A Tangle of Knots

Fifty-three years after the events of the Prologue, 11-year-old Cady lives at Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was left at the home when she was only an infant, and no one knows where she is from. Miss Mallory’s Talent allows her to place orphans with their perfect families, and Cady is the only person Miss Mallory hasn’t been able to find a home for quickly. The orphaned girl’s Talent for baking allows her to “imagine the absolutely perfect cake for any person, anywhere” (14). She’s won first place in the Sunshine Bakers of America Annual Cake Bakeoff every year since she was five, and the next bakeoff will be held in New York City the following week. One foggy morning, Cady bakes a cake for another girl’s Adoption Day party while dreaming of the day that she will be adopted. She tells herself, “[M]aybe [...] my real and true family will step right out of the fog” (19).

The Owner of the Lost Luggage Emporium at 1 Argyle Road in Poughkeepsie, New York, reluctantly opens the building’s upper rooms to renters. His mother had no Talent, but she amassed an impressive fortune, which has been depleted over the past 53 years. The Owner can float in midair, and he sells clothes, electronics, suitcases, and other items that are found among lost luggage left at the local airport. Unbeknownst to his customers, he also steals their Talents. In a week’s time, the emporium’s upper rooms will fill with renters, including “a thief, a person in possession of an object worth millions of dollars” (24). Each of the renters will lose what they treasure most.

Ten-year-old Marigold Asher spends the foggy morning testing out possible Talents and eliminates “doing jumping jacks, gargling, blowing bubbles, slicing garlic, making a house out of playing cards, stringing popcorn, organizing furniture, drawing mazes, and making piñatas” (26). She wears a red bracelet with three silver beads that is meant to help her find her Talent. Her younger brother, Will, has a Talent for going missing and a pet ferret named Sally. Her rude older brother, Zane, has the Talent of perfectly aimed spitting. Like many middle children, Marigold has no Talent and belongs to the group of people called Fair or Middlings.

A 60-year-old woman has a stroke while out for a walk and collapses on the highway. She loses her ability to speak, read, and understand others’ speech. Unable to tell the strangers who stop to help her name, she holds up a locket inscribed with the letter V. Her daughter, Caroline, is dead, and she feels that her life is meaningless since she has lost both her daughter and her words.

Zane reads Face Value by Victoria Valence, a mystery about “a rogue treasure hunter with a Talent for changing his face—a chameleon” (35). As he tries to distract himself with the novel, he remembers Principal Piles’ searing words, “WORTHLESS, Zane Asher, that’s what you are. A delinquent. A waste of a perfectly good desk. I’ll be writing to your parents and letting them know as much” (35). The boy worries that he will be sent to a boarding school when his parents read the principal’s letter. He vents his frustration by spitting on a pigeon.

Cady finds three tickets to the Annual Sunshine Bakeoff in the mail. She expects that she and Miss Mallory will go together like they do every year, but Miss Mallory suspects that Cady’s perfect family will find her soon because she feels a tug in her chest that morning. Over the past decade, Miss Mallory’s Talent ensured that most girls were matched with families within days or even mere hours, and Cady has been “the only constant Miss Mallory had come to count on” (39). She named the girl Cadence because their heartbeats were in perfect sync when she held Cady for the first time.

Dolores Asher drops off a bundle of blankets that she knitted with her Talent at a hospital. She sees V, who is being treated for her stroke. V is still unable to communicate, and her age, name, and Talent are unknown. Dolores keeps her bun in place with a hairpin that is “beige and cracked and knobby, as wide as a rib of celery and as long as a pencil” (42). A nurse compliments Dolores’s Talent for knitting, but she thinks wistfully of her days working at the Poughkeepsie Museum of Natural Sciences on a scholarship for Fair students. She returns to her car, sees an envelope from McDermott Elementary School among the pile of mail on the passenger seat, decides to open it later, and drives home through the fog. After Chapter 7, there is a recipe for Will’s S’more Cake, which “always disappears quickly” (44).

Six-year-old Willard Asher and his ferret use the apartment building’s dumbwaiter to search for adventure, which he believes should involve “Giants. Monsters. Cake” (48). He hears an enormous crash and hurries to his family’s living room, where he discovers that a hot air balloon has collided with their building.

Toby works for the Lost Luggage Emporium. While transporting his daily truckload of unclaimed luggage from the airport, he learns of an accident on the highway and takes an unfamiliar route. He swerves onto the lawn of Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls, nearly hitting Cady. Toby expects Cady and Miss Mallory to be furious with him, but they invite him to join them for some cake instead. He accepts their invitation and gives them “a real and true smile, the kind he hadn’t felt in a long, long time” (53). Toby says that his last name is Darlington. He also claims not to have a Talent, which is a lie. Miss Mallory asks Toby if he wants to adopt Cady. The question stirs up difficult memories from “long ago, in that tiny village in Africa, when he’d been a very different man” (56). Toby realizes that he longs to be a father again and agrees. After the chapter, there is a recipe for V’s Mystery Fudge Cake, which has a secret center.

Toby and Cady live in the same building as the emporium, and the also Ashers move into the building while their apartment is being repaired from the rogue hot air balloon accident. Cady and Marigold quickly become close friends. The last day of Cady’s trial week with Toby is also the day of the Annual Sunshine Bakeoff. Although Cady is finding it difficult to get to know the reserved Toby, she hopes that Miss Mallory will declare that their little family is a perfect match. Mrs. Asher introduces Cady to V, who takes one look at the girl and rushes into the emporium. Mrs. Asher asks Cady if she’s seen her hairpin and notices that the girl seems subdued. Cady frets, “I just want Toby to be happy with me, is all” (65). Mrs. Asher gives Cady a knitted red apron and assures her that parents just want their children to be happy. An enormous man in a gray suit rides up to the emporium on a bicycle with a powder blue suitcase. He advises Cady, “It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are” (67). When she looks up from the wildflowers she is gathering, the man is gone.

V recalls her dead daughter Caroline when she looks at Cady, so she flees into the emporium. She knows the building used to be the Darlington Peanut Butter Factory. The factory owner’s remarkable success was all the more impressive because she was Fair. After the owner died, the factory closed abruptly when V was a girl. V morosely muses that she could “use a taste of happiness” (70). She follows the scent of Cady’s cake-baking and Marigold’s oboe-playing deeper into the building.

The Owner finds Mrs. Asher’s hairpin and uses it as a toothpick. The man in the gray suit enters the emporium with a powder blue St. Anthony’s suitcase. The Owner has already collected all other 35 copies of the suitcase over the last 50 years, so he knows the salesman’s case must contain the item he longs to possess. The Owner notices the knotted ropes inside the salesman’s jacket and asks if they’ve met before, but the salesman denies it. The Owner gives the salesman all of the money in the cash register in exchange for the suitcase and its contents. The gray-suited man mentions that he is on his way to pick up his repaired hot air balloon and says, “Pleasure doing business with you” (75). The Owner replies that the pleasure was his and reaches for a handshake, ready to steal the man’s Talent.