Finn was surprised that Emma had said that in front of him, instead of making up some comforting lie.
Both of them could tell that Emma was only trying to sound brave when she squared her shoulders and added, “We’ll be fine. We’ll have each other.” She gulped. “Just . . . just like Mom told us . . .”
But then Natalie was back, putting her arms around all of them, and telling the firefighters who trailed after her, “And these kids will come home with me, too. My dad will take care of all of us.”
While the firefighters conferred about this, Chess whispered, “Natalie, there are three of us. All he’ll know is that our mom has totally disappeared. He’ll never . . .”
And Natalie jutted her jaw into the air and countered, “He’ll agree to this because I tell him to. That’s how it works with my dad. He lets me do anything. It drives my mom crazy.” For a moment, her chin trembled. “Mom is the only one who . . . who . . .” She swallowed hard and dropped her voice to a whisper. “. . . cares.”
Finn nestled in close, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“We’ll find her,” he reminded Natalie. “Her and our mom and Joe. We will.”
Emma started to add, We figured out the first part of Mom’s coded message. Maybe all we need to do to find our way back is to solve the rest of the code. She wanted to assure Natalie, I’m really good at codes and secret messages. You know that, right?
But maybe that wasn’t what Natalie needed to hear. Emma thought hard as she hugged Finn and Natalie tight, then reached back to draw Chess in, too. The four of them stood together for a long moment. United.
“And in the meantime,” Emma finally said, “until we get our mothers back, we’ll all have each other.”
Acknowledgments
About thirty years ago, a newspaper columnist named Rheta Grimsley Johnson wrote about a sad, odd, true coincidence so compelling that the story has haunted me ever since. It took me almost three decades to realize it, but that column planted the first seeds of this book. So Rheta Grimsley Johnson is the first person I need to thank.
I’d also like to thank my agent, Tracey Adams, and her husband and co-agent, Josh Adams, for their belief in this book and this series at a time when I wasn’t sure what I had.
Likewise, I owe my editor, Katherine Tegen, a great deal for her faith in this book and this series and me. Thank you as well to everyone else at HarperCollins who worked on the book, especially Allison Brown, Ann Dye, Mabel Hsu, Christina MacDonald, Aurora Parlagreco, Bethany C. Reis, Mark Rifkin, and Amy Ryan. And thank you to Anne Lambelet for the amazing cover art.
I’d also like to thank my niece Meg Terrell and my sister, Janet Terrell, who’s a teacher, for their help with thinking about life in elementary (or intermediate) school. A shout-out as well to my daughter, Meredith, who helped with my research trip to the National Cryptologic Museum.
And I’m always grateful to my friends in my two Columbus-area writers groups, who provided love and support and listening when I needed it most: Thanks to Jody Casella, Julia DeVillers, Linda Gerber, Lisa Klein, Erin McCahan, Jenny Patton, Edith Pattou, Nancy Roe Pimm, Amjed Qamar, Natalie D. Richards, and Linda Stanek. My friend and fellow author Lisa McMann lives in the wrong place (though she says I’m the one who lives in the wrong place), but she provided moral support at a critical time, too, while I was working on this book.
And thanks as always to my family, especially my husband, Doug. A dinner with Doug and our friends, journalism professors Beverly and Mark Horvit, helped me figure out an important part of this book, so this is both a thanks and a “Sorry for completely zoning out for a while.”
Finally, thanks to my friends Janis and Dan Shannon for showing me certain unique features of their new house, while our friends Sarah and Mark Fox and Barb and Gary Munn stood there saying, “Margaret, you’re going to put this in a book, aren’t you?”
People say that to me all the time, about all sorts of things. But this time . . . they were right.
About the Author
Cilento Photography
As an adult, Haddix worked as a newspaper reporter and copy editor in Indiana before her first book, Running Out of Time, was published. She has since written more than forty books for kids and teens, including the Shadow Children series, the Missing series, the Children of Exile series, and lots of standalones. Haddix and her husband, Doug, now live in Columbus, Ohio, where they raised their two kids. You can learn more about her at www.haddixbooks.com.
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
GREYSTONE SECRETS #1: THE STRANGERS. Text copyright © 2019 by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Anne Lambelet. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2019 by Anne Lambelet
Cover design by Aurora Parlagreco
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Haddix, Margaret Peterson.
Title: The strangers / Margaret Peterson Haddix.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2019] | Series: The Greystone secrets; #1 | Summary: Told from separate viewpoints, Chess, Emma, and Finn Greystone, ages twelve, ten, and eight, investigate why their mother went missing and uncover their ties to an alternate world.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018013963 | ISBN 9780062838377 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062892034 (signed edition)
Subjects: | CYAC: Missing persons—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H1164 Str 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013963
* * *
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-283839-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-283837-7
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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