Chapter 1 The Blond Woman Maisie and Felix Robbins watched from their third-floor apartment''s kitchen window as one of the biggest Christmas trees they''d ever seen was unloaded from a truck. Thanksgiving was still a week away, but Newport, Rhode Island, seemed to be skipping that holiday and racing right toward Christmas. On Bellevue Avenue, white lights twinkled from lampposts and fences, and wreaths hung on the doors of all the stores. In front of a restaurant on Thames Street, Santa sat in a sailboat pulled by eight leaping dolphins. And at Elm Medona, the mansion where Maisie and Felix lived with their mother in the old servants'' quarters, a team of people had arrived to put up decorations, including the gigantic tree, which would sit in the Grand Ballroom. "The one at Rockefeller Center is bigger, I think," Maisie said, squinting against the bright November sun. Felix wasn''t sure. But he said, "Absolutely," because to his sister everything in New York was bigger and better than here.
Ever since their parents had gotten divorced and they''d moved from their apartment on Bethune Street in New York City to Newport, Maisie had spent most of her time either homesick or scheming to get back. Felix, on the other hand, had started to feel at home in Newport. He had grown to love the smell of the salty air and the sound of buoys clanging on the wharf. The sight of sailboats in the bay on a sunny day looked beautiful to him. He had even started to enjoy eating seafood, stuffed quahogs and fried scallops and fish-and-chips. In fact, if their father lived with them instead of in faraway Qatar, life would be pretty perfect. From their perch at the window, Maisie and Felix could now see oversized gold ornaments getting wheeled inside. "Gauche," Maisie said, enjoying the word.
She loved using words that most twelve-year-olds didn''t know. Like this one, which meant crude. She wondered where those ornaments, too big for even this enormous tree, would get hung. Another truck arrived with piles of evergreen boughs. A blond woman in a camel-colored coat stood in the driveway directing all the workmen. "Let''s go see what they''re doing," Maisie suggested. Before Felix could answer, she was slipping on her sneakers and heading out the door. Felix followed his twin sister, as usual.
"Well now," the Blond Woman said, frowning up from her clipboard at Maisie and Felix. "Where did you two come from?" "Up there," Maisie said, pointing. "And what were you doing up there?" the Blond Woman said. Her hair was cut in a bob, and she looked like she''d spent too much time in the sun. Maisie thought she had a nose like a pig. And beady blue eyes. "We live here," Maisie said. "I don''t think so," the Blond Woman snorted.
"Well," Felix added, "on the third floor." The Blond Woman knit her overplucked eyebrows into a scowl. "Phinneas Pickworth was our great-great-grandfather," Maisie said, standing up straighter and trying to sound rich. "Humph," the Blond Woman said. Two men navigating a giant wreath decorated with enormous pinecones and gold ribbons hesitated in front of her. "That one goes on the front door," she said, checking something off on her clipboard with a purple pen. She glanced at Maisie and Felix again. "Did you want something?" she asked.
Felix shook his head. "How long does it take to put all this stuff up?" Maisie said. "In twenty-four hours, Elm Medona will be transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Just in time for all the holiday activities," the Blond Woman said, studying her clipboard. "What kinds of activities?" Maisie said. "Oh, all kinds of things," the Blond Woman said distractedly. "There are a few weddings. Lots of Christmas concerts and some kind of Victorian party.
And of course the big VIP Christmas party on the ninth." "You mean Elm Medona is going to be crawling with people for the next month and a half?" Maisie said, trying not to panic. "Basically, yes," the Blond Woman said. A dolly loaded with poinsettias rolled past. "Pink? Pink poinsettias?" the Blond Woman shouted. "No, no, no. The pink ones belong at Rosecliff. Elm Medona gets the red ones.
" She scurried over to the men with the plants, waving her clipboard at them. Maisie looked at Felix. "With people all over the place, we''ll never be able to get into The Treasure Chest." He could tell how upset she was. But a feeling of relief washed over him. When they had first moved to Elm Medona, they got a tour of the mansion. The docent showed them a secret staircase hidden behind a wall on the second floor. At the top of the stairs was a room called The Treasure Chest.
It smelled like the Museum of Natural History and was filled with curious objects: maps, seashells, peacock feathers, a small gold telescope, seedpods, an arrowhead, a porcupine quill, a compass, a bouquet of dried flowers, and hundreds of other things. One night they snuck back into The Treasure Chest and found a letter dated 1864. When they both yanked on it, they got carried back in time to the childhood farm of Clara Barton. Clara had told them how she''d nursed her brother David back to health after he fell from a barn rafter, and they''d listened to her father tell stories about his time at war. The next time, they landed on the island of Saint Croix with Alexander Hamilton and stowed away on a ship to America with him. Even though both trips had been grand adventures, Felix was afraid to time travel again. Their great-great-aunt Maisie made them promise they would do it one more time, but the more Felix thought about it, the more he worried they might be pushing their luck. What if they didn''t get back home? What if they were stuck in the past? Maisie had no such worries.
She couldn''t wait to get back in The Treasure Chest, pick up an object, and leave Elm Medona and the twenty-first century behind. "Well," Maisie said as she watched the Blond Woman point an angry finger at the men with the poinsettias, "I guess that means we''ll just have to do it tonight." Maisie loved her mother''s bacon-and-egg pasta more than almost anything. The real name for it was spaghetti carbonara, but Maisie liked her name for it better. Her mother fried bacon nice and crispy, tossed it with spaghetti and Parmesan cheese, and then added three beaten eggs to it. Before the divorce, she added four eggs, and this small detail made Maisie sad. When Maisie walked into the kitchen, she smelled bacon cooking and saw her mother beating eggs in the green-striped mixing bowl. She grinned.
They would eat, their mother would go back to her law office at Fishbaum and Fishbaum, and then she and Felix would go to The Treasure Chest. "Perfect," Maisie said out loud. "I count my lucky stars every day that you two never get tired of spaghetti carbonara," their mother said. Felix did not love spaghetti carbonara, mostly because he didn''t like eggs. They were slimy. But beaten like this and mixed up with the cheese, he could almost forget there were eggs in it. Almost. "Why so miserable?" their mother asked him.
"I . I wish you didn''t have to go back to work," Felix said. He could practically feel his sister glaring at him. "Oh, sweetie," their mother said, and tousled his hair. "We could play hearts tonight," Felix said hopefully. "Not tonight," his mother said. She pulled a strand of spaghetti out of the pot of boiling water and offered it to him. "Done?" she asked.
Miserable, Felix took a bite. "Done." His mother studied his face. "What''s going on?" "Yeah," Maisie said evenly. "What''s going on?" "Maybe I just want to stay home tonight." "You are staying home, aren''t you?" their mother said, confused. She looked from Felix to Maisie, who smiled and shrugged innocently. "I won''t be too late," their mother added as she drained the pasta and began mixing it with the bacon, eggs, and cheese.
"We''ll play hearts tomorrow night. Okay?" "Great!" Maisie said so enthusiastically that their mother actually looked at her suspiciously. "I love hearts." Felix tried to eat as slowly as possible, as if that might make their mother stay home longer. He couldn''t help it. As the weeks and months had passed, Newport and their small apartment at Elm Medona felt more and more like home to him. Time traveling had scared him each time. But even more than ever, he wanted to just stay here and go to school and eat quahogs and play hearts.
Besides, their father was arriving on Christmas Eve, and that was enough for Felix to look forward to. But before he''d finished his last bites of spaghetti, their mother glanced at her watch and decided it was time to get back to the office. "You two stay out of trouble," she said as she put on her powder-blue puffy coat and a pair of blue-and-white mittens. Maisie smiled at her sweetly. At the door, their mother turned to Felix. "Tomorrow night, buster," she said. "I''m shooting the moon." He nodded and watched her as she walked out.
The sound of her boots on the stairs faded, then disappeared. "What is wrong with you?" Maisie hissed at him. "We promised Great-Aunt Maisie." "I know," Felix said. He twirled and untwirled the spaghetti on his fork. "So?" Maisie demanded. "So I don''t want to.