Aeturnum (The Book of Adam 2), page 9
“Why have two Impression Stones?” asked Adam.
“I always like to have a backup plan. No plan is completely foolproof, but we try and do the best we can. Even though we want to make it difficult for Larix to get the Heartstone back, we don’t want to make it impossible for anyone to transfer it to another location. Moving it around a lot has seemed to work best for us in the past. Two stones gives us two options.”
There were so many questions that Adam had wanted to ask but he couldn't put them into words fast enough.
“We should get back to town now”, said Gurpreet, “It's getting late.” His words interrupted Adam’s thoughts and all Adam could do was nod before being shuffled toward the door.
The ride back to town was quiet. Adam wished he would have asked more questions about his family, or what was the deal with Killaly – especially John Gunderson.
“I forgot to tell Elianora about John. I think someone here is feeding him information,” Adam blurted out.
Gurpreet raised his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“He knew you were trying to get an Impression Stone out of Brutus, and the way he said it sounded like it was top secret.”
Gurpreet chuckled. “That’s John for you. We told him exactly what we were looking for when we asked him to keep an eye on Brutus. He was just testing you.”
Adam said, “Ok,” but still felt like John was hiding something else.
As they stopped in front of Adam’s house, Gurpreet spoke. “Thanks for getting that stone tonight. I know Ellie appreciates it a lot more than she let on.”
“Glad I could help,” he replied as he stepped out of the car. “Thanks for taking me.”
Gurpreet waved in return while Adam closed the van door. Adam waved back as Gurpreet pulled away, and then he turned toward his house. He hadn't realized until that point just how tired the evening’s events had made him.
It was a really dark night and there were no lights on inside or outside of the house. Mary would never leave any on so the power bill would stay low. The only problem was that on dark nights there was so little moonlight Adam couldn’t put the key in the keyhole. The nearest street light was further down the block and obstructed by a large tree.
Adam took the key from its hiding spot under the side of the step and went to open the door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. He wondered if Mary hadn't gone out for the evening after all because she usually locked the door behind her if Adam wasn’t home. As soon as he turned on the light, though, he knew she wasn't there.
While they were out, the house had been broken into.
CHAPTER NINE
Adam stared in shock at the sight. The cupboard doors in the kitchen were open with the contents scattered all over the counter top. The lower cupboards had been emptied onto the floor. He looked over at the living room and the cushions were pulled off of the two chairs. Everything on the mantle had been gone through and moved around.
After a few seconds standing still surveying the mess, it occurred to Adam that nothing seemed to be missing. Whoever broke in must have been looking for something specific. That's when it occurred to him.
He felt his pockets and the pin was still there, since he had taken it to Killaly just-in-case. As fast as he could, he turned and bolted outside to his garage. He slammed the door open and flipped on the light, but barely registered the fact that tools and parts were lying everywhere. His eyes were fixed on the back corner where a furnace would have once been. That was the spot where his best hiding spot was, and where he kept the little amount of money he had.
The tin heat shields that kept the walls from burning had provided a place for Adam hide items he didn’t want Mary to know about, but they were ripped away from the wall.
Adam ran to the corner to survey the damage. His money was still there, and so was the envelope full of pictures related to the Sentinel League. He quickly thumbed through them but didn’t notice anything missing.
Adam quickly reattached the heat shields to the wall again, thinking about the break-in the entire time. By the time he had finished, he was fairly certain that someone was either looking for his dad's lapel pin or the Heartstone, but exactly who was another question. He had been extremely clear that the Heartstone he had found in the cave was a fake the previous summer, and all of the upper members of the League seemed to believe him.
That's when the thought hit him. Maybe Larix was back. He was the only person Adam could think of that thought Adam had the real Heartstone. The thought made him shudder, but he pushed the thought away when he remembered Elianora saying Larix was confirmed to be in South Africa the day before.
After looking around some more, Adam decided he would finish cleaning his garage later and check out more of the house. Maybe he could get everything cleaned up before Mary got home. He was sure she would blame him for it anyway, even if she had been in a good mood earlier. She had been so happy to go to the dinner theater with Mrs. Garagan that Adam worried Mary would never leave the house again if she found out.
Back in the house, Adam checked his room, and it was in the same condition as the kitchen. He could close the door and leave it for later too, so he moved on to start in Mary's room. When he opened the door, again he was surprised. It hadn't been touched.
Why would someone rip apart the whole house and not her room, he wondered.
He closed the door again and returned to the main floor to start cleaning. Thoughts ran through his head as he worked. Why didn't they go through Mary's room? Had they left it intentionally or did they get interrupted? Or did they know how long Adam and Mary would be gone and run out of time?
The cleaning went fast, mostly because whoever went through the house had pulled everything apart neatly, so it was only a matter of putting things back where they belonged. The fact that the McTaggarts didn't own much also helped. Within half an hour he was done the rest of the house and started working in his room.
As he finished re-folding his clothes and putting them on the bed he heard a car pull up outside, the door close and then the house door opening. He ran down the stairs to see if Mary noticed anything was wrong with the house. When he reached the bottom step, he realized that he had run down the stairs instead of tiptoeing quietly and thought he would be scolded for being so loud.
Instead, Mary was smiling. Adam was happy to see it, and it confirmed the fact that he didn't want to tell Mary about the break in.
"Oh, you're home," she said as she glanced at the clock. It was 11:35.
Adam nodded. He suppressed the urge to say "obviously," and instead said, "How was the dinner theater? Looks like you had fun."
Mary nodded in return as she hung up her jacket. "It was ok, I guess. Not as good as I expected, but worth going to see."
She looked around as if she sensed that something was different.
Adam came up with a story quick. "I dusted everything when I got home. Just felt like doing it before I went to bed." He wasn't really lying as he had wiped down the surfaces as he straightened up, since everything was out of place anyway.
Mary accepted his explanation easily. "I'm going to bed. I'm really tired. Mr. Garagan gave me the morning off tomorrow so I’m going to sleep in. Don't stay up too late and keep the volume down if you watch TV."
Adam had heard this sentence a million times before, and simply replied, “Ok.”
Mary made her way upstairs while Adam breathed a sigh of relief, seeming to have covered up all that had happened. His relaxation was short lived when a cry came from the top of the stairs.
"What happened in here?" came Mary's voice, and it sounded upset.
Adam was jolted into action, running up the stairs while trying to remember what he had missed cleaning. As he reached the top, he realized that he hadn't closed his bedroom door and Mary had seen everything scattered about. He was never allowed to let his room get that messy, and he knew it.
Mary turned from the bedroom back to Adam, but she didn't look as angry as Adam had expected. As she stared at him, he came up with an explanation.
"I was just cleaning that up," he managed to spit out, wondering how she was going to react to the fact that they had someone go through their house. Maybe she would just think someone went through his room and nowhere else
Her face softened. "Well, you must be in a cleaning mood tonight. You didn't have to pull everything out of your dresser and off your shelves, though. It would have been easier to do them one at a time."
Adam looked at his room. Yes, everything was out of the drawers and off the shelves, but it hadn't been thrown around like you would assume. Everything was stacked somewhat neatly, although in no particular order. It dawned on Adam that Mary thought this was how he was sorting and cleaning his room.
"Oh...well...uh, one thing just led to another, you know, and I was just starting to put things back again."
Mary smiled. "Don't stay up too late. You can finish it tomorrow."
Adam was stunned but tried not to show it, so he said, "Ok...goodnight."
Mary managed a quick "night" before heading into her room. Adam closed the door, flopped on his bed and breathed deeply. He felt bad that he hadn't told his mom what had really happened, but at the same time he had managed not to outright lie to her - just forgot to give her the details.
Soon the excitement of the day caught up with him, and before he knew it he had fallen asleep, fully clothed. When he woke the next morning, he had barely moved the entire night since everything that had been stacked on his bed was still there and not toppled onto the floor.
After carefully getting off his bed so he didn't disturb anything, he set to work putting everything back in its place. It had been a dreamless night and he was still waking up as he cleaned.
The only drawer that hadn't been emptied was his top dresser drawer - the one filled with parts and components he had collected and used to build things. It had been rifled through, but everything still seemed to be there.
By the time he had finished, he wandered downstairs, ate a quick breakfast and headed outside to his garage. He glanced at the clock on his way out and couldn't believe it was only just past 7:30 am. He felt like he had slept for a lot longer.
Until he opened the door, he had almost forgotten that his garage was still a mess. As he stepped inside, he surveyed the interior and realized that whoever had gone through everything had done it in the same way as the rest of the house. Except for the tin that was pulled from the wall the previous night, everything was stacked somewhat neatly all around. The good thing was that it wouldn't take long to clean.
As he worked his mind ran through scenarios, everything from Larix returning to a random hitchhiker looking for food, and each scenario got more and more unlikely. Larix was known to be in South Africa at the moment, he remembered, so that wasn't a possibility, and Grayson was so far from anywhere that there were never hitchhikers in town. If there were it would be the biggest news of the week.
Soon everything was back to the way Adam had it before, so he sat in his chair and put his feet on the table, thinking about the day ahead. He was pretty sure he was going to tell Gurpreet about the break in as soon as he could, maybe they would even go tell Elianora together.
Adam looked at his watch. It still wasn't even 9am. Mary wouldn’t be up yet, so he didn't want to go in the house in case he disturbed her. Kevin would be up and working on the farm most likely, because if he wasn't working he would have been there to see Adam already. Jimmy and Mark would still be asleep, since neither one seemed to get out of bed much before lunch, and Adam didn't feel like seeing Gurpreet quite yet. He decided to wait until after lunch before trying to find anyone.
After looking through the small stack of salvaged, cover-less comics that he had read a thousand times, he decided to practice seeing again. He had already seen inside the antique transistor radio, so he looked around to find something else he might have missed that might work. There wasn't much selection though, as he had already ripped apart everything else just to find out how it worked.
As he searched, he heard faint footsteps on the sidewalk getting closer. It was probably just someone out for a walk that morning, so he ignored the sound and kept looking. As soon as he heard the familiar crunch of gravel, he knew he someone was coming up their driveway, but he didn't recognize the footsteps. They sounded heavy, but not in the same way as Mark's. The person was approaching at a normal pace, and although Adam thought the footsteps sounded familiar, he couldn't place them.
What if it’s whoever broke in last night? he thought as the footsteps didn’t stop at the house. The person was heading straight to the garage.
He froze where he stood and listened until the person knocked on the garage door. The sharp sound made Adam jump as he wasn't expecting it, even though he knew he should have.
"Hello," sounded a gruff voice from the other side of the door.
The voice shocked Adam almost as much as the knock.
It was the voice of Ben Casey.
CHAPTER TEN
Since the events of the previous summer, Adam hadn't seen much of Ben Casey other than riding past on his bike while Ben worked in his yard. Each time Ben would glare at Adam with suspicion and Adam always felt as if he were under interrogation from a distance.
But why was Ben standing outside his door and how did he know to find Adam in the garage? Adam wondered.
Ben hadn't even tried the house first. It was like he knew where Adam was.
Adam cleared his throat and managed to say, "Just a second," before he made his way to the door and opened it.
"Mr. Casey...hi…Why are you here?" Adam realized as he said the words that they sounded a lot more harsh than he had intended.
Ben glared at him for a second before saying, "Aren't we just a little ray of sunshine this morning? I think that's what I'll call you from now on - Sunshine."
Adam felt sheepish. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that," he said in an apologetic tone. "What can I do for you?"
Ben nodded, accepting his apology. "First, call me Ben. Mr. Casey reminds me of being in a courtroom a little too much."
Adam nodded but wondered why and how many times Ben had been in a courtroom.
"Second, I need your help," he continued. "I want to cut my lawn today, but my lawn mower won't start. I’ve heard you’re pretty handy with these type of things. Think you could try and fix it?"
Adam was surprised that Ben was asking him for help.
"Sure, I can take a look," Adam replied.
"Can you come now? I want to get it done before lunch and nobody else can take a look until later today."
Adam then realized why Ben was asking him for help.
"Ok. You have tools, right?"
Ben nodded. “Should have everything you need.”
"Let's go then," said Adam. Ben headed back down the gravel driveway and Adam followed as soon as he closed the garage door. He caught up to Ben soon after.
"You walked instead of driving?" asked Adam.
Ben gave a mean sounding chuckle. "You think I'm too old and fat to walk?" He replied with a straight face.
Adam couldn't tell if Ben was joking.
Ben managed to crack a slight smile. "It's a nice morning and I felt like a walk, that's all."
Adam didn't think he would ever get used to Ben's dry sense of humour. They walked a little further without speaking and Adam wondered if he should tell Ben about the break-in. Ben was the head of security after all. Everyone seemed to trust him in town, but Adam wasn't so sure. Yeah, Ben had saved Jimmy and Mark the previous year and taken out most of Larix's men by himself, but Adam still couldn't bring himself to trust Ben for some reason. Because of that, he kept his mouth shut. Instead, he figured he could kill some time by asking Ben about his problem.
"So what exactly is wrong with your mower," he asked.
"Won't start," Ben grunted in reply, then must have realized that Adam was helping him, so he continued. "I pulled the cord over and over and it doesn't even try to start. It has oil and gas in it."
That narrowed it down a little for Adam. The lawn mower he used at home was so old that he had learned a lot just keeping it running. Thankfully he had salvaged two other engines that weren't running but gave him enough parts to keep one of the three going.
“Did you pull out the spark plug and check it?” asked Adam.
Ben frowned. “Even though I am ruggedly handsome, I’m not terribly handy with those kind of things,” he said, returning to grunting quietly as he walked.
Adam decided to ask no more and remained quiet until they arrived at Ben’s shed a few minutes later.
The mower was sitting outside the shed on a small cement pad. Adam pulled the starter cord a few times and listened. It didn’t sound like it was even close to starting, and there was a distinct smell of gasoline in the air.
“Do you have a spark plug wrench?” he asked Ben, “It doesn’t seem to be sparking. I can smell the gas, so it’s probably an ignition problem.”
Ben looked at Adam as if Adam had just asked him a stupid question.
“Can’t you just do that thing you do and see if it’s got a spark?”
Adam wasn’t completely surprised that Ben knew about Adam’s ability already. Adam hadn’t thought about using his ability to fix the mower but reasoned that Ben was probably right.
“uh, sure. I can give it a try,” he said. “I’ll go in and then get you to pull the cord a couple of times,” he said, a little worry in his voice.
