The Secret of Goldenrod

  Text copyright © 2016 by Jane O’Reilly

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. 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 prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Illustrations by Elly MacKay.

  Additional images: © Shtonado/Shutterstock.com (title font); © Oleg Golovnev/Shutterstock.com (border); © Le Chernina/Shutterstock.com (texture).

  Main body text set in Bembo Std 12/16.5.

  Typeface provided by Monotype.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: O’Reilly, Jane H.

  Title: The secret of Goldenrod / by Jane O’Reilly.

  Description: Minneapolis : Carolrhoda Books, [2016] | Summary: “Fifth-grader Trina, who has never lived anywhere long enough to call home, is excited about moving into Goldenrod, an abandoned mansion, with her dad. But soon Goldenrod brings its secrets to her attention, including a forgotten doll, leaving Trina wondering what the old house wants from her.” —Provided by publisher

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015038098| ISBN 9781512401356 (th : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512408942 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dwellings—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction. | Dolls—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.O7 Se 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038098

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-38945-20974-4/4/2016

  9781512418781 mobi

  9781512418798 ePub

  9781512418804 ePub

  For Jack, Hudson, and Ella Jane

  Chapter One

  Trina pushed up the brim of her baseball cap and strained against her seat belt to look through the dusty, bug-smeared windshield. “Do you see it yet, Poppo?”

  Her dad shook his head, yawning. The two full days of driving since they left New Mexico were nothing compared to the eternity of the last twenty minutes on a narrow two-lane road flanked by nothing but cornfields.

  The ball game on the radio turned to garbled voices and then to static. “Read me the directions again,” her dad said, turning off the radio. “The part after we exit the highway.”

  Trina reached for the letter. The smudged and crumpled letter she had read a million times. “Go east until you come to the big red barn with three silos. Then turn left onto the dirt road. After the double bump, cross the creek and turn right.”

  “That’s it? That’s all it says?”

  “Yup,” Trina said, and then she continued to read the letter out loud with brand-new excitement. “The house is a Queen Anne with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a library, a parlor, a butler’s pantry . . .” Wait a minute. How could she have missed it all these times? “Poppo, it doesn’t say anything about bathrooms. It better have indoor plumbing.”

  “There’s always . . . you know.” He pointed at the cornfields.

  “No way,” Trina said, grimacing. Then she rushed to her favorite part of the letter. “The Harlan M. Roy family is giving you one year to restore the house to marketable condition.” No matter how many times she read that line, she couldn’t believe it. One whole year was almost like having a real home. And now she couldn’t wait to get there. “Please hurry, Poppo.”

  “Hurry? Any faster and I might miss the turn.”

  “Please,” Trina insisted, knowing her dad was often too calm about important things.

  “How about you read and I drive?” he said.

  Trina scrunched up her face at him and turned back to the letter. “Mechanical systems are functional but not up to code. A credit account has been established at Hank’s Tool and Lumber on Main Street for all your supplies. The key to the front door will be under the mat. At your service, Mr. Gerald Shegstad.” Trina sighed. “Six bedrooms and four fireplaces.”

  “Biggest house we’ve ever fixed up,” her dad said.

  “But what’s a Queen Anne?”

  “The fancy kind. With gingerbread and wraparound porches.”

  “Gingerbread?” Trina asked.

  “You know, all that frilly trim they used to put around the eaves of the roof.” Her dad drew curlicues in the air as he spoke. “It’ll probably look like a wedding cake.”

  Trina imagined the house as big and as fancy as a palace, and herself as the princess with a grand bedroom and servants. “But what’s marketable condition?”

  “So it can be sold. It’s been in the same family for over a hundred years but nobody’s lived there for a really long time. Some great-great-nephew in New York inherited it and he’s decided he’d rather have the money than the house.”

  Trina looked out her window, watching row after row after row of corn, corn, corn, thinking about what her dad had said. “That’s sad. If I had a house that had been in my family for a hundred years, I’d keep it forever, wouldn’t you?”

  Her dad shook his head. “People always want what they don’t have. If they have big, they want small. If they have the country, they want the city. If they stay too long in one place, they want to get moving.”

  “And if they’re always moving, sometimes they want to stay put,” Trina added, looking forward to calling New Royal, Iowa, home. At least for a year, anyway.

  Her dad reached over and tugged on the bill of her baseball cap. “Until they catch the traveling bug all over again, like you and me.”

  Trina didn’t actually have the traveling bug. Her dad did. And her mother had it worst of all. Her mother was exactly the restless person her dad was talking about. He always said she was trying to find herself. Luckily her postcards, which came from all over the world, had no problem finding Trina wherever she was. The last one had come from Tanzania in East Africa. “Sounds just like Mom,” she said.

  “I guess,” her dad said.

  Trina was used to the silence that followed any mention of her mother. She figured her dad missed her so much he couldn’t talk about her. But the more postcards she got, the more curious about her mother Trina became. She hadn’t seen her mother in nearly eight years and she had no idea what her mother looked like now, or how she dressed and wore her hair. And if she liked sports. Someday her mother would have to run out of places to visit and then she’d come home.

  As the truck crested a hill, Trina could see a big red barn in the shallow valley below. “There’s a red barn,” she said. “With silos!” She leaned forward in her seat. “One . . . two . . . three!” And when they reached the bottom of the hill, there was the dirt road. They took a left-hand turn and bounced off the main road onto nothing more than a rutted dirt path that cut through a field of cornstalks taller than the truck.

  They were almost there now. Trina could feel it. With an urge to jump out of the truck and run the rest of the way, she rolled down her window and stuck her head into the steamy August air, watching for any sign of a house at the end of the tunnel of dirt road and corn.

  The truck bounced over a large bump with a loud ca-thunk and Trina bounced with the truck. The old cargo trailer heaved behind them, sounding like it was ready to snap off.

  Ca-thunk. The truck jolted again.

  “I guess that’s the double bump,” her dad said. Trina checked the trailer in
the rearview mirror, glad to see it was still attached.

  “Look!” Trina cried. “Up there! I see the bridge!”

  The truck shuddered over the wooden bridge and headed straight for a wall of corn. “That was the creek! Turn right, Poppo! Turn right!”

  Her dad placed one big, calm hand over the other and turned the wheel. “What else would we do but turn right?”

  All of a sudden, Trina had a funny feeling the house was waiting for them and they were running late. She kept her eyes glued to the windshield as the truck rolled on and on through the cornfield. Her dad’s cell phone rang, just once, before it went silent. He glanced at its blank screen. “So much for cell service way out here.”

  At that moment, the cornfields gave way to a meadow of tall yellow flowers, and then a big gray house with gables and chimneys emerged as if it were growing straight out of the ground. Her dad put his foot on the brake and let the truck inch its way to a tall black wrought iron gate. Trina could feel her mouth hanging open as she stared through the bars of the gate at the enormous house.

  The house was not what she had expected. It didn’t need to be fixed up. It needed to be torn down. Boards covered all the windows, and the few shutters that remained dangled from their hinges. Pillars that would have held up a porch roof, if the porch had still been there, lay in the weeds like fallen trees.

  Trina blinked and blinked, hoping she would open her eyes to the palace she had imagined. But with each blink the house just looked worse. There wasn’t a fleck of paint on the wind-beaten siding or a crumb of gingerbread anywhere. If the house was supposed to look like a wedding cake, the bride had to be an evil witch.

  “Poppo—”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, shifting the truck into park just before he let out a sweeping whistle. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  No, their next project wasn’t a beauty. It was a hopeless old house, sitting in the middle of a yellow sea like a dried-up island. “We aren’t really going to live here, are we?” Trina asked.

  “Trina,” her dad said in surprise. “You know I signed a contract. Besides, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun working on this place.”

  Fun. Fun was playing softball. Fun was going to the movies. Fun was not fixing up a decrepit old house in the middle of nowhere. Trina sat helplessly in the truck as her dad got out and waded through the sea of yellow flowers. He pushed open one side of the big black gate, which squealed in protest, and then the other side, which was just as rusty. He hopped back into the driver’s seat without closing the door and let his foot drag through the snapping overgrowth as they crawled to a stop beneath a gnarled arm of a giant oak tree. “What if I make you a swing and hang it from that big branch?”

  Trina sighed, disappointed by the house and even more disappointed by her dad for still thinking of her as a little girl. He should know that almost fifth graders were too old for swings.

  Reluctantly, Trina got out of the truck. She felt as limp as the tall flowers all around her until the eerie feeling that someone was watching her from the highest window—a window that was all boarded up—snapped her to attention. She shivered, despite the heat.

  “Poppo, do you think it’s haunted?”

  “You and your imagination,” he said, shaking his head. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. There’s no such thing as a haunted house.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and looked up at the house. “Try seeing her for the masterpiece she really is.” Pointing up at the roof, he said, “See the fancy corbels under the eaves?”

  Trina had no idea what a corbel was, but she knew she saw nothing but gray, weathered wood. “Sure,” she said.

  “And just think about sitting on the porch and sipping lemonade all afternoon. Or sliding down the porch railing into the front yard.”

  Almost fifth graders were also too old for sliding down railings, and there was no porch, and the front yard was an overgrown mass of weeds, but Trina nodded anyway. Arguing with Poppo at a time like this would be as hopeless as the old house.

  “And that turret?”

  “The what?” Trina said, feeling her voice getting sadder and sadder.

  “That little tower with the pointed roof.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!”

  Right then, as if answering his call, a small bird darted from its nest in the eaves, which made Trina wonder what else might be living in the big, abandoned house.

  “That turret is fit for a princess just like you. Windows on all sides for a view of your own country gardens.” Then he yanked one of the tall yellow flowers from the ground, roots and all. “Look at all these weeds. No wonder they call her Goldenrod.”

  “Who?”

  “The house.”

  “The house has a name?”

  “Sure she does. And isn’t she amazing? She’s what you call a grande dame.” He bowed to the house as if it were royalty. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Madam Goldenrod.”

  Trina looked up at Madam Goldenrod, but the only amazing thing about her was that she was still standing. Even so, she tried to play along with her dad’s giant dream. She even tried to imagine the house with a coat of paint. “She’s such a beautiful . . .” But there was nothing at all beautiful about the house. Trina’s eyes shifted from the drab clapboard house to the sparkling meadow of yellow goldenrod. “Yellow,” she said, trying to sound excited. After all, yellow was her mother’s favorite color.

  “Then yellow she’ll be!” her dad said. He took the steps—nothing but stacked bricks and rotten planks—two at a time and playfully knocked on the faded No Trespassing sign tacked to the door.

  “The key is under the mat,” Trina reminded him, but that didn’t matter. One of the big wooden double doors creaked open on its own, and he stepped inside.

  Trina slowly went up the makeshift steps and paused at the open door. She lifted a corner of the ragged doormat, which was anything but welcoming. No key. She peeled away the doormat completely, revealing a rectangle of dark wood where the doormat had sat forever, but still no key.

  “Trina?” her dad’s distant voice called.

  “Coming,” she said. But with her first step across the threshold into the pitch-black house, she felt like she was barging in where she didn’t belong. As if the darkness was a suspicious old lady, her white cobweb hair tied up in a bun, standing with her dusty hands on her hips, blocking Trina’s way. Trina stopped dead in her tracks, wishing she had stayed in the truck.

  “Power must be off,” her dad called from somewhere deep in the darkness. “Shoot,” he said as Trina heard him slap his pockets. “No flashlight. Lucky I still have my lighter.” A tiny dot of flame appeared like a lightning bug. The creaks of his footsteps moved farther away, taking the dot of light with him, and then something squealed like a mad cat.

  “Poppo?” Trina yelled, scared that the house had gotten him.

  “Just a squeaky door,” he hollered back.

  More doors squeaked and boots clomped down hollow steps. He must have been heading to the basement to turn on the electricity—if a house this old even had electricity.

  The air inside the house was thick, and somehow it even smelled forgotten. The odor tickled her nose and she sneezed so hard the noise echoed around her, making her feel very small and very alone.

  Except for that strange feeling she wasn’t.

  A light came on in a distant room. It was dim and flickering, but Trina could see enough to know she was standing in a foyer as big as a hotel lobby.

  In front of her was a grand staircase that reached into the blackness of the second floor while the rest of the house stretched off forever and ever into the shadows.

  “Man, is our work cut out for us,” her dad said, his voice bouncing in the emptiness. “But she has steam heat, and someone delivered us a brand-new refrigerator, washer, and dryer. And lucky for you, I passed a bathroom on my way to the basement. Right by the servants’ stairs.”
He pushed the top button of an odd-looking light switch on the wall, and a few dusty bulbs of a fancy chandelier with beads and prisms lit up high above Trina’s head.

  The speckled light revealed pale wood floors, but the banister, doors, and archways were made of dark wood. “Look at this place,” he said. “The whole house is trimmed in mahogany.”

  Mahogany schmogany. The house was dark and creepy and it smelled like a cellar. “Is steam heat a good thing?”

  “Steam heat is amazing,” he said, standing on the tips of his boots to examine a tarnished brass sconce mounted on the wall. “Watch this,” he said as he turned a valve on the bottom of the sconce and flicked his lighter. A flame shot out of the top of the sconce at the same time an electric light bulb glowed beneath it. “They didn’t trust electricity back then, so the fixtures used gas, too.”

  Then, without a word, he sprinted past the staircase, pushed open two fancily carved sliding doors and pulled them shut again, leaving Trina by herself in the foyer. “Pocket doors,” he shouted, his voice muffled. “I think I’m in the library. There are built-in bookcases everywhere.” Before Trina had a chance to be scared, he slid the doors back open.

  Trina was actually curious about the library. Maybe books had been left behind. She’d be happy for any sign that people had really once lived there. But one look around the big dreary room made her heart sink. The library shelves, a forest’s worth of mahogany, were completely empty.

  Trina stayed close to her dad as he walked past a deep, blackened fireplace, toward another pair of pocket doors. These doors led to the darkest of rooms. “Ah, the smoking room,” her dad said, inhaling deeply. “You can still smell the burning pipe tobacco.”

  Even with a light on, the room was really dark. Her dad spotted a doorknob, nearly invisible in the heavy paneling, and turned it. “Look, a secret passageway.” Trina was afraid he’d leave her alone again, so she grabbed hold of his T-shirt and followed him.

  “Where are we, Poppo?” Trina asked as they walked down the passageway in the darkness.