The Callender Papers Read online

  The most important consequence took the longest to bring about. I don’t know why it wasn’t as clear to them as it was to me what should be done. But Aunt Constance always believes in thinking carefully about things. My father finally persuaded her to marry him, which had always seemed to me the obvious step. When I chide either of them with this, they remind me that I am a child and do not understand everything. I suspect I understand more than they think, but do not tell them that. For instance, I suspect that Aunt Constance was afraid he would ask her to give up the school, which he would never dream of doing. He does not want a dependent female making demands on him. I also suspect that she was embarrassed, after so many years of proud spinsterhood, to marry at all.

  My father persevered, as he puts it, cautiously and carefully. When I told him, that first winter we spent together in Cambridge, that she had once said they were two of a kind, he first roared with laughter and then fell silent. “I see,” he said. I think he did see. We think alike, my father and I.

  Books by Cynthia Voigt

  Homecoming

  Dicey’s Song

  Winner of the 1983 Newbery Medal

  A Solitary Blue

  1984 Newbery Honor Book

  Tell Me If the Lovers Are Lovers

  Elske

  The Vandemark Mummy

  Building Blocks

  The Runner

  Jackaroo

  Izzy, Willy-Nilly

  Come a Stranger

  Stories About Rosie

  Sons from Afar

  Tree by Leaf

  Seventeen Against the Dealer

  On Fortune’s Wheel

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition March 2000

  Text copyright © 1983 by Cynthia Voigt

  Aladdin Paperbacks

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Designed by Steve Scott

  The text for this book was set in Adobe Garamond

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Voigt, Cynthia.

  The Callender papers.

  Summary: In nineteenth-century Massachusetts, orphan Jean, employed to sort out the family papers of a reclusive artist, becomes curious about the mysterious, long-ago death of his wife and the subsequent disappearance of their young child.

  [1.Mystery and detective stories. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Massachusetts—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.V874Cal 1983 [Fic] 82-13797

  ISBN 978-0-689-30971-7 (hc.)

  ISBN 978-0-689-83283-3 (Aladdin pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8924-0 (eBook)