Secrets

Chapter 27

While not the greatest cook in the world, Holly was always much better at it than her father. As soon as she was able to do so, she'd taken up the task of cooking the meals after her mother had passed. It was a great improvement over the concoctions her father had attempted or the endless money spent on take-out meals, and there was much less risk of unnecessary fires that were not set purposefully or for complicated reasons. The young girl believed that her father was amazing at many things, some of which she did not know about until recently, but cooking in the kitchen was not one of them. Such a skill also became a necessity when he was away on business trips or voluntary adventures, leaving her to fend for herself... much like right now.

With these thoughts in her mind, the Snicton girl was unsure if Mr. Caliban was any better than her father at such things and she decided to make breakfast for both of them. She began to crack some eggs into a bowl and searched for the necessary ingredients to create cheddar and spinach omelettes; a favourite, especially when she was concentrating on something. Her preferred comfort food was pancakes with syrup, whipped cream and strawberries, but due to the broken milk bottle, she could not make them. She also did not need to be comforted at this moment, she was thinking and planning.

While whisking the eggs in a bowl, she listened as Mr. Caliban went to the telephone and began to call other members of V.F.D. She pretended to be busy cooking, but she was eavesdropping for any information that she could gather. She needed to know what had truly happened at the school and what this secret organization was doing to rescue her friends.

Eavesdropping is a word that here means secretly listening in to a conversation that you were not invited to. It is a practice often considered impolite and intrusive to many people, especially if the conversation is private or does not concern you or your well-being.

However, when you have been in a secret organization as long as I have, you find that sometimes such ill-mannered practices are required especially when uncovering the conspiracies entrenched in a small seaside town that exports ink or discovering a plot to poison your sister-in-law. You might find yourself crouched in a dumbwaiter next to the adjacent room where two sinister people talk about how they are going to use your sister-in-law's love of tea to end her life before her thoughts and ideas spread to others and settle an imagined conflict between their families. When you signal to the butler who had lowered you down in the small device to pull you up, you barely have time to write a message to warn her family and attach it to a crow, before you are forced to hang glide out the window and escape the blaze the butler is going to set to end the two people's tyranny. I am sad to say that the man in service failed to end the villainy and to this day I am unsure what has become of him. Several years later, I'd heard from my sister that she still worked with this butler and he'd been sent on a mission to retrieve and protect one of my family members. Sadly, my message was never received and the plot against my sister-in-law was carried out, leaving that same family member without a mother for a very long time. Such guilt plagues my conscience every day and often leaves me thinking about what could have been if a trained eagle had not snatched the crow from the sky, intercepting the efforts of my eavesdropping.

While I cannot say this practice is not without its risks, I can say that over time, people such as myself have found various ways to listen into other people's conversations without being detected including empty glasses against hollow walls, using disguised recording devices, pretending to be someone else, hiding behind or within objects in the room that the discussion is taking place or in the case of Holly Snicton, pretending to be busy with something while secretly listening in. I find this method of disguised listening to be the best as you are not only being productive by doing something else but gathering important intel on what might be occurring within a secret organization. Sadly, it is difficult to get all the details when eavesdropping on a telephone conversation and Holly S. had the unfortunate luck of listening in on one at the moment she was whisking eggs.