# **Gigi\'s Last Secret**

#### By Bryan Baldwin

Copyright © 2025 Datastorm Insights LLC All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 979-8-27-858862-7

Cover design: Julie Baldwin

## **Dedication**

*To Oliver, Charlie, and Millie: May you always be good stewards of the gifts God has given you—especially each other.*

*And to Gigi: Thank you for building a foundation of faith that will last longer than any house.*

## **Chapter 1**

A   secret, once you have one, is a lot like a staring contest. At first, you feel confident. You think, *I've got this. I can hold this forever.*  

But then, your eyes start to dry out. They begin to sting. The longer it goes on, the more you become aware of every little twitch. You clench the corners of your eyes, being very careful not to squint too much and lose. You might even pinch your arm just to distract yourself from the burning.  

But it doesn't matter. Eventually, you know the truth: You're going to blink. And the game is going to end.  

Oliver, who was eleven, had just started a staring contest with Truth. And he was about to feel the sting.  

He stood at the end of the driveway, wiping sweat from his forehead. The early summer breeze felt good against his skin, carrying the scent of fresh-cut grass and hot asphalt. But as soon as he turned back toward the house, the summer feeling evaporated.  

Gigi's house sat in the middle of the block, a modest white square that had been born in a wide-open field but now found itself crowded by newer, bigger houses on all sides. To the left was the small, detached garage—Papa Arnie's domain. It was still a museum of heavy, iron tools that would be made of cheap plastic today; a place where you had to be careful not to step on a rusty nail or a sleeping spider.  

But the house… the house was Gigi's.  

Oliver picked up his empty box and walked up the rear steps. He pulled open the screen door, and just like that, he stepped out of today and into a time capsule.  

Usually, crossing this threshold felt like a warm hug. It was supposed to smell like cinnamon toast, peppermint, and the faint, comforting scent of old paper, an imaginary candle labeled "Familiar Home." It was supposed to sound like the *tick-tock, tick-tock* of the giant grandfather clock in the hallway, a steady wooden heartbeat that had been thumping for as long as Oliver had been alive.  

But today, the hallway was silent. The pendulum hung dead center, frozen at 4:12.  

And the smell was wrong. Instead of baking spices, the air was thick with the dry, dusty scent of cardboard and packing tape. It smelled like leaving.  

Oliver walked down the main hall, his sneakers squeaking on the hardwood. He passed the entrance to the den and slowed down. This room was famous in their family. For decades, the shelves that surrounded the entire room had been home to Gigi's ceramic village—a sprawling, magical town that changed with the seasons.  

Oliver remembered how, in December, the whole village would be buried in drifts of fluffy cotton snow. Then, come spring, Gigi would ceremoniously clear the snow and turn the little ceramic trees around to reveal their "unsnowed" green sides. It was one of Oliver's favorite things to watch—the seasons changing on the shelves, predictable and safe.  

But as he looked in today, the shelves were bare. The little houses, the townspeople, and the reversible trees were all gone, wrapped in newspaper and shoved into boxes marked "DONATE."  

Without the village, the room looked small. It looked ordinary.  

Oliver swallowed the lump in his throat and kept walking, moving deeper into the sad, beige canyon of boxes that had taken over the living room.  

"Oliver, can you get those last few items from the upstairs closet?" Mom asked. Her voice was tired, and she had a smudge of dust on her cheek. She was kneeling on the floor, looking at some old knick-knacks she had given to Gigi over the years. She sniffled, dried her eyes with her sleeve, and placed them in a box before taping it up. Oliver suspected this hurt Mom the most; she had grown up right next door.  

"Sure, Mom," he said, trying to force a smile.  

He walked past his dad, who was pacing in the kitchen, phone pressed to his ear. "I just don't know," his dad was saying, his voice low and tight. "The listing goes live next week. We still have to get the carpets cleaned, and this whole… this whole *mess*…"  

Oliver recognized that tone. It was Dad's "Weight-of-the-World" voice. He'd been using it a lot since Gigi passed. Oliver felt his own shoulders get a little tighter. He just wanted this day to be *over*.  

He passed the spot where the plaid sofa used to be. Now, it was just an empty space with dents in the carpet. His six-year-old sister, Millie, was sitting cross-legged in one of the dents. She was supposed to be helping. Instead, she was wearing her bright pink swimming goggles and "rescuing" a porcelain bird from a "Donate" box.  

"I saw that, Millie," he whispered. "And why are you wearing goggles?"  

"This dust is *toxic*, Oliver. It's basically *poison*," she said, her voice muffled by the rubber seal pressing into her cheeks. She stuffed the bird deep into her pocket. "And Mr. Feathers isn't a donation. He's an orphan."  

She patted her pocket with serious, magnified eyes. "He has no parents, and he needs snacks. I'm saving him."  

Oliver sighed. Arguing with Millie was like arguing with a hurricane; you just had to wait for it to pass. "Just don't break him."  

At the end of the hall, near the stairs, his eight-year-old brother, Charlie, was parked in his wheelchair before a mountain of photo albums. He was the official "Photo Sorter."  

"This one is labeled 'Christmas 1982'," Charlie said, adjusting his glasses and tapping a picture with his pencil. "But the television in the background is a Sony Trinitron KV-27, which didn't feature that specific wood-grain bezel until 1984\. The timeline is compromised. I'm creating a separate pile for 'Anomalies'."  

"Just put it in the box, Charlie," Oliver said, stepping around him to get to the narrow staircase. He was the only kid big and strong enough to get the "attic junk," which really just meant the weird, heavy stuff in the upstairs closets. He was the Responsible One. The Helpful One.  

He grabbed the last items: a bag of old blankets and the ancient, wobbly metal ironing board. It looked like a folded-up robot and made the sound of nails on a chalkboard when he lifted it.  

"Okay, last load," he muttered to himself, trying to balance both, being sure not to bump the walls or ding up the doorways.  

He pivoted at the landing. The momentum from the turn was enough to spring open the ironing board with a screeching metal roar. In a frantic attempt to prevent the item from dropping, he quickly jerked to pull the board back towards him, which sent the metal legs flying up towards the wall.  

*CLANG\!*  

The board smacked the frame of the big, old-fashioned picture of Great-Grandma Gigi that hung on the wall.  

Oliver froze. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the crash. He waited for the shout from downstairs. He waited to be the kid who ruined a family heirloom.  

But the crash never came.  

Instead, there was a sound.  

*HMMMMmmmmm-click.*  

It wasn't a normal click. It sounded like a deep, contented hum, followed by the heavy *thunk* of a lock deciding to let go.  

Oliver opened one eye.  

The picture hadn't fallen. It was floating. Well, not floating, but it had swung away from the wall on a hinge so smooth it looked like magic. It didn't squeak or groan like everything else in the old house. It glided.  

A puff of air escaped from the darkness behind the frame. It hit Oliver's face, cool and smelling of old cedar wood, peppermint, and… was that static electricity? It made the hair on his arms stand up.  

As the frame swung fully open, it revealed a square of pure shadow. A hole. A secret cubby in his great-grandmother's wall that absolutely, positively, should not be there.  

It didn't look like a dusty crawlspace. The darkness inside seemed to swirl, thick and inviting, as if holding its breath. A faint amber glow from deep inside cast a silhouette of what appeared to be a briefcase.  

"OLLIE\! WHAT WAS THAT? YOU OKAY UP THERE?"  

His dad's voice boomed with concern from the kitchen. The sound made Oliver's heart jump into his throat.  

He stared at the dark hole. A new problem. A new "mess" to deal with.  

He remembered his dad's "Weight-of-the-World" voice.  

"YEAH, DAD\!" Oliver yelled, his own voice cracking. "FINE\! I DIDN'T FALL. JUST… JUST THE IRONING BOARD\! I DROPPED IT\!"  

His heart hammered. He was lying. *Twice.*  

First, he wasn't "fine." Second, it wasn't "just" the ironing board.  

He reached out a shaky hand and pushed the picture. It clicked shut, hiding the secret once more. He could feel it was more than just an "attic," but couldn't really figure out why. He just felt that there was something more to that space. Something not meant for anyone else.  

Oliver looked at the portrait of Gigi one last time. Her painted eyes seemed to be looking right at him, sparkling with that mischief he remembered.  

"Sorry, Gigi," he whispered to the frame. “This will be our secret. Just for a little while."  

Oliver finally wrestled the stupid ironing board back into its folded state, leaned it against the wall, and continued down the stairs, his mind racing. He was the Responsible One. He needed to be the one to really help out in a time like this. And being responsible, he decided, sometimes meant *not* adding one more problem to the pile.  

He would just keep it to himself.  

But the stinging behind his eyes had already started. He hadn't even seen his siblings yet, but he was already pretty sure that winning this staring contest was going to be impossible.

## **Chapter 2**

Oliver lasted exactly forty-five minutes. If keeping a secret was a staring contest with Truth, Oliver’s eyes were becoming dry, and his eyelids were starting to twitch.  

The family was back at their own home for the evening, gathered around their kitchen table. It was a welcome relief from the dust of Gigi's house, but the chaos had followed them. The table was covered in a mix of mail, moving labels, markers, and a grease-stained take-out container.  

"I'm telling you, Julie," Dad said, wiping sauce from his chin. "I cleared everything out of that upstairs hallway. The sconces, the mirror, the runner rug. Everything except that portrait of Gigi."  

Oliver froze, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. He carefully lowered it back to his plate.  

"Did you get it down?" Mom asked, pouring herself a glass of iced tea.  

"No," Dad groaned. "I swear, Papa Arnie must have welded that thing to the studs. I pulled on the frame, and it wouldn't budge an inch\! Okay, it's not actually welded, but it looked like the screws are stripped."  

Oliver stared at his plate. *It wouldn't budge because it's latched,* he thought.  

"Well, it has to come down, Bryan," Mom said. "The realtor is doing the listing photos on Tuesday. That's two days away."  

"I know, I know," Dad sighed. "I'm going to head over there first thing tomorrow. I'll have to run to the store and get some special bits to back out the stripped screws. Maybe I'll grab a heavy-duty pry bar if I need to. I just can't leave Gigi's portrait for strangers."  

Oliver felt the blood drain from his face—a *pry bar.*  

If Dad took a crowbar to that frame, he wouldn't just find the secret room. He'd destroy the mechanism. He'd break the magic before they even knew what it was.  

Under the table, there was a sudden scuffling sound, followed by a wet *shlorp*.  

"Millie," Charlie said, his voice calm and authoritative. "Do not feed the dog your food."  

Millie popped her head up from under the tablecloth. She was still wearing her neon-pink swimming goggles, which were now slightly fogged. "Willow likes it\! She told me. She said, 'Millie, I want your food\!'"  

"Willow did not say that," Charlie said, adjusting his glasses. "Willow is a Golden Retriever. Her linguistic capabilities are barking and whining."  

Charlie pointed a fork at her. "Furthermore, breadsticks are suboptimal for canine consumption. It contains processed flour and garlic powder. While raw dough is the primary danger due to yeast fermentation causing alcohol poisoning, cooked noodles are merely a gastrointestinal ticking time bomb."  

Millie blinked. "A what?"  

"It gives her gas, Millie," Oliver said, his voice tight. "Deadly gas."  

"Precisely," Charlie noted. "And bloat. Do you want Willow to inflate like a party balloon?"  

Millie looked horrified. She dropped the rest of her food back onto her plate. "Sorry, Willow," she whispered to the floor.  

"Oliver," Dad said, looking at him strangely. "You haven't eaten a bite. You okay?"  

Oliver looked up. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I'm fine," he squeaked.  

"You don't look fine," Mom said, leaning forward. "You look… sweaty."  

"It's the peppers\!" Oliver blurted out. "Hot peppers\! On the noodles\!"  

"Those are plain cheese noodles, Oliver," Charlie observed, taking a clinical bite of his own food.  

"I… I think I swallowed a whole peppercorn\!" Oliver lied. He stood up so fast his chair screeched against the tile. "I need fresh air\! I'm going to… check on the backyard\! Make sure the grass isn't… growing too fast\!"  

He turned and bolted for the sliding glass back door before anyone could ask him why the grass needed supervising at 7:00 PM.  

Outside, the evening air was cool, but Oliver felt like he was burning up. He sat down in the grass at the bottom of the deck stairs, burying his face in his hands.  

*A pry bar.* He had roughly twelve hours before his dad tore the secret door off its hinges.  

*Rrrrrrumble-clack-clack-clack-SCREEEE.*   

It was the distinctive, rhythmic sound of wheelchair tires hitting the wooden slats, punctuated by a sharp, high-pitched whine from the left wheel. The sound got louder, followed by the *whoosh* of rubber on concrete as Charlie coasted onto the patio.  

"Statistically," Charlie's voice said from behind him, "people who run away from dinner claiming to inspect the lawn growth are hiding something."  

Oliver didn't look up. "Go away, Charlie."  

"You displayed three classic markers of deception," Charlie continued, rolling his chair into the grass to park next to Oliver. "Sudden perspiration, vocal pitch elevation, and illogical statements regarding toppings. Also, Millie is now under the impression that you might be a spy."  

The back door slid open again. Millie marched out, her goggles finally perched on her forehead, leaving red rings around her eyes like a raccoon. She flopped down in the grass next to them.  

"Willow forgives me," she announced. "Also, Mom and Dad are talking about carpet cleaners again. Boooo-ring." She poked Oliver in the arm. "So? What did you break?"  

Oliver looked at his siblings. Charlie, with his relentless logic. Millie, with her fearless curiosity.  

He couldn't stop the pry bar alone. He needed a team.  

"I didn't break anything," Oliver whispered, leaning in. "The picture frame Dad was talking about? The one he can't move?"  

"The portrait of Gigi," Charlie said.  

"It's not stuck," Oliver said. "It's latched."  

Millie gasped. "Like a treasure chest?"  

"Better," Oliver said. "I hit it with the ironing board today. It triggered a hidden latch. The whole picture swings open. There's a secret room behind the wall."  

Charlie's eyes widened behind his glasses. "A hidden architectural void? In a standard 1940s layout? That implies a deliberate modification by the original owner."  

"Papa Arnie," Oliver said. "Or Gigi."  

"We have to go in," Millie said, standing up. "We have to go in *right now*."  

"How are we going to do that when we're currently at our house?" Oliver questioned. "And tomorrow morning, Dad is going back with a pry bar. If he rips that frame off, he'll destroy the lock. We'll never know what's inside."  

"Then we have to intercept," Charlie said. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket. "We need to launch an investigation before Dad initiates demolition."  

"How?" Oliver asked. "They're going to be at the house all day working."  

"We need a diversion," Charlie said. "We need to separate our parents from the target location."  

Oliver frowned. "You want to trick Mom and Dad?"  

"Not trick," Charlie corrected. "Manage. We need them to leave Gigi's house while we stay there. But, since they usually take turns watching us, we need a reason for them to go to the hardware store *together*, and more importantly, *without us*."  

"Mom always likes going to the hardware store," Oliver pointed out. "She especially loves the paint aisle. She says it smells like 'possibilities'."  

"Precisely," Charlie said, tapping his pen on his chin. "And Dad is notorious for what he calls 'getting it done' and what Mom calls 'missing the details.' So I suggest we employ what I call a 'Mind Ninja' technique."  

"Mind Ninja?" Millie whispered, eyes wide.  

"It's a psychological maneuver," Charlie explained. "We need to use their own personality traits to herd them together. Oliver, I will deploy what I call *The Beige Alert*."  

"The what?"  

"I will sow the seed of doubt," Charlie said. "By casually mentioning to Mom that I heard Dad mentioning the 'Discount Paint' bin and heard him say, 'White is white, nobody will notice the difference.'"  

Oliver grinned. "Oh, she'll hate that. She spent three hours picking out 'Whispering Birch,' or whatever it was, last year."  

"Exactly," Charlie said. "Mom's artistic integrity will not allow her to stay behind. She will insist on verifying the shade to ensure the patch-up work matches perfectly. She doesn't trust Dad's color vision."  

"Okay…" Oliver said slowly. "That gets Mom to go. But what if Dad just wants to stay and keep working?"  

"That is phase two," Charlie said, turning a page in his notebook. "You will add the Practicality kicker. You suggest that since Mom's going to make sure the paint matches, maybe Dad should go with you to help unload all those heavy donation boxes at the center."  

"Brilliant," Oliver whispered. "Mom hates lifting the heavy boxes, and Dad loves feeling strong. It solves both their problems. It's a win-win\!"  

"An efficient solution," Charlie said, closing his notebook with a snap. " A joint departure."  

"That… that might actually work," Oliver realized, impressed at the thought.  

"Of course it will work," Charlie said. "Then, once the minivan leaves the driveway, we execute Operation Attic."  

"We will need the walkie-talkies," Oliver said, the plan forming in his mind. "Charlie, you can't get up the stairs, so you're on lookout."  

"Mission Control," Charlie corrected. "I will monitor the driveway from the living room window. You and Millie are the Retrieval Team."  

"Retrieval?" Millie asked. "Are we getting a puppy?"  

"We are retrieving answers," Charlie said. He flipped his notebook to a fresh page and wrote *OPERATION ATTIC* at the top in block letters.  

"Okay," Oliver said, feeling a surge of adrenaline. It was better than the feeling of dread. It felt like… a mission. "Tomorrow morning. We become Mind Ninjas. We convince them to go to the store together. And then we save our secret."  

Millie spit in her hand and held it out.  

"Gross, Millie," Oliver groaned.  

"It's a blood pact\!" she insisted. "But with spit\!"  

"No spit," Charlie said, grossed out. "Just nods."  

They all nodded.  

From inside the house, Dad's voice drifted out. "Kids\! Time to get ready for bed\! We have a big day tomorrow\!"  

Oliver looked at his brother and sister. "You have no idea," he whispered.

## **Chapter 3**

Operation Mind Ninja commenced at exactly 8:47 AM. The Baldwin family minivan pulled into the driveway of Gigi's house. The engine hadn't even turned off before Dad was unbuckling his seatbelt with a sigh, already looking stressed.  

Before the van door had finished opening, the furry ball of energy darted out. Dad locked Willow in the backyard and pivoted back towards the van.  

"Alright, troops," Dad said, clapping his hands together, trying to muster enough enthusiasm to motivate the family. "Big day. The sun will set before we know it. I want this place to look like a model home. Mom is going to finish the kitchen, I will be tackling the patchwork in the living room, and you kids…"  

"We know," Mom said. She hopped out of the van, but she didn't grab a box immediately. She stopped and looked up at the attic window—Gigi's sewing room. For a second, her shoulders slumped, and she looked like she might cry. Then, she blinked, shook her head, and plastered a bright, fake smile on her face. "You kids are going to be helpful. Right?"  

"The most helpful," Charlie said from the back, as the wheelchair lift began to lower him to the driveway. "We have a highly efficient schedule planned."  

They filed into the house. It smelled even mustier than yesterday, probably because the air conditioning had been off all night. The hallway was lined with the boxes they had filled yesterday, creating a cardboard obstacle course.  

Phase One belonged to Charlie.  

He waited until Dad was standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at the picture of Gigi. Dad was patting his pockets, looking for his keys.  

"Alright, I need to get to the home supply store," Dad muttered. He started reciting the mental list, "Specialty bits, pry bar… And drywall mud."  

Charlie took a deep breath. He assumed his most casual posture as he leaned back. His front wheels lifted off the ground, the left axle squeaked, and he rested in wheelie position thanks to an anti-tip bar on the back of his wheelchair.  

"Hey, Dad," he said. "Mom mentioned you were going to get paint, too? For the patch-ups?"  

"Yeah," Dad said, checking his wallet. "Just going to grab a bucket quick."  

Mind ninja stealth mode initiated. "My initial visual inspection indicates the wall might be an eggshell finish. But using a color swatch is the only way to match paint that's this aged. Paint tends to oxidize over decades, so it can be difficult to match precisely."  

"We don't have time to do color matching, Charlie," Dad replied dismissively. "I'll eyeball it. Besides, white is white. No one is going to notice. I’m just hoping to save some *green* with a discount bucket.”  

Hearing footsteps and, based on the pace and steadiness, determining they were most likely Mom's, Charlie calculated the timing of her entry. He paused for exactly three seconds before delivering his next ninja line to make sure Mom heard. "White reflects the entire spectrum of visible light. Therefore, even the slightest mismatch in hue or tint will be fairly noticeable. The probability of finding the matching white is statistically improbable for a 'discount bucket.'"  

Mom, who was walking into the room with a roll of tape, froze. Her head snapped up.  

"Discount bucket?" Mom whispered.  

"Oh, hey, Mom," Charlie said, trying to act surprised. "Yeah, Dad was just saying he was going to 'eyeball it' to match the existing paint color ."  

Mom's left eye twitched. It was a tiny movement, but to Charlie, it looked like a calculated victory.  

"Eyeball it," she repeated. She turned to Dad slowly. "You are going to 'eyeball' a patching job on a seventy-year-old wall one day before the photos?"  

Dad looked confused. "Well, I mean… It's just a few spots. I don't need a color swatch."  

"Phase One objective complete," Charlie whispered to himself. He spun his wheelchair around and gave a subtle nod to Millie, who was standing by the door. She adjusted her pink swimming goggles—which she was wearing again, claiming the house was "too bright"—and trotted over to Mom.  

"Here, Mommy\! Let me help\!" Millie chirped, grabbing the corner of a heavy box Mom was trying to lift. "I am super strong\!"  

"I've got the other end\!" Oliver added, swooping in to take the weight.  

Together, the two siblings marched the box out to the minivan with impressive speed. Mom followed them out, carrying a lamp and looking pleasantly surprised. They spent the next five minutes efficiently loading the back of the van with the "Donate" pile: old books, clothes, and kitchenware. Mom would occasionally pause to stare at the contents. She would let out a sigh, dry her eyes, then continue loading.  

Once the van was loaded, Mom wiped her forehead as she slammed the trunk shut. "Phew. Thanks, guys. That was a huge help." She looked at the packed van, then back at the kids.   

"But getting it *in* is the easy part. It's too bad you have to unload all of this at the donation center by yourself," Oliver noted.  

She sighed, reaching for her keys. "You're right. You two had better come with me. I'll need those muscles to get this unloaded quickly."  

Oliver froze. This was not part of the plan. He looked at Charlie, who had rolled out onto the porch to supervise.  

Charlie adjusted his glasses. "Mom," he called out. "Geographically speaking, the Donation Center is located in the same plaza as the home improvement center, correct?"  

"Yes…" Mom said, hesitating.  

"And Dad needs to go to the home improvement center," Charlie continued. "It would be illogical for you to expend energy lifting heavy boxes when your very capable spouse is traveling to the same location."  

"Plus," Oliver added quickly, leaning against the van. "Dad is really strong. He loves lifting heavy stuff. It makes him feel… manly. And since he's going there anyway…"  

Mom looked at the van, then back at the house where Dad was walking out, still looking for his wallet. She thought about the heavy boxes. She thought about the 'discount bucket' of paint she needed to supervise.  

"You make a compelling argument," she muttered.  

She turned to Dad. "Bryan\! Change of plans\! You're driving the van. I need help unloading these boxes at the thrift store. And then," she narrowed her eyes, "we are going to the paint aisle. *Together*."  

Dad looked confused but resigned. "Okay, okay. Just don't let me forget why I'm going there." He peered into the full van. "It doesn't look like we have enough room for the kids."  

He looked at the kids. "You guys sure you'll be okay here?"  

"Totally," Millie said, beaming. "We will be angels. Angels who clean."  

"We'll keep the doors locked," Oliver promised. "We brought the walkie-talkies."  

"Okay," Mom said. "We'll be back in an hour. Don't open the door for anyone."  

"Bye\!" the kids shouted in unison.  

The minivan doors slammed shut. The engine started.  

The three siblings rushed to the living room window. They watched as the minivan backed out of the driveway, paused, and then disappeared down the street.  

"Targets are mobile," Charlie announced. "The Eagle has left the nest. Repeat, the Eagle has left the nest."  

"We're not eagles," Millie said, whipping her hands in front of her, karate style. "We're *Mind Ninjas*."  

"Totally," Charlie said. He dropped his backpack and pulled out a set of heavy-duty, yellow walkie-talkies. He handed one to Oliver.  

"Radio check," Charlie spoke into the unit, pressing his button. "Tango, Echo, Foxtrot, Tango. Over."  

Oliver's reply buzzed through the speaker. *Szzt-chk. Loud and clear, Mission Control. Over. Szzt-chk.*  

"Excellent," Charlie said. He spun his chair around to face the stairs, puncturing the stairway with a squeak. "Phase Two: Operation Attic is a go. Oliver, Millie—you are the Retrieval Team. I will remain here at Base Camp to monitor for the return of the minivan and maintain radio contact."  

"Let's go\!" Millie yelled, sprinting for the stairs.  

"Careful\!" Oliver hissed, chasing after her. "Don't run up the stairs\! They're slippery\!"  

They reached the top landing. It was hot up here, the summer heat pressing down through the roof. The hallway was empty, stripped bare of pictures.  

Except for one.  

The portrait of Gigi hung there, majestic and stubborn. Her painted eyes seemed to sparkle even more today, as if she knew exactly what they were about to do.  

"Okay," Oliver whispered. His heart was doing that bird-fluttering thing again. "Remember the plan. We go in. We look. We do *not* touch anything unless I say so. And we definitely don't break anything."  

"Okaaaaaay," Millie whispered. "Open it."  

Oliver stepped up to the ironing board—which was still leaning against the wall where he'd left it yesterday—and moved it aside. He reached out and touched the ornate gold frame.  

He felt around the edge until his fingers found the hidden catch. It wasn't a latch you could see; it was a tiny, smooth bump in the scrollwork. He pressed it.  

*HMMMMmmmmm-click.*  

The deep, satisfying hum vibrated through the wall. The painting popped loose.  

Oliver pulled it open. The cool, cinnamon-scented air puffed out, hitting him in the face. It was pitch black inside.  

"Flashlights," Oliver said.  

He clicked on the small flashlight he'd brought from home. Millie turned hers on, too—except hers was a toy flashlight that projected the Bat-Signal. A tiny bat silhouette danced across the darkness.  

"Millie, really?"  

"It's for protection. In case there are bats," she reasoned.  

Oliver sighed and climbed into the hole.  

It wasn't just a crawlspace. It was a small, unfinished room tucked under the eaves of the roof. The floorboards were rough, unfinished wood. The ceiling slanted sharply down, so Oliver had to hunch over.  

"Whoa," Millie whispered, scrambling in behind him.  

The beams of their lights swept across the space. It wasn't empty.  

It was like a secret workshop.  

On the end wall, there was a small, dusty workbench. Strange diagrams were pinned up above it—drawings of gears, levers, and mathematical equations that looked way too complicated for a grandmother who baked cookies.  

But in the center of the room, sitting on a velvet-covered crate, was a suitcase.  

It was shaped precisely as Oliver remembered from his quick peek yesterday. It was military green, made of heavy wood and reinforced with brass corners that gleamed in the flashlight beam. Stenciled in faded white letters at the top were the initials: **G.G.**  

*Szzt-chk. Mission Control to Retrieval Team. Report status. Over.*  

Oliver grabbed the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. "We're in, Charlie. We found it. Over."  

*Describe the scene. Over.* Charlie's voice fuzzed through the walkie-talkie.  

"It's a little workshop filled with drawings of inventions. There's a suitcase in the center," Oliver said. "It's… it feels important. It's sitting on a velvet crate, almost like a museum exhibit… Over."  

*Bring it to Base Camp,* Charlie said. *I need to inspect the artifact. Over.*  

"Roger that. Over," Oliver said. He clipped the radio back. "Okay, Millie. Help me lift it."  

Oliver grabbed the handle. He expected it to be heavy, but it was denser than he imagined. It felt like a solid block of oak and iron.  

"Ugh\!" he grunted, tilting it forward until gravity took over. "It's heavy\!"  

"It's full of gold," Millie whispered, grabbing a corner. "Pivot\! Pivot\!"  

"Stop saying pivot\!" Oliver grunted as they shuffled awkwardly to the opening.   

Getting it out of the hole was difficult. Millie had to push it through while Oliver pulled from the landing, trying not to let it crash onto the hardwood floor.  

"Okay… one, two… three\!"  

*THUD.*  

The suitcase landed on the hallway runner Oliver had wisely piled up as a cushion.  

"We got it\!" Millie cheered.  

*Szzt-chk. I heard a thud,* Charlie's voice crackled. *Did you compromise the structural integrity of the floor? Over.*  

"No, Charlie. We're coming down. Over."  

Oliver looked at the stairs. They were steep, narrow, and polished to a slippery shine. Carrying this awkward mystery box down them seemed like a recipe for disaster.  

"We can't carry it," Oliver said. "It's too heavy. If we drop it, it'll smash through the stairs. But maybe we can slide it."  

"Hmm… Sled ride?\!" Millie yelled.  

"Exactly," Oliver said.  

He grabbed a thick moving blanket from the linen closet pile. He folded it in half and wrestled the suitcase onto it.  

"You get on top," Oliver told Millie. "Guide it away from the wall. I'll hold the back and let it slide down slowly."  

It was a delicate operation. Oliver held the corners of the blanket like reins on a wild horse. Millie stuck her legs out to keep the heavy case from banging into the wall or railing.  

*Slide. Clunk. Slide. Clunk.*  

"Careful… careful…" Oliver muttered, sweat dripping down his nose. The suitcase picked up speed the further down the stairs they got.  

As they approached the bottom landing, Oliver's grip slipped, and the suitcase accelerated down, slid off the last step, and skidded down the hall, coming to a stop right next to Charlie's wheelchair in front of the open utility closet.  

"Touchdown\!" Millie yelled, high-fiving the air.  

Charlie didn't high-five. He leaned forward, adjusted his glasses, and began inspecting the case.  

"Excellent work, team," he said, his voice hushed. "Now. Let's see what Gigi was hiding."  

Oliver knelt down. The brass latch seemed complicated, covered with small dials marked with numbers.  

"It's a combination lock," Oliver said. "We don't know the code."  

"Let me see," Charlie said. He rolled even closer and studied the dials. "Look for wear patterns on the brass. See if the metal is slightly shinier on specific numbers."   

"It doesn't appear to be," Oliver checked.  

"Try Gigi's birthday\!" Millie suggested.  

Charlie was good at remembering dates and gave it a try, spinning the dials. "Nope. Too obvious," Charlie said. "Wait. Look at the initials."  

He pointed to the **G.G.** stenciled on the top.  

"Gigi," Oliver said.  

"No," Charlie said. "Look closer. Just underneath the second period, carefully carved into the wood… look."  

Oliver squinted. There, scratched tiny into the metal, was a reference: *Luke 1:37*.  

"It's a Bible verse," Oliver said. "Gigi loved that verse. She had it on a plaque in the kitchen."  

"What is it?" Millie asked.  

"'For with God nothing shall be impossible'," Oliver recited. He'd learned it in Sunday School.  

Charlie did the math in his head, moving his finger in the air as if typing onto an imaginary calculator. "According to my calculations, Luke is the 42nd book of the Bible if you count Old and New Testament books … Numerical value is 4… 2… 1… 3… 7."  

He reached out and spun the dials. *Click. Click. Click.*  

*THUNK.*  

The latches sprang open with such force that they all jumped.  

Oliver looked at Charlie. "How did you know?"  

"Gigi was a woman of faith," Charlie said simply. "And she never forgot a number."  

Oliver took a deep breath. He looked at Millie, whose eyes were wide behind her goggles. He looked at Charlie, who was gripping his tires tightly.  

"Okay," Oliver whispered. "Here we go."  

He lifted the heavy wooden lid.  

Inside, there was no gold. There were no secret war maps.  

There was only a machine. And it was the most beautiful, confusing thing Oliver had ever seen.

## **Chapter 4**

It didn't look like a computer. It didn't look like a toy. It looked like the inside of a grandfather clock had collided with a typewriter.  

Though the outside was army green, the inside revealed the case was made of polished mahogany, glowing warm under the living room lights. Under the lid was a maze of brass gears, silver levers, and glass tubes that pulsed with a faint, amber light. In the center was a wide brass funnel that folded open with the lid, and right below it, a slot labeled with a single, hand-engraved word: *MEND*.  

"It's a... toaster?" Millie whispered, tilting her head. "A magic toaster?"  

"It is definitely not a toaster," Charlie said, leaning so far forward in his wheelchair that his nose was almost touching the gears. "Look at the escapement mechanism. And these vacuum tubes... this is early 1930s technology, but the miniaturization is impossible. It defies the laws of physics\!"  

Oliver reached out a hand. The air above the machine felt warm and hummed against his skin, like static electricity. He took a deep sniff.  

"It smells weird," Oliver said. "Like... like a thunderstorm."  

"And cinnamon rolls," Millie added. "Thunderstorm cinnamon rolls."  

She was right. The smell of ozone—that sharp, electric scent of lightning—was mixed with the warm, sweet smell of cinnamon. It was the smell of Gigi's house, distilled into a box.  

Taped to the inside of the lid was a yellowed index card with black ink writing. Oliver carefully peeled it off and read Gigi's loopy, elegant handwriting aloud:

The Correction Contraption.   

For Mending Mistakes.   

Instructions: 

1. Write the problem clearly.   

2. Insert into the slot.   

3. Turn the crank. 

Warning: Use only when all else fails. 

And be specific.

"Correction Contraption," Charlie whispered, testing the words. "A device for correcting errors."  

"It fixes mistakes?" Oliver asked, looking at the card. "Like... spelling mistakes?"  

"Or bigger mistakes," Millie said, her eyes widening behind her goggles. "Like if you accidentally flush a goldfish."  

"Millie, you have never flushed a goldfish," Oliver said.  

"I almost did," she insisted. "It was a close call. If I had, this machine would have saved Cheddar\!"  

"We need to test it," Charlie said, pulling his notebook out. "We need a controlled experiment. Something small."  

"I want to do it\!" Millie yelled, reaching for the big brass crank on the side.  

"No\!" Oliver shouted, grabbing her wrist. "The instructions say 'Use only when all else fails.' Nothing has failed yet\! We don't even know what it does. It might explode. It might turn us into frogs."  

"Maybe it turns us into dragons\!" Millie argued, trying to wiggle her hand free. "Let go\!"  

"Charlie, tell her\!" Oliver pleaded, using his other hand to block Millie's diving reach for the machine.  

"Millie," Charlie said calmly, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "Recklessly operating unknown machinery is not a good idea. Also, Oliver, your grip on her wrist is causing a dynamic pivot point."  

"A what?" Oliver grunted, trying to hold back a struggling six-year-old who suddenly had the strength of a linebacker.  

Charlie warned, "She's going to use your arm as a lever—"  

But it was too late. Millie dropped her weight, spun, and used Oliver's arm to swing herself around the side of the suitcase.  

The force threw Oliver off balance. He tried to step back to catch himself, but his heel caught on the edge of the bunched-up moving blanket. He was falling, and he was falling backward—straight toward the open utility closet.  

He crashed shoulder-first into the doorframe of the utility closet. The impact shook the wall and vibrated the shelves.  

On the high shelf inside the closet—where Mom had safely tucked away a couple of "Fragile" items—a cardboard box shifted. Oliver looked up just in time to see the box labeled "Gigi's Lamp" tip over the edge of the shelf.  

In slow motion, he watched as gravity gripped the box and pulled it towards the floor.  

"NO\!" Oliver yelled, reaching for it.  

He missed by an inch.  

*CRACK\!\!*  

The box hit the floor corner-first. It wasn't a shattering crash. It was a sharp, hollow pop, like a heavy plate snapping in two.  

Oliver scrambled to the box and ripped open the cardboard flaps. He peered inside, and his face went pale.  

"It's toast," he whispered.  

He reached in and pulled out a piece of the lamp, a porcelain shepherd. It hadn't shattered into dust, but it was definitely broken.  

The lamp had snapped cleanly into three large pieces. The head had popped off the neck, the body had separated from the base, and the shepherd's head was sitting at the bottom of the box, staring up at him.  

Silence.  

Complete, terrified silence filled the room. The three siblings froze, staring at the dismembered family heirloom.  

"Oh no," Oliver whispered. "Oh no, no, no. Mom loved that lamp. She said it was the first thing Gigi ever bought for the house."  

"It is definitely broken," Charlie observed quietly. "The structural integrity has been compromised at the neck and torso."  

"We're dead," Oliver moaned, dropping to his knees. "We are so dead. Mom packed this one herself. She treated it like a diamond. When she unpacks this and finds a headless shepherd, she's not going to be mad. She's going to be crushed."  

Millie peered into the box. She didn't look chaotic anymore. She looked scared. "Can we glue it?"  

"We don't have time for glue to dry, Millie\!" Oliver said, his voice rising to a panic. He checked his watch. "They've been gone twenty minutes. The paint store is only ten minutes away. They could be here any second."  

"Also," Charlie added, inspecting the porcelain shard, "glue would leave a visible seam. Mom has excellent visual acuity. She would notice the repair immediately."  

Oliver looked at the decapitated shepherd. He looked at the open utility closet. And then, slowly, he turned his head toward the middle of the room.  

The giant, military suitcase was sitting there, wide open, humming with amber light. The word MEND seemed to glow brighter than the rest of the brass faceplate.  

Use only when all else fails.  

Oliver swallowed hard. "Everything has failed," he muttered.  

"Oliver?" Charlie asked. "What are you hypothesizing?"  

"We can't glue it," Oliver said, standing up on shaky legs. "And we can't hide it. If Mom finds it broken, she'll never trust us with anything again." He looked at his siblings. "We have to fix it. For real."  

Oliver grabbed a scrap of packing paper and a marker from the floor. With shaking hands, he scribbled two words:  

FIX LAMP.  

"Oliver, are you certain about this?" Charlie asked, his eyes darting between the machine and the note. "We have no data on the output."  

"We don't have a choice," Oliver said. He snatched the pieces of the broken lamp out of the box—the head, the body, the base—and carefully set them into the wide brass funnel. They clattered against the metal.  

He shoved the paper into the brass slot.  

"Crank it, Millie."  

Millie didn't hesitate. She grabbed the brass handle with both hands and heaved.  

*CRANK-CLACK-WHIRRRRR.*  

The machine roared to life.

## **Chapter 5**

The Correction Contraption did not hum politely. It did not whir gently.  

It burped.  

A loud, mechanical belch erupted from the brass funnel, followed by the sound of a thousand tiny knitting needles clicking together at warp speed.  

*Click-click-click-click-WHIIIIINE-thwack.*  

"It's eating the paper\!" Millie yelled, cranking the handle like she was trying to row a boat.  

Oliver watched, paralyzed, as the machine began to vibrate under the living room lights. It looked like a very lumpy, very angry suitcase having a seizure.  

Suddenly, the machine gave one final, exhausted *CLUNK* and stopped moving. A wisp of white smoke curled out from the funnel, shaped vaguely like a question mark.  

"Clear\!" Charlie yelled.  

Oliver collapsed to his knees, crawling toward the machine. "Okay," he whispered. "Let's see how bad it is. Did it glue the head on wrong? Is it just a pile of dust?"  

He looked into the brass funnel, but it was empty. He looked at the floor near the machine's base.  

"Where is it?" Millie asked.  

"It's... It's there," Charlie whispered, pointing to the spot where the machine had spit something out.  

Sitting on the floor, upright, was the shepherd boy lamp.  

But it didn't look like it used to.  

Before, the lamp had been a smooth, delicate porcelain figure of a boy holding a flute, painted in soft pastels.  

Now, it looked like something from a Halloween decoration aisle.  

The cracks where the porcelain had snapped were still visible, but they hadn't been glued. Instead, black shoelaces—the kind you'd find on running shoes—were woven directly through the ceramic.  

It looked like the machine had found tiny holes near the break lines—holes that Oliver hadn't noticed before—and used them like eyelets on a sneaker. The laces crisscrossed over the boy's neck, stitching his head firmly back onto his shoulders. A heavy knot was tied right under his chin.  

The base was lashed to the body with a thick wrapping of black cord, pulled tight to hold the heavy porcelain together.  

It stood there, ugly and sagging, looking almost like a porcelain football.  

"It's... It's hideous," Oliver whispered.  

"It looks like a zombie," Millie said, leaning in close. "A cool zombie."  

"Technically," Charlie said, adjusting his glasses and leaning down to inspect the stitching, "your request was executed successfully. The structural integrity has been restored. It is no longer a rigid ceramic object; it is a flexible composite. If you dropped it now, I bet it wouldn't shatter. It would bounce."  

"But look at it\!" Oliver groaned. "I'm pretty sure Mom is going to notice that her precious antique now has laces coming out of its ears\!"  

"You asked it to 'Fix Lamp,'" Charlie pointed out. "You did not specify the method of repair. The machine chose the most readily available binding agent."  

"Shoelaces?" Oliver asked. "Where did it even get shoelaces?"  

Oliver noticed a relaxed sensation in his foot and looked down at his own sneakers.  

"Hey\!" he yelled.  

His left sneaker was flopping open. The laces were gone entirely.  

"It stole my laces\!" Oliver cried, hopping on one foot. "It cannibalized my shoe to fix the lamp\!"  

"Hmmm. *Equivalent Exchange*," Charlie murmured, looking impressed. "To mend one object, it must harvest materials from another. Fascinating. It acts on a localized conservation of mass."  

"It's a shoe-lace thief\!" Oliver said. "This isn't a Correction Contraption\! It fixes things, but it does it in the worst way possible\!"  

"I like it," Millie decided. She picked up the Franken-Lamp by its newly reinforced neck. "It's tough. Mr. Feathers would be safe with this guy."  

"Put it down\!" Oliver hissed. "We have to hide it. If Mom sees that, she won't just be mad. She'll be... confused. And confused parents ask questions."  

*Rrrr-rrr-rrr... VROOOM.*  

The sound cut through their argument like a knife.  

It was the sound of an engine. A car engine. Pulling into the driveway.  

Oliver scrambled down the hall and ran to the window. His heart stopped.  

"It's the minivan," he choked out. "They're back\!"  

"That is impossible," Charlie said, checking his watch. "They have only been gone for thirty minutes. The operational window was sixty minutes. Were my calculations flawed?\!"  

"They're parking\!" Oliver yelled. "Dad is getting out\! Mom is getting out\! They're walking to the door\!"  

He ran back to the hallway and looked around.  

The giant, military suitcase was still sitting in the middle of the floor, wide open. And right there, in plain sight, was the grotesque, laced-up lamp.  

"Hide it\!" Oliver screamed. "Hide everything\!"  

"It's too heavy\!" Charlie yelled. "We can't get it back up the stairs\!"  

"The closet\!" Oliver shouted, pointing to the utility closet under the stairs. "Shove it in the closet\!"  

They folded the brass funnel and quickly closed the lid.  

Millie grabbed the edges of the moving blanket they had used as a sled and threw it over the suitcase. "Push\!"  

Oliver threw his shoulder against the side of the case. Millie pushed from the back.  

"Go, go, go\!" Oliver grunted.  

The heavy mahogany box slid on the blanket, surfing across the hardwood floor. They hit the doorframe with a thud, then heaved it inside into the darkness.  

"The lamp\!" Charlie hissed.  

Oliver scrambled back, grabbed the ugly lamp, and tossed it into the box. He didn't even have time to tape it; he just tucked the flaps over and placed it on top of the machine. He slammed the closet door shut just as the front doorknob rattled.  

*Click.*  

"Hey, kids\! We're back\!" Dad's voice boomed from the other side of the door.  

Oliver stepped out, closed the door, then spun around. He leaned his back against the closet door, spreading his arms out wide to block the view.  

"Act natural\!" he whispered.  

The front door swung open.  

"We got the paint\!" Dad announced, stepping into the entryway with a gallon can in one hand. "And we made good time. No traffic."  

Dad stopped. Mom walked in behind him, carrying a coffee. She stopped too.  

The hallway was… interesting.  

Millie was standing in the middle, smiling so hard her gums showed, her hands clasped innocently behind her back. Charlie was staring intently at the ceiling, doing what looked like whistling, but sounded more like an attempt to blow out birthday candles.  

And Oliver? He was doing a pose that could only be described as "Human Shield," pinning himself against the utility closet door.  

"Hey\!" Oliver shouted. It came out way too loud and unnatural. "HEY\! YOU'RE BACK\! THAT WAS FAST\! WOW, LOOK AT THE TIME\!"  

Dad blinked. "Oliver? Why are you shouting?"  

"I'm not shouting\!" Oliver shouted. He lowered his voice to a frantic squeak. "I mean... I'm just... excited. About the... painting."  

Dad's nose wrinkled. "What is that smell?"  

"Smell?" Charlie asked, finally looking down from the ceiling. "I detect no olfactory anomalies."  

"It smells like..." Dad took another sniff. "Like a thunderstorm inside a bakery? Is something burning?"  

"It's probably just the... dust\!" Oliver said, sweat stinging his eyes. "Old dust. Ancient dust. It smells like cinnamon when you disturb it. Did you know that? It's a scientific fact."  

"That is incorrect," Charlie noted, but Oliver kicked the wheel of his chair. "Ow. I mean... that's correct. I read that the specific chemical composition of 1940s dust particles often mimics baked goods."  

"Right," Dad said slowly, looking at his children like they were aliens who had just landed. "Well. Since we're back early, let's get to work."  

Dad set the paint can down and reached into the plastic shopping bag he was carrying. He pulled out a long, yellow iron bar. The Pry Bar.  

"First order of business," Dad said, hefting the bar like a medieval sword. "I am getting that picture frame off the wall."  

Dad marched toward the stairs. Toward the picture of Gigi. Toward the secret latch that would pop open the moment he applied pressure.  

"No\!" Oliver shouted.  

Dad stopped, the tool hovering inches from the wall. "Oliver? What is it?"  

Oliver's mind raced. He couldn't tell the truth yet. And he couldn't tackle his dad.  

"It's... Mom\!" Oliver pivoted. "Mom, you said we needed to keep the house clean for the photos, right? If Dad rips the wall out now, drywall dust will get everywhere\! All over the... freshly vacuumed floor\!"  

Mom looked up at the portrait and the clean floors around her.  

"He has a point, Bryan," Mom said, taking a sip of her coffee. "If you crack that old plaster now, we'll be cleaning up white dust for the next three hours. We have to get ready for the realtor pictures tomorrow."  

Dad looked at the picture frame. He looked at the pry bar. He looked at his watch.  

"I really wanted to get that thing down," he sighed. He tapped the pry bar against his leg. *Clang. Clang.*  

Oliver held his breath, pressing his back harder against the closet door where the machine and the Franken-lamp were hiding.  

"Fine," Dad grunted, setting the pry bar down. "I'll leave it for now. If the realtor complains about it after the photos, I'll come back and rip it down then. For now, let's just focus on the paint touch-ups."  

"Phew," Millie whispered, too loud.  

"What was that?" Dad asked.  

"Phew-y\!" Millie said, pinching her nose. "I said Phew-y\! Because... cleaning makes me sweaty."  

Dad chuckled and ruffled her hair. "Let's get to work. There's still a lot that needs to be done. I'd like to get the rest of the boxed out of the house by dinner."  

Oliver let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding since Friday. They were safe for now. The machine was hidden. The wall was intact.  

But as he walked toward the kitchen, his left shoe flopped loosely with every step. *Slap. Slap. Slap.*  

He looked down at his unlaced sneaker. He thought about the lie he'd told about the dust. He thought about the grotesque, laced-up lamp hiding in the dark closet, waiting to be discovered.  

"Hey, Oliver," Charlie whispered, rolling up beside him. "Your shoe."  

"I know," Oliver muttered.  

"We have successfully managed this crisis," Charlie said. "But based on the data... our 'fixes' have a high cost."  

"Yeah," Oliver said, looking at the pry bar leaning against the wall like a sentry. "And I have a feeling the cost is going to go up."  

"It feels like lying," Charlie noted. "Maybe we can pray for forgiveness."  

Oliver didn't answer. He just dragged his floppy shoe into the kitchen, feeling less like a hero and more like a criminal who had just barely escaped the scene of the crime.  

And so the staring contest with Truth continued…

## **Chapter 6**

Later that day, the family returned to their house. The pepperoni pizza sat in the center of the kitchen table like a greasy, delicious stop sign.  

Usually, Monday night pizza was a celebration. It meant the weekend was wrapping up, and the rules of nutrition were suspended for thirty minutes of cheesy bliss. But tonight, the pizza box looked less like a party and more like evidence in a crime scene.  

Oliver sat at his usual spot, but he wasn't sitting normally. He knew he should have taken his shoes off at the door like always, but he couldn't. If he took them off, everyone would see the empty eyelets. He was doing a complex under-the-table maneuver that involved curling his left toes to keep his sneaker on.  

Without laces, the shoe gaped open like a hungry fish every time he moved his foot. To keep it on, he had to walk with a stiff-legged shuffle that made him look like a cowboy who had spent too much time on a horse.  

"Eat up, guys," Dad said. He didn't sound celebratory. He sounded like a general addressing troops before a battle they were probably going to lose. "We need the energy. Tomorrow is another big day. There's still lots of cleaning to do."  

"Ugh, I don't want to do anymore cleaning," Millie mumbled. She was holding a slice of pizza with two hands, but she wasn't eating it. She was wiggling her front tooth against the crust, a look of intense concentration on her face.  

"I hear you, kid," Dad said, wiping his forehead with a napkin. He looked exhausted. There was white paint and dust in his hair, making him look prematurely gray. "But the responsibility is ours. We have been entrusted with the house."  

He took a sip of water and set the glass down with a heavy *thud*.  

"The Photographer is coming tomorrow," Dad announced. "Nine o'clock sharp. Or as Charlie would say, '0900 hours.'"  

Oliver swallowed a lump of cheese that felt like a golf ball. "Nine?"  

"That means we have a few hours to clean tomorrow," Mom added. She was staring at the kitchen cabinets as if she could will them to be cleaner. "The house is… okay. The patchwork is done. The boxes have all been moved out."  

"But," Dad interrupted, leaning forward. He engaged his 'Serious Dad' eyes. "It is not just about being clean. It is about *Stewardship*."  

Charlie, who was dissecting his pizza slice with knife and fork to remove what he calls *"excessive grease pools*," paused. "Stewardship: the job of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or property."  

"Exactly, Charlie," Dad said. "We are stewards of that house until it sells. And tomorrow, we have to show that this house was well cared for and loved."  

He held up a finger. "Rule number one: No touching the walls. I just touched up the paint. If I see a fingerprint, I will cry."  

He held up a second finger. "Rule number two: No breathing on the windows. Mom cleaned them three times. If I see a smear, I may cry."  

"And Rule number three," Mom said, looking directly at Millie. "No crumbs. No messes. No accidents. That house needs to be a museum. Perfect. Pristine. Sterile."  

"That is statistically improbable," Charlie noted, pushing his glasses up. "Entropy dictates that disorder increases over time. Especially in a closed system containing a six-year-old."  

"The what\!?" Oliver asked.  

“Entropy. It’s basically a theory that things go from order to chaos," Dad explained. He turned towards Charlie. "We will have to fight *local* entropy, Charlie. At least for tomorrow."  

Oliver looked down at his plate. The guilt was rising in his chest, hot and heavy, mixing with the pepperoni.  

*Perfect. Pristine.*  

Suppose his parents knew that secret hiding in the utility closet, they wouldn't be talking about entropy. They'd be talking about fumigating that house.  

He thought about the Franken-Lamp hidden in the utility closet, its ceramic body stitched together with his stolen shoelaces. He thought about the Machine—the Correction Contraption—lurking in the dark, smelling of ozone and impossible magic.  

He was a terrible steward. He wasn't protecting the house; he was harboring a mechanical fugitive.  

"I feel sick," Oliver whispered. It wasn't entirely a lie.  

"It's probably just nerves," Mom said gently. "We're all stressed. Just finish your crust."  

But Millie wasn't stressed.  

Oliver looked over at his sister. While Oliver was drowning in a sea of guilt, Millie was looking at her pizza crust with a strange, glittering look in her eyes.  

She wasn't listening to the lecture about Stewardship or entropy. She was thinking about the Machine.  

To Oliver, the Contraption was turning into a nightmare—a that stole shoelaces and made zombie lamps.  

But to Millie? Oliver saw the gears turning in her head. She didn't see a monster. She saw a genie. She saw a fairy godmother made of brass gears and vacuum tubes.  

Millie carefully tore a corner off her paper napkin.  

While Dad droned on about the to-do list for clearing the house, Millie reached into her pocket and pulled out a stubby red crayon.  

Shielding her work with her pizza crust, she began to scribble.  

Oliver kicked her under the table.  

"Ow\!" Millie yelped.  

"What are you doing?" Oliver hissed, trying to keep his voice under the radar of Dad's speech.  

"Planning," Millie whispered back. She shoved the scrap of napkin into her pocket and took a giant, defiant bite of her pizza.  

She winced as her loose tooth hit the crust, but then she smiled. It was a toothy, lopsided, terrifying smile.  

"We have to fix things, Ollie," she whispered, patting her pocket. "And I know just the guy for the job."  

Oliver's stomach did a flip-flop. The "guy" she was talking about wasn't a handyman.  

"Millie, no," Oliver pleaded. "Dad said no accidents."  

"Exactly," Millie said, wiping tomato sauce on her sleeve. "No accidents. Only fixes."  

Oliver looked at the clock. It was 7:30 PM. The Photographer was coming early tomorrow morning.  

And as he watched Millie wiggle her tooth with her tongue, Oliver realized that the staring contest with Truth wasn't over.  

It was just moving to the lightning round.

## **Chapter 7**

Tuesday morning arrived not with a glorious summer sunrise, but with a sudden, blinding flash of the bedroom light.  

"Up and at 'em, troops\!" Dad's voice boomed through the bedroom door. "It's 5:30\! We roll out in fifteen minutes\!"  

Oliver groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. It felt like he had only been asleep for ten minutes. His dreams had been a stressful loop of chasing his own shoelaces through a dark tunnel while a giant porcelain lamp laughed at him.  

"This is inhumane," a voice mumbled from the other side of the room.  

Charlie was sitting up in bed, looking like a grumpy owl with bedhead. He reached for his glasses on the nightstand. "The circadian rhythm of a pre-adolescent requires nine to eleven hours of sleep. I have achieved six."  

"Dad doesn't care about rhythms," Oliver mumbled, tossing the pillow aside. "He cares about getting things done."  

Summer vacation mornings were not meant to be early. But Dad had decided last night that in order to protect the "Stewardship" of Gigi's house for the 9:00 AM photos, the family needed to be on-site at dawn for "Final Preps." He was there late last night doing more work on Gigi's house, but wasn't able to get it all finished.  

Oliver dragged himself out of bed. He looked at his left sneaker sitting by the door. It still looked like a dead fish with its mouth gaping open. He sighed, jammed his foot inside, and curled his toes tight.  

*Don't limp,* he told himself. *Just walk like… a guy who walks weird.*  

Fifteen minutes later, the family was piled into the minivan. The world outside was still gray and misty. The streetlights were humming, and the only other people awake were the garbage truck drivers.  

"Okay," Dad said, tapping the steering wheel as he turned onto Gigi's street. "Here is the battle plan. Mom, you're on kitchen detail. I'm doing a final sweep of the basement. Kids… just sit on the floor. Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't exist."  

"You can exist a little bit," Mom said, sipping from a travel mug. "But cleanly and quietly."  

They pulled into the driveway. By now, the horizon was glowing from the coming sun. Gigi's house looked peaceful in the orange hue of morning light. The windows were dark. It looked like a normal, empty house.  

But Oliver knew better. He knew that in the utility closet under the stairs, a brass-and-wood monster was waiting.  

As soon as they were inside, Dad switched into high gear.  

"Go, go, go\!" he whispered, clapping his hands. He grabbed a broom from the garage and headed into the basement. Mom headed straight for the kitchen to polish the chrome sink for the tenth time.  

Oliver flopped onto the carpet where the sofa used to be. Charlie parked his wheelchair next to him and immediately opened a book, trying to wake up his brain.  

"I'm hungry," Millie announced.  

She was standing in the middle of the empty living room, wearing her pajamas and a pair of fuzzy slippers that looked like unicorns. She was holding a bright green Granny Smith apple she'd apparently snagged from the cooler bag Dad had brought.  

She opened her mouth wide and took a confident bite.  

*CRUNCH.*  

"Ow\!" Millie yelped. She pulled the apple away. There was a small dent in the skin, but no bite mark. "Stupid tooth\!"  

She opened her mouth and wiggled her front incisor. It was hanging by a thread, swinging back and forth like a saloon door in a western movie.  

"It's too loose to bite," she whined. "But it won't fall out. It's hanging on by a booger\!"  

"The term is 'avulsion, '" Charlie muttered without looking up from his book. "Just pull it. The probability of pain is high, but brief."  

"No\!" Millie said. "I need it to be strong. I need to eat my apple. I need…"  

Oliver opened one eye. He saw Millie look toward the hallway. Toward the utility closet. "I need help."  

"Millie," Oliver warned, sitting up. "Don't even think about it."  

"Think about what?" her eyes shifting sideways as she asked innocently. *Too* innocently.  

"The closet," Oliver hissed. "We agreed—no more fixes. The machine is dangerous. It steals things."  

"It *fixes* mistakes," Millie whispered. "And my tooth is a mistake. It's supposed to be biting, but it's just wobbling."  

"Millie—"  

"I have to go to the bathroom," she announced quickly.  

Before Oliver could scramble up with his laceless shoe, Millie had turned and sprinted toward the hallway.  

"Millie\!" Oliver tried to run, but his shoe flopped, and he nearly tripped. By the time he regained his balance, he heard the distinct *click* of the utility closet door.  

"Oh no," Oliver moaned. "Charlie, she's going to the machine\!"  

"Let her," Charlie said, turning a page. "Perhaps if she breaks the machine, our problems will be solved."  

"Or she'll break herself\!" Oliver said. He shuffled-ran down the hall, his sneaker slapping against the hardwood floor.  

He reached the closet door and yanked it open.  

It was dark inside, smelling of lemon floor cleaner and… ozone.  

Millie was already there. She had squeezed behind the vacuum. The heavy moving blanket was pulled back, revealing the brass gears of the Correction Contraption.  

The amber tubes were glowing softly in the dark closet, casting eerie shadows on Millie's face. She held her red crayon in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other.  

"Millie, stop\!" Oliver whispered-shouted.  

"Too late," she said.  

She dropped the paper into the slot labeled **MEND**.  

Oliver saw the words written in crude, red block letters: **FIX TOOTH**.  

"Millie, you can't just—"  

She grabbed the brass crank and heaved.  

*GRIND-CLACK-WHIRRRRR.*  

The sound was louder in the small closet. It sounded like a garbage disposal chewing on silverware. The machine shook. The brooms rattled against the wall.  

"It's working\!" Millie squealed excitedly.  

"Shhh\!" Oliver hissed, looking over his shoulder at the kitchen door. "Mom is going to hear\!"  

Suddenly, the machine stopped grinding. It let out a high-pitched *ping*, like a microwave finishing popcorn.  

The brass funnel on top swiveled. It pointed directly at Millie's face.  

"Ready for the magic," Millie whispered, closing her eyes and opening her mouth, revealing her big toothy smile.  

*ZAP.*  

It wasn't a laser. It was a stream of white dust—thick and chalky—that shot out of the funnel and coated Millie's face.  

"Pfft\!" Millie sputtered, coughing. "It tastes like… chalk\!"  

"Is that it?" Oliver asked, squinting in the dim light. "Did it work?"  

"My mouth feels heavy," Millie mumbled. She reached up and touched her lip. Her eyes went wide.  

"Ollie," she said, gasping. "I think it worked too much\!"  

She turned toward him and smiled.  

Oliver gasped. He couldn't help it. It was a short, strangled yelp of pure horror.  

Millie's front tooth was no longer loose. It was no longer small.  

It was enormous\!  

The machine hadn't just tightened the tooth; it had added mass. A *lot* of mass. A square, solid slab of white material had replaced her front tooth. It was so big it pushed her lip out. It extended down past her bottom lip, looking less like a human tooth and more like a single, giant beaver fang.  

"What?" Millie asked, touching the monolith in her mouth. "Is it big?" It was clear that the tooth had made it impossible to pronounce S's.  

"It's… It's a tombstone," Oliver whispered, backing away. "Millie, you look like a cartoon rabbit."  

"Does it wiggle?" she asked, pushing on it with her tongue. It didn't move. It looked solid enough to chew through a tree trunk.  

"Let me see," Charlie's voice came from the doorway. He had rolled up silently.  

He clicked on his flashlight and shone it on Millie's face.  

"Fascinating," Charlie said, leaning in. "The machine has interpreted 'Fix' as 'Reinforce'. It has increased the surface area and density of the incisor by approximately 500%."  

"It's huge\!" Oliver cried. "How are we going to hide that? She can't smile\! She can't even close her mouth\!"  

"What is it made of?" Millie asked, tapping it with her fingernail. *Click, click.* It sounded hard, heavy, and glassy.  

Charlie squinted. He reached out and rubbed the surface of the giant tooth.  

"It's smooth," Charlie noted. "Cold to the touch. And look at the gloss. It's not enamel. It's… glazed ceramic."  

"Ceramic?" Oliver asked.  

"Like a fancy plate?" Millie asked, looking excited.  

"Yes, well, not exactly," Charlie said. He turned his wheelchair around and pointed his flashlight beam out of the closet and down the hall. He pointed it directly at the door Dad had been obsessively polishing earlier.  

"The bathroom," Charlie whispered.  

"Eww," Oliver said. "Millie has a TOILET TOOTH\!?"  

They rushed—well, shuffled and rolled—out of the closet and down the hall to the small bathroom.  

Oliver pushed the door open and gasped.  

The bathroom was sparkling clean. Dad had scrubbed it within an inch of its life. The chrome faucet shone, and the white mosaic tiles on the wall gleamed in the light.  

Except for one of them.  

In the shower, a small square white tile was missing, perfectly at eye level.  

Not just broken—*gone*. There was just a gray, square patch of dried adhesive where the tiles used to be.  

The kids let out a sigh of relief when they learned it was not a toilet tooth.  

"Equivalent Exchange," Charlie said, his voice echoing in the tiled room. "To build the tooth, it harvested the ceramic."  

"It stole the shower  wall?" Oliver whispered, horrified. "To make a beaver tooth?"  

"It fused the tile," Charlie observed. "That explains the square shape. And the extreme whiteness."  

"Kids?" Mom's voice floated from the kitchen. "Everything okay? I heard a gasp."  

"Just… a spider\!" Oliver yelled back, his voice cracking. "A big one\! Millie ate it\! I mean… stepped on it\!"  

"Okay, well, keep it down," Mom called. "I'm trying to focus."  

Oliver looked at Millie. She was standing there with the giant slab protruding from her mouth, gleaming with the same high-gloss finish as the bathroom wall.  

"You look like a backsplash," Oliver groaned. "You literally have a bathroom wall in your face."  

"I bet I can eat the apple now," Millie said. She picked up the bruised green fruit from the floor where she'd dropped it earlier.  

She didn't hesitate. She didn't find a soft spot. She just bit down.  

*CRUNCH.*  

The sound was deafening. It sounded like a branch breaking in the wind. The giant ceramic tooth instantly decimated the apple, taking a massive, perfect chunk out of its center.  

"It workths great," Millie said, spraying a little apple juice through the gap. "Thuper crunchy."  

"We have to hide it," Oliver said, panic rising in his chest. "Mom is going to see. Dad is going to see. The *photographer* is going to see."  

"How do you hide a giant tooth?" Charlie asked. "It is the most prominent feature on her face."  

Oliver looked around the closet. One of the brooms had a thick, knitted wool scarf wrapped around the handle. Oliver quickly unwound it and knocked out the dust by shaking it like a rug.  

"Here," Oliver said, wrapping it around Millie's neck and pulling it up over her nose.  

"It's summer," Millie complained, her voice muffled by the wool. "I'm hot."  

"You have a toothache," Oliver improvised. "A cold… toothache. The cold air hurts it. You have to keep it warm."  

"That is medically inaccurate," Charlie pointed out.  

"Hey, it's the best we've got\!" Oliver snapped.  

"I look like a bank robber," Millie said, looking at her reflection in the dark window.  

"You *are* a vandal," Oliver said, looking back toward the bathroom and the hole in the wall. "You're smuggling construction materials in your mouth."  

From the backyard, they heard the sliding glass door open. Dad walked in, wiping sweat from his forehead.  

"Yard is clear," Dad announced. "Not a single leaf or pile of dog poop. Now, who's ready for a break? I brought snacks."  

He looked at the kids. He looked at Oliver, who was standing on one leg to hide his shoe. He looked at Millie, who was wrapped in a winter scarf up to her eyeballs.  

"Millie?" Dad asked. "Why are you wearing a scarf? It's July. And where did it even come from?"  

Millie looked at Oliver. Oliver looked at Charlie.  

"Fashion," Charlie said simply. "She is experimenting with avant-garde textures."  

"And… her tooth hurts," Oliver added quickly. "Sensitive. To the… air conditioning."  

"But the AC isn't on," Dad said, frowning.  

"Exactly," Oliver said, sweat dripping down his back. "It's… a preemptive strike."  

Dad stared hard at them for a long moment. He looked at the scarf. He looked at the anxious look on Oliver's face.  

"Okay," Dad said slowly, too tired to argue. "Whatever keeps you quiet and clean until 9:00 AM. Just… please, don't make a mess."  

He turned and walked back to the kitchen.  

Oliver slumped to the floor. "That was too close."  

"T minus three hours," Charlie whispered. "And we have a machine that steals things."  

"And," Millie added, pulling the scarf down to reveal the giant white slab, "I'm still hungry."  

Oliver looked at the tooth. He realized with a sinking feeling that the machine hadn't just fixed a mistake. It had created a whole new category of problems.  

And they still had one more request to make.

## **Chapter 8**

The house was quiet. Too quiet.  

It was the kind of silence that usually happens right before someone starts coughing in church. The only sounds were the distant hum of the refrigerator and the frantic *scritch-scritch-scritch* of Mom scrubbing the kitchen grout with a toothbrush.  

In the living room, the three Baldwin siblings were gathered in a tight, anxious circle on the floor. Or rather, Oliver was standing on one leg to keep his shoe on, Millie was lying on her stomach drawing with a crayon while wearing a heavy wool winter scarf, and Charlie was sitting in his wheelchair, looking annoyed.  

"It is a tactical liability," Charlie whispered, staring at his left wheel.  

He rolled forward an inch. *SCREEEEE.*  

He rolled backward an inch. *REEEEEEK.*  

The sound was high-pitched and piercing, like a robotic mouse screaming for help. In the empty, echoey house, it sounded as loud as a fire alarm.  

"It's just a squeak, Charlie," Oliver hissed, glancing nervously toward the kitchen door. "Just don't move."  

"*Don't move* is not a strategy, Oliver," Charlie retorted, pushing his glasses up his nose. "We are currently in a hostile environment. We have to navigate the perimeter to avoid Dad's 'Stewardship' inspections. If I cannot move silently, I am a sitting duck. And you…" pointing aggressively at Oliver's flopping sneaker, "…are compromised by a lack of tensile support."  

"I'm fine," Oliver lied, curling his toes so hard his foot cramped.  

"You walk like a penguin on ice," Charlie noted. "And Millie looks like a bank robber."  

Millie pulled her scarf down for a second, flashing the square white tile that was now her front tooth. It gleamed in the morning light like a bathroom fixture. "I'm a shark," her whisper sprayed spit, then she pulled the scarf back up.  

"See?" Charlie said. "We are a disaster. And the Photographer arrives in…" He checked his watch. "…one hour and forty-two minutes."  

He rolled forward again. *SCREEEEE.*  

"Stop it\!" Oliver begged. "Dad's going to hear\!"  

"I can't stop the friction, Oliver," Charlie said calmly. "The bearing is dry. It requires lubrication. Or replacement."  

He looked toward the hallway. Toward the utility closet. Then grinned as he glanced at the left tire.  

Oliver saw the look. He stepped in front of the wheelchair, arms crossed. "No. Absolutely not. You saw what it did to the lamp. You saw what it did to Millie. That machine is a monster\!"  

"The machine is a *tool*," Charlie corrected. "The problem isn't the hardware. It's the software. Or rather, the user's lack of *specific* instruction."  

Charlie pulled out his notepad. He flipped past the page where he had drawn the "Mind Ninja" plan and started a new diagram.  

"Oliver," Charlie explained, "you wrote 'Fix Lamp.' That is ambiguous. The machine had to improvise. Millie wrote 'Fix Tooth.' Also vague. It maximized the tooth's structural integrity, which was logical, but aesthetically disastrous."  

"It gave her a tile for a tooth, Charlie\!"  

"Because she didn't specify a *human* tooth," Charlie countered. He tapped his pen on the paper. "I, however, am a man of science. I will not make a vague request. I will give it a precise, engineering-based command. I will outsmart the machine with logic."  

"You can't outsmart magic," Oliver said.  

"It's not magic," Charlie said dismissively. "It's physics. It's Equivalent Exchange. I just need to define the terms."  

He scribbled a sentence on the paper, tore it out, and held it up.  

**ELIMINATE AUDIBLE FRICTION. LEFT WHEEL BEARING.**  

"See?" Charlie said triumphantly. "It's precise. I'm not asking it to 'fix' the wheel. I'm asking it to remove the sound caused by the friction. It can't be misunderstood."  

"Charlie, please," Oliver said. "We're running out of house. We're running out of… luck\!"  

*SCREEEEE.*  

From the kitchen, Mom's voice floated out. "Boys? Is someone hurting a cat out there?"  

"No\!" Charlie raised an eyebrow at Oliver. "Your choice, Oliver. Either I squeak and get caught, or we use the machine, and I become stealthy."  

Oliver looked at the kitchen door. He looked at Charlie's determined face. He looked at his own laceless shoe.  

"Fine," Oliver groaned. "But if you end up with a wheel made of… I don't know, cheese… I'm telling Dad it was your idea."  

They moved to the closet. It was a slow procession—the Squeak, the Shuffle, and the Scarf.  

Inside the small, dark room, the Correction Contraption sat waiting. The amber vacuum tubes were dim, sleeping. The smell of ozone and cinnamon was faint but present.  

"Clear the area," Charlie commanded. He rolled up to the machine. He had to lean far out of his chair to reach the slot.  

"Remember," Oliver whispered. "Precise."  

"Calculated," Charlie corrected.  

He slid the paper into the brass slot labeled **MEND**.  

"Millie," Charlie said. "Engage the mechanism."  

Millie, who never turned down a chance to crank a handle, squeezed past the vacuum. She grabbed the brass lever.  

"Preparing to de-squeak," she announced.  

She heaved.  

*CRANK-CLACK-WHIRRRRR.*  

The machine woke up. The amber lights flared bright, illuminating the closet with a golden glow. The gears spun. The internal hammers started clicking and tapping.  

But this time, the sound was different.  

When it fixed the lamp, it made a *zipping* sound. When it fixed the tooth, it had made a *ping*.  

This time, the machine made a sound like a heavy, wooden crack, like a tree branch snapping in a storm.  

*SNAP\! CRACK\!*  

"What was that?" Oliver yelped, backing up against the brooms. "That sounded like the house breaking\!"  

"It's harvesting," Charlie said, his eyes glued to the funnel. "It found the material."  

The brass funnel swiveled. It pointed straight down at Charlie's left wheel.  

A stream of powder didn't shoot out. Instead, a blur of brown motion shot from the funnel. It looked like a stream of liquid wood, flowing and reshaping itself in mid-air. It wrapped around Charlie's left wheel.  

There was a loud *THUNK,* and Charlie felt a sharp jolt in his chair.  

Then, silence. The machine powered down. The lights faded.  

"Did it work?" Millie whispered.  

Charlie looked down at his chair. He moved his hand to the rim of the wheel to give it a test push. But it didn't budge.  

"Fascinating," Charlie breathed.  

"Is it cheese?" Oliver asked, afraid to look.  

"No," Charlie said. "It followed my instructions perfectly. I asked it to eliminate the friction from the bearing."  

Oliver looked down.  

The tire of the chair wasn't touching the floor anymore.  

Instead, it was resting inside a beautiful, polished, curved piece of wood. It cradled the bottom of the wheel perfectly, lifting it an inch off the ground. The wood curled up at the front like the runner of an old-fashioned sled.  

"It's a ski," Oliver whispered.  

"It's a *runner*," Charlie corrected. "A fixed, wooden runner. The wheel is immobilized inside the channel. Zero rotation means zero friction squeaks."  

He held the right rim and twisted his body, causing the left side to slide silently across the wooden floor of the closet.  

*Shhhhhhh.*  

"Silent," Charlie said, a grin spreading across his face. "I did it. I beat the machine."  

"You have a sled-chair," Oliver said. "You can't roll."  

"I can slide," Charlie said. "It's a hybrid locomotion system. Watch."  

He pushed off. The right rubber wheel rolled, while the new left wheel sat saddled in the runner; it began to slide. The result was that Charlie didn't move straight. He drifted. He veered sharply to the left, spinning in a quiet arc.  

"I have to compensate for the drag," Charlie muttered, adjusting his grip. "But the acoustic signature is zero. Success."  

"Where did it get the wood?" Millie asked. She was poking the new runner. "It's shiny. And dark. It looks like chocolate wood."  

Oliver froze. He looked at the runner. It was made of dark, polished oak. It had a familiar varnish. And along the side, there was a decorative groove that looked exactly like…  

"Oh no," Oliver whispered.  

He shoved the closet door open and stumbled into the hallway.  

But now, at the bottom—right where the stairs spilled into the cramped hallway—something was missing.  

The fancy, swirling curl of wood at the end of the handrail was gone.  

The rail didn't curl gracefully into a stop anymore. It just ended abruptly in a jagged, splintered stump, like a tree that had been cut down.  

"The curly thing\!" Oliver choked out. "It ate the swirly end-piece\!"  

"The *volute*," Charlie corrected, sliding and drifting into the hallway. "It is an architectural spiral used to terminate a handrail."  

"I don't care what it's called\!" Oliver yelled. "The va-*toot* is gone\!"  

"*Vo-LUTE*," Charlie corrected, looking down at his left wheel. "And it's not gone. It has been re-purposed."  

Oliver looked. The rubber tire was still there, visible now in the hallway light, jammed deeply into the hollowed-out curve of the stolen wooden swirl. The dark, polished oak acted like a shoe, cradling the tire perfectly. It made the left side of his wheelchair look like Santa's sleigh.  

"The radius of the volute matches the radius of my tire," Charlie murmured. "It didn't replace the wheel. It encased it."  

"Great," Oliver said sarcastically. "You're now wearing the stairs."  

"We can fix it," Charlie said, but his voice wavered.  

"No\!" Oliver shouted. "No more fixes\! Look at us\! I have no laces\! Millie has a bathroom tile in her mouth\! You have half of Santa's sleigh\! This house is being eaten alive\!"  

"Oliver?"  

Dad's voice came from the top of the stairs.  

Oliver froze. He looked up.  

Dad was standing on the landing, holding a bag of tools in one hand while his other rested on a dropcloth draped over the railing, blocking his view of the banister. He looked down at them.  

"What are you guys doing?" Dad asked. "And why is Charlie in the closet?"  

"We're playing… Hide and Seek\!" Oliver yelled. "Charlie was hiding\! I found him\!"  

"Well, keep it down," Dad said, starting to come down the stairs.  

Oliver's heart stopped.  

If Dad came down the stairs, he would reach the gap. He would feel the jagged, splintered edge. He would look down.  

But Oliver had a flash of brilliance.  

"Dad, wait\!" he screamed.  

Dad stopped, his hand hovering inches from the rail. "What? What is it now?"  

"The… the ceiling\!" Oliver improvised wildly. "I just… I saw a spider\! A huge one\! Headed towards the room\! Right there\!"  

He pointed to the ceiling behind Dad.  

Dad was hit with a wave of terror and pushed off using the hand resting on the dropcloth in a hurried spin. "A spider?"   

The momentum of the push sent the dropcloth sliding. Gravity took over and carried the dropcloth, drifting all the way down the banister, stopping directly over the missing banister. The stiffness of the old paint helped it retain its shape, like a mummified ghost at the bottom of the stairs.  

"It was a fast one," Millie added, muffled by her scarf. "A *ninja* spider."  

Dad disappeared frantically into the upstairs hall, breathing in controlled panic.   

They had managed to avoid disaster for now.  

Oliver sagged against the wall. He looked at Charlie, still in the closet.  

Charlie was staring at his new wooden runner. He gave it a little push. *Shhhhh.*  

"The hypothesis was flawed," Charlie whispered. "I solved the audio problem. But I created a mobile deficit."  

"You think?" Oliver hissed.  

"However," Charlie added, turning his chair through the closet doorway with a wide, drifting slide, narrowly missing the hallway baseboard. "I am now stealthy. I can drift."  

"Great," Oliver said, burying his face in his hands. "You can drift. Millie can chew through concrete. And I can take my shoe off in record time."  

He looked at the machine in the closet, dark and silent again. It had won again. It had given them exactly what they asked for, and taken exactly what they couldn't afford to lose.  

And the worst part?  

They still had to survive the morning, and Truth hadn't blinked.

## **Chapter 9**

If you asked Oliver, 8:00 AM was the worst time of day. It wasn't quite morning anymore, but it wasn't day yet. It was the deadline hour. It was the hour when you realized you hadn't studied for the math test, or that you had forgotten to put on pants before the bus arrived.  

But this Tuesday, 8:00 AM wasn't just stressful. It was a countdown to doom.  

"One hour\!" Dad shouted from across the house. He sounded like a game show host who was slowly losing his mind. "The Photographer arrives at 0900 hours\! I want this house to sparkle\! I want it to shine\! I want it to look like human beings have never set foot inside it\!"  

In the hallway, Oliver stood on one leg, leaning against the wall to take the pressure off his cramping toes. He looked at the staircase.  

Technically, the house *did* sparkle. The floors were polished. The windows were streak-free.  

But if you looked closer, the cracks in the facade were starting to show.  

Still draped over the jagged stump at the bottom of the stairs was a canvas drop cloth. It was stiff and splattered with white paint—leftover from Dad's frantic patching of the picture frame area upstairs.  

It didn't look "casual." In the small house's tight, narrow hallway, it looked like a construction zone. But at least it hid the fact that the stairs had been decapitated.  

"Status report," Charlie whispered.  

"Drop cloth is holding," Oliver whispered back. "But Dad is going to move it eventually. He wants the house 'pristine,' not 'under construction.'"  

"We just need to delay until 9:15," Charlie calculated. "Once the Photographer captures the stairway shot, the house is immortalized. Then we can reveal the structural deficit."  

"And tell him we ate the stairs?" Oliver hissed.  

"We tell him termites," Charlie said. "Amazon bullet termites."  

"I'm thirstyyyyyy," Millie whined.  

She was sitting on the bottom step, still wrapped in her thick wool winter scarf, looking like a very small, very warm bank robber. Her eyes, peering over the wool through the googles, were tracking Dad as he marched out of the kitchen carrying a soft-sided cooler bag. Charlie pivoted sideways to hide his new ski.  

"Okay, team," Dad said. "I left a cooler with snacks in the living room. I'll need you to get out of the hallway.  

"Can we eat on the patio?" Oliver asked hopefully. He wanted to get as far away from the hole in the floor as possible.  

"Negative," Dad said immediately. "The bench is soaking wet. And the grass is full of morning dew. If you go out there, you will get wet. Wet shoes equal footprints. Footprints equal a dirty floor."  

So, weare having a tactical picnic right now. I packed emergency rations. String cheese. Grapes. Fruit snacks. Water. Things that do not stain. Things that do not crumble."  

He looked at them sternly. "You may eat. But you may not move. You sit on the floor. You consume the nutrients. You do not touch the walls. You do not touch the windows. And you definitely do not go outside and track mud into the foyer."  

"Understood," Charlie said.  

"Good," Dad said. He tossed Oliver a roll of paper towels. "I'm going to do one final sweep of the garage. It still has old leaves and grass clippings on the floor. It clashes with the *Feng Shui*." Humor was Dad's coping mechanism for stress.  

He marched out the front door, closing it with a firm *click*.  

The moment he was gone, the tension in the room snapped.  

"Food\!" Millie muffled-shouted through her scarf. She scrambled off the stairs and ran for the cooler.  

"Careful\!" Oliver warned, shuffling after her.  

Millie dug into the cooler like a badger. She tossed a bag of fruit snacks to Oliver. She tossed a cheese stick at Charlie.  

She dug down to the bottles of water and pulled one out.  

"The tooth makes me thirsty," she announced, tilting her head back to swallow.  

Unsatisfied, she tossed the water back into the cooler and pulled out a foil pouch she snuck with her. "Water is boring. I need juice. Grape juice\!"  

She poked the straw in and slipped it under her scarf. A loud, slurping sound filled the room, amplified by the hollow ceramic echo of her giant tooth.  

"Charlie, you want anything?" Oliver asked, opening his fruit snacks.  

"Negative," Charlie said, eyeing the cooler from the hallway. "My trajectory is currently… complicated."  

"Just roll over here," Oliver said.  

"I cannot 'roll', Oliver," Charlie corrected. "I can slide. And due to the coefficient of friction on the banister, my turning radius is significantly impaired."  

"Just try," Oliver said. "We have fifty minutes. We need to look normal."  

Charlie sighed. He gripped his wheels—well, his one wheel and one wooden sled runner.  

He pushed.  

*Shhhhhh-thump.*  

The movement was not graceful. The rubber wheel on the right gripped the hardwood perfectly. The polished oak banister-runner on the left, however, lagged behind. To compensate, Charlie had to twist his body to the right to pull the left side of the chair forward.   

He repeated the pattern of push, twist, push, twist, push, twist.  

The result was that Charlie didn't move directly forward. He drifted diagonally, side to side like a downhill skier. After a few pushes and twists, he got the hang of it and began to gain speed heading toward the living room.  

However, the floor's friction profile changed as soon as the hardwood in the hallway transitioned to the carpet in the living room.   

Instead of sliding, the banister caught hard. The wooden runner dug into the carpet pile while the right wheel turned freely. The chair lurched violently to the left, and Charlie's momentum and body weight began to tip the chair to the right.  

"Whoa\!" Oliver yelled.  

"I am losing control\!" Charlie panicked. "I am tipping\! I am tipping\!"  

He was now angled on the two right wheels, with a trajectory arcing leftward, directly towards the cooler and Millie.  

"Brake\! Brake\!" Millie yelled, then dove out of the way, dropping her juice pouch in the process.  

"I'm trying\!" Charlie grunted. He slammed his hand down on the right wheel to stop the spin and threw his body weight towards the left to prevent the chair from tipping all the way over.  

The chair continued to roll on two wheels as if balancing on a tightrope.  

But gravity can be cruel at times.  

Now that the chair was slowing down, the left side began its descent, and the chair righted itself.  

The round, hardwood edge of the banister runner came crashing down. However, the beige carpet was no longer the only object under the sleigh runner of Charlie's chair.   

*Poomf.*  

It wasn't a loud sound. It was a wet, decisive pop, like a grape being stepped on by a giant.  

"No\!" Oliver screamed as he watched Millie's dropped juice pouch bear the full weight of the banister.  

Time seemed to freeze.  

From under the wooden runner, a jet of dark, violent purple liquid shot out. It didn't just leak. It exploded. It sprayed across the white carpet in a perfect fan shape. It pooled around the white rubber of Charlie's right wheel and soaked instantly into the fibers.  

It was a purple nebula in a universe of beige.  

"Five-second rule\!" Millie yelled. "Pick it up\!"  

"You can't pick up liquid, Millie\!" Oliver shrieked.  

He dropped to his knees. He decisively grabbed the roll of paper towels Dad had left. He started dabbing frantically at the stain.  

"Don't rub it\!" Charlie yelled, his voice cracking. "Stop\! You're smooshing it\! The scrubbing makes it worse\!"  

"I have to do something\!" Oliver cried. The paper towels turned a deep, bruised violet instantly. He grabbed more. But the juice kept coming. The foil pouch was flattened underneath the runner, squeezed dry like a tube of toothpaste.  

"Back up\!" Oliver yelled at Charlie.  

Charlie heaved the chair backward, revealing the flat, empty husk of the foil juice pouch.  

But the stain… the stain was the size of a dinner plate.  

"Oh my gosh," Oliver whispered, staring at it. "Oh my gosh. Dad is going to kill us. He is actually going to end our lives."  

"The Photographer," Charlie said, his voice hollow. "He will be here in forty minutes. He has to take photos of the living room. This is the center of the room."  

"We can put a rug over it\!" Millie suggested.  

"We don't have a rug\!" Oliver shouted. "We packed the rugs\! And we can't use the drop cloth because that's covering the hole in the stairs\!"  

Oliver looked at the purple disaster. It looked like a black eye on the house's face.  

He thought about the "Stewardship" lecture. He thought about Dad's gray hair and stressed-out face. He thought about how hard Mom had scrubbed the grout.  

If they saw this, they wouldn't just be mad. They would be broken.  

"We can't fix this," Oliver said, tears stinging his eyes. "We can't clean this. It's grape juice on light wool. It's permanent."  

"Not necessarily," Charlie said.  

Oliver looked up. Charlie wasn't looking at the stain anymore. He was looking at the hallway. At the closet door under the stairs.  

"No," Oliver said. "Charlie, no. Look at us\! I'm shuffling\! You're sledding\! Millie is a bank robber\! Every time we use that machine, it makes it worse\!"  

"It makes it *different*," Charlie corrected. "We made mistakes with the input. We were vague and lacked specificity. But this time… this time the problem is a simple matter."  

Oliver looked at the stain. It was turning a dark, sickly maroon as it dried.  

He heard the scuffle of bristles from the kitchen. Mom or Dad could walk in at any moment.  

"We don't have a choice," Oliver whispered.  

He scrambled up, his laceless shoe flopping. "Guard the door, Millie. Charlie, get to the closet."  

"I can't," Charlie said. "I'm stuck in the juice mud."  

"Slide, Charlie\!" Oliver yelled, grabbed the back of the wheelchair, and gave a shove. "Slide for your life\!"  

He pushed. Charlie drifted. And together, they careened toward the closet, leaving a faint, purple track mark behind them, heading straight for the only thing that could save them—or destroy the house completely.  

Truth stared back hard, and Oliver's eyes were feeling the sting.

## **Chapter 10** 

The closet under the stairs had become their war room. It smelled of lemon cleaner, ozone, and the distinct, tangy scent of three panicked children.  

"Okay," Oliver breathed, wiping purple juice from his hands onto his shorts. "We have twenty-nine minutes until the photographer is here. We have a stain the size of a frisbee. And Dad is on the porch sweeping dead beetles. Talk fast."  

Charlie was parked—or rather, docked—next to the vacuum. His left wooden runner was still dripping slightly with grape juice. He pulled a pen from his pocket, his face set in a grim expression of scientific determination.  

"The data is conclusive," Charlie whispered. "Every time we ask the machine to 'fix' something, it solves the problem by adding material from another source."  

He held up a finger. "Exhibit A: The Lamp. Added shoelaces. Took from Oliver's shoe." He held up a second finger. "Exhibit B: The Tooth. Added ceramic tile. Took from the bathroom." He held up a third. "Exhibit C: My wheel. Added the wood it took from the banister."  

"We get it," Millie muffled through her wool scarf. "It likes to build stuff."  

"Precisely," Charlie said. "It adheres to the Law of Equivalent Exchange. It stole laces to add structure. It stole the wall to add mass. That is why we are failing. We keep asking for repairs without specifying a source material."  

He grabbed his notebook from his pocket. He pressed it against the top of the brass suitcase and began to write in neat, block letters.  

"The problem is the grape juice," Charlie explained as he wrote. "The juice is a foreign contaminant occupying space within the wool fibers of the carpet. We don't need a patch. We don't need a cleaning agent. We need an *exchange* of materials."  

"So what do we do?" Oliver asked, glancing nervously at the closet door. "Ask it to replace the carpet?"  

"No," Charlie said. He clicked his pen. "We tell it the source material. The juice is a foreign substance that has been added to the carpet. We don't need to 'fix' the carpet. We just need to substitute the juice for something else."  

"Replace the juice? With what?"  

"We tell the machine to remove the grape juice and specifically tell it to replace it with something else, like… air," Charlie said. "100% of it. No additions. No shoelaces. No tiles. Just an Equivalent Exchange."  

He held up the page.  

**SWAP 100% OF GRAPE JUICE IN THE CARPET FIBERS AND REPLACE WITH AIR.**  

"See?" Charlie said, pointing to the second line. "The 'Equivalent Exchange' clause. It constrains the materials for the exchange. We are explicitly forbidding it from harvesting laces, tiles, banisters, or any other material. It can only exchange the juice for air. We are being very specific."  

Oliver looked at the card. It made sense. It was logical. It seemed safe. And it was the only hope they had.  

"Okay," Oliver said. "Do it."  

"Millie," Charlie commanded. "Engage the mechanism."  

Millie shimmied past the mop bucket. She grabbed the brass crank with both hands. "Operation Juice-Be-Gone," she whispered.  

She heaved.  

CRANK-CLACK-WHIRRRRR.  

The machine woke up. The vacuum tubes glowed amber, casting long, dancing shadows against the broom handles. The gears clicked rhythmically.  

But this time, the machine didn't burp. It didn't zip. It didn't snap.  

It inhaled.  

*Whoooooosh*.  

It sounded like a jet engine starting up in a library. A deep, powerful suction noise filled the small closet. The air pressure dropped so fast that Oliver's ears popped. The dust bunnies on the floor were sucked toward the machine. Millie's scarf flapped wildly in the sudden wind.  

"It's hungry\!" Millie yelled over the noise.  

The brass funnel on top of the machine swiveled. It turned 180 degrees, pointing away from them, directly at the closet door.  

ZWOOOMP.  

A beam of something—not light, but pure, distorted air—shot through the wood of the door like it was a ghost.  

"It went into the living room\!" Oliver shouted.  

The machine shuddered once, let out a satisfied hiss, and powered down. The lights faded. The wind stopped.  

Silence returned to the closet.  

"Did it work?" Oliver whispered.  

"The acoustic signature suggests a rapid displacement of air mass," Charlie said, adjusting his glasses.  

"English, Charlie. English."  

Charlie sighed in annoyance. "It seems like it took air from the room and carried it out there. Let's investigate."  

Oliver pushed the door open.  

They shuffled out into the hallway. They looked into the living room.  

The purple stain was gone.  

"It worked\!" Oliver cheered, his voice cracking with relief. "Look\! It's perfect\! Charlie, you genius\!"  

"Wait," Charlie said. He scoot-shuffled down the hall towards the living room, squinting. "The shade is… incorrect."  

Oliver walked closer. He looked at the spot where the stain had been.  

It wasn't beige carpet.  

It wasn't carpet at all.  

Where the grape juice stain had been, there was now a perfect, absolute circle of darkness.  

Oliver walked right up to the edge. He peered down.  

He wasn't looking at the floor. He was looking *through* the floor.  

The machine had followed Charlie's instructions to the letter. It had removed 100% of the grape juice and exchanged it with air. But since the juice had soaked into the carpet, the padding, and the plywood subfloor… the machine had simply deleted everything the juice had touched.  

There was a one-foot hole in the living room floor, cut with laser-like precision.  

Through the hole, Oliver could see the living room lights spill onto the concrete floor of the basement seven feet below. It was gray, cold concrete, and a lonely metal drain cover sitting in the middle of the dark slab.  

"It's a hole," Oliver whispered and began to breathe with heavy panic. "It's a giant hole\! A HOLE CHARLIE\!\!\!"  

"It removed the particulate," Charlie murmured, looking down into the abyss. "And the medium containing the particulate exchanged it for air. Technically… it did the exchange and the stain is gone."  

"THE FLOOR IS GONE, CHARLIE\!" Oliver screamed in anger through his teeth. "WE CAN SEE THE BASEMENT\!"  

"Well," Millie said, peering over the edge and nursing her aching jaw. "At least it's not purple."  

"This is worse than purple\!" Oliver grabbed his hair. "We have a pit\! A death pit\! Right in the middle of the room\!"  

*Click.*  

The front door knob started to turn.  

"Okay, troops\!" Dad's voice boomed through the entryway from the porch. "Beetle situation neutralized\! I'm coming in to do a final check\!"  

"Dad\!" Oliver yelped.  

"Hide it\!" Charlie hissed. "Cover the hole\!"  

"With what?" Oliver frantically looked around. "We have no rugs\! The dropcloth is on the stairs\! The room is empty\!"  

Dad's footsteps echoed in the entryway. *Clack. Clack. Clack.*  

He was just mere seconds away. He would walk around the corner, see the hole to the underworld, and probably faint. Or explode.  

Oliver looked at the hole. He looked at the empty room. He looked at his own body.  

"I am the rug," Oliver whispered.  

"What?" Charlie asked.  

"I'm the rug\!"  

Oliver threw himself onto the floor. He landed flat on his stomach, positioning his torso directly over the hole. His elbows dug into the carpet on one side. His knees dug in on the other. But his stomach… his stomach was hovering over nothing but empty air and a seven-foot drop.  

Charlie calculated that his sled runner was enough to straddle part of the hole, providing extra support to Oliver and concealing the oak ski from view.  

"Don't move," Oliver grunted, bracing his core. "Millie, sit on my legs\! Make it look… casual\!"  

Millie flopped onto Oliver's calves just as Dad walked into the room.  

"Alright\!" Dad announced, rubbing his hands together. "Time for the… whoa."  

Dad stopped. He looked at the scene, perplexed.  

Oliver was lying face down in the center of the room, stiff as a board, holding himself up by his elbows. Millie was sitting on his ankles, wearing a winter scarf and reading a comic book upside down. Charlie was parked nearby, staring intently at a blank wall.  

"Kids?" Dad asked. "What in the world are you doing?"  

Oliver turned his head. He forced a smile. It was a terrible, strained smile.  

"Planking\!" Oliver wheezed. His stomach muscles were beginning to burn, and his body was bobbing up and down. "It's an exercise. For the… core."  

"Planking?" Dad asked. "Now?"  

"Stewardship," Oliver squeaked. "Strong body… strong house. Just… exercising… overcoming the mind."  

Dad frowned. "You look like you're in pain."  

"It burns," Oliver admitted, sweat beading down his face. "But it's a… good burn."  

Dad sighed. He checked the time on his phone.  

"It is 8:50," Dad said. "Ten minutes, Oliver. You can plank later. Right now, I need you to stand up and clear out. The photographer needs this room to be empty. No people. Just house."  

Oliver's arms shook. Clear out.  

If he stood up, he wouldn't just be clearing the room. He would be revealing the pit.  

"No\!" Oliver shouted.  

Dad blinked. "Excuse me?"  

"I mean… I can't\!" Oliver gasped. "Not yet\! I have to… hold the plank\! It's a new yoga pose called… "The Turtle\!"  

"Oliver," Dad said, his voice dropping to that dangerous, quiet tone. "This isn't a gym. Get up. Go to the backyard. Now."  

"I can't," Oliver whimpered. "My muscles… they're locked."  

"Cramps," Charlie interrupted, spinning his sled-chair slightly. "Severe lactic acid buildup. If he moves now, his muscles will seize. He requires ten minutes of static recovery, then dynamic stretching."  

Dad looked at Charlie. He looked at Oliver, who was trembling violently over the secret pit.  

"Fine," Dad threw his hands up. "Fine\! You want to be weird? Be weird. But if you aren't out of this room when that doorbell rings at 9:00 AM, you are grounded until you are in college."  

Dad turned and marched toward the kitchen. "I feel as though I'm going crazy\!"  

As soon as he was gone, Oliver collapsed.  

His stomach dipped into the hole, but he caught himself on the rim. He rolled onto his back, gasping for air, staring at the ceiling.  

"We made it," Oliver wheezed.  

"Negative," Charlie said. He checked his watch.  

"8:52," Charlie announced. "We have eight minutes."  

"Eight minutes to what?" Oliver asked, sitting up but carefully staying seated on the edge of the hole to keep it covered. "Fix the floor?"  

"Until we are required to vacate," Charlie said. "Dad was clear. The photographer needs an empty room. If we stay here, we ruin the shot. If we move, we reveal the hole. We need to…"  

*Ding-Dong.*  

The doorbell rang.  

Oliver froze. He looked at Charlie's watch.  

"That's not possible," Oliver whispered. "It's too early\!"  

"Photographers are prompt," Charlie said, his face pale. "It is a professional courtesy."  

Oliver looked at the front door. He looked at the hole beneath him. He looked at his brother and sister.  

"We can't go," Oliver whispered. "We're trapped."  

"If we leave, the house is unsellable," Charlie analyzed, backing his chair up so his sled runner covered a sliver of the edge. "But if we stay, we defy a direct parental command."  

Oliver cried as the front door handle turned. "What do we do\!? This is a disaster\!"

## **Chapter 11**

*Ding-Dong. Ding-Dong.*  

"He's early\!" Mom yelled loudly, her voice tight with panic. She was wiping the countertop so hard the laminate was squeaking. "Why is he early?"  

"He's not supposed to be early," Dad hissed, checking his watch frantically. "Creative people are never early. They're supposed to be fashionably late\! It's in the contract. Or at least it should be."  

Mom came around the corner into the living room with a panicked look.  

"Door\!" Mom said, pointing a shaking finger at the kids. "You three. Patio. Now. Please." She didn't bark, but the sheer stress in her voice made Oliver want to phase through the floorboards.  

"We can't," Oliver wheezed. His elbows were sinking into the carpet. "We are… meditating."  

Now Dad rounded the corner into the room on his way to answer the front door.  

"Meditating?" Dad whispered furiously. He stopped and smoothed his hair in the entryway mirror. "If you aren't invisible in three seconds, you're grounded until you're thirty\!"  

While Dad reached for the doorknob, Charlie saw his opening.  

"Movement opportunity," Charlie whispered.  

With everyone looking at the front door, Charlie gripped his rims. He pushed hard. The rubber wheel gripped, and the wooden sled runner slid. He didn't roll so much as *ski* across the carpet and linoleum, drifting in a wide, silent arc toward the kitchen, desperate to keep his banister hidden.  

He cleared the room just as the door opened, tucking himself into the corner where the old cabinets met the wall. He swung a lower cabinet door open and parked his wooden runner behind it, effectively hiding the evidence.  

Dad swung the front door open.  

Standing on the porch was a man who looked less like a photographer and more like a tornado that had hit a vintage clothing store. He wore a billowy linen shirt that was unbuttoned one button too low, loose trousers with a loud pattern, and a scarf, despite the July heat. His glasses were just two small glass circles held together by bare metal wire.  

"Greetings," the man said, looking down the bridge of his nose. His voice was deep, serious, and dripping with pretentious tone. "I am Nelson. This is… the dwelling?"  

"Nelson\!" Dad said, putting on his best 'I-Am-A-Relaxed-Homeowner' smile. "Welcome\! Come in, come in. The house is ready. Sterile, actually."  

Nelson stepped inside. As he looked around in wonder, his unkept hair would drop over one eye. Every few seconds, he'd whip his head back to reveal his face once again.  

He made a rectangle with his fingers and thumbs, then held it out in front of him as if he were viewing everything from the camera's perspective. This was a man of art.  

"Okay," Nelson breathed, scanning the house though his hands. "Okay. Strong energy. This is good. The light is… aggressive. But we can work with it."   

He turned towards Dad, his hair whipping in the process, dropping his hands to his hips. "This is my first realty shoot, you know. Usually, I photograph fruit. Still fruit. Houses are… just… bigger fruit."  

"Riiiight," Dad said, his smile freezing. "Well, this fruit is ready and ripe for pictures."  

Nelson marched into the foyer with a hand out as if feeling the air. "I need flow," he announced. "I need architectural honesty." He pointed a lens at the living room. "And I need these people not to be here." He peared out from the side of the camera with a perplexed look on his face.  

Oliver was still face down on the floor. Millie was sitting on his calves, reading her comic book upside down.  

"Kids\!" Mom hissed. "Patio\!"  

"Wait," Nelson said. He lowered his camera. He squinted at Oliver. "I sense tense energy. What is… the vibe here?"  

Oliver's arms were shaking so badly that his entire body was vibrating against the carpet. He felt the cool draft from the basement hole tickling his stomach through his t-shirt. If he moved an inch, the secret pit would be revealed.  

He was a quick thinker and observed Nelson to be artistic, so he tried to play to his strengths.  

"It's… Lifestyle," Oliver gasped. "Modern… Living."  

"We are furniture," Millie added from under her wool scarf. "I am an Ottoman."  

"Ignore them," Dad said with a tone of embarrassment. "Oliver, get up. Take the snack bag. Go outside."  

He stepped forward to grab the cooler bag that was sitting near Oliver's head, then reached for the handle of the half-unzipped cooler lying on its side.  

Oliver's heart stopped. The cooler was the only other object near the hole. If Dad lifted it, he might see the edge of the abyss.  

"Wait\!" Oliver shouted.  

He didn't stand up. Instead, he did a move that was half-breakdance, half-seizure. He rolled his body to the right, coming off the hole, but in the same motion, he shoved the cooler bag with his shoulder.  

*Scrrrtch.*  

The cooler bag slid, coughed out an apple, and stood upright perfectly over the one-foot circular hole in the floor, covering it completely.  

Oliver landed on his back, panting. He quickly reached out, grabbed the shiny red apple that had rolled out of the bag, and placed it artistically on top of the cooler to entice the former fruit photographer. He whipped a napkin out of his pocket and draped it next to the apple.  

"Don't move it, Dad," Oliver whispered, pointing at the cooler-apple-napkin tower. "It… adds a pop of color. It breaks up the beige. It adds warmth and invitation. It says… 'Come live here.'"  

Dad glared at him. "It says 'lunch is on the floor.' Now, pick it up or else-"  

"Eureka\!" Nelson interrupted, snapping his fingers. "The boy is right. The red anchors the room. It's organic. It's raw. It suggests hunger, yet… satisfaction. The viewer is drawn towards the energy in the middle of the room."  

Nelson snapped a photo. *Click\!*   

Oliver slumped back against the carpet. Safe. For now.  

"Beautiful," Nelson muttered. "Leave it be. The juxtaposition of the soft cooler against the hard reality of the housing market… genius."  

Dad looked at the cooler, which was hiding a literal hole to the underworld. He looked at Nelson with one eyebrow raised, clearly thinking this guy is nuts. "Okay. Sure. Organic."  

Nelson spent the next twenty minutes moving through the house like a whirlwind. The kids followed at a distance. He photographed the bedrooms, bathrooms, and the backyard.  

But eventually, he returned to the danger zone.  

"The Entryway," Nelson announced. "I need to capture the grandeur of this small staircase. This is the money shot.  

From the kitchen, hidden behind the cabinet door, Charlie let out a low hiss. "The staircase," he whispered.  

Oliver rushed down the hallway to check the stairs. Dad had moved the drop cloth. It was no longer draped over the bottom of the banister.  

The jagged, splintered gap where the machine had eaten three feet of oak railing was completely exposed. It looked like a beaver had gone to war with the stairs.  

Nelson set up a tripod in the foyer, aiming towards the stairs. He adjusted the height. The camera lens was pointed directly at the missing section of the banister.  

Nelson peered through the lens. He frowned. "Hold on. The wood grain here… it looks wrong. It looks… chewed? Is that a beaver mark?"  

Oliver stopped breathing. Nelson was leaning in close.  

"I need to open the aperture," Nelson said. "I want to see the texture of that staircase."  

Charlie peeked out from the kitchen. He looked at the worried look on Oliver's face. He looked at the camera. He then saw the morning light beaming through the window.  

"Calculate trajectory," Charlie mumbled. He calculated the geometry in his head. "Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection."  

As Nelson adjusted the dials and twisted the lens, Charlie made his move. He lifted his watch. He tilted it fifteen degrees to the left. Then three degrees up.  

A beam of sunlight hit the crystal face of his calculator watch. It bounced off with blinding intensity and produced a focused spotlight on the distant wall.  

Charlie rotated his wrist a fraction of an inch. The reflected beam shot across the room and landed on the camera's lens.  

"Whoa\!" Nelson pulled his head back.  

"What is it?" Dad asked, looking nervous. "Is it the dust? I can dust again\!"  

"No," Nelson said, looking back into the viewfinder. "It's… the light."  

In the viewfinder, the bottom left corner of the image—exactly where the broken banister was—was thoroughly washed out by a massive, glorious lens flare. It looked like an angel had just landed on the stairs.  

"Look at that ethereal glow," Nelson whispered in awe. "The morning light here… It's like the shine of an apple and the comfort of a peach. It's spiritual. It completely obscures the railing, but it captures the *feeling* and *essence* of ascent. My instructor said lens flare is amateur, but this? This is art\!"  

*Click\!*  

"Genius," Nelson said. "Moving on."  

Charlie lowered his wrist. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "Physics," he whispered.  

"Okay, last one," Nelson said, checking his list. He pivoted the camera and zoomed out. "The hallway. It's a black hole back there. It makes the kitchen look cold, like a frosty blueberry. I need a summer strawberry. I need a warm, practical light at the end of the hallway."  

Oliver froze. He exchanged a look with Mom.  

"Light? I don't think we have anything," Mom said, squinting her eyes to think. "Oh\! Gigi's antique lamp\! It's right here in the closet\!"  

"No\!" Oliver and Charlie shouted in unison.  

Mom stopped. "What? Why?"  

"Because…" Oliver stammered.  

"Because it's… shy\!" Millie yelled.  

Mom ignored them. She headed for the utility closet under the stairs.  

The closet where the machine was hiding. The closet where the Franken-Lamp—the one stitched together with black shoelaces—was boxed up.  

Millie was standing near the closet door, still wearing her giant wool scarf wrapped around her head like a bandage. She saw Mom coming.  

Millie didn't argue. She threw herself against the closet door. She slumped down, her back sliding against the wood until she hit the floor, placing her wrist to her forehead. She struck a pose that looked like a tragic opera singer who had just lost her true love.  

She blocked the handle with her head.  

"Millie, move," Mom said, reaching for the door. "I need the lamp."  

Millie didn't speak. She couldn't, because of the tile tooth in her mouth. Instead, she stared at Nelson.  

Her eyes were wide and unblinking. She pointed a trembling finger at the sunlight coming from the kitchen. She recoiled from it, hissing softly through her scarf.  

"She's… terrified of the light," Oliver improvised wildly. "She's… darkness. Method actor… For a school play."  

Nelson stopped. He looked at Millie. He looked at the wool scarf. He looked at the sheer, unhinged intensity in her eyes and felt inspiration.  

"Darkness," Nelson murmured. He looked at the gloomy hallway and then back at Millie. "You know what? She's right. The light would destroy the mood. The shadows… they speak. They say 'mystery'. They suggest 'possibility'."  

He adjusted his lens and announced. "No lamp. The void is better. It adds depth. It adds… *gravitas*."  

"Are you sure?" Mom tried to step around Millie. "It's a really nice lamp…"  

"Positive," Nelson said, backing away toward the front door. "Your children are… very strange. But they have an eye for composition."  

He opened the front door. The bright summer sun flooded in.  

*Click\!*  

"That's a wrap," Nelson said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I think I've captured the essence of the house. It has… character. It has stories to tell. There's something… *magical* about it."  

He stepped out. The door clicked shut.  

For a long moment, nobody moved. The house was silent again.  

Then, Dad let out a long, shuddering breath. It wasn't a cheer. It was the sound of a man who had just walked a tightrope over a shark tank and survived.  

"Thank goodness," he whispered.  

He turned to Mom and pulled her into a hug. Mom melted into him, resting her head on his shoulder.  

"We did it," Dad whispered. "We actually did it."  

"Thank you, guys," Mom said, her voice wobbling as she looked at the kids. "I know we were… a lot. Thank you for helping."  

"I'm going to the back porch," Dad said quietly. "I need some fresh air."  

"Me too," Mom said.  

They turned and walked down the hall together, arm in arm.  

As they passed the staircase, their eyes were so full of happy, relieved tears that they didn't even notice the jagged, three-foot gap in the oak banister just inches from their elbows.

## **Chapter 12**

Inside, the house didn't just go quiet. It went dead.  

The kids stayed in the living room. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold, heavy feeling in Oliver's stomach. For the last three hours, the air had been vibrating with panic, shouting, and the squeal of rubber wheels. But now, the silence was heavy. It pressed down on Oliver's ears like water.  

Oliver was still sitting on the floor, guarding the cooler bag that covered the hole to the basement. Millie was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, her wool scarf pulled up to her nose, her eyes darting around the room as if expecting the photographer to pop out of a vent. And Charlie was parked just behind the other two, staring at the cooler bag covering the pit.   

Oliver looked at Charlie, who was lost in thought. He looked at Millie, pulling the scarf down to let her tiny tooth breathe. He looked toward the back porch, where his parents sat in silence, unaware that their perfect house was actually a hollow shell held together by tricks and shadows.  

They had saved the photos. But the house was still broken. And worse, they had lied about all of it.  

"We survived," Charlie whispered, adjusting his glasses. "Statistically speaking, that was a miracle."  

"Yeah," Oliver said quietly. He let out a breath that rattled in his chest. He slumped forward, resting his forehead on the cooler bag. "We survived. But I don't feel like a winner."  

He picked up his head and looked around the room. It was exactly what Dad had wanted. The sun was streaming in through the streak-free windows. The beige carpet was vacuumed. The air smelled of lemon and hard work.  

It was perfect. It was pristine.  

It felt completely wrong.  

"It feels like a doctor's office," Millie said, pulling her scarf down to let her giant tile tooth breathe. "It doesn't smell like cinnamon anymore."  

"We achieved the objective," Charlie said, though he didn't look happy. He looked at the cooler bag. "We successfully deceived the observer. The photographic evidence will suggest a structurally sound house."  

"I don't even know what you're saying, Charlie. But the house isn't sound," Oliver said, pulling his knees to his chest and curling his toes to keep his lace-less sneaker on. "It's a shell. We're sitting in a pit. The stairs are eaten. The lamp is a Frankenstein's monster."  

He looked toward the hallway where his parents had disappeared.  

"And I don't think Mom and Dad are celebrating."  

From the back porch, the breeze carried a sound that drifted in through the screen door. It wasn't the sound of high-fives. It wasn't the sound of relief mixed with grief.  

It was the sound of a small, choked sob—the sound of sadness.  

Oliver stood up. He shuffled toward the den, his left shoe flopping with every step. "Come on," he whispered.  

"Stealth mode," Charlie agreed. He pushed his rims. The wooden runner slid silently over the carpet, drifting slightly to the left, but he corrected it with a practiced hand and a twist. Millie tiptoed behind them, her scarf trailing like a cape.  

They entered the den and gathered at the edge of the curtains, peering out at the concrete patio.  

Mom and Dad were sitting on the old wrought-iron bench. They weren't looking at the yard Dad had raked for an hour. They weren't looking at the house. They were looking at their hands.  

Mom was crying. Not the frantic, stressed-out crying from the morning. This was different. It was quiet and slow.  

"I just… I just feel like we erased her," Mom said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.  

"We did what we had to do," Dad said gently, putting an arm around her. "We had to get it ready for the market."  

"I know," Mom sniffled. "But look at it. The village is in boxes. Her photos are gone. The smell… we scrubbed the smell away. It's just a sterile white box now. It's not Gigi's home anymore. It's just… a house."  

She turned and looked up at the house, her eyes red. "I feel like I failed her. She left me this house to take care of, and I just turned it into a product. I miss her. I miss this house full of memories, but now it's just empty."  

Oliver felt a lump form in his throat, heavy and sharp.  

He looked at Dad, who had been barking orders like a drill sergeant all weekend, ordering where people needed to be, where they needed to go. Dad, who seemed to care more about dust motes than feelings.  

But Dad didn't look like a sergeant now. He looked tired and concerned.  

"It's not your fault, honey," Dad said softly. He sighed, leaning his head back against the brick wall. "I pushed too hard. The 'Stewardship' thing… the rules… the cleaning."  

"You were just trying to help," Mom said.  

"I was trying to get things done," Dad corrected. He looked at his hands—hands that were raw from scrubbing and fixing. "But maybe I pushed too hard."  

"I saw how sad you were. Every time we walked in here, you looked like you were going to break. And I didn't know how to fix that. I can't fix grief with a wrench."  

He laughed, a dry, sad sound.  

"So I thought… if I fixed the walls, maybe it would help. If I patched the cracks in the plaster, maybe I could patch the cracks in… us. I thought if the house were perfect, the sadness would go away."  

He shook his head. "But you can't spackle over a broken heart, can you?"  

Mom leaned her head on his shoulder. They sat there in silence, two people outside a perfect, clean, empty house, feeling more broken than the furniture inside.  

The kids pulled back from the den window. Oliver sat down heavily on the carpet.  

"He was doing the same thing," Oliver whispered.  

"Elaborate," Charlie said, his voice quiet.  

"Dad," Oliver said. "He was obsessing over the house to hide how sad *he* was. He was covering up the feelings with paint and cleaning."  

Oliver looked at his shoe. He looked at Charlie's sled leg. He looked at Millie's scarf.  

"We did the exact same thing," Oliver realized. "We broke things, and then we just… covered them up. We hid the hole. We hid the banister. We hid the lamp. We made it *look* okay for the camera when it really wasn't."  

"We prioritized superficial aesthetics over structural integrity," Charlie murmured, adjusting his glasses.   

Oliver and Mille both gave confused looks.  

Charlie clarified, "We created a deceptive disguise of our mess. We made lies."  

"We fixed the house," Millie said, her voice muffled by the wool. "But we didn't fix the people."  

"We didn't even fix the house," Oliver pointed out.  

She touched her chest. "My heart feels like the floor. It has a hole in it."  

Oliver looked at his sister. Her giant beaver tooth was hidden, but her eyes were filled with tears.  

He looked at the utility closet under the stairs. The door was slightly ajar.  

Inside, buried behind the mop bucket and the broom, the Correction Contraption sat in the dark.  

It had caused all of this. It had stolen laces, eaten walls, and deleted floors. It was a chaotic menace.  

But Dad had said something. *I can't fix grief with a wrench.*  

"We have to fix it," Oliver said. He stood up.  

"Fix what?" Charlie asked. "The floor? We lack the lumber. The banister? We lack the carpentry skills."  

"No," Oliver said. He looked toward the back porch again. "Not the house. The house is just stuff. Dad said it. We need to fix the *sadness*."  

"The machine," Millie whispered. Her eyes lit up.  

"It's dangerous, Oliver," Charlie warned. "Every time we use it, the cost increases. Equivalent Exchange. If we ask it to fix sadness… what will it take? What is equal to sadness?"  

"I don't know," Oliver admitted. He looked at his laceless shoe, then back out the window. "But look at them, Charlie. They're crushed. We can't leave it like this."  

He walked toward the closet. "We're not going to ask for a patch job this time. We're not going to be vague."  

"We have to be surgical," Charlie said, rolling after him. "If we are going to manipulate emotional variables, the request must be flawless."  

Millie ran ahead, her fuzzy unicorn slippers sliding on the hardwood. She pulled the closet door open.  

The military green suitcase sat there, smelling of ozone and cinnamon. The amber tubes were dim, waiting.  

Oliver knelt down in front of it. He felt that familiar hum in the air, the static that made the hair on his arms stand up.  

"One last time," Oliver whispered. "For Mom and Dad."  

"For Gigi," Millie added.  

"For family," Charlie confirmed. He pulled out his pen. "Let's draft the command."  

As they huddled around the brass machine in the dark closet, they didn't know if it would work. They didn't know if a machine made of gears and vacuum tubes could understand something as messy as a broken heart.  

But as Oliver watched the amber light begin to pulse, he knew one thing for sure.  

The staring contest was over. It was time for someone to blink.

## **Chapter 13**

The utility closet under the stairs was tight. It smelled of lemon cleaner, old dust, and the distinct, tangy scent of panic.  

"Squeeze in," Oliver whispered, pulling his knees up to his chest.  

"I am squeezed," Charlie grunted. He was parked at an awkward angle, his left wooden sled-runner wedged against the mop bucket, while his right rubber wheel was jammed against the wall. "My turning radius in this enclosure is zero."  

Millie wiggled in between them, the wool scarf still wrapped around her head like a mummy to hide the giant ceramic tile that was her front tooth.  

"Is it ready?" she asked, her voice muffled.  

Oliver looked down at the Correction Contraption. In the cramped darkness of the closet, the suitcase seemed larger than before. The amber vacuum tubes were dim, but the hum—that static electricity that pricked at the hair on his arms—was louder here. The faint smell of ozone and cinnamon returned.  

"It's ready," Oliver said. "We do it here. We don't move it."  

Millie reached into her pajama pocket and pulled out her red crayon and a crumpled receipt. She smoothed it out on top of the brass case.  

"FIX SADNESS," she announced, lifting her crayon.  

"Hold on," Charlie whispered, reaching out to block her hand. "We cannot use a subjective variable like 'Sadness.' The machine operates on literal interpretation and material exchange."  

He adjusted his glasses, the lens reflecting the dull brass of the machine.  

"If we input 'Remove Sadness,' the machine might calculate that the most efficient method is to delete the memory of Gigi entirely. We cannot risk total memory erasure."  

Oliver felt a cold chill. "We have to be specific," he whispered. "Like you said. Fix the hearts, not the heads."  

"We've been attempting to use our own words to control the machine. Let's try a command that speaks its language," Charlie murmured. He pointed to the tiny penned reference on the lid: *Luke 1:37*. "It binds things. It stitched the lamp. It fused the tooth. We need to tell it to bind the heartbreak."  

Charlie took the pen from his pocket. He flipped the receipt over and wrote in neat, block letters:  

**PSALM 147:3 \-** **HEAL THE BROKENHEARTED. BIND UP THEIR WOUNDS.**  

He handed the paper to Millie. "Insert the command."  

Millie took the note. She didn't hesitate. She shoved the paper into the brass slot labeled *MEND*.  

"Crank it," Oliver whispered.  

Millie grabbed the cold brass handle. She planted her fuzzy unicorn slippers, took a deep breath through her scarf, and pushed.  

It didn't move.  

"It's stuck," Millie grunted, pushing harder. "It's… really… heavy."  

"Push, Millie\!" Oliver urged. "You have to force it\!"  

Usually, the crank spun easily, like a toy. But this time, Millie had to put her entire body weight into it. She groaned, her face turning red, until finally—  

*CL-CHUNK.*  

The gears moved one notch. It sounded heavy, like a dungeon door dragging open.  

*CL-CHUNK. CL-CHUNK.*  

"It's working," Millie wheezed, spinning it faster now that the momentum had started. *WHIRRRRR.*  

The reaction wasn't instant.  

At first, the closet went dead silent. The hum stopped. The static air went still. It felt like the machine was holding its breath, reading the words on the receipt, trying to understand the command: *Heal the Brokenhearted.*  

Then, the machine seemed to inhale.  

*Whoooooooosh.*  

The air was sucked toward the suitcase with a violent force. The dust bunnies on the floor were whipped up and flew into the vents. Millie's scarf flapped wildly toward the intake.  

"It's hungry," Millie whispered, stepping back.  

The vacuum tubes flickered. They didn't glow a soft amber this time. They pulsed a deep, angry red, then shifted to blinding white. The light grew brighter and brighter, lighting up the brooms and mops like lightning trapped in a bottle.  

"The thermal output is rising," Charlie whispered, staring at the gauges, his face bathed in the harsh light. "Look at the needle. It's in the red."  

*GRIND-GRIND-GRIND.*  

The sound changed. It wasn't the happy clicking of knitting needles anymore. It sounded like metal teeth chewing on granite. The machine began to vibrate. It wasn't a gentle shake; it was a violent convulsion. The heavy suitcase hopped on the floor, hammering against the linoleum.  

*THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.*  

"What is it doing?" Oliver yelled over the noise.  

"It's searching\!" Charlie yelled back, pressing his hands over his ears. "It's trying to perform an Equivalent Exchange\! It's looking for the material to fix the sadness\!"  

The brass funnel on top swiveled wildly. It pointed at the wall. It pointed at the mop. It pointed at the boys. It was moving frantically, like a desperate eye looking for an exit.  

*SCREEEEEEE\!*  

The gears screamed. The smell of cinnamon vanished, replaced by the sharp, stinging stench of burning wire and melting plastic.  

"It can't find it\!" Charlie realized, terror washing over his face. "Sadness isn't wood\! It isn't tile\! There's no material match\!"  

The machine shook so hard the shelves above them rattled, raining a few loose screws down on their heads. The walls of the closet groaned. The floorboards beneath them vibrated as if a train were passing inches beneath their feet.  

"It's pulling too much power\!" Charlie screamed, his voice cracking. "RUN\!"  

"Get out\!" Oliver shouted. "Back up\!"  

"I can't reverse\!" Charlie panicked, slamming his hands on his wheels. "My runner is stuck on the mop bucket\!"  

The machine let out a sound like a jet engine winding up to takeoff speed. The white light from the tubes became blinding, too bright to look at.  

Oliver didn't think. He grabbed the back of Charlie's wheelchair and yanked with everything he had.  

"GO\!"  

He dragged Charlie backward, scraping the wooden runner over the threshold with a harsh *SCRAAAAPE*. Millie scrambled out between them, diving onto the hallway rug.  

They tumbled into the hallway, slipping on the floor, legs and wheels tangled together.  

"Close it\!" Charlie yelled. "Contain the blast\!"  

Oliver stretched out his leg and quickly kicked the closet door. *SLAM.*  

He popped up and threw his body against the wood, bracing himself.  

From inside the closet, the noise reached a fever pitch. It sounded like the machine was screaming in frustration. Something heavy crashed against the door—*THUD*—likely the machine throwing itself against the wall.  

*CRASH-tinkle-tinkle.*  

The vibration tipped the cardboard box hiding the Franken-lamp inside.  

And then, after all the chaotic noise and commotion, the machine simply gave up.  

*POP.*  

It wasn't a massive explosion. It was the sad, final sound of a lightbulb burning out.  

The rumbling stopped instantly. The whining gears died.  

Time stood still.   

Silence rushed back into the hallway, ringing in their ears. The only sound was Oliver's heavy breathing and the *drip-drip* of water from the mop bucket that had tipped over in the escape.  

Oliver pressed his ear against the wood of the door, his eyes squeezed shut. He waited for the house to crumble. He waited for a second explosion. A pop. A whine. Anything.  

But there was nothing. Just the ringing in his ears and the wild thumping of his own heart.  

Slowly, he opened his eyes. Charlie was staring at the closet door, his chest heaving. Millie was untangling herself from the rug, her scarf pulled down, her mouth open in shock.  

The kids felt the rhythmic throb of their heart in their ears, like the ghost of the old grandfather clock. The anticipation of what was behind the door was haunting.  

Then, Oliver smelled it.  

It wasn't the sweet smell of cinnamon anymore. It was sharp and bitter—the scent of dead electronics and scorched wood. A thin, grey wisp of smoke curled out from the crack beneath the closet door, twisting into the hallway air like a serpent.  

"Did it work?" Millie whispered, her voice trembling.  

Oliver looked at the smoke. He looked at the closet door. He opened his mouth to say *"No,"* but he never got the chance.  

"Kids?\!" Dad's voice boomed, sharp with alarm. "What was that? The whole house just shook\!"  

"Is something burning\!?" Mom cried, right behind him.  

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Oliver scrambled to his feet, but his laceless shoe flopped, and he nearly tripped. Charlie tried to look casual, but he was currently parked sideways in the middle of the hall, his wooden ski glistening in the light.  

Mom and Dad rounded the corner. They stopped.  

They looked at the kids, huddled together like guilty statues. Then, they looked at the utility closet door.  

Thin, gray smoke was curling out from the cracks around the frame.  

"Fire," Dad breathed.  

He didn't hesitate. He rushed forward and threw the closet door open.  

The smoke billowed out, spilling into the hallway. Dad waved his hand through the haze, peering inside.  

And then, he froze.  

It was a monument of chaos—a museum of their crimes.  

The vibration had knocked the "Fragile" box on its side. Spilled out on the floor, lying in a pile of packing peanuts, was the Shepherd Boy Lamp.  

Dad stared at it. He saw the cracks. He saw the black shoelaces stitched through the porcelain face, tying the head to the body like a Frankenstein monster.  

His eyes darted down to Oliver's feet. To the sneaker that was flopping open, utterly devoid of laces.  

He looked back at the lamp. Laces.  

He looked at Oliver. No laces.  

Dad's gaze shifted. He looked at Millie, who was pulling her scarf down to breathe, revealing the glint of the giant white bathroom tile fused to her mouth. He had seen that tile before.  

He looked at the open bathroom door behind him, where a tile was missing from the mosaic wall.  

Tile. Tooth.  

He looked at Charlie. At the beautiful, polished oak sled-runner attached to the wheelchair.  

He turned and looked at the staircase railing just a few feet away, where a three-foot section of oak was jaggedly missing.  

Banister. Ski.  

And finally, Dad looked back into the closet, at the source of the smoke.  

The Correction Contraption sat there, the brass funnel knocked askew, the *MEND* slot blackened with soot, looking like a dead engine.  

Dad stood there for a long time. He looked at the lamp stitched with shoes. He looked at the tooth made of tile. He looked at the chair made of stairs.  

He turned slowly to face Oliver. His face wasn't angry. It was pale, bewildered, and completely stunned.  

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He looked at the smoking machine, then back at his terrified children, and simply stood there in the silence, paralyzed by a confusion so deep it didn't even have words. 

## **Chapter 14**

The silence in the hallway was heavier than the wooden suitcase sitting in the smoking closet. It was a thick, suffocating blanket of silence, smelling of burnt dust, ozone, and impending doom.  

Oliver stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He waited for the explosion. He waited for Dad's face to turn purple, for the fury, for the grounding that would last until the sun burned out.  

But the explosion didn't come.  

Dad just stood there, blinking. He looked at the lamp on the floor, its porcelain body stitched together with black shoelaces. He looked at Millie, who was nervously pulling at her wool scarf, revealing the gleaming white tile that was currently acting as her front tooth. He looked at the sleek, polished oak runner attached to Charlie's wheelchair.  

Finally, Dad clenched his eyes, shook his head, then let out a long, shaky breath. He turned, opened his eyes, and looked at Mom.  

"Huh," he said, his voice strangely calm and grasping for words. "Am I hallucinating? Or is that lamp wearing sneakers?"  

"It's wearing laces," Mom whispered, her eyes wide, her brain struggling to process. "And… is Charlie wearing the staircase?"  

The tension snapped inside Oliver's chest. He couldn't take it anymore. The silence was worse than the yelling.  

"It's the machine\!" Oliver blurted out. The words rushed out of him like water from a burst pipe. "It's Gigi's Correction Contraption\! We found it in the wall\! Behind the picture\!"  

"Oliver, slow down," Dad said, frowning.  

"I can't\!" Oliver yelled, waving his hands at the smoking closet. "We just wanted to help\! The house was a mess, and we wanted to fix it\! So we used the machine\!"  

He pointed a shaking finger at the pile of debris. "We asked it to fix the lamp, and it stole my laces\! Look at my shoe\!" He kicked his flopping sneaker forward. "Then Millie asked it to fix her tooth, and it stole the bathroom wall\! And Charlie asked it to fix the squeak, and it ate the banister\!"  

He took a deep breath, his chest heaving. "And just now… just now we asked it to fix your hearts. Because you were crying on the porch. And we didn't want you to be sad about the house anymore."  

Oliver squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. He waited for the anger.  

Instead, he heard… a snort.  

Then a chuckle. Then a giggle.  

And then, Dad was laughing. It wasn't a mean laugh. It was a bewildered, exhausted sound, like a man who had just woken up in a zoo.  

"Oh, you kids," Dad wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye. He shook his head, looking at Mom. "You definitely have Gigi's imagination, don't you? 'Correction Contraption?' That sounds exactly like something she would tell them."  

Oliver opened one eye. "Imagination?"  

"It's not imagination\!" Charlie insisted, pointing at his ski-wheel. "The physical evidence is irrefutable\! Look at the structural modification of my wheelchair\!"  

Dad sighed, still smiling, and knelt down next to the Franken-Lamp. He picked it up gently, running his thumb over the black laces stitched through the porcelain.  

"Guys," Dad said softly. "I know you've had a long weekend. We've all been stressed. But this isn't magic."  

"It has shoelaces in its face, Dad," Oliver pointed out. "Through the ceramic."  

"I know," Dad said. "Because I drilled those holes… but… how you managed to weave these laces so tight without breaking them is a mystery to me."  

The hallway went silent again.  

"What? Drilled holes?" Oliver whispered.  

"Years ago," Dad explained, turning the lamp over. "The wiring in this thing was ancient. Old incandescent bulbs get hot and produce heat. But Papa Arnie swapped the bulb for the new LED bulbs, which don't get hot. So without that heat, condensation kept building up inside the hollow base. It was an electrical and fire hazard. So, I took a masonry bit and drilled ventilation holes in the neck and base to let the moisture escape."  

He looked at Oliver's laceless shoe. "But Oliver… I still can't figure out how you wove your shoelaces into the lamp. For real, like how did you do it? That looks nearly impossible\! You should be a surgeon."  

"No, I didn't\! What about the tooth\!?" Oliver stammered, pointing at Millie. "She has a bathroom tile in her mouth\! It's fused\!"  

"I doubt it's fused, Ollie," Dad said, standing up and walking over to the bathroom door. He pointed to the empty spot on the shower wall. "And the house didn't lose its tile. I removed the elderly grab handle in the shower this morning. That tile popped off when the screws came out. I set it on the sink to reattach it once I grabbed some adhesive."  

He turned toward Millie. "I have no idea how you got a tile to stick in your mouth. I swear, if you Super Glued a tile to your tooth, we are going to the dentist right now and a therapist on our way back."  

Millie's eyes darted back and forth, but she was interrupted before she could protest.  

"But it's stuck\!" Oliver argued. "It won't come out\!"  

Oliver felt the world tilting sideways. This didn't make sense. He had seen the machine work. He had heard the *zip* and the *crunch*.  

"We'll get it out," Dad said, slightly annoyed. "It's probably just wedged in tight between her baby teeth. Or you used a lot of glue. Let me have a look-"  

"The banister\!" Charlie interrupted, diverting Dad's attention and pointing a finger at his wheel. "Explain the banister\! The machine harvested the volute to create a frictionless runner\! It teleported the wood\!"  

Dad looked at the jagged gap at the bottom of the stairs. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish.  

"Okay, that one is on me. First of all, I didn't know the curly part was called a 'volute.' So thank you, Charlie. Secondly, I must have knocked that loose while carrying the ladder this morning. I thought I heard something fall, but I was in such a rush I couldn't find the piece."  

"You did?" Oliver asked.  

"Yeah, it was early," Dad sighed. "I was carrying the step ladder down from patching the wall upstairs. I turned the corner too fast, slipped a little on the bare stairs, and—*whack*. The ladder caught the curl and popped it right off."  

He gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. "I figured once I found it, I'd glue it back on along with the tile. But then… I still couldn't find it. I thought I'd lost my mind."  

Dad walked over to Charlie's wheelchair. He crouched down, inspecting the way the rubber tire was jammed tightly into the curve of the wooden volute. He shook his head, looking impressed and confused.  

"It must have gotten knocked onto the floor," Dad reasoned and gave it a tug. "I see you ran over the banister piece, Charlie, but how did you get it wedged on so tight? I can't pull it off\! It's like it's part of the wheel now\!"  

"But…" Charlie stammered. "I… I calculated… the trajectory…"  

"You guys sure have been busy," Mom said, shaking her head. "Lacing lamps, gluing tiles, attaching banisters to wheelchairs… all while we were trying to take photos."  

"That wasn't us\!" Oliver insisted, his voice cracking. "We didn't touch the shoelace\! We didn't touch the glue\! The machine did it\! It's the Correction Contraption\!"  

"Oliver," Mom said gently, stepping forward. "I love that you guys were playing together and having fun, really using your imagination and creativity. But we know that 'magic' isn't real. And when we mess with stuff, we tell the truth about what happened."  

She walked over to the closet door and looked down at the suitcase gently leaking smoke through the cracks. "And this thing… I haven't seen this in years. This thing isn't a magical suitcase."  

"But Gigi made this machine that fixes mistakes," Millie protested, the tile making her lisp.  

"No, honey," Dad said, kneeling beside the machine. He reached out to the brass faceplate. "This is Papa Arnie's Portable Phonograph. It's an old record player."  

"The Correction Contraption," Oliver corrected quietly under his breath. "Look," Oliver said. He pointed to the stenciled letters on the lid. He pointed out the instruction card, the lamps, and the MEND slot.  

*G.G.*  

"That doesn't stand for 'Gigi,'" Dad said. "It stands for *Grigsby-Grunow*. It's the brand name. It's the original manufacturer."  

He wiped a smudge of soot off the corroded brass plate near the slot. "And this label here? It looks like it says 'MEND'. But look carefully at the worn-off parts around it."  

Oliver squinted. Faintly, ghostly letter were visible before and after the word.  

"It's part of an instruction label," Dad said. "It used to say 'USE RECOMMENDED NEEDLES.' You know, for playing records."  

Dad traced the air with his finger. "The 'USE RECOM' and 'ED NEEDLES' are sun-damaged or maybe bleached out from arc flash and faded over the years. All that's left visible is 'MEND'."  

Oliver felt his stomach drop. "But… the slot. We put the paper in the slot."  

"That's a heat vent," Dad said, tapping the brass opening. "For the amplifier tubes inside."  

Dad fished out a scrap hanging from the vent. It was brown and singed around the edges.  

"That's why it caught fire, Oliver," Dad said, holding up the note. "You shoved a piece of paper directly onto a red-hot vacuum tube. I wouldn't recommend doing that anymore."  

"So… it's just a record player?" Oliver asked, his voice small. "It's just a broken record player?"  

"I don't think it's broken," Mom said softly. She reached down and touched the wooden lid. Her eyes were misty. "It just has a lot of memories."  

"And the smell?" Oliver whispered. "The ozone? The magic smell?"  

"It smells like work," Dad said, a small smile touching his lips. He ran a hand over the scuffed green case. "Papa Arnie was a welder. A Master Welder. For forty years, he fused steel cabinets and chairs at the production plant downtown."  

"He built things?" Charlie asked.  

"He *fixed* things," Mom corrected gently. "He spent his whole life mending metal that had snapped. But the plant… it was a hard place. It was loud and gray. Just metal hammers and hissing torches all day long."  

She looked at the brass gears. "Gigi knew Papa Arnie loved music, but the workshop was just noise. So she traded her mother's pearl earrings…."  

"To buy him the record player," Oliver realized.  

"Equivalent Exchange," Charlie whispered.  

"She gave him the gift of the symphony at his work," Mom said. "He'd set it up right on his workbench, next to his mask and his torch. That's why it smells like ozone, Ollie. It sat in the spark shower of his welding arc for years. He even made a folding funnel to amplify the music enough to hear over the noise of the warehouse."  

"But the card?" Charlie asked, pointing to the instructions. "Write the problem? Insert into slot?"  

Dad chuckled as he remembered the stories. "That was a joke for the guys at the plant. The other welders were always griping. 'It's too hot,' 'The shift is too long.' So Gigi made the card. She told Arnie to tell them: 'If you have a problem, write it down, put it in the slot, and the machine will fix it.'"  

"And did it?" Millie asked, clearly missing the joke.  

"In a way," Dad smiled. "They'd shove their complaints in, Arnie would blast the music, and the heat would turn the paper to ash. He jokingly called it 'processing the paperwork.' It made them laugh. It made the day go faster and brought a little joy to the workplace."  

"It fixed the day," Mom whispered, wiping a tear. "Papa Arnie told me once… he said when the work got too heavy, or the noise got too loud, he'd crank this handle and fill his workstation with music."  

Dad closed his eyes for a second, imagining it.  

"He said the music changed the air. It turned the banging of hammers into a drum section. It turned the sparks into fireworks. It 'corrected' the factory. It turned a gray, hard job into a symphony."  

Mom smiled, wiping a smudge of soot from the label that read MEND.  

"He was a man who mended steel with fire and electricity," she whispered. "And this machine mended the air with music."  

Dad turned his attention to the wrinkled note in his hand. He smoothed it out and read the red crayon letters that remained: **HEAL THE BROKENHEARTED.**  

He looked at the mess. The destroyed lamp. The missing banister.  

"You guys were trying to fix us," Dad realized, his voice thick.  

"We messed it up," Oliver whispered. "We just broke more stuff."  

"You can't fix hearts with a record player," Dad said, folding the note and tucking it in his pocket. He stood up and pulled Oliver and Charlie into a hug, creating a family sandwich. Mom pulled Millie in.  

"But," Dad said, squeezing them tight. "You tried. And honestly? I think it worked. I haven't laughed this hard since Gigi died. And she would have been touched you were using this to help heal our hearts."  

"The house isn't perfect," Mom said, wiping her eyes. "But we're okay."  

"We'll fix the house," Dad said. "Maybe even hire a contractor. But right now? It's already been quite a day. I'm starving\!"  

As his parents hugged them, Oliver looked over Dad's shoulder at Charlie.  

Charlie was adjusting his glasses. He looked at the machine. He looked at the smooth, impossible curve of the oak runner on his wheelchair.  

He caught Oliver's eye.  

*It wasn't us,* Charlie mouthed silently.  

Oliver looked at Millie. She was hugging Mom, but she winked at Oliver. She tapped the giant tile tooth. It didn't look glued. It looked like it had grown there.  

Oliver looked back at the machine. The smoke had cleared. It looked like a piece of junk.  

But Oliver remembered the sound. He couldn't deny the *zip* of the laces. The *ping* of the tile. The *crack* of the banister.  

Dad and Mom had explained it away. That's what adults did. They smoothed over the cracks in the world with logic, just like Dad had tried to smooth over the cracks in the wall with spackle.  

But the kids knew better. They hadn't touched the laces. They hadn't touched the glue. And they certainly did not touch the volute, now that they know it was called that.  

"Okay," Dad said, clapping his hands. "Let's get out of here and grab some brunch\!"  

"Yessth," Millie yelled through her tile.  

Everyone started to head out the back door to the minivan, except Dad.  

Oliver stopped and watched as Dad turned back toward the living room. Oliver's blood ran cold. He'd completely forgotten.  

The hole.  

In all the relief, he had forgotten about the pit waiting underneath that cooler bag. He knew it would prove the magic, but it also proved his guilt in damaging the house.  

Dad reached down and gripped the handle.  

Oliver squeezed his eyes shut. He braced himself for the scream. He braced himself for the grounding of a lifetime.  

*Swish.*  

The sound of the cooler lifting off the carpet echoed in the silent room.  

Then, a distant, muffled *pop* from the utility closet.  

Oliver held his breath. One second. Two seconds.  

"Huh," Dad said.  

Oliver winced. Here it comes.  

"I don't remember hardwood here," Dad muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. "And… army green? Like the phonograph? I… I must need something to eat."  

A heavy sigh. Footsteps. Then, the back door opened and closed.  

Oliver opened his eyes. He was alone in the room. He turned slowly toward the center of the floor.  

There was no hole. The floor was solid. But the circle where the grape juice had been—and where the pit had been—wasn't beige carpet anymore.  

It was a perfect, army green circle of wood. And part of a stenciled "G."  

Oliver gasped. He ran to the utility closet. The door was open, and the machine sat there, cold and dead. He looked at the lid.  

As he expected, the suitcase sat there donning a new circular void in the lid.   

*Equivalent Exchange.*  

To fix the house, the machine had given up its own protection. It had mended the home one last time.  

Oliver walked back to the green circle. He knelt down and touched it. It felt warm. A tiny puff of scent rose up from the wood. But it wasn't the smell of burnt wires anymore. It had the scent of cinnamon.  

Oliver looked up, smiled, and whispered, "Thanks, Gigi."  

"Brunch\! Let's go\!" Dad yelled from the driveway.  

Oliver smiled. He stood up, turned his back on the magic patch, and ran out to join his family.   

He realized he didn't want to win the staring contest anymore. And he was more than willing to blink.  

Truth remained undefeated. But when he thought about the green patch, it didn't feel like a loss. It felt like a wink.

## **Did you enjoy this book?**

Thank you for reading **Gigi's Last Secret**. As an independent author, reviews make a huge difference. If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a short review on **Amazon**. It helps other readers find my work.  


## **Acknowledgement**

First and foremost, I thank **God** for blessing me with the unexpected ability to write. This wasn't a path I planned or aspired to, but rather a calling I am humbled to answer.   

To my wife, **Julie**: You have been my constant encouragement, my editor, and my design partner. From the cover art to the final feedback, I truly could not have done this without you.   

To my kids, **Oliver**, **Charlie**, and **Millie**: Thank you for providing the best character material a dad could ask for. I am so proud of the way you are growing in the Lord and caring for your neighbors. It thrills me to see your love for reading grow—even when you're reading my work.   

To my friend and mentor, **Nelson Miller**: Your direction and support since my first book have been invaluable. When I thought I had only one story in me, you saw more and supported me every step of the way. The time we've spent discussing writing, faith, and life has been a true blessing.   

Finally, a massive thank you to **my parents** (including my **in-laws**). Your unwavering faith built the foundation our family stands on today. Also, thank you for accounting for nearly half of my book sales so far—your support is, quite literally, the reason I keep going.

## **About The Author**

**Bryan Baldwin** is an author and data scientist from Grand Haven, Michigan. Inspired by the loss of his family's beloved matriarch, Gigi, he wrote Gigi's Last Secret to capture her humor, faith, and love for her great-grandchildren. The story features his real-life children—Oliver, Charlie, and Millie—and their Golden Retriever, Willow. Bryan is a DIY enthusiast and a believer in stewardship who wants his kids to know that while we can build and fix many things, true healing comes from the Lord.

## **Also by Bryan Baldwin**

*For Adult Readers*

**The Ground Level Series**

### **The Flatlands  

**Stop waiting for the mountaintop. God is already at work in your commute.**

We are constantly told that the "real" life is waiting for us just around the corner. We believe it’s waiting at the next promotion, the next vacation, or the moment we finally become "extraordinary." We treat our actual lives—the traffic, the dirty dishes, the difficult coworkers—as a waiting room we have to endure.

But what if the boring, messy middle is exactly where the glory is?

In The Flatlands, data scientist and self-proclaimed "average guy" Bryan Baldwin takes a sledgehammer to the idol of the Extraordinary. With a blend of humor, grit, and biblical insight, he challenges the modern obsession with the "highlight reel" and offers a field guide for finding deep purpose in the mundane.

This isn't a book written by a Navy SEAL or a megachurch pastor. It’s a report from the trenches of the suburbs, written for men who are tired of the hustle and wondering if their daily grind actually matters.

### **The Undertow (Coming 2027\)**

The Undertow throws a lifeline to Christians who are exhausted from hiding their internal mess and feeling like fugitives in their own lives. Bryan Baldwin exposes the futility of trying to outswim the cycle of guilt, shame, and regret through self-improvement, offering a guide to the "daily rinse" of repentance and the safety of honest community instead. Ultimately, this book invites readers to stop fighting the current of their own brokenness and find rest in a radical grace that repurposes their wreckage into something beautiful.

### **The Bedrock (Coming 2028\)**

The Bedrock completes the author's trilogy by dismantling the exhausting pursuit of counterfeit happiness to reveal that true joy is a sturdy anchor rather than a fleeting emotion. This upcoming book explores how godly joy can coexist with life's messiness, offering practical habits like gratitude and community to cultivate a spirit that holds fast in the trenches. Ultimately, it invites readers to stop performing for applause and start resting in the unshakeable delight of being fully known and loved by God.