Contents
CHAPTER 36: LYRA
Overview
Lyra and Grayson confront Nan about Alice and the date 3/5/1967. Nan reveals Alice vanished for nearly a year and returned to Tobias, who gave her a carved box for secrets and twelve keys—one per month of her absence. Nan lacks the box’s location, but Grayson knows where to find the keys.
Summary
Grayson gives Lyra caramel candies and warns her about his great-grandmother Nan’s cane before they find Nan in the Hawthorne House bowling alley. Nan sizes Lyra up, makes barbed comments about Grayson’s past and “emotional security suits,” and pointedly prefers Xander. Grayson asks if March 5, 1967 means anything.
Pressed, Nan reveals that was the day Alice disappeared. Poor and dismissed by police, the family got no answers. Alice was gone nearly a year, then returned without explanation. Tobias, after a week to think, took Alice back without demanding the truth.
Nan recounts that Tobias brought a carved box for Alice to hide her secrets and a ring of twelve keys he’d made—one for each month she was gone. He told Alice his year was in those keys and that they’d never speak of it again. Nan doesn’t know what became of the box.
After Nan leaves, Grayson tells Lyra he has never seen the box but knows where they can find the keys, setting their next objective.
Who Appears
- LyraInvestigates Alice with Grayson; questions Nan and connects the date to Alice’s disappearance.
- Grayson HawthorneLeads the inquiry with Nan; learns Alice vanished; reveals he knows where the keys are.
- Pearl O’Day (Nan)Reveals Alice disappeared on 3/5/1967, returned after a year; describes Tobias’s box and twelve keys.