“We’re just going to have to wait until it gets dark,” Wunder said as sunset grew closer and closer.

“Dark?” Davy shook his head in disbelief. “We’re going to chop down a tree in the dark?”

“Not a tree. A branch, David,” Faye said. “And we don’t have any other choice.”

“The last train to Branch Hill leaves at 8:15,” Wunder said. “As long as we make that, we’ll be okay.”

“We won’t get back to the station until three!” Davy cried. “Do you know what my mother will do to me if I come home at three in the morning?”

Wunder didn’t know exactly, but he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. Mrs. Baum—cancer survivor, attorney-at-law, marathon runner—was not a woman to be trifled with.

“Call her and tell her you’re staying at my house,” Wunder suggested.

“She doesn’t know where I am now,” Davy said. “She’s probably already so angry. If I call her, she’s going to go crazy!”

“Lucky for me,” Faye said, “my mother probably isn’t worried at all.”

Wunder wasn’t sure what his parents would be thinking. He wondered if his mother had come out of her room today. He wondered if his father had been angry that he had skipped church yet again. Maybe they were relieved that he was gone. Maybe they had closed the door of his bedroom so they wouldn’t have to see his bed or Milagros’s crib, so they wouldn’t have to think about either of them. Maybe that was what they wanted.

“It’s going to work out,” he said loudly. “We’ve made it this far. We’re going to do it.”

Chapter 35

At seven thirty, it was dark and cold and the town of Benedict was finally still. The stores had been closed for a few hours. An evening service ended and churchgoers headed home. Soon after, the lights inside the church turned off.

“Now!” Wunder said, jumping up from the bench.

He half ran down the block of shops, pulling the wagon as smoothly as he could to keep the clanging to a minimum. He could hear Faye’s cloak flapping in the wind behind him, and he suddenly wished he had one of his own, if only for moments like these when things were dangerous and wild and exciting. A cloak, he was sure, would amplify those feelings at least a hundredfold.

At the back of the church, they came face-to-face with the DoorWay Tree for the first time.

The tree was inside a black wrought-iron fence. The fence enclosed a small plot of land that was dotted with gleaming marble and rough gray stone and glistening gold and shining silver and one statue of a majestic white bird.

The tree was in a graveyard.

“Of course,” Wunder said aloud. “Where else would it be?”

The fence was short enough that Wunder was able to throw his bag to the other side and then scramble over himself. Davy needed a boost, and Faye’s cloak got stuck and nearly ripped, but soon they were in the graveyard.