably—asked more questions, gotten a second or third opinion from other psychiatrists—but they really wanted to believe I was doing better. That whatever drugs Dr. Spanger had put me on were working their magic. More than anything, they wanted our lives to return to normal, and the longer I was home, the more that seemed to be happening.
Privately, though, I was struggling to adjust. I was bored and lonely. The days dragged. I had thought, after the hardships of the past few weeks, that the comforts of home would be sweeter, but pretty soon even laundered sheets and Chinese takeout lost their luster. My bed was too soft. My food too rich. There was too much of everything, and it made me feel guilty and decadent. Sometimes, wandering mall aisles on an errand with my parents, I would think about the people I’d seen living on the margins of Devil’s Acre and get angry. Why did we have more than we knew what to do with, while they had less than they needed to stay alive?
I had trouble sleeping. I woke at odd hours, my mind looping scenes from my time with the peculiars. Though I’d given Emma my address and checked the mailbox several times a day, no letters had arrived from her or the others. The longer I went without hearing from them—two weeks, then three—the more abstract and unreal the whole experience began to seem. Had it really happened? Had it all been a delusion? In dark moments, I wondered. What if I was crazy?
So it was much to my relief when, a month after returning home, a letter finally arrived from Emma. It was short and breezy, just filling me in on the rebuilding process and asking me how things were going. The return address was a post office box in London, which Emma explained was close enough to the Devil’s Acre loop entrance that she could sneak into the present fairly often and check it. I wrote back the same day, and pretty soon we were exchanging two or three letters a week. As home grew more suffocating, those letters became a lifeline.
I couldn’t risk my parents finding one, so every day I stalked the mailman and dashed out to meet him as soon as he appeared at the end of our driveway. I suggested to Emma that we trade e-mails instead, which would have been safer and faster, and I filled several pages attempting to explain what the Internet was and how she might find a public Internet café and create an e-mail address—but it was hopeless; she’d never even used a keyboard. The letters were worth the risk, though, and I came to enjoy communicating by hand. There was something sweet about holding a tangible thing that had been touched and marked upon by someone I loved.
In one letter she included a few snapshots. She wrote:
Dear Jacob, things are finally getting interesting around here again. Remember the people on display in the basement, the ones Bentham said were wax models? Well, he was lying. He kidnapped them from different loops and was using Mother Dust’s powder to keep them in suspended animation. We think he’d been trying to power his machine using different types of peculiars as batteries—but nothing worked until your hollowgast. Anyway, Mother Dust confessed to having known about it, which explains why she was acting so strangely. I think Bentham was blackmailing her somehow, or threatening to hurt Reynaldo if she didn’t help him. Anyway, she’s been helping us wake everyone up and return them to their rightful loops. Isn’t that just pure madness?
We’ve also been using the Panloopticon to explore all sorts of places and meet new people. Miss Peregrine says it’s good for us to see how other peculiars live around the world. I found a camera in the house and brought it along on our last excursion, and I’ve included a few of the photos I took. Bronwyn says I’m already getting good!
I miss you like mad. I know I shouldn’t talk like that … it only makes this harder. But sometimes I can’t help it. Maybe you could come visit soon? I’d like that so much. Or maybe
She’d scratched out or maybe and written: Uh-oh, I hear Sharon calling my name. He’s leaving now and I want to make sure this letter gets into the post today. Write soon! Love, Emma.
What was that “or maybe,” I wondered?
I looked over the photos she’d included. A few lines of description had been penned on the back of each. The first was a snapshot of two Victorian ladies standing in front of a striped tent beneath a sign that read CURIOS. On the back Emma had written: Miss Bobolink and Miss Loon started a traveling exhibit using some of Bentham’s old artefacts. Now that peculiars are freer to travel, they’ve been doing quite a business. Many of us don’t know much about our history …
The next was a photo of several adults descending a set of narrow steps to a beach and a rowboat. There’s a very nice loop on the shore of the Caspian Sea, Emma had written, and last week Nim and some of the ymbrynes went on a boating trip there. Hugh and Horace and I tagged along but stayed on the shore. We’ve all had enough of rowboats, thank you.
The last picture was of conjoined twin girls wearing giant white bows in their raven-black hair. They were seated next to each other, their hands pulling aside a bit of their shirts to reveal a section of shared torso. Carlotta and Carlita are conjoined, the back read, but that isn’t what’s most peculiar about them. Their bodies produce an adhesive glue that’s stronger than concrete when it dries. Enoch sat in some and attached his bottom to a chair for two whole days! He was so mad I thought his head would pop off. I wish you could’ve been there …
I replied right away. What did you mean by “or maybe”?
Ten days passed and I didn’t hear from her. I worried that she felt she’d gone too far in her letter; had violated our just-friends agreement and was stepping back. I wondered if she’d even sign her next letter Love, Emma, two little words I had come to depend on. After two weeks, I began to wonder if there would even be another letter.
Then the mail stopped coming altogether. I watched obsessively for the mailman, and when he didn’t show for four days, I knew something was up. My parents always got tons of catalogs and bills. I mentioned, casually as I could, that it seemed strange we hadn’t gotten any mail recently. My father mumbled something about a national holiday and changed the subject. Then I really started to worry.
The mystery was solved during the next morning’s session with Dr. Spanger, which, unusually, my parents had been invited to attend. They were tense and ashen-faced, struggling even to make small talk as we sat down. Spanger began with the usual softball questions. How had I been feeling? Any interesting dreams? I knew she was leading up to something big, and finally I couldn’t take the suspense.
“Why are my parents here?” I asked. “And why do they look like they just got back from a funeral?”
For the first time ever, Dr. Spanger’s permasmile faded. She reached into a folder on her desk and pulled out three envelopes.
They were letters from Emma. All had been opened. “We need to talk about these,” she said.
“We agreed there wouldn’t be any secrets,” my dad said. “This is bad, Jake. Very bad.”
My hands started to shake. “Those are private,” I said, struggling to control my voice. “They’re addressed to me. You shouldn’t have read them.”
What was in those letters? What had my parents seen? It was a disaster, an utter disaster.
“Who is Emma?” said Dr. Spanger. “Who is Miss Peregrine?”
“This isn’t fair!” I shouted. “You stole my private letters, and now you’re using them to ambush me!”
“Lower your voice!” my dad said. “It’s out in the open now, so just be honest, and this will be easier for all of us.”