As glad as Willa was for the work, as time went on she was not finding much satisfaction in her job. She wasn’t getting any answers to her many questions, that’s for sure. And she felt terribly isolated. Everyone stayed in their bedrooms while she worked. Even Miss Trang spent the entire time in her office. Willa sometimes heard her muttering to herself in there. She ran into Horace in the hall one day, and he admitted, in a whisper, that they were supposed to stay away from Willa as much as possible. Since her friends were out of town, the only people she had to talk to all day were her mom and dad, and she couldn’t tell them anything at all about the house, because of her promise to Miss Trang. It was all very frustrating.
The only soul she had for company was the bird in the parlour. A small tarnished plaque on the cage read “Fadiyah.” Willa began talking to her, calling her “Fadi.” After all, the bird seemed to be her only friend in the house. Just taking a break and gazing into the bird’s eyes for a moment or two gave Willa that warm, happy feeling she had felt the first time she’d seen her.
Days passed without event. Once she found Baz snoozing on the sofa and had to tiptoe around, cleaning quietly. A couple of times she met Belle wheeling to or from the bathroom, where she loved to take long, long baths, but the old lady always ignored her completely. This made Willa very sad, because there was something about Belle that fascinated her. There was a deep, silent melancholy about her that just broke Willa’s heart. Sometimes Willa could hear her humming up in her room. The sound made her stop what she was doing and listen, transfixed, until it faded away to silence. It was hard to believe that such haunting music could come from that cranky old dame.
In all this time she didn’t catch even a glimpse of the cat that she knew had to be there. There were white cat hairs on the sofa, one cupboard in the kitchen was full of cat food tins, and occasionally she could swear she heard, or felt, a deep thrumming purr coming from somewhere upstairs. Yet Miss Trang had insisted that they had no cat. Why would she want to keep it a secret? Her mind reeled with this and other questions.... Why was there a padlock on the doll’s house in the parlour? Why did the brownie leave? How did a bunch of old people come to be living in a house with a magic brownie? Nothing made any sense. Willa was desperate to know the full story of the house, but she wasn’t about to pry or break any of the rules, because she sure didn’t like it when Miss Trang got angry. No, she was determined to stay on the woman’s good side from now on. Of course there was no rule against keeping her eyes and ears open, and that’s what she did.
One grey and dreary day Willa was mopping the second floor hallway. One wall was lined with large windows looking out onto the back garden, and as she wrung out her mop Willa stared out at the view. She could just make out the stable, a crumbling, ivy-covered stone building at the back of the rather large property. The rest of the yard was an overgrown mess of vines, shrubs, huge oak trees, and rose bushes gone wild, so it was hard to see what else might be back there. She was just trying to picture how it might have looked in days gone by when she heard a soft tapping sound behind her.
The hallway was empty. The sound came again. She moved quietly down the hall until she reached the library door. Tap, tap. She looked up. A slender branch poked out from the top of the tall door, sporting three droopy yellow leaves. The leaves were tapping gently against the door. One of them detached and fell to the floor at her feet. She picked it up. It was dry and cracked in her hands. Willa had carefully brought all the other plants back to life, and now she desperately wanted to water this poor thing. She wasn’t allowed to enter the library, but Miss Trang had gone out to buy the groceries, and it would only take a moment....
She refilled her watering can downstairs in the kitchen (since Belle was in the bathroom, as usual) and returned to the library door. She pushed it open. It was dark, there was nobody in sight, and she could see the plant in the corner right beside the door. Carefully keeping her feet planted in the hallway, she leaned in and poured water into the pot, which began to make the strangest gurgling sounds.
“Hello, Willa.” She jumped. Horace was peering around the edge of a high, wing-backed chair by the window. “Come in.”
Willa shook her head. “I’m not supposed to be in here. Miss Trang said. I just noticed the plant was dying....”
Horace raised an amused eyebrow. “It’s quite all right. Come in. I’ll take the blame if Miss Trang catches you. Besides, the hibiscus has already invited you in.” He gestured to the plant. “Does it look like it’s dying?”
She took a step into the room and looked the plant up and down. It was perfectly green, healthy, and bushy. It was sending runners out all over the room. They trailed across the tops of the bookshelves and down the sides. One little vine was even draped over Horace’s chair.
“But ... the leaves that were sticking out of the door were dead.”
Horace laughed and shook a finger at the plant. “Playing tricks on our new friend!” He turned back to Willa. “I think it was just curious to meet you.”
“Curious? How could it be curious?”
“Come over here. Have a seat.”
She gingerly walked over to join him. She sat in one of the big leather chairs, her feet dangling. Horace pulled a volume from a shelf and flipped through the pages. He showed her a diagram of the same plant. “Gossiping hibiscus. Very rare.”
“Why is it called that?”
Horace smiled. “Plants have all the patience in the world. The only thing they have to worry about is growing. This one, however, listens. It knows all our secrets and one day it might just tell all!”
Willa was staring at him. “But plants can’t talk.”
“It called you in here, didn’t it? You heard it.”
He replaced the book as Willa thought about the tapping leaves. And the other odd things in the house.
“Can you tell me about the brownie?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I still don’t know why he left. And is he really a brownie?”
Horace leaned on one elbow. “He certainly is. Brownies are very hard workers. That little fellow kept this whole place together. Worked day and night. Never complained and never took a day off. But brownies are also very secretive. If you try to see one, they pack up and leave forever.” He snapped his fingers. “And you’re left to wash your dishes yourself.”
Willa thought this over. “When Miss Trang got so angry ...”
Horace stopped her. “Willa, surely you’ve noticed there are some rather ... odd things about this place. Miss Trang is very worried about people out there finding out about us. She just wants to keep outsiders out. When she became so angry with you, she wanted to scare you into staying away.”
“So she wouldn’t really have hurt me?”
Horace sighed. “Well, I can’t say that for sure. Miss Trang is full of surprises. None of us are entirely sure what it’s capable of.”
“It?”
Horace smiled. “I meant ‘she,’ of course. Now maybe you’d better scoot out of here before she gets back, hmm?”
Willa nodded.
On her way back down the hall she paused at the bathroom door. Belle loved her two- and three-hour baths, but it sure was a pain to mop up all the water she left on the floor. Willa had no idea how Belle managed to climb from the tub into her wheelchair on her own. She tapped gently on the door.
“Belle? Are you going to be much