The Penderwicks at Point Mouette (27 page)

Asimov’s answer was to droop heavily in her arms looking, if no longer dead, at least pathetic, and he kept it up until Rosalind hauled him back into the kitchen and opened a new can of tuna. After two bites he forgave her, and after another three he forgot all about being left behind, though he did forever hold on to his newfound interest in the Red Sox.

Rosalind checked the time—three o’clock. While Daddy, Iantha, and Ben wouldn’t be home until that evening, the Maine contingent should be arriving soon. She took her luggage up to her room and dug around in it for the stuffed animal she’d bought for Batty in Ocean City, a squishy red lobster with huge
eyes. She had a squishy toy crab for Ben, too, a stingray-shaped chew toy for Hound, and a miniature toy octopus for Asimov. She carried the lobster, stingray, and octopus back downstairs and tried to present the octopus to Asimov, but he leaped instead at the lobster.

“Bad cat,” she said, holding the lobster high and kicking the octopus around, hoping its movement would catch Asimov’s interest. When at last he deigned to poke at it dispiritedly, Rosalind went outside to sit on the front steps and await the travelers from Maine.

She’d missed them very much. She’d expected to miss Batty and so had been ready for that emptiness, but she hadn’t expected to miss Skye and Jane as much as she had. She also, however, hadn’t thought she’d enjoy being without all of them, even Batty, despite the missing. She’d tried not to feel guilty about it—Anna had said that for once she was being normal—and by now had forgiven herself. Because what she felt right this minute, sitting on the front step and waiting, was what mattered. She let herself be swept up in it, a grand and uproarious happiness that they would all soon be together again.

And then there was the curiosity. It hadn’t escaped Rosalind that she’d never once in the entire two weeks talked to Skye. She’d talked to everyone else, including Jeffrey, including even a man named Turron,
though she never quite figured out who he was. But Skye, no. The lack of Skye had been so apparent that after a while Rosalind asked Aunt Claire if she was still with them in Maine, and Aunt Claire laughed and said yes. There were other mysteries, too—events hinted at, people mentioned, then dropped. Like Dominic. Who was Dominic?

Commotion was breaking out behind Rosalind. Bored with the octopus, Asimov was meowing at her from inside the door, and when she resolutely ignored him, he launched himself at the screen and hung there, stuck and yowling. Sighing, she went back inside and took him to the kitchen for another look at his octopus, which she prayed he would finally take to. This time she got down on the floor and wiggled the octopus enticingly and made what she hoped were octopus noises. It was in the middle of one of the squishiest of these noises that Rosalind heard a car pull into the driveway, its horn blaring—they were home!

She tossed aside the octopus, raced outside, and hurled herself at Aunt Claire’s car, shouting “Hello” and being shouted back at by Skye, who sprang from the car almost before it stopped.

“Your hair!” Rosalind cried to Skye, and when Jane leaped out, too, she said it again. “Your hair! Why did you cut your hair?”

“It’s a long story,” said Skye.

But Rosalind was now diving into the backseat, ready to bestow her lobster and her love and longing, but found it frighteningly empty of children and dogs.

“Where’s Batty? Where’s Hound? What’s happened to them?”

“They’ll be along in a minute with Jeffrey,” said Aunt Claire, smiling in the front seat.

“But who’s driving them?”

“Alec,” said Skye. “He’s a long story, too. Hold on. We have to get Aunt Claire out of the car.”

Rosalind was reeling. Both her sisters seemed taller and so independent with their cropped hair. Had time moved more slowly in New Jersey? Had she been asleep for a year under the boardwalk? And why did Aunt Claire need help getting out of the car?

Jane got a pair of crutches out of the backseat, and Skye pulled Aunt Claire out of the front seat, and now Aunt Claire was on her crutches and reaching for a hug from her oldest niece.

“How beautiful you look, Rosalind,” she said. “We all certainly missed you.”

“But you said on the phone that it was a minor strain!” Rosalind refused to be distracted by compliments. “Are you all right? Why didn’t you tell me how bad it was?”

“Skye didn’t want you to worry,” answered Aunt Claire. “None of us did. We were fine.”

“How did it happen?”

“A shorter story. Hoover the dog did it,” said Jane.

“Hoover?” asked Rosalind, then clutched at her hair. “Oh, I remember now. Batty kept talking about Hoover and how bad he is. I thought she was exaggerating.”

“He’s bad, all right,” laughed Skye, “as you’re about to find out.”

Another car was pulling into the driveway, with more honking. Rosalind got a confused impression of the occupants of the front seat—besides Jeffrey, a man she’d never seen before and a blur of black-and-white dog with a squashed-in face—before she plunged into the backseat and found it delightfully and comfortably occupied by her most beloved youngest sister—another haircut!—who was unhooking her seatbelt as fast as she could and crying, “Rosalind, Rosalind,” until the two of them, plus the red lobster, plus the dogs, all tumbled out of the car, with hugs and dog kisses and much loud homecoming exuberance, the loudest of which was Batty’s insistence on playing her harmonica.

“Alec taught me the blues on the way home.” Wrapped tight in a Rosalind hug, she wailed through several bluesy lines. “I can explain the blues to you, Rosy, if you want.”

Rosalind held her at arm’s length and marveled. “You’re
glowing
, honey.”

“I’m a musician now.” Batty went back to her harmonica.

“Oh, yeah, that’s another thing, Rosalind,” said Skye. “Batty needs a piano. Another long story.”

“A piano!”

Before she could try to absorb that shock, Jeffrey was giving her a hug. When he stood back, she saw that he looked taller, too, and more grown-up somehow, and again Rosalind had that curious sense that she’d been apart from these people for much longer than two weeks. But the most noticeable thing about Jeffrey was his luminous joy. What had happened in Maine? Whatever had happened?

Standing next to Jeffrey was the man who’d been driving.

“Rosy, this is Alec McGrath,” said Jeffrey. “Alec, this is Rosalind.”

“Hello,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

There was nothing special about the words he’d used, but there was something special in his tone that made Rosalind look more closely at this Alec. He seemed familiar, but not in a way she could describe.

“Have we met before?” she asked. “Is that why Skye says you’re a long story?”

“I told you she was smart, Alec,” said Jeffrey gleefully.

“Jeffrey also told me that I wouldn’t be absolutely accepted without your approval.” Alec dipped his head in teasing supplication.

Several people giggled and Rosalind gazed wonderingly around at her family. They were all watching her, waiting for something from her, something
important. All the watching and waiting seemed to do with this man, Alec, so she turned her attention back to him. She liked his face and she liked the way he was smiling at her—I’m already your friend, he seemed to be saying—with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped a bit to one side. Jeffrey was smiling the same way, she noticed, and had his hands in his pockets, and his head—why, his head was tipped just the same way. How strange. How very …

“Jeffrey, I’m having the most peculiar idea,” she said.

“What is your idea?” he asked, smiling more than ever.

“I’m thinking that he—that Alec—oh, Jeffrey,” she breathed. “Have you found your father?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Rosy, I most certainly have.”

It was very unfair, and only a girl as strong as Rosalind could have waited as long as she did to have her curiosity satisfied. A father for Jeffrey! Let alone a mysterious piano, new haircuts, and Aunt Claire’s sprained ankle. But before any stories could be told, Alec, Jeffrey, and Hoover had to be sent on their way to Arundel, with many hugs and promises to see each other as soon as possible, preferably for a weekend stay at Alec’s apartment in Boston. Then Aunt Claire needed to be put on a couch to rest, because driving across New England with a sprained ankle is tiring, and then the car needed to be unpacked, and then
Hound had to be fed and Asimov had to be fed all over again.

But at last, Rosalind ordered her sisters upstairs to her room, because she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.

“I want to hear everything,” she said, wrapping her arms around Batty and the new lobster—already named Lola—and how good it felt to have her littlest sister right back where she belonged.

“I need a piano,” said Batty.

“All right. Start with the piano.”

“It’s hard to explain the piano without explaining Alec and Jeffrey,” said Skye, “and Hoover.”

“And we have to tell how Dominic made us get haircuts,” said Batty.

“He didn’t make us,” put in Jane. “It was all my fault. Or the Firegod’s.”

“Oh, definitely, let’s pin everything on the Firegod,” said Skye.

Rosalind waved her arms at them. “You’re getting nowhere. Firegods! Good grief.”

“Maybe we should just start at the beginning,” said Jane.

“Yes, please.”

So Skye, Jane, and Batty started at the beginning and, with lots of interweaving, overlapping, and interrupting, told Rosalind the tale of Point Mouette. Rosalind, holding fast to Batty, listened, and exclaimed,
and absorbed. The piano went down more easily than Skye had feared it would, maybe because Rosalind had more memories than the others did of their mother’s love of music. Hoover she was rather glad to have avoided spending too much time with, and Dominic she was very glad to have missed altogether. But from what her sisters told her, she hoped to meet Turron in the future, and Mercedes, too. Naturally, though, Rosalind was most touched by how Jeffrey had finally found his long-lost father.

“And Mrs. T-D won’t try to keep them apart?” she asked.

“She can’t,” answered Jane. “They’re bonded now, father and son.”

“Besides, she’s got no legal grounds for doing it,” added Skye. “Turron asked a lawyer.”

Rosalind sighed happily. “This is a wonderful story. All the stories are wonderful, except maybe the ones about Dominic.”

Jane nervously cleared her throat. “I haven’t yet told you the last one of those.”

“Oh, no,” said Skye. “You didn’t go to French Park and kiss him again, did you?”

“I did not go to French Park, and of course I didn’t kiss him again. He has proved himself unworthy of me. It’s just that he stopped by yesterday to give me this.” Jane pulled a grubby and much-folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Rosalind.

“It looks like the beginning of a poem,” Rosalind said after carefully unfolding it. “May I read it out loud, Jane?”

“I guess so.”

“Here goes,” said Rosalind.

Skye let out a groan that could have been heard all the way back to Maine, but Rosalind was laughing, so Skye couldn’t help but laugh, too, and although Jane tried hard to be fair and kind about Dominic, she ended up feeding the poem to Hound, who appreciated it much more than she had.

“And now that we’re through all that,” said Skye, “I’m officially handing back the reins of OAP-dom to Rosalind. Long may she live. Amen.”

“You were a good OAP, though, Skye,” said Jane.

“Yes, you were,” added Rosalind. “Thank you.”

“I did okay,” said Skye. “At least Batty didn’t blow up.”

“Why would—?”

Rosalind was interrupted by Hound suddenly charging the window, barking ecstatically and crashing his big nose against the screen. Everyone knew what that meant, and their hearts soared.

“They’re home! They’re home!” cried Batty.

She rushed from the room, and Hound followed, and charging after him went Jane and Skye. Rosalind held back for a moment, still puzzled about people blowing up. But then she heard car doors slamming, sisters shrieking, Iantha and Aunt Claire laughing, Ben shouting, and—above all that and better than anything in the world—her father’s deep voice asking for Rosalind, where is Rosalind, and thoughts of blowing up were gone, never to return. She flew downstairs, and the Penderwick family was back together again.