The Penderwicks at Point Mouette (6 page)

She thought for a while, trying to figure out how to spell
miss
, as in
I miss you
, but when she couldn’t work out whether it was
mis
or
miss
or something else altogether, she used a gold marker to write LOVE instead.
Then, since somehow she’d managed to fill up most of the paper, she finished off with BATTY in red letters. Rosalind would know what she meant. She always did.

And now came the hard part—throwing the letter into the ocean. Batty pushed open the heavy sliding door, shoving with all her strength, then stepped out into the night. How dark it was outside, and how much louder the ocean sounded all of a sudden! Clutching her letter, Batty crept to the edge of the deck but could go no further. Not without Hound, who had stayed inside, and not, she realized now, without the orange life jacket. Rosalind had made it clear that Batty would drown without that life jacket, but now she was too tired to go back for it. She wasn’t going to be able to send her letter and Rosalind would never know how much Batty missed her.

Out there on the cold deck, Batty started to cry, and once she started she couldn’t seem to stop, even when Hound gave up on the stove and came outside to find her. He licked her face, but she sobbed on and on and thought she might sob forever, or at least until breakfast. But she didn’t have to wait that long, because Hound, finding that he couldn’t soothe her, wisely went looking for the one person who could, and soon he came back with Jeffrey, who sat down beside Batty and put his arm around her, and that was wonderful. She told him everything, about the
shadows and the postcards and how she needed to throw the letter into the ocean, and he didn’t laugh at her or even smile, and then he offered to throw her letter into the ocean for her, which he did, just like the hero she’d known him to be since the very first day she met him.

“There,” he said, coming back to her on the deck. “Letter launched.”

“And you won’t tell Skye and Jane, right?”

“Penderwick family honor.” He inspected her for traces of further crying. “Do you feel better now? A little bit? Wait—I know what else we can do. Stay here.”

Jeffrey disappeared back into the house, but before Batty had time to get scared all over again, he was back with his clarinet case and a small silvery something that he handed to Batty.

“It’s a harmonica. If you like, you can keep it, and I’ll teach you how to play. Think how surprised Rosalind will be when you play a song for her.”

Batty turned the harmonica over and over and let Hound sniff it. She’d seen one before, and had even blown on it, but no one had ever offered to teach her a real song. Penderwicks didn’t play songs on instruments. Rosalind and Skye had both tried music lessons when they were younger, and they’d been so miserably bad at them that Jane hadn’t bothered.

“I don’t know,” she said, though she longed to try.
Jeffrey was right—how surprised Rosalind would be, and Daddy and Iantha, too. And Ben, why, she could teach Ben everything Jeffrey taught her. “Well, maybe.”

“Good. Now blow into it.”

She blew and heard music coming out. She blew some more, then sucked in instead of blowing out, and although this was a mistake, music still came out, and it hadn’t been a mistake after all. Batty was astonished, and Hound, who had suffered through the older sisters’ struggles with music, was even more so.

“Teach me more,” she said. “Please.”

And right there, with the rushing, crashing waves for accompaniment, Batty had her first-ever music lesson. Jeffrey showed her how to make her mouth smaller to keep from playing lots of notes all at once, and talked a little about the difference between blowing in and out—though Batty didn’t get all that right away—and when she had a little more confidence, he started teaching her a song. He played one note at a time on his clarinet, then waited for her to find that same note on her harmonica before he went on to the next. They did that for six whole notes, and then together they played the six notes all in a row, and Batty couldn’t have been happier if she’d had an entire orchestra behind her.

“Again?” she asked.

“We need to go back to sleep, but I can show you more tomorrow.”

“Yes, please.” She stood up and took his hand. “Maybe I’ll be a musician when I grow up, just like you.”

“I’d like that,” Jeffrey said, and took her and Hound inside and put them safely back to bed.

E
VEN WITH HER HEAD UNDER THE PILLOW
, Jane could hear the harmonica. She knew what time it was, and there was no reason for anyone to be playing a harmonica at eight o’clock in the morning. Unless Jeffrey was having an uncontrolled urge to play music, any music. But whoever was playing seemed to be playing the same notes over and over, and Jeffrey wouldn’t torture people like that, especially not this early. It couldn’t be Skye, because she was still asleep in the cot next to Jane’s, and Aunt Claire had never shown interest in harmonicas or any other musical instruments. Which left only one possibility.

Jane came out from under her pillow and shook Skye. “You’d better go see what Batty’s doing. I think she’s got hold of a harmonica.”

“Impossible,” mumbled Skye.

“Improbable, but not impossible. Go find out. You’re the OAP.” Jane went back under her pillow, trying to block not only the harmonica but the thumps and crashes of Skye getting out of bed. Jane needed quiet, because she was working on her book. This was her favorite time to think about writing—while she was still in bed, no longer asleep but not quite awake, or as she put it when she thought about writing her autobiography, while she floated between dreams and reality. She was trying to come up with a good second sentence. She was almost sure she wanted to keep
Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr who had never been in love
as her first sentence. But where to go from there? Last night she’d come up with several possibilities, full of words like
yearn
and
destiny
, but this morning they all sounded ridiculous.

Now it was Skye shaking her. Jane’s pillow fell to the floor.

“What?” she asked crossly. If this morning was any indication, she wasn’t going to get much writing done in Maine.

“You were right,” said Skye. “Batty does have a harmonica. She says that Jeffrey gave it to her in the middle of the night, that he’s teaching her to play, and from what I can tell, he’s teaching her to play ‘Taps.’ Aunt Claire’s in there with her, looking very patient.
Do you think there could have been a rule against musical instruments on my list?”

Jane listened to the notes still being played in the house. Yes, they did sound like the beginning of “Taps.”

“If not, there should have been,” she said.

“I agree,” said Skye. Crouching, she tossed a shoe under the bamboo room divider. She must have aimed well, because now there came a series of snorts, and finally Jeffrey’s indignant voice.

“Why did you do that?”

“ ‘Taps’? On a harmonica?”

The bamboo screen was shoved aside and Jeffrey’s head came through. “It was the easiest song I could come up with,” he said. “And I think she sounds pretty good.”

When Skye picked up another shoe to throw, Jane scooted down under her blanket. A second line had just come to her, and she didn’t want to lose it.
Sabrina told herself that she didn’t long for love, but this was a lie
. No, that wasn’t right at all! Rats! Maybe it would help to choose a name for Sabrina’s love. Arnold, Akbar. No. Aidan? No. Bartholomew. Ha. Crispin, no, Carl, no, no, no. Go on to D. But to Jane’s annoyance, her brain got stuck on Dexter, and that of course was out of the question.

“What’s wrong with me?” she moaned. “Am I washed up as a writer already?”

No one answered, not a helpful muse or even a sister. Jane peeked out from under her blanket. Skye was gone, and Jeffrey’s shoes, his hat, and a golf club were on this side of the bamboo curtain. There must have been an exhilarating battle while Jane had gotten exactly nothing done. She twisted her blanket in frustration.

But now Skye was bursting back onto the porch, full of energy and plans. Aunt Claire was sending the two of them and Jeffrey on a walk to that market with the moose in front. For groceries, and also to keep Skye from breaking Batty’s harmonica in two and throwing it into the ocean. And also to work on soccer skills. Skye loved working on soccer skills. Jane would have preferred to stay in bed and think—Eamon? Felipe?—but Skye was waving around three fat slices of Churchie’s gingerbread, and suddenly Jane was too hungry to worry about Sabrina Starr’s love life.

Skye didn’t hand over the gingerbread until they were all dressed and outside. It was a gorgeous morning, bright with sunshine while still fresh and cool, and with traces of dew glittering on the grass. Across the street a broad meadow was dotted with wildflowers and, in the middle, one giant oak lording it over all. The pinewood to their left was as dark and secretive as a pinewood should be, and to their right was a long stretch of privacy, broken only by Alec’s red house, and that was half hidden by the birches.

“I like it here,” said Jeffrey, cramming the last of his gingerbread into his mouth.

“It’s idyllic,” agreed Jane.

“Enough chatter. Get ready for soccer drills,” said Skye. “Taps” had been only a temporary setback. The combination of Jeffrey, gingerbread, and the invigorating ocean air had her nearly giddy with happiness. “Dribble pattern Isosceles.”

Isosceles was one of Skye’s favorite drills. It needed three people—positioned at the three points of a triangle—and consisted of a complicated pattern of passing, receiving, and switching places in the triangle, while all the time running forward, even when passing backward. Jeffrey and Jane groaned—weren’t they on vacation after all?—but Skye was already tossing out two balls, so off they went down Ocean Boulevard. They passed Alec’s house and the stretch of rocky coast that separated it and Birches from the rest of Point Mouette.

Then came a large white building, which they’d been too rushed the day before to notice. It turned out to be an inn—Mouette Inn—and was comfortable-looking rather than grand, with cheerful flower gardens and a wide porch full of lounge chairs, and across the road from it was a wooden dock built far out into the ocean, which everyone agreed was full of possibilities.

None of this slowed down the intricate dance of
Isosceles, but when they had to turn off Ocean Boulevard and start up the hill, the triangle had a hard time holding its shape, and as the road got steeper and curvier and there were cars, even Skye knew that the soccer drill was over. Still, she insisted they all run in a straight line, carrying the balls. She wanted them to chant as they went, but while she was trying to decide on a chant, Jane and Jeffrey ganged up on her and said that if they had to chant, they wouldn’t run. Even without the chanting, it was grueling work, and they were grateful to reach Moose Market.

Inside, the store had wide-planked wooden floors and leaning shelves, and it smelled delicious, like ripe fruit and new bread. Jeffrey, in charge of Aunt Claire’s list, sent them hunting and gathering for groceries, and when they’d finished that, all three ended up staring at the rows of fresh-baked pies in the glass case near the cash register, debating the merits of each, and finally deciding on one lemon meringue and one strawberry-rhubarb. Then Skye grabbed extra cartons of orange juice to drink on the way home, since the run there had made them thirsty, and they were ready to check out and head back.

On the way down the hill, Jane lagged behind the others, laden down with a soccer ball, her orange juice, and both pies. Moose Market had made her think about her book. Maybe she needed to come up with a particularly interesting place for Sabrina to
meet her love, like a country store with wooden floors.
Looking up from the pies, Sabrina saw him across the aisle, near the lettuce and celery
. No, that doesn’t work, thought Jane. Was it possible that Sabrina Starr simply wasn’t ready for romance? And how does somebody become ready for romance, anyway? This was an enigma, one that Jane needed to solve.

“For my art,” she said out loud.

Ahead of her, Skye called out, “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Jane knew there was no point in discussing love with Skye, who didn’t have what Jane considered to be a romantic soul. Or with Jeffrey, whose head was so stuffed with music that there wasn’t room for much else. Like right now—Jane could hear him trying to explain to Skye about something called a diminished seventh chord while Skye was beating him with a roll of paper towels to make him stop.

Jane wished she’d begun thinking about love a week or so ago, when the family was still together. Iantha would have answered her questions. She always did—it was one of the million nice things about her. Rosalind might have, too, though she had said it was none of Jane’s business that one time Jane asked what it was like to kiss Tommy. Maybe that hadn’t been a good question to start with. Maybe she should work out better questions to ask, and make up a survey for
research. Yes, a Love Survey. Jane liked that idea a lot. What she needed was a good first question, one that would get people interested without scaring them away.