really hard to explain his and Carrie’s search for the San Telmo and have it make sense Also Chris had hoped that bringing Professor Griffin an extra sandwich from the bakery that he really liked and surprising him with fresh muffins from the same place would make up for the fact that Chris and Carrie had cornered their oldest family friend in his office over his lunch hour and poured out a tale of secrecy mystery and terror but the muffins didn’t seem to be making that much of a difference Yes Carrie spoke up Accidents Like what happened happened to Aunt Elsie Neither Chris nor Carrie really wanted to get into detail about what they meant by accidents or what happened happened to Aunt Elsie but they were starting to realize that just saying accidents to someone who hadn’t had a near miss with a car crash that wasn’t really a car crash wasn’t clear enough Chris poked Carrie Carrie swatted him back Professor Griffin continued to look alarmed I think he said folding a discarded muffin wrapper carefully into a triangle that this is a lot to 6
take in smaller Kingsolvers And you’ve been carrying this all by yourselves this whole time We weren’t sure who to trust Chris admitted If Chris was being honest with himself he still wasn’t Professor Griffin at least was trustworthy though they might be putting him in terrible danger by getting him involved But they had to because who other than Chris and Carrie would Aunt Elsie have left her clues to Chris was still a little okay actually a lot but he didn’t want to admit it nervous about trusting Dr McRae even as far as they’d had to already It was only the fact that Chris and Carrie and Maddison were about to go into the woods looking for the ruins of an old Spanish mission church that had driven Chris to tell Professor Griffin why they might not come back alive The day before they had been for once hanging out in Maddison’s house rather than Chris’s Mainly because Maddison had better access to maps than Chris and Carrie did since her dad had an impressive collection of Florida topographical maps and was on 7
a first name basis with multiple park rangers They had been debating whether or not to include Professor Griffin in their plans Remember he has a boat Carrie had added looking looking up from the map she and Maddison were poring over Will you cut it out with the boat routine Chris had said They had been scattered around the McRaes living room surrounded by maps of the Pine Lick State Park and Chris had been sitting furiously on his curiosity for the past half hour because he’d never been in Maddison’s house before It was a small two story with yellow siding and a decorative glass ball in the front yard and someone in the family liked decorating decorating in green and yellow and hanging china plates on the indoor walls Chris hoped it wasn’t Dr McRae because the plates looked nice on the walls and he was trying not to find things they had in common I’m sure we can find someone with a boat we can borrow Maddison said She was chewing 8
absent mindedly on the end of a highlighter Someone else on this island Chris shrugged It did seem silly when you put it that way Why is Professor Griffin the only person with a boat you can borrow anyway Maddison asked Because he’s almost the only adult I can think of who’s going to believe the whole story but not ground us for eternity when we tell him Chris remembered explaining Although now he was starting to worry about that claim because the Professor looked Don’t worry Professor Griffin said I’m not about to forbid you from searching for a lost treasure ship that would be hypocritical of me after I did all that looking for the spy plane that sank off the coast in the fifties And it would require me to believe that the tall tale you’re telling me is true Carrie bristled at this Chris opened his mouth to argue but the Professor with a twinkle in his eye stopped him Just teasing Chris he said I’ve known you two 9
